Chapter 4 Riley #2
‘Everett doesn’t talk.’
Riley wonders if they are going to kill her. It doesn’t really matter because the drop is way worse. She clings to the cliff like a pinned insect. She feels the height pulling at her, gently, like a sucking mouth. Her breath comes hard.
‘Riley’s a dumb name,’ Cal says, reaching for her. She gets ready to bite but she can’t control anything. She is frozen. Cal gently pries her hands loose from their grip on the cliff. ‘So dumb,’ he says to himself, shaking his head.
‘It’s a great name,’ she says, stung. ‘Cal isn’t even a name. It’s just short for something. Your mother didn’t love you enough to give you an actual name?’ She doesn’t even really know what she’s saying at this point.
Cal slides into place beside her, blocking the view of the deep canyon below. ‘My mother’s dead,’ he says. ‘Have some manners.’
He sounds so like Riley when she talks to Oliver that she can’t help laughing, though it comes out sounding kind of insane.
‘Mine is too.’ With Cal on one side and the rock on the other, the path doesn’t feel so bad. She doesn’t feel like she’s going to be blown away.
‘Where’s Oliver? My brother?’
‘They ran ahead with him.’
Riley is scared, and exhausted by being scared, and all she wants to do now is hold Oliver and smell his hair.
Riley turns and places a gentle hand on Cal’s chest. She doesn’t push, exactly.
She applies the tiniest amount of pressure.
Behind him the drop yawns. She hears Everett move, the shift of stones underfoot.
He’s getting ready. She keeps her eyes on Cal.
‘I don’t like being apart from my brother,’ she says.
‘His leg is hurt. They ran on ahead because he was in pain. They took him to Noon. You’re too heavy to run with. It’s ok, I promise.’
It has been so long since Riley trusted anyone that she doesn’t recognise the feeling at first. A homeliness, a relaxation of the mind and body. She trusts Cal, though she has no reason to.
Riley steps back. Everett lowers his raised arm, which, she now sees, holds a machete. The blade is weathered, but sharp. He tucks the blade back into its sheath in some unseen place in his clothing and she thinks, remember that.
‘Let’s go then,’ Riley says. As they walk Cal keeps himself between her and the drop. She tells herself that this is good because she can attack at any time. Not because he has put himself between her and that endless fall.
Half an hour later the snow has stopped. They have walked back down through spring, then into the summer.
The sheer wall of rock to the right gentles out and the path veers onto solid ground. It’s so wonderful, solid land.
Riley follows Cal along an animal track that runs through rustling summer leaves. Wild jasmine and morning glory are everywhere. The path grows fainter until it’s a mere graze, a ghost through the trees.
Riley feels Everett’s silence in her wake. ‘One of you walking ahead of me, one behind,’ she says lightly. ‘It looks like you’re guarding a prisoner.’
Cal turns. ‘You’re not a prisoner,’ he says, serious. ‘You’re just about to be free.’
Ahead on the rise is a patch of bright sunshine. The forest is giving way to blue sky.
‘Come on,’ Cal says. He and Everett run towards the sunlight. After a moment Riley sprints after them.
They run out into the day and skid to a halt by an old ivy-clad oak stump which stands on the lip of a cliff.
A green basin lies below – a valley enclosed by rocky peaks.
The long grass of the meadow bends in the wind, as if under a stroking hand.
There are low buildings on the valley floor.
They look like stables or barns. There are terraces on the distant, facing side of the valley, beds and plantings and things like that – Riley guesses vegetables.
She doesn’t know much about growing. To the west there is a gleam of water, showing the faint pink of the coming sunset.
Beyond the rocky parapets that line the valley the hills are blue whales.
In the distance the eastern end of the valley is covered in green forest which moves gently in the wind. Occasionally through the waving treetops can be glimpsed something skeletal, black and ruined. Riley averts her eyes. If you stare too hard at a grave it might look back at you.
She sneaks a look at Cal’s face. His eyes have a feeling. He’s glad to be home. Envy rises in Riley. She hasn’t felt that kind of happiness since she was small.
‘How do we get down there?’ she asks. The cliff looks sheer, a two hundred foot drop at least.
‘We fly,’ Cal says. Reaching into the ivy-clad oak, he produces a kind of harness.
Riley sees that there is a thick braided wire running from the oak down to the valley below.
It’s fastened to a steel bar set between a pair of standing stones out in the meadow far below.
There is some kind of wheel attached to the top.
