Truth is often overrated, Riley thinks. Oliver has enough bad stuff in his head for one small person.
Riley checks the directions. There’s nothing to do but go ahead. Overhead, white magnolia blossom nods against distant snow. Summer comes later the higher you go in the mountains.
The path winds through blossom and everything smells new and green. Their spirits lift. Oliver bounces along the path. He sees a hummingbird and yells. He’s only seven and there is sunlight everywhere. Riley feels a great release. She did the right thing. She knows it now. ‘We would have died if we’d stayed with Cousin,’ she says gently to the mountain. ‘Sooner or later.’
Cousin isn’t speaking into Riley’s ear anymore. She doesn’t believe in such things, but she has a thought she can’t get rid of – that it means Cousin is dead.
A lone cedar towers ahead. Its branches form the shape of a ship with sails, rippling in the breeze.
Beneath the tree’s shelter in the dusk, Riley builds a fire. She feeds kindling carefully into its small red burning heart. She rinses out Oliver’s weird Nana dog socks in a puddle and lays them out to dry on a rock.
The warmth is comforting, as are the flames’ crackling remarks. She feels protected here, as the sails of the ship – no, she reminds herself, the leaves of the tree – rustle above. Tall trees take care of you, everyone knows that. Riley tries to keep watch, but her eyes keep closing. The world winks out again and again. She wonders if the lion was even real. The mountains light up old wild parts of the mind. Riley gathers Oliver into her arms and thinks,a nap. Just ten minutes.
She wakes completely in an instant. The moon casts long stark light and shadow everywhere. The scent of bitterness and dried grass is strong in her nostrils. The mountain lion is close. No, it’s already here.
The fire has burnt down to grey coal but the moon is high andbright. It shows the shape of the man crouching beside the embers. He is tall. In the flickering light he looks lean and lined with weather. He reaches into Riley’s pack, going through it with expert fingers. Her mind takes a second to make sense of it – when did mountain lions learn to walk upright? Then she sees.Oh right – it was never a lion at all, was it.
‘You been following us,’ she says.
He turns and smiles and she sees the gaps in his back teeth. It makes the front ones look like fangs. ‘Hello, sister.’ His voice is deep like wood. ‘Something for the hungry?’
Oliver is gone from Riley’s arms. Half of her thinks,where is he? The other half thinks,good boy, smart boy.
Riley pulls a Powerbar from her pocket and tosses it at the man. ‘There. Now leave us alone.’
‘Travelling is better with company,’ he says. He is close to her now though she hasn’t seen him move. His breath smells of burnt hair. ‘You seem like a girl who doesn’t want to be found. I know the trails round here, the places no one goes. The caves, the gullies. Places no one will find you.’ The reek of him is as heavy as bonfire smoke. She thinks of Noon. He smells like her, of dirt and smoke. Did Noon lure them to this place? Are they prey?
The man’s hand hovers above her knee, strokes the air there, squeezes it. He’s showing her what’s to come. She sees the bluntness of the stump where his little finger is missing.
‘Don’t touch me.’ She tries to keep her voice even but it comes out thready and high.
‘I wasn’t going to,’ he says, injured. ‘Just trying to help you kids out.’ He’s still wearing the costume of a person who’s being helpful. People only wear disguises in the wild when they want to do bad things – things their real selves can’t handle.
‘I’ll yell. I’ll scream.’ It is the wrong thing to say. Riley knows that as soon as she says it. He smiles. She really is prey, now.
‘Why would you do that? I’ll take care of you. No one would hear anyway. This trail is closed. Too many landslides. Nearly no one comes this way.’ He sounds genuinely sympathetic. ‘Where’s the kid?’ he asks. ‘Your brother?’
‘I don’t know,’ she says honestly. ‘He’s only seven, maybe he got lost.’ All the time she’s speaking, Riley thinks carefully about what to do next.
She waits until he moves his hand, as she knew he would, towards the knife at his belt. This is where the world will change from one thing to another. She reaches too – behind her, slowly – so slowly that she hardly seems to move. She keeps her eyes on his. The man’s face is distant, occupied, almost like he has forgotten about her.
His eyes focus all of a sudden. Now he comes in close, the big body hovers over her like a cage. She smells every thought in his head. They are all there in his sweat, his hair, his breath.
Riley keeps feeling delicately through the leaf mould with silent fingers. She keeps her eyes on the man’s wide brown ones. It’s like they’re going to kiss. Riley has only ever kissed Jared Rubenstein and it tasted like Clearasil.What a waste, she thinks, almost laughing out loud.I’m going to die after just one kiss. Well that one and this one, if he kisses me. He might not. He doesn’t need to, to do what he wants.
If this doesn’t work Riley hopes that she loses her mind. She doesn’t want to be in her body for what happens next.
Her seeking fingers brush lightly against the barrel of the gun. Her fist settles gently around the grip and she brings it swiftly forward.
He is almost too close, the muzzle brushes his nose in passing. But the movements feel smooth and easy, as if with long practice. She shoots the man twice, once in each eye. She fires a third shot which doesn’t land. The man doesn’t make a sound at first, just keels over backwards. Flat out on the ground, he twitches. Legs full of dance. Little gushes of breath come out, and the air is heavy with the scent as he soils himself. Riley doesn’t take her eyes off him, she watchesas he moves from living to dead. Something red and hot is in her.I did that.It’s terrible, but also her heart pounds with another feeling. Riley takes the flashlight from her pack and trains it on the man. She’s hungry so she grabs the Powerbar from the dead man’s hand and eats it in three bites watching his still face.
The stump of his missing finger twitches once, twice, faintly a third time. After it stops Riley watches for a few minutes to make sure. His eyes are red tunnels in his face. A creaking sigh comes from his mouth. It’s just his lungs giving up their last. He has stopped like a clock.
She kicks his booted foot because she can. He isn’t aheanymore but anit.She unwraps another Powerbar from her pack.
‘You can come out now, Oliver!’ she yells through her mouthful.I’m the lion now, she thinks. There’s a kind of dead fire in her.
‘Oliver!’
