Riley’s mom used to call ithaving the sun in your head. When someone looks at you and they shine so much inside it comes out of their eyes. It’s a gift. It makes people do what you want. Riley has tried to fake it, she does a pretty good impression but she knows it’s not the real thing.
But then, apparently Riley’s father had the sun in his head and look how that turned out.
‘Come with me,’ Noon says.
They walk through summer grass, towards the lake. The light is different here, maybe it’s the altitude or sun reflecting on snow on the peaks. Maybe it’s happiness. But as Riley watches the light dance on the still water she says to Noon, confident, ‘I’ve been here before.’ She stops, confused. ‘I don’t know why I said that.’
‘You’ve always been here,’ Noon says. ‘That’s how people feel, who belong at Nowhere. When I first saw this place I knew I had come home. It was like I’d just been away for a while.’
‘Did you miss me while I was gone?’ Riley means it as a joke but it doesn’t come out like that.
‘Yes,’ Noon says. ‘Now – we need something dead.’
The rabbit shivers in the wire trap. Riley is sorry, its eyes are big and frightened. She knows how the rabbit feels. Noon breaks its neck with one quick movement.
‘You’ll settle in, Riley,’ she says, taking the corpse up by its long soft ears. ‘But there are a couple of things you need to know right away.’
Riley follows Noon to the shore. The water is bordered by a narrow strip of sand, bright white, like a toy beach or a beach in a picture. The water gleams and the reeds dip in the breeze. Riley wants to feel the fine white sand on her feet and she bends to take off her shoes.
‘Better keep those on for now,’ Noon says. She puts two fingers in her mouth and whistles.
Nothing happens. Riley squints in the sunshine and scratches her elbow. Noon whistles again.
Something stirs in the reeds. It’s big. It makes wide trails in the gleaming water as it comes across the lake. Riley glimpses a dark, scaled head, a dead eye.
Noon puts the dead rabbit down on the sand. ‘We’re going to run now,’ she says comfortably. She grabs Riley’s hand. ‘There’s a place we can watch from.’
Riley is staring at the slow thing that is coming through the water. ‘But—’
Noon drags her away from the lake and Riley starts back to herself. Noon is right. She does not want to stay to meet the thing in the water. They run to a tree where a rope ladder hangs down the trunk.
‘Up,’ Noon says. She does sound slightly worried now. ‘Hurry.’
Riley climbs the ladder, up into the heart of the tree. Noon is right behind her. There’s a platform in the branches. Their arrival startles a cloud of purple canopy butterflies, which burst into the air and then vanish into the blue morning.
Noon pulls the rope ladder up after them. ‘Oh, look,’ she says, approving. ‘There he is. Isn’t he beautiful?’
Riley hisses a hard indrawn breath.
The crocodile comes out of the water slowly, made clumsy by land. Its warty hide is dark and sleek-wet on the shore. Yellowed teeth jut out from its closed jaws. It moves ponderously across thesand, lifting one slow armoured leg after another. It is fifteen feet long or so. It’s too big to imagine, even though she’s looking at it. Maybe it’s the biggest living thing Riley has ever seen. The thick heavy tail leaves a furrow in the sand behind it. Somehow Riley finds that most terrifying – the drag of that heavy heavy tail.
The crocodile opens its jaws and takes the dead rabbit in its yellow teeth. Its entire head parts in two, because it is made all of jaws, with two tiny eyes above.
‘Aren’t you scared of it?’ Riley asks. ‘What about the kids and babies? What about if it comes in the night …’
‘Listen,’ Noon says.
Faintly, Riley hears a high sound from below.
‘You’ll hear him coming,’ Noon says, cheerful. ‘I feed him a dog toy now and again, hidden in meat – something that squeaks. His stomach acid always dissolves it in the end. But in the meantime we can hear him coming.’
‘It sounds like tiny people screaming,’ Riley clutches the railing and watches the dark shape scrape itself across the shore on its belly, back towards the water.
‘He won’t hurt us,’ Noon says. ‘We look after him. That’s how it works at Nowhere. Balance.’ She shrugs. ‘He sleeps a lot anyway. It’s too cold for him up here. He lived in a tank back before Nowhere burned. There was a kind of zoo. I don’t know what happened to the other animals. Maybe they’re on the mountain, somewhere. Imagine, herds of wild giraffes and zebras roaming the mountain.’ She smiles. ‘They would be dead by now, of course. The first winter would have seen to that. So we leave Tinkerbell alone. Ok?’
Riley nods.
‘And we don’t go to the house. His place.’ Noon nods in the direction of the black burnt thing in the distance. ‘Except when – just don’t, ok? It’s not safe. And we don’t say his name.’ She looks out over the lake. Sun ripples on the water. ‘And most importantly, we lookafter the children. We have five little ones here. We’re lucky. We can give them the lives we didn’t get. Everything we do here is for them.’
