‘It was good,’ Noon says. ‘When I saw it I knew you were on your way. Everyone walked the trails every day until they found you.’ Noon draws a stem of grass from its sheath and nibbles the soft white end. ‘You know what’s waiting for you out there.’
‘We can stay out of people’s way,’ Riley says. ‘We can live in the wild. Or hitchhike out of state. We can go far away where people don’t know that story.’
‘Or you could stay here,’ Noon says.
‘I won’t stay in a place that worships him as a god.’
‘Is that the problem?’ Noon laughs. ‘We don’t worship him.’
‘It looked like it,’ Riley says.
‘People need gods,’ Noon says. ‘Especially when they’re often cold and hungry. Life out here isn’t easy. Some of the kids don’t even really know what he did, they were too young to understand before they came here. But everyone has a favourite Leaf Winham movie. It’s harmless.’
Riley makes a scornful sound and Noon holds up her hand.
‘But what they’re really worshipping is this place, their home. They’re giving thanks for being safe at Nowhere.’ Noon clenches her fists for a moment. ‘There were more Nowhere children once, when I first came here,’ she says. ‘Word spread. Kids came here wanting safety. We grew. In the end we were thirty, maybe. It didn’t work. We divided into tribes, groups took territories in the valley, they started raiding and stealing from each other. The stronger ones didn’t let the little ones have food. They didn’t respect this place – they had no gods. There were fights, and then there were killings.’ Noon takes a deep breath. ‘Me, Danny, Midnight, Cal and Everett realised we had to work together. In the end we were all that was left. We made this place safe. We found out how to worship. It keeps us all as one.’
‘This won’t work on me,’ Riley says but her voice shakes.
Noon breathes out a hard puff of frustration. ‘I’m not trying to make anything work. I’m trying to explain. We live on a knife edge here – never more than one bad month away from starving, laid open to sickness, right next to death. Nowhere is all we have. She’s our god and she keeps us alive. If some of them choose to think of her as Leaf Winham I’m ok with that.’
‘Not many of you left,’ Riley says slowly. ‘What happened to the others?’
‘Nowhere chose us,’ Noon says. ‘We did what we had to do.’
A wash of cold sweeps across Riley’s skin. ‘What Oliver and I have to do,’ she says, ‘is leave in the morning.’
‘All right,’ Noon gets up. ‘Better spend the night up in that tree, just in case our friend comes out of the lake on his night walk.’
‘I should never have come here,’ Riley says.
‘She likes you,’ Noon says. ‘Nowhere. You’re welcome and I hope you stay.’
Her mother always spoke about Nowhere with fear and hatred. ‘It took everything,’ she said. ‘Evil lives there.’ As a child Riley had nightmares about fire leaping into the night sky, the flames reflected in pools of blood on a vast floor. But it drew her too. She thought about Nowhere, imagined it. The place beat like a pulse beneath her daily thoughts. She spent hours at the library, hunting down old newspaper articles with pictures of the house.
She was sitting on the front step of their old house in Boulder when she heard the news that Mom was really dead. Oliver was sleeping inside. Riley always made sure he took his nap. Sometimes the memory is so vivid in her mind that she feels the late sun on her skin, her thin summer dress, the warmth of the stoop through the cotton.
She held the locket in her hands, brought it to her nose and inhaled the particular scent of the old silver. The car that pulled up was a Buick. Cousin got out. Riley knew when she saw him what he’d come to say. She knew that her mother was gone. She got up and went to meet Cousin, not wanting to wake Oliver yet – to give him a few more moments of peace before he knew.
Cousin said he couldn’t keep Riley and Oliver at first. Then after they had been at the group home for six months, he changed his mind. Riley remembers the relief of hearing that they could leave the home, that they would be with family. Riley and Oliver had never known Cousin, growing up. Later they understood why their mother had kept him out of their lives.
Bad things can start so slow, like they did with Cousin. Normality slipped off its axis gradually; by the time it was at its worst Riley couldn’t say how they had got there. Anyway there was no one to help. Both of Riley’s parents are shut away forever now, in the silver that hangs about her neck, and in the ground.
Riley stays awake, one arm around Oliver, the other wrapped around the trunk of the tree. Nowhere chirps and rustles and chatters to itself. A night bird sings high and liquid. Clouds scud across the bitten moon.
Pink light spreads across the grass and something makes a deep sound above them on the edge of the cliff. Riley starts awake. Cal is below her, holding the harness.
‘Time to go,’ he says. ‘If you’re going.’
‘We’re going.’ Riley shakes Oliver awake. ‘Come on, Oliver Olive. Move.’
His pupils are blown out large, almost to the edge of his irises. His brow feels skillet-hot under her hand. Infection.
‘Help me,’ she says to Cal and she lowers Oliver into his arms. Oliver cries out with pain. Above, there’s a flash of tawny hide on the cliff.
‘There’s a lion up there,’ Cal says.
‘She’ll move on,’ Riley says.
