Marc tears free. He had wanted more time before seeing her. He didn’t want to do it in a storm in the middle of an earthquake. But there is no more time.
‘Get the van,’ Marc yells at the two of them. ‘I’ll meet you at Leahy’s turnout.’ He’s almost sure that they hear him. Marc tightens the hood about his face as Kimble lunges for him. He ducks away from her grip and is gone into the driving rain.
The boulders have crushed the steel gate under their weight. Marc climbs. A slick weal of red spreads across his wet hand where it drags across the razor wire and he winces, shakes his head and goes on. No time to be careful.
In the narrow channel of the pass beyond the ruined gates, the water rushes fast. He was right; the valley is flooding. It’s hard to push forward now. He thinks about a figure perched in the rocks above, the ricochet of gunfire off the narrow walls in the rain, thunder hiding the shot. She wouldn’t. He’s almost sure.
Marc runs down the cracked asphalt road which is now rushing water, ankle deep, into the meadow. Even with storm clouds boiling overhead and almost blinded by rain, Marc sees how beautiful it is, this green valley protected in the teeth of the mountains. He had hoped he would remember the way and he does.
He passes evidence of the life the children lead. A pink tricycle, handles carefully mended with duct tape, lies upended, one wheel gently turning. A teddy bear with no eyes lies bloated and sodden in a patch of flattened grass. He passes the burnt-out skeleton of the stables, roof patched with sheets of plywood and rusting metal.
He thinks of the children who live here and play with these things – he feels fear that is not to do with the rain or the storm. It’s the fear that comes when you touch the edge, the places where life and death meet.
He runs through the woods. Thunder cracks overhead, or was it something else? Did it come from above, or below in the earth? Marc speeds up, slipping and running through the pine forest. He feels the furry texture of the air that means lightning. Marc pushes himself on, panting. He just needs a little longer.
Nowhere House rears up before him, roof partially caved in, a hulking skeleton in the flickering light. It is boarded up, seemingly abandoned. But he guesses it’s not.Now here.There is a door of sorts, layers of plywood. He puts a testing hand against it. Firm, solid. A bolt on the other side?
‘Did you get my note?’ he yells through the door. There’s no answer so he hurls himself against the plywood, throws his weight at it again and again until the wood gives with a splintering scream.
The house is dim, quiet, the assault of rain suddenly muted.
She lies in front of the fireplace. She must have been caught in a rockfall or hurt herself somehow. Her shoulder is covered in blood.
‘There you are,’ he says, wiping rain from his mouth.
Her hair is plastered to her head. It’s in a neat, though wet, pony-tail. She wears a flannel shirt, jeans, boots. Practical. Ordinary. She looks like a regular woman in her forties who lives quietly by herself in the mountains.
‘Get off my property.’ Her voice is scratched from disuse. She takes the gun from the holster at her hip and trains it slowly on him. ‘I mean it,’ she says. ‘You’re trespassing.’
‘Hi, Riley,’ Marc says. A hot lick of rage strokes his throat. It’s not fair that she can still hurt him. ‘You don’t recognise me?’
‘I don’t know any people,’ she says. ‘Nice try.’
Marc remembers that slight smile like a blow to the heart. He takes a deep breath and leans against the wall, takes a cigarette from his inside jacket pocket. His hand shakes a little as he lights it.
‘I smoke now,’ Marc says. ‘Sorry. I took most of the rest of your advice. I always buy things at eye level, on the shelves. And I have a pretty happy life.’ He is startled to find that this actually feels true.
Her mouth opens in a silent ‘o’. She bends a little at the middle as if she’s been dealt a blow. She stares at Marc, her eyes rake his face. ‘No,’ she says quietly. ‘It can’t be, because he would never come back. I told him to never.’
‘He didn’t.’ He smokes and looks at her. ‘But once, a long time ago, I had a different name.’
Riley pushes herself upright. ‘You can’t be him,’ she whispers. ‘If you’re lying or it’s a trick, I think it might kill me.’
‘You told me to forget Oliver,’ he says. ‘Oliver’s gone. So yes and no.’ Marc takes a deep drag on his cigarette. ‘Riley,’ he says. ‘The girl who was hatched from an egg.’
‘Oh,’ she says. ‘Oh, oh.’ Riley gives a hacking sob and her hand clamps over her mouth. ‘Hello, Oliver Olive.’ She comes towards him, wincing at the pain in her shoulder. Marc tenses. She might shoot him after all.
Close to her wet hair carries the scent of woodsmoke. Riley throws her armd round him. Marc hurtles back in time. He’s there again, clinging to her for warmth as the lion stalks them across the mountain. Riley was all the safety he knew, once.
He could say, don’t call me that name, or you abandoned me, or how could you how could you. Instead he whispers back, ‘Hi, Riley.’
Her grasp tightens. He puts his arms carefully, slowly, around her. He holds his sister gently, after all this time.
Oliver found his way from the tunnel to the lilac. He didn’t know what to do; he was hungry until the man came with the meatball sandwich.
He did just what Riley said and told them he didn’t remember anything. Even as Oliver cried at night with rage and hatred for what she had done, he never told other people. For a time, he was just the lilac boy.
Oliver was in hospital for a while. By the time they had debrided all the infected tissue in his leg they decided it wasn’t worth saving so they took it off neatly below the knee.
