‘Hey,’ Adam says. ‘Hey.’ He pokes Leaf gently in the ribs.
‘Darkness is like a disease,’ Leaf says, dreamy. ‘You can be inoculated. If you let in a little, Adam, you won’t get sick.’
Adam looks at him, measuring. ‘What does that mean?’
Leaf takes a deep breath and tells Adam what he wants with averted eyes. ‘Underwater is the way to practise. You work up to it.’
Later Adam will remember Leaf’s voice telling him his desires, mingling with the call of loons in the reeds, their long mourning notes.
12Riley
It’s Riley’s turn to bleed the woman. She flicks on her lighter and passes the flame along the blade. The woman jumps when she hears it and starts to cry.
‘Stop it.’ Riley speaks in a whisper, like Noon told her, because voices are less identifiable that way. They don’t want the woman to recognise who’s speaking or know how many of them there are.
There’s not much room left on the woman’s arm, which is covered in band aids. Riley finds a patch of bare skin, making sure it’s far away from the blood-rich blue veined places on her wrist. She tries to think of it like the cut she makes in rabbit hide to skin it.
Riley cuts neatly into the woman’s forearm. The woman cries out. She shakes with sobs. The blood runs down her white flesh and drops into the sunken garden. Riley doesn’t look down. She doesn’t want to see it again, the ground breathing in and out.
‘Are you all going to kill me?’
‘I don’t know,’ Riley replies honestly. ‘But I saw what you did to your kids and I wouldn’t care if you died.’ Riley shakes the bottle of baby formula and puts the nipple to the woman’s mouth. The womansucks hard, she’s hungry, takes too much and chokes. Riley removes the bottle and waits for it to pass.
‘My name’s Alison,’ the woman says through tears.
‘I don’t care about that either.’ Riley pushes the rubber nipple back into the woman’s mouth. ‘Drink.’
Dawn is shaking Riley’s shoulder, gently, speaking to her. She holds a piece of summer carrot in her other hand. Riley startles up. How long has she been sitting here? She’s by Home Barn, the afternoon is low and golden, and the air is warm. Dandelion clocks blow over the meadow in the long light. Riley looks down at the rabbit trap in her hands. Right, she’s supposed to be mending it. But the wire has got loose somehow, the end has cut Riley’s hand. Blood trickles down her finger.
She stares as the drops fall, coating the sleek blades of grass at her feet. Does the earth tremble a little with pleasure?
Riley, Midnight and the little ones are by the lake when the men come to the gate. The summer sun beats from the blue sky, the meadow is tall and bleached gold, alive with grasshopper song. Riley smells the warm earth on the wind.
Midnight, Oliver and Riley are in the sandy shade of the rocks. Oliver sits playing with the sand and Midnight lies back with her baby on her chest. Una stares at Riley with her round dark eyes.
Riley can’t sit. She paces, watching the water as it gleams under the sun. The kids crouch in the shallows, building pebble castles and digging holes.
Oliver fidgets, restless. ‘Can’t I go in the water, Riley?’
‘No. You stay here.’ Riley says to Midnight, ‘I don’t understand, how can you let them swim in the lake? The crocodile …’
‘The crocodile won’t hurt them.’ Midnight yawns and turns over. ‘You always hear it coming. It makes a squeaky noise.’
The little red-haired boy, Rufus, drops his electric blanket on the sand and wanders towards them. He smiles a shy smile. ‘Mommy,’ he calls. That’s all Rufus ever says.Mommy.
‘No,’ Riley says as kindly as she can. ‘We’ve talked about this.’
Rufus smiles and turns away back to the gleaming waterline. He always seems so happy. He and Hallie scream and run along the shallows, water scattering in diamonds.
Everyone seems to take care of the kids together. Apart from Midnight and Una, who’s always wrapped tight to her chest, there’s no indication of parents. There’s the very blonde-headed one, Whitey. She’s a little older than Rufus, six maybe, and one of her eyes has been injured in the past. The eyelid has healed wrongly, the skin too tight, so that her eye never opens fully. A thoughtful, serious child. She doesn’t talk much. Whitey wades out into the lake.
Riley can’t take it anymore. ‘Come back,’ she calls. ‘Come back in right now, Whitey!’
Whitey turns and looks at Riley, then drops and swims out into the water.
‘I’m going after her,’ Riley says. ‘I’ll bring her back.’
Midnight clamps an iron hand around Riley’s wrist. ‘You don’t touch her. I’ve told you again and again, you outsiders don’t touch the children until it’s time, you might contaminate them.’
