“Basil, meet Alex Price, my fiancé. Please do not drown him, bury him in mud, or attempt to feed him live frogs because you think it’s funny when humans scrunch their faces up. Alex, meet Basil, our local yowie. The dog is Jett, she belongs to Raina.” Shelby gestured between us violently. “There, now you’ve met. Basil, will you please go get the boat? Raina and I need to talk to Gabby.”

“Hi, Basil,” said Raina.

“Fuck off, Raina,” said Basil. He stabbed a finger in my direction. “How come I get told all the things I can’t do to him, but he doesn’t get told what he can’t do to me? You’re favoring the humans again.”

“Well, yes, I am,” said Shelby. “I generally do. As to why Alex doesn’t get a list of thou shalt nots, it’s because he’s a gentleman, and he knows that it’s rude to attack your new friends. You’ve never shown that sort of civility. If you start, maybe I’ll stop giving you commands.”

“It’s nice to meet you,” I said, before the argument could proceed. “I’ve never met a yowie before. I’d love to discuss your ecological niche, after the current crisis has passed. I can bring Tim Tams to pay you for your time.”

Basil blinked. A small frog fell out of his hair and leaped for the swamp, choosing freedom over remaining on Basil’s head. Basil snatched it out of the air and jammed it into his mouth, crunching twice before he said, “I like this one, Shelby, he understands basic commerce. All right, Price, you can come back here and talk to me. I’ll let you open your own tab, rather than drawing on this pair’s.” He jerked a thumb toward Shelby and Raina. “Their credit’s shot. Which is why I’m interested to hear what makes them think I’m going to bring the boat over here for them. Strikes me that watching them go wading might be a great way to spend an afternoon.”

“I wasn’t even in the country when Raina decided to stop paying you,” protested Shelby. “You can’t punish me because she’s an unthinking brat!”

“Can, will, am,” said Basil. “You’re the older sibling. You should have drilled it into her head that she needed to keep paying me while you were away. You didn’t, and now you’re paying the price. Sucks to be the eldest, doesn’t it?”

“Yes, it does,” I said. All three of them turned to look at me. “I’m the eldest in my family, and I’m betting you are too, Basil. You know it’s your job to make sure your younger brothers and sisters are taken care of. That they understand right and wrong. Don’t you?”

Basil frowned slowly before he nodded and said, “That was my job before we all left home, yeah. Someone’s got to do it.”

“Well, we’re here, and asking you to please, ah, get the boat,” I gestured toward the boat, just in case he was the sort to interpret my words to mean “any boat he could find” and dredge one up from the bottom of the swamp, “so that we can go and help Shelby and Raina’s other sister. The one who isn’t standing here in front of you, being very sorry that she didn’t get your cookies when she was supposed to.”

On cue, Shelby dug her elbow into Raina’s side. Raina reddened, looking down at her feet, and said, in a staccato rush, “I’m sorry I didn’t bring you the Tim Tams I promised. There was a new Pokémon game and I really wanted it, but I should still have kept my word to you before I did something for myself and I’m sorry.”

Basil blinked. “See, that’s all I wanted,” he said. “Apologies are the glue that makes the world go ’round. Wait here, you lot, and I’ll expect everything that’s coming to me to be delivered here before the full moon, or it’s no more Mister Nice Yowie.” He stood up still further, rising out of the muck until it became very clear that the hypothesized evolutionary link between yowie and Sasquatch was more truth than fiction. Scratching his mossy bottom one more time, he turned and lumbered toward the boat.

“Do you think he’d give me some hair and maybe a blood sample for later analysis?” I asked, transfixed by the sight of the giant green man wading through the swamp.

“That’s my little scientist,” said Shelby, sounding amused. “Tell you what, how about you come back here and negotiate that with him after we’ve finished handling the current crisis? I’ll bring popcorn.”

I blinked, the strangeness of the scene finally crystalizing into something logical, if bizarre. I turned to Shelby. “Your father didn’t even want us to call Dr. Jalali, because the Society doesn’t treat nonhumans as people. How is it that you and your sisters are friends with a yowie?”

“We found him,” said Raina. Her head was up again, and her coloring was back to normal. Embarrassment was apparently not a long-term thing with her. “He’d been bit by a snake. Was all sick and moaning and making a muck of things here on the bank. Right over there, in fact.” She pointed to a spot a little farther along.

“Luckily, Jack and I were with them that day, and since he was already training to be Dad’s assistant, and I wanted to do anything he was doing, we both had our snakebite kits and medical supplies on us,” said Shelby, smoothly taking up the story. “Basil never did tell us what had bitten him, and we thought he’d die even after we suctioned the venom out and gave him some basic medical care, since we couldn’t provide antivenin if we didn’t know what he needed. But it turns out yowie are tougher than anything living has the right to be. As soon as we got the bulk of the poison out of him, and some fresh water into him, he bounced right back. Was up and moving about normally by the end of the afternoon.”

“Jack insisted we come back here to check on him; said that once you’ve saved something, you’re responsible for it, even if it’s as smart as you are. Basil started asking for Tim Tams after the third time we came by. He helped us build the playhouse, and the skiff.” Raina paused, looking down again. “They were real good friends. He hasn’t been the same since Jack died, you know? He’s still friendly enough, but it’s like he’s not really glad to see us, not like he says. He’s just going through the motions so we don’t get upset enough to tell our parents he’s down here. So we haven’t visited much.”

Which explained why Raina had been willing to seize on the excuse afforded by the reduction in her allowance. They couldn’t come to visit Basil. They couldn’t afford the cookies, and that meant they had no business bothering him. Keeping my voice as gentle as I could, I asked, “Did you let him come to Jack’s funeral?”