Chapter 8 Riley
They sit beneath an apple tree. Riley holds Oliver close and he rests his head against her heart. They watch the sun sinking behind the peaks. Nowhere sinks into gentle dusk. Kids are running everywhere.
‘I like it here,’ Oliver says. ‘Can we stay?’
‘I don’t know.’ Riley has learned not to promise him too much. ‘We can try.’
Noon goes to the front of the group. She stands before the fallen wheel and everyone falls quiet. Everyone who was sitting stands, so Riley does too, helping Oliver to his feet.
The sun is a finger of fire behind the western peaks.
The last of the light falls like a path of gold through the valley, from the entrance across the lake and the grass, through the forest. It looks so like a path that Riley is not surprised to see that it ends at the distant, blackened ruins among the trees.
Riley quickly glances down. She realises that in only one day, she has taken on the habit of averting her gaze from the burnt-out skull of a house.
Noon touches her hand to her mouth. ‘We send our breath to him.’ Riley had thought that this gesture was a kiss but she sees now that it’s not.
Noon breathes gently into her palm. Then she releases it, giving her breath towards the east. All around, the others are doing the same.
Even the kids are in perfect time with everyone else.
Their hands let their breath fly in the direction of the ruined house at the end of the valley.
Riley feels again, through grass and trees, the pulse of that blackened thing.
She looks around at the serious downturned faces.
She realises, with slow horror, her mistake. She thought that they were afraid of the house and of Leaf Winham. But what she sees in their faces as they send their breath eastwards is not fear. It is love. Beside her, Oliver is imitating the Nowhere children. He gives Leaf Winham his breath.
Horror fills Riley with a cold trickle. She clutches the locket on her breastbone.
The red finger of sun disappears behind the peaks and the valley plunges into dark.
Riley seizes Oliver about the waist and drags him backwards into the apple trees.
She feels it in his body, the moment he’s about to cry out, and clamps her hand over his mouth.
He fights her but she keeps her hand tight and her arm firm around him, dragging him away from the clearing.
She’s panting by the time she thinks it’s safe to stop.
‘We have to go, Oliver Olive,’ she whispers. He tries to shake his head. She can feel the fury running all through his body.
‘It’s you and me,’ she says quietly in his ear. ‘Just you and me, like always.’
After a moment, he nods. She takes her hand away from his mouth. ‘We’ll go slow, ok?’ Riley looks up. In the fading light she tries to see the shape of the peaks through the leaves. Where did the sun sink? Riley turns in the direction – she hopes – of the zipline.
‘Come on.’ She looks behind her through the knotted branches of the trees. No one is following.
The ground is uneven, they stumble on roots and stones. Oliver is limping and crying out in pain after a few minutes of walking. Blood seeps through the white bandage on his leg, a narrow slash of red.
‘Riley, I’m tired,’ Oliver says. ‘It’s cold and my leg hurts.’
‘It will be ok,’ Riley says. ‘Just a little further.’ But reality is setting in.
Can she take him out into the mountains at night, with no gear and a wound?
Riley pushes these thoughts away – doesn’t matter because they can’t stay here.
Maybe they can hide somewhere in the valley until daylight?
Riley thinks of the crocodile and the bitter taste of panic fills her mouth.
‘It’ll be ok.’ She squeezes Oliver’s hand.
‘You already said that.’ Oliver twists out of her grasp. But she knows he’ll come. The two of them are all they have.
Overhead the moon is yellow and on the wane. Riley always thinks it looks bitten, like this. It sheds enough light to see the open meadow ahead, through the trees. Up the rise, beneath the cliff face, she can just make out the posts of the zipline.
‘We’re here, Oliver.’ Her voice is unsteady with relief. ‘See?’
‘Ok,’ he says, exhausted. They walk across the moonlit meadow hand in hand.
As they draw near Riley sees that there is no harness, no line running up the cliff.
The posts are just posts. She breathes. Maybe these things are stored nearby.
Don’t panic. But her heart is already pounding.
Riley hunts through the bushes, the grass, the under-growth.
But there is no metal wire and no harness.
She can’t think and fear is beating like a drum.
She doesn’t know how close they are to the lake.
Riley yells, ‘Oliver!’
‘Uh?’ He raises his head from where he was sleeping in the grass.
Riley points. ‘Go climb that tree.’
‘I don’t WANT—’
‘I said, go climb that tree and stay there.’
