‘I know you don’t understand,’ Riley says. ‘But they’re my children.’
‘Fine.’ Marc throws his hands up. ‘If you’re right, they can’t be killed. But you and I can die, and I won’t leave without you.’
Riley wipes her eyes and nods. ‘Ok.’ She avoids his gaze. Marc sees her eyes glisten with feeling as she jumps down into the hollow place in the earth. Riley thinks he came back for her. She doesn’t understand yet why Marc needs her.
He brushes that thought aside as the house flashes up white with lightning.
Riley leads Marc past the five round, smooth skulls, through thelilac and into the dark. The blossom is sodden with rain and clings to Marc’s face; he’s soaking wet and blinded by leaves and flowers. It’s like being born. He has been born so many times in this life – as Oliver, as Marc, and lastly with the arrival of his daughter. He doesn’t know which, or how many parts of him had to die to make room for the new. There’s no way to tell; change is like that.
The tunnel is smaller than he remembers, the ceiling lower. Marc can only just stand upright. Riley grabs a torch from her pocket. The beam dances on the rocky floor ahead. It’s quiet down here after the raging storm above. There is only the faint sound of water, rushing somewhere behind the walls.
The world cracks and breaks overhead.
‘Was that—’
‘Yes,’ Riley says. ‘I think it was the house falling.’ Her torch beam dances on the cave wall. Her face is ghostly. ‘It will hold,’ she says. ‘Solid mountain stone.’ But Riley doesn’t sound sure. ‘Come on.’
Marc and Riley walk faster, faster and then they run, and somehow he finds that he’s holding her hand. They run down the rocky passage, through the mountain, just as they did all those years ago. The flashlight plays on the glittering walls.
‘I remember this,’ Marc says breathless. ‘It sparkles.’
‘Yes.’ Riley slows and runs a finger down the gleaming wall. She turns to Marc. Her fingertip glistens in the torchlight. ‘Wet,’ she says. ‘Oliver …’ The mountain shakes. The earthquake is moving the world.
‘Run,’ Marc says. ‘Really run, now.’
The rock wall splits and a fissure opens boiling white. More cracks appear with sounds like gunshot, spewing foam and water into the tunnel. The water bursts through, reclaims its ancient path, becomes a river again.
Marc and Riley wade through the water which races about their calves. As it rises to their knees they slip and stagger, panting. He stays close behind Riley, trying to shield her.
Riley cries out and grasps frantically at her neck. ‘My necklace,’ she shouts over the water. ‘It’s not here!’
‘It doesn’t matter,’ he shouts.
Riley clings to the rock. She shakes her head and cries.
Marc seizes her. He’s not leaving without Riley – her living body. He pries her hands from the wall and she screams and beats him with her fists. He feels how thin and fragile she is. Marc lifts her above the racing current and carries her on.
The water creeps higher and higher; it’s thigh deep, then at their waists. Marc fights through the frozen torrent. Riley struggles in his arms and twice Marc stumbles and is dashed against the wall. He rights himself, heart pounding.
Marc thinks at first it’s hope or a hallucination, the faint grey light ahead. But it’s there. He shouts and pushes on faster. The way out is still open. Maybe they won’t die here after all, drowned or buried in the rock.If we hurry, he thinks.Maybe.
He shoves Riley hard out of the mouth of the tunnel, forcing her up out of the dark earth. He hoists himself out after, into the forest.
Coming out into the storm is like being beaten. The air screams. Wind batters his ears, rain falls in long freezing needles battering the earth. Lightning makes the world click white, grey, white, black. A roll of thunder shakes everything.
‘We have to go back – my necklace,’ Riley shouts into his ear.
There is the distant crash of rock. The mountain is falling into the valley of Nowhere. Riley lunges back towards the tunnel entrance.
‘No,’ he yells.
‘You don’t understand,’ she says. ‘I have to …’
‘It’s too late.’ Marc takes Riley by the waist and drags her down through the trees. The hillside is flooding; water flows around them, calf deep, yellow and brown with topsoil. Lilac blossom floats past on the racing current. Lightning flickers.
Riley claws at him, ‘I need their bones to see the children. Noon told me, she told me …’
‘She told you that while she was torturing you,’ Marc spits in Riley’s ear. ‘While you were high.’
