Chapter 6 Riley #3
The next thing she was aware of was her own hard breath and someone else’s close by, hot and upset in her ear. There was flesh between her hands. Mom’s shiny chestnut head filled Riley’s vision, she smelled coconut shampoo.
Her mother hacked and wheezed, clawing at Riley’s grip on her throat.
‘Don’t you hurt him,’ Riley said. ‘Not ever.’
Her mother waved an urgent hand, a rattle in her throat.
Riley slowly unclenched her hands from her mother’s neck.
There were little dark ghosts of Riley’s fingers on her skin.
Her mother got up and went from the room.
She wore her hair down for a week, though neither she nor Riley ever mentioned what happened.
Riley watched her all the time after that.
She tried to never leave her mother alone with her brother.
Her mother had problems. It was difficult to be her child, her daughter.
Sometimes Riley feels those problems stirring in her own mind.
She gets a dark tightness inside that makes her do things.
Riley looks back on her mother’s sorrow and anger and thinks, yes, I get that.
I understand why. Sometimes when Riley looks in the mirror she sees her mother looking back – the same vague, unfocused gaze she fixed on Oliver as she put the pin into his thumb.
Riley doesn’t like the old man in the sky but she likes the other stuff even less. These are the reasons why, probably.
Dawn takes them up through the orchard, away from the stables. The others are already gathered, Riley can hear voices ahead.
The path weaves behind a fold of red rock into a clearing in the orchard. The Nowhere children are sitting and standing on the grass. There’s talk and laughter. It’s like a picnic.
Behind them there is something metal, rusted and broken like the remains of a burnt-out star.
A couple of cabs are still attached to it, lying on the grass.
Their chains swing and chink in the wind.
It’s not possible grounded as it is, but the great metal circle seems to turn slightly as she watches. Crows sit along its bars, cawing.
‘It’s a Ferris wheel,’ Riley says, blank. Beside her, Oliver squeaks with excitement. He must have some dim memory of a fair. Riley has it too, though she can’t recall exactly when – a vague impression of being allowed to stay up late, of funnel cake and cotton candy. Of Mom.
‘Careful of your leg,’ Riley says. ‘Don’t jump around like that. You can’t go on that wheel. Look, it’s old and broken.’ The more Riley looks at the wheel the less she likes it. It’s like skeletal remains.
It’s so unexpected that Riley can’t escape the impression that it has been hiding all this time.
The late afternoon air is still warm but the kids have got blankets and comforters.
Riley sees newspaper peeking from waistbands and out of the collars of sweaters.
Insulation. One small red-headed child, a boy she thinks, toddles unsteadily across the grass, wrapped in an electric blanket.
The cord trails after, the plug leaving a line in the soft dirt floor. He points a tiny finger at Riley.
‘Hi,’ Riley says.
The little kid smiles, bright. ‘Mommy,’ he says.
‘No.’ Riley is shaken, she doesn’t know why. ‘Go find your real mommy.’
‘Come here, Rufus,’ calls Noon from across the clearing. Rufus smiles and wanders away.
There are five little children, including Midnight’s baby.
The oldest looks about nine. Riley worries, again, about that.
She’s uneasy because there don’t seem to be any grownups here.
Riley and Oliver need lots of working adults so Nowhere can support two new arrivals.
The kids are happy and dirty. One of them grabs a cushion from another one and they both cry, pointing at each other.
Midnight comes over and scolds them. Her baby’s eyes go round and startled at her raised voice and Riley can’t help laughing, it looks so surprised.
There’s another feeling in her, a painful-sweet pull.
It’s the first time she’s been around a family in a while.
She sees it in Oliver’s face too. ‘Can I go play with them, Riley?’
Riley’s smile suddenly feels thin and brittle. ‘Not right …’
‘Hey, Oliver,’ Dawn says. ‘You want to come help me find some dandelions for salad? I really need some help.’
‘Um, ok,’ he says. Dawn takes his hand. Oliver doesn’t usually like people quickly, but he likes Dawn already.
Cal is standing over by Noon. He’s not smiling his white smile. Their heads are bent together and they’re talking close.
They’re so absorbed they don’t notice Riley approach.
‘He’s never been away this long,’ Cal is saying to Noon, pleading. ‘Two full days late, now. I have to go and look for him. I can walk the trails in the dark.’
‘No one moves alone at night,’ Noon says.
‘But—’
‘Cal,’ she says gently. ‘I’m worried. But we don’t want to lose you too.’
Cal looks like he might be about to cry, but he nods. He sees Riley and scrubs one eye with a fist. ‘Maybe you saw him on the mountain, Riley?’
‘Who?’
‘Danny,’ Cal says. ‘My brother. It’s his place you’re sleeping in.’ His words are rushed. He’s got a faint, faint hope that Riley might save him. ‘He went to walk the trails. He’s tall. Missing his right little finger, like me.’ It’s phrased like a question – he is still pleading.
Riley’s insides make a movement like a big wave crashing.
The bitter scent of lion fills the air. She sees it all again, she is back there in the firelight, the big body like a cage over her, brown eyes turning to bloody holes.
She sees the stump of a little finger twitching on the pine needles.
You seem like a girl who doesn’t want to be found.
She looks at Cal’s face and it’s clear now, she wonders how she missed it before – the lineaments of the lion boy echoed in his bones.
‘No,’ Riley says. ‘We never saw anyone after we left the main trail.’
‘We saw the demon,’ says Oliver, at her elbow.
Riley starts. ‘You’re supposed to be helping Dawn.’
Oliver shrugs. ‘I didn’t want to so she gave me a toy.’ He frowns and worries the rag doll in his hands. He’s not interested in adult conversation but he always likes to correct Riley when she lies. Riley should have thought of that.
Noon is watching him. ‘You saw a demon?’
‘Uh huh. Riley saw the demon and she killed it,’ Oliver says.
‘Yeah,’ Riley says, smiling down at him. ‘I sure did kill the demon, didn’t I?’ Riley throws her smile at Noon, rolling her eyes a little. Sun in the head, she thinks.
Oliver gives her a look of disgust, which Riley knows she deserves. He starts towards the other kids, who are piling on top of Midnight on the grass, screaming.
‘Hey, Oliver Olive.’ Riley seizes his hand. ‘Come hang out with me, ok? You can play with the others soon enough.’ She doesn’t know if this is true. ‘I’d better stay with him,’ Riley says to Cal and Noon. ‘Keep him distracted.’
‘I’m going out first thing tomorrow,’ Cal says to Noon. ‘If I don’t find him, I’ll go out the day after that. And the next day and the one after that, every day until I find him.’
Noon nods and touches his shoulder.
Oliver tugs on Riley’s hand. He strains towards the other kids.
‘How about we climb that tree, Oliver Olive?’ she says. ‘See? It’s so high, I bet we can see all the way to Boulder if we get to the top.’
‘Ok,’ he says, resigned, and lets Riley draw him away.
Over her shoulder Riley says to Cal, ‘Sorry about your brother. I’m sure he’ll be home soon.’