He trots off towards the lone gnarly pine she’s pointed out. She watches his tired form as he climbs. He gasps with pain at the strain on his injured leg. Then he slumps down, hugging the branch he’s sitting on. He might be asleep.
Riley looks everywhere for the zipline gear.
She scrabbles in earth and undergrowth and combs the cliff wall with her hands, looking for openings.
Every so often she glances over at Oliver, slumped on the branch.
And every so often she checks the grass for the approach of a long, dark shape made of teeth.
‘How’s it going?’
Riley yells and jumps. She backs away from the stand of tall grass she was looking in.
Noon stands in the meadow in the moonlight, hands in her ragged pockets.
‘Don’t touch me,’ Riley says. ‘Don’t come near me.’
‘I won’t,’ Noon says. She sits down on a rock.
‘I’m sad today,’ she says. ‘Cal’s brother.
Danny – he’s missing. Each one of us is everything to each other here at Nowhere.
But.’ She swallows and Riley realises that Noon is trying not to cry.
‘He and I were – well. We were happy. So if he’s not home by now, there’s a reason.
I’m so scared he’s dead and I don’t want Cal to see that I’m scared.
Every person here in this place is precious to me.
Our families, where we ran from – they weren’t families.
The places we ran from weren’t homes. We made this family and this home.
All we have is one another. I know you understand that. ’
‘Ok.’ Riley is so tired of lying and hiding. She is weary of it down to the bone. It might be a relief, she thinks, to confess.
Noon looks down at the ground, breathes into her palm and releases her breath into the air, towards Nowhere House.
‘It makes me feel sick when you do that,’ Riley says. ‘Little rats worshipping a dead king rat. He killed people.’
‘That was the past,’ Noon says. She comes closer.
Moonlight has bleached her of all colour.
‘I saw you for the first time as you were walking home from school. I watch that school sometimes. Midnight watches, I watch. We look for the ones who need help. I knew right away that you had to come to Nowhere. I saw that you were one of us.’
‘What does that even mean?’ Riley wants to push Noon away, she wants to run or hit something.
‘You have the right hunger. The cold place deep inside you. No one survives here without those things.’ Noon smiles at Riley but it’s sad, like she actually understands how hard it all is, like Noon truly wants the best for her. ‘I asked three girls before you.’
‘What happened?’ Riley asks. Her heart pounds splashy and strong.
‘They didn’t come,’ Noon says. ‘They chose to stay where they were. One of them is dead now.’
Riley whispers, ‘I want to leave.’
‘This isn’t a prison,’ Noon says. ‘But I mean what I say. You belong.’
Riley shakes with rage. ‘Don’t try that brainwashing garbage,’ she says. ‘This is a place. It’s made of rock, grass, earth. The house is just a burnt-down house, whatever. It doesn’t have feelings. It can’t want me. It doesn’t want anything.’
But even as Riley says the words they don’t feel true.
She felt welcome here – by the people and the land.
She had thought for a moment that she belonged.
A tear tracks down Riley’s cheek like a hot needle and she scrubs it away.
She was right to keep her guard up, not to trust, all these years.
Trust tears a hole in you in the end. Riley swears to herself that she won’t ever make this mistake again.
‘That day we met,’ Noon says. ‘I had been watching you for weeks already. I saw what happened in that house. I listened. I knew I had to get you out of there, I saved your lives.’
Riley laughs. ‘I saved our lives,’ she says. ‘I got us out of there. There was just no place to go except here.’
‘You can’t leave,’ Noon says.
‘I can do whatever I like,’ Riley says. ‘Whatever is best for me and Oliver.’
Noon shakes her head in the moonlight. ‘I don’t think you can do whatever you like.’ Noon pats the space beside her on the rock. ‘Sit. What’s the worst that could happen?’
‘I’m ok here.’ Riley sinks to the ground where she is. The wet night-grass seeps through her jeans right away. She tries not to shiver.
‘I had two daddies once,’ Noon says. ‘One was good and one was bad. I found out too late which one was which. Now I can only really remember one daddy – what he was like, the things he did. It’s much harder to recall my good daddy.
I wish it wasn’t like that. But the people you never forget are the ones you kill.
In fact if you’re not careful all the living ones fade away and only the dead are left. ’
‘You killed your daddy?’ Riley asks.
‘I did it and ran. Just like you.’ Noon raises her eyebrows at Riley. ‘Rat poison?’
Riley feels as if the ground beneath her is trembling. ‘What?’
‘Riley,’ Noon says, patient.
Riley bows her head. She whispers. ‘Is Cousin … is he really, is he—’