Chapter 17 Riley #2
Riley knows what it is, and that this is all the food that she will get. She scoops it into her mouth with a clawed hand. When it’s gone she licks the bowl and fingers clean. She feels a faint gleam of hope. If they’re feeding her, maybe they’re not going to kill her after all.
The light is blinding and the rope is around Riley’s neck before she can think. She claws at it but Midnight has already pulled it tight. She drags Riley out of the stall, into the dusk.
The Ferris-wheel fire is burning bright. Midnight drags her to the circle.
‘Please,’ Riley says to their averted faces, serious in the firelight.
Dawn begins to cry. Oliver hides his face in her shoulder.
‘Please.’ Not one of them will look at Riley. ‘I didn’t mean it.’ She feels like a ghost. ‘Don’t—’ she pleads again, looking around, hoping, seeking. She is invisible. When Riley’s eyes light on Cal she stops. She drops her head to her chest. Riley can’t look at Cal.
Noon stands and hands something to each person – two small objects. After a moment, with a rush of fear Riley realises what they are. They are human teeth. One is painted black, the other left white.
‘You know what we’re voting for,’ Noon says. ‘Riley has killed one of our own.’
Noon points at a tree stump. Everett goes to stand beside it.
His machete gleams at his belt. Riley has seen this stump many times at firelight nights.
She has even sat on it, talking and laughing.
Now she sees the brown stains that spread across it.
This is where they take the fingers, she thinks, hazy.
She assumes that this time it’s for her head.
‘It’s the worst punishment we have,’ Noon says. ‘So I want us all to agree.’
The faces around the fire bow, and offer their breath to Nowhere. Noon takes up a leather bag. ‘White is no. Black is yes – for the house.’
‘What does that mean, for the house?’ Riley’s throat is so tight she almost can’t get the words out.
‘You’ve no right to ask questions.’ Noon’s face is grim and stony. ‘But I will answer. It means that all the blood goes to the land.’
Noon moves around the circle. One by one everyone drops a tooth in the bag.
Riley sees it, the flash of black in Cal’s hand. She watches Oliver carefully, but she can’t see what lies in his palm. ‘Oliver Olive,’ she whispers. He does not look at her.
Noon spills the contents of the bag onto the bloodstained tree stump. Black teeth, all.
Cal’s throat moves hard. ‘Wait. Maybe we … Hold on a second.’
Noon comes close to him and puts a hand against his cheek. ‘Do you want to change your vote?’
Cal’s mouth hardens. He shakes his head just once.
The firelight is rocketing into the sky, Riley sees, and sort of mingling with the stars.
‘Is this what you did to the others who lived here, before?’ Riley struggles to get the words out. They seem to be solid in her mouth. ‘Did you give their blood to the land?’
‘We made ourselves safe,’ Noon says. ‘We made Nowhere safe.’
‘What’s happening?’ Riley’s mind is floating outside of her body.
The faces in the firelight are drifting, fading in and out of the dark.
She thinks of the mushroom stew she ate.
It’s too late, she knows, but she retches, bends double, trying to throw up.
She can’t and spits uselessly onto the earth.
Noon’s face stretches and contracts, shadows and light writhing across it like worms. ‘It’s time for you to go.
We’re giving you as an offering.’ She turns to Cal.
‘It’s your right to offer her. But first we take her bones.
’ Riley wants to scream but her mouth seems to have grown beyond a usable size.
‘And this is for all.’ Noon raises her voice. ‘I have taken down the fly. I have cut the cable into pieces. We don’t leave Nowhere anymore. We trust the land.’
Around the circle heads nod.
‘We have discovered the penalty,’ Noon says, ‘for inviting outsiders in.’ Noon comes close and reaches for Riley’s throat. Riley waits for the blade, the cut.
Noon unfastens her bone necklace. ‘You are no longer one of us.’ Her breath smells like a warm meadow; it brushes across Riley’s cheek.
Noon nods at Cal. ‘You can take her now.’
He nods, pale. Riley struggles and pulls at the rope around her neck, but it’s no good. As she goes, she sees Oliver’s face, his mouth a round ‘O’ of horror. She wants to tell him it’s ok, but it’s not. ‘Riley!’ He starts to run to her but Dawn catches him. She holds Oliver back as he struggles.
‘You did the right thing, Oliver,’ Riley hears Dawn say. Dawn strokes his head.
Oliver’s high cracked voice follows them, calling her name, as Cal takes her towards the woods.
With her last glance backwards, Riley sees Noon spreading her arms and tipping her face up to the night sky. Cal tugs on the rope around Riley’s neck and she stumbles. But just before that, she could swear she glimpses Noon rising into the air, arms wide, taking flight.
