Nightpeople

by Anthony Eaton

  The hummer rose into the air with its usual scream and kept going up, higher and higher, and from his position on top of the dune Dariand watched it turn and vanish over the Darkedge.

  She was gone.

  Dariand swallowed the lump that had formed in his throat and tried to ignore the sudden emptiness that yawned inside him.

  ‘It makes no difference,’ he told himself, even as he admitted in the privacy of his thoughts that it made all the difference in the world.

  He studied the Darkedge. The sound of the hummer had faded completely now, leaving him alone with just the whisper of a slight desert breeze and the sound of shifting sand.

  Alone.

  For the briefest of moments Dariand wished that Dreamer Wanji could have been there too, to see it happen for himself. But he shook the feeling off and, as he had done once before, a long time ago, Dariand turned his back on the disappearing Nightpeople, gathered up his bundles and, smiling, set his course daywards, following the cluster of the Child towards a distant, glowing horizon.

  First published 2005 by University of Queensland Press

  PO Box 6042, St Lucia, Queensland 4067 Australia

  Reprinted 2007, 2010, 2014

  www.uqp.com.au

  © Anthony Eaton

  This book is copyright. Except for private study, research, criticism or reviews, as permitted under the Copyright Act, no part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any foram or by any means without prior written permission. Enquiries should be made to the publisher.

  Typeset by Peripheral Vision

  Cataloguing in Publication Data

  National Library of Australia

  Eaton, Anthony

  Nightpeople

  For secondary school students.

  I. Title.

  A823.4

  ISBN 978 0 7022 3494 1 (pbk)

  ISBN 978 0 7022 4192 5 (pdf)

  ISBN 978 0 7022 4193 2 (epub)

  ISBN 978 0 7022 4194 9 (kindle)