He sets the wheels on the wire where they notch sweetly into place.
‘It’s a zipline,’ Riley says to Cal. ‘Really? This is how you get in?’
He grins, white and dark places showing in his mouth. ‘This is the fly. It’s safe. Watch.’
Everett grips the handlebars and pushes off.
He yells, a high, cracked noise of joy. It’s the first sound Riley has heard him make.
His legs kick the air as he accelerates, descending impossibly fast. As the descent levels out he slows a little but the report when he hits the steel bar between the stones is audible, even from where they stand above.
Everett screams again as he is flung far ahead into the grass, laughing.
‘Yeah, he loves that,’ Cal says, apologetic.
‘But how do you get out?’
‘There’s a winch at the bottom. Get into the harness, someone turns the handle, up you go.’ He reaches for her. ‘Your turn.’
‘I can’t,’ Riley says firmly and simply. ‘I have vertigo. I can never do that.’
Below, Everett brings the handholds for the zipline back to the foot of the cliff. They put it in a basket with the harness and Cal starts to haul it up.
‘You can do it,’ Cal says. ‘You made it through the cliff path. I saw that you were afraid – but you did it.’ Cal takes the harness out of the basket. ‘We’ll do it together. You hold onto me.’
‘No,’ Riley says. ‘I’ll go down another way.’
‘There’s no other way,’ he says, holding out an arm. ‘Time to fly.’
Riley thinks of Oliver and lets Cal put the harness around the both of them. She puts her arms about his neck and settles into the contours of him. He smells like warm skin, sweat.
‘Ready?’ he asks. ‘I won’t let you go. Close your eyes if it helps.’
But Riley doesn’t. If she’s going to die she might as well see it coming. They push off and all she can feel is her heart beating against his as they whistle hard through the air. As the speed picks up her eyes water but she still can’t close them. Riley concentrates on Cal’s warm limbs.
They hurtle off the end of the line, are flung into the long grass.
‘I did it,’ Riley says. She unbuckles herself and rolls into the meadowsweet, laughing. She finds she can’t stop.
‘You’ve got a grip like a monkey,’ Cal says, rubbing his neck.
‘How many monkeys hug you?’ It’s a really good joke. Riley doubles over, wheezing.
‘Uh, none.’ Cal sounds uncertain. Every time she looks up and sees his puzzled expression it makes her laugh even harder.
‘Ok,’ Cal says, ‘whatever, let’s find Noon.’
Riley follows him across the grass, lightheaded. Giggles erupt from her at intervals. It’s so surprising when things go right after a bad time, it’s almost as much of a shock as when they go wrong.
Riley, Cal and Everett head downhill towards the scattering of outbuildings.
The ground is covered in young clover and waving grass, knee deep.
Something startles as they pass – a pair of jackrabbit ears bounces away above the nodding grass.
There’s the sound of rushing water nearby.
The sun is a fiery trace between two peaks above.
It casts a narrow corridor of gold light all down the valley, a path to somewhere.
Riley can almost feel the woodland to the east, dark against the gold and green of the meadow. The giant spider of a house crouched among the trees, pulsing like a heart.
‘Is that Leaf—’ Riley asks.
Cal holds up his hand abruptly, cutting her off. He and Everett stop dead, grass waving about their knees, eyes trained on the ground at their feet.
They turn to the east, towards the house, not looking at it.
Their gaze remains lowered. Both touch their hands to their mouths, and then the two of them reach towards the house as if releasing something on the wind.
They do it at exactly the same time, like it’s a dance they both know well.
They stand tense and still, like they’re waiting for an answer.
The breeze strokes the meadow. A hawk circles overhead on spread wings.
After a moment, Cal relaxes. He brings his chin up briskly and taps Everett on the shoulder. ‘It’s ok,’ he says and Everett nods.
Cal bends to look Riley in the eye. ‘We don’t say the name,’ he says quietly. ‘Come on.’
Riley nods. She has learned something else, now – that they are afraid of Leaf Winham, and that they think he’s still alive.
Or maybe they’re scared of his ghost. But they think he’s listening, that they can summon him with his name.
It’s a vulnerability, and it’s good to know where those lie in people.
As they walk, Riley pinches the delicate inner skin of her elbow between sharp nail tips. The pain needles down her arm, her eyes water. Good, she has learned something important. This is a dangerous place. It makes you forget things, like caution, and fear. For a moment back there she felt happy.