The world gets stranger as Cal and Riley go through the trees.
The rope about Riley’s neck has become a live thing like a warm animal.
The ivy and stinging nettles are crowned with whitish-green blooms and some of the flowers rise into the air and dart like gnats.
The moss and leaf litter are a rich carpet beneath her feet.
Riley feels Cal’s presence beside her like a sun but she can’t look him in the eye. ‘I’m sorry.’ Riley can see her voice in the air. The words hang there in the dim forest light.
‘I trusted you,’ Cal says. ‘I wish I’d never met you. But soon you won’t be here anymore. You won’t be anywhere. That’s good.’ He walks faster and tugs. Riley coughs and pulls at the rope about her throat. ‘The sooner we do this the better. No one will miss you. Even your little brother hates you.’
‘What did they give me?’ Riley asks. ‘In the mushroom stew?’
‘The mushrooms,’ he says. ‘You know.’
Nowhere House rears up in the clearing ahead like a blackened tooth. Cal drags her towards it, the rope tight and choking about her throat.
As he shoves the door open with his shoulder, Riley thinks how quickly she could bend and seize a stone, of the report on his skull. But she hesitates and he feels the thought and turns.
‘There’s no point,’ Cal says. ‘I meant what I said. You can’t leave Nowhere.
The gate is sealed, and Noon has taken apart the fly.
This is our valley and we would find you wherever you hid.
’ He leans in close. ‘Also, if you run, I’ll take your brother to the lake, tie him up and whistle for the crocodile.
That would be real justice. Then you’d know how I feel.
How it is to lose him.’ He leans back, eyes cold. ‘Are you going to run?’
After a moment Riley shakes her head.
They walk through the house, disturbing a pair of crows and a fox that turns and looks at them with golden eyes before slipping into the shadows.
The walls and everything are pulsing. The house is alive, all right.
Riley sees lights dancing in the air, all around.
Each glowing orb surrounds a tiny person-shaped thing.
Their dragonfly wings beat fast, a blur.
The sunken garden is green and dim. The chair looms, high and pointed.
The wood is dark with blood – Alison’s of course, and the blood of many others.
The blood glows bright; Riley sees every drop, each stain on the wood.
She struggles again, a river of fear rushing through her.
She knows that once she’s fastened into the chair, everything ends.
The orbs of light are everywhere in the dark air. The tiny people watch, expectant.
The straps close about her arms and legs. Cal stands back. For the first time, he looks hesitant.
‘Do it,’ Riley says. She feels vicious, at this last moment. ‘Why wait?’ She was a fool to have imagined she could find a place in this world.
Cal takes out his pocketknife and slides it in, not quite into her vein, but nearby.
The pain is not as bad as she expects. Adrenaline, probably, and the mushrooms might be helping.
Riley’s main sensation is heat, the warm gout of blood running over her wrist. The orbs of light dance through the air towards Riley and her wound.
The small people hover by her wrist on their dragonfly wings.
They dart delicately in and out of the red stream of her blood.
She knows it’s the drug they gave her but it’s so vivid, the sensation of little lips sipping at the cut.
The skin between all worlds seems worn very thin, here.
‘Leaf Winham will come for you,’ Cal says. ‘You’ll see him soon enough.’ For a moment his anger gives way. He looks worried and sad. In that moment Riley believes him. Then she remembers that she is feeling fairies drink her blood.
She smiles, white-lipped. ‘No I won’t,’ Riley says. ‘Because he’s dead.’
‘When you’ve had the mushrooms,’ Cal says, ‘that doesn’t matter. Normally we give them baby formula too. We don’t want to make it too bad for them. As for you, all you get is mushrooms. We punish you inside as well as outside.’
‘Cal.’ Riley’s body is singing.
‘You probably won’t die today,’ Cal says, ‘so someone will be back again tomorrow. Not me. I don’t want to see you ever again.’ Riley watches him walk away. His back heaves; he’s crying and she wants to call him back but she can’t, and she won’t, and it would do no good anyway. Cal is lost to her.
His footsteps fade. Riley is alone in the house, now. She tries to think, to make a plan, but the bobbing lights fill her vision, and all that will run through her mind are two words, over and over. Now here Now here Now here. It mingles with the rhythm of her blood, dripping onto the earth.
When next she surfaces, Everett is there. His eyes look pin-bright against the black wool mask. He has just opened her up again, she can tell, because there is a hot rush passing across her wrist. He holds out a bowl. Riley’s stomach clenches. She can smell the mushrooms.