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with his curly hair. The person called Mum. I even remind Dot about the blurry eyes and stuff, although I’ve already mentioned that a million times before.
    Bubbles go on floating past, all silent and serene. I’m sitting there, watching them soak up everything I’m thinking and feeling, carrying it all off to the beyond, when it hits me.
    It doesn’t matter that I don’t understand what all this is about. I’m not supposed to.
    Dot has her reasons for prenormal wrens and blurred vision and making me see the things I did. That’s all I need to know. My only job is to follow the Books. The rest of it, well, Dot has it covered, so what am I even doing thinking so hard? When she decides I’m ready, Dot will explain.
    If she wants to, that is.
    If not, I can handle it. I mean, I only need to look around at her perfect creation to realise that Dot completely knows what she’s doing.
    I let myself sink back into my big, soft cushion. I stretch my arms and legs across the silk, yawning as Dot smiles down at me and the sun makes yellow-gold pools on my skin.
    I’m light again, relaxed and smiling. Right here is where I leave all those precalm feelings behind.
    Dot will work it out. And that means I’m free to make today the best day in creation. You know, just another instalment in Dot’s never-ending series of minor miracles.

07
    O N THE EDGE of the newfruit grove there’s a stack of empty
picking bags, the way there always is. That’s how it works (Book of Contribution, Chapter 5,Verse 2). Every day, everyone fills a picking bag in the grove. Then we empty all the newfruit into a chute built into the ground, which leads … well, I guess it leads directly to Dot. The Books aren’t specific about how that part works. All I know is, when the bags are empty, we leave them stacked up beside the chute, ready to fill the next day.
    That’s it. That’s all Dot asks us from each of us. Just one single, perfect bag of newfruit, which is nothing when you think about all the stuff Dot’s given us.
    ‘Throw me a bag, can you?’ I say to Fern.
    She’s gone all glazed with her nose way up in the air and her nostrils practically quivering. That sounds prenormal but it isn’t, not when you understand how totally dotly the smell of the newfruit grove actually is.
    Imagine warm grass and dripping honey, fresh sungarb, vanilla beans and bark, sunshine on a warm rock and a creation’s neck as you nuzzle in to it, all rolled into one. That’s close to what the smell is like, except the real thing’s a bazillion times better.
    It’s the blossoms that make the newfruit grove smell so incredible. Obviously Dot created tons of other flowers as well as the newfruit blossoms. There are flowers all over the place, in the orchard, by the gazebo, near the lagoon.
    But newfruit blossoms are a whole other thing altogether. Newfruit trees only grow in the grove. Their blossoms fall off their branches and there are so many different colours. There’s purple flowers with gold speckles. Bright yellow ones with fuzzy pink centres. Blue ball-shaped things that leave dust on your fingertips when you touch them. And, I swear to Dot, the smell of newfruit is the most incredible thing in all creation.
    ‘Hello, Fern?’ I wave my hand in front of her face. ‘Anyone home?’
    Fern stoops and takes a picking bag from the pile at our feet. But with her short arms and everything, she ends up flubbing the throw.
    ‘Careful,’ Gil says, arriving at the exact right moment to see the bag hook itself over one of the newfruit trees.
    Gil’s walking with Brook and Drake, the three of them in sungarb as bright as the blossoms all around us. Drake has his sungarb unbuttoned lower than the others, which gives me a perfect view of the creamy-yellowy skin underneath. Arms, legs, chest, chub. Drake’s pretty much hairless apart from the black hair on his head, which brushes his shoulders as he walks. He smiles and I think about hooking up with him again,