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minutes. And next time leave your boots outside, see. We don’t wear boots in the house.”
    * * *
    Tim walked up the dark passage to the bathroom. The worn wooden floorboards creaked underfoot. The smell of food had reminded him just how long ago, and in what a different world, his last bowl of cornflakes had been. He was still tired, wary, and deeply unhappy inside. But it was kind of odd what someone saying “Welcome home” did to him inside.
    It was almost as if, strange as the place was, it was home. Weird , he thought as he washed his hands. Home was Melbourne. It didn’t have a wood fire in the kitchen and had hot water in the hand-basin. It wasn’t a million miles out into the bush with a crazy old woman.

CHAPTER 4
    Tim made his way back to the kitchen. It was a bit smoky in there, lit by a single bare bulb. Two places were laid on the scrubbed boards of the big, rickety table. A plate full of food—a generous plateful—stood steaming at one of them. His grandmother was dishing a second, much smaller plate of food from pots on the stove. Tim hovered, uncertain if he should sit and where. She turned from the stove. Gestured with an elbow at the plate at the table. “Yer making the place look untidy. Sit down and eat up. It’s getting cold.” As he moved to pull the chair out, she said. “Wait. Yer’d better give it a welcome.”
    She put her plate down at her place, went to an old rounded refrigerator in the corner, rummaged in it, and pulled out a bottle…of beer. Well, it was a beer bottle. She handed it to him. “Here. For your little friend.”
    Tim looked uncertainly at the stubby bottle. It had a cork shoved into it. Not a new cork, either. The bottle was about half full. Not quite knowing what he should do, he pulled the cork out.
    “It’s flat, but they don’t mind,” said his grandmother.
    “Er. What is it?” he said, sniffing it from a distance.
    “Beer. Not for you to drink, boy! Get a bowl from the dresser and put it in the corner where I won’t kick it.”
    Tim did as he was told and came to the table. He was hungry, and it smelled good, even if she was crazy enough to have him pour stale beer in bowls.
    “You’re supposed to say ‘Be welcome to the house and hearth,’ when you put it down. My nan taught me that. They behave then,” said his grandmother.
    “Who behaves?” he asked warily.
    “The little people,” said his grandmother. “Go say it, boy. He’s waiting.”
    She was crazy. But what could he do? It was dark out there, and he was hungry and tired. So he did it. “Be welcome to the house and hearth,” he said awkwardly. Then he came and sat.
    The food was good. More vegetables than he would have chosen to put on his plate, but the gravy was thick and herby and rich to disguise it, and the stewed meat was fall-apart tender. And there was lots of potato. Later he would say that was how he knew his gran’s cooking, there was always lots of potato.
    “You like it?”
    He nodded. “It’s great. What is it?”
    “Roo-tail stew. They’re a pest here. What you’ll eat most of.”
    Tim thought of the little hoppers on the track. It wasn’t exactly pizza or Chinese, which had been what they ate pretty often at home. But he supposed it was the nearest you’d get to delivery here.
    When he got up from the table…he noticed the bowl in the corner was empty too.
    But he was too exhausted to think much about it that night. He’d barely coped with being shown to a painfully neat bedroom and wooden frame bed with a patchwork quilt on it. He must have gotten his bag, brushed his teeth and collapsed to sleep in it, because he was in the bed the next morning, and his toothbrush was in the bathroom.
    * * *
    Áed took the welcome as both a comfort and a threat. A comfort: she knew the old ways and words, a pleasure in the tasting of the beer, as was his rightful reward. A threat: if she knew the words of welcome, it might be that she also knew the words of punishment or