The Toyota Hilux came with its bullet-cracked windshield and its leaking transmission. They threw Tom into the back.
“What’s your plan, Heather?” Ivan yelled. “We’re bringing more dogs! No cops have been round looking for you! No one’s looking for you here! You’re never getting off this island. Never!”
“That’s right!” Kate said and they got in the Toyota and they left.
Still she waited until it was fully dark.
“You nearly got me,” she whispered as she put Petra’s singed, ripped T-shirt back on. She slid backward through the grass. It was her and them now. She’d get off the island or die trying. When she was half a mile away from the cave, she turned south to gather more shearwater eggs. The tide was very low. Her sneakers sank softly into the wet sand.
Was that the moon? A brand-new moon after the dark of the moon?
Yes.
A sliver of beautiful white sickle moon defiantly upside down.
She got the eggs and headed home.
When she reached the burned plateau she took a last look at the one-tree hill.
“Goodbye, Tom,” she said.
44
The land had become dark.
A deep, dark ticktocking in time to the rotating stars. Olivia sat under the foliage of the eucalyptus trees. Dusty, dry, kind of ugly leaves, but each one a miracle engine that had spent the day converting light into food.
Birds in a V formation.
Starlight on the water.
She thought about Heather. Worried about her. She’d been wrong about her.
She sat on a root and cried. She cried about herself and her mom. She cried about her dad.
He was her dad, after all.
But Heather would get her and Owen out, not him. She knew that. She had to look after her little brother.
In the cave she could hear Owen cooking the snake by the fire. There wasn’t going to be much meat, he’d said. It was all bony and gross. But that was OK.
Olivia stood and peered into the darkness and waited for Heather.
Either Heather would come back or her dad and Matt and the others would come. She missed her dad. She loved her dad. But she wanted it to be Heather. Her mom would have wanted it to be Heather too.
She went inside the cave mouth. If you looked very hard you could see faint drawings on the walls. Stick men and women dancing with spears. In the light of Owen’s fire, they danced still.
The men and women with spears were attacking or fleeing from a monster with six legs.
After a while, Heather appeared in the cave mouth.
Olivia hugged her.
Olivia asked her a question without saying anything.
Heather nodded.
Heather put her arms around her and explained what had happened.
Olivia cried and Heather cried and they held each other for a long time.
“Look what I found,” Olivia said, sniffing and showing her the cave drawings. “Some of these images are thousands of years old but some must have been done in the last hundred and fifty years. That’s a man on a horse, isn’t it?”
“I think so.”
“They made a record of the black line, of the massacre.”
“What are you guys doing up there?” Owen yelled. “I’ve cooked this, come down!”
They went down.
It tasted like chicken, or maybe wildfowl. It was good. It went well with the eggs.
Owen and Heather talked about TV shows and movies and music to distract themselves.
Heather didn’t say anything more about Tom. Owen already knew.
They talked and ate and drank. Owen told them everything about all the videos on the Primitive Technology channel on YouTube. Heather talked about how low the tide was at the shearwater nests, and Owen explained that it was probably because of the new moon. Olivia and Owen talked about his astronomy worksheet. Everything seemed so much clearer now. Owen recited the planets and got them right this time. They did all they could not to talk about Tom.
Later, Heather sang them all the songs on Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.
They were tired and they settled down to sleep next to one another by the fire.
Heather picked up the rifle and slid on the safety and slept with one hand on the stock.
“That was weird, looking in the mirror yesterday,” Olivia said. “I’d forgotten what I looked like.”
“You know,” Heather said, “when you look really closely, all mirrors look like eyeballs.”
Olivia thought about that one and smiled.
“Guys, I’m going to try to get some sleep, all right?” Heather said.
Olivia nodded and lay there and thought about the moon.
She closed her eyes.
She began to drift into sleep.
Zodiac, moon, mother.
She sat bolt upright.
“Owen! Your homework. The new moon and the full moon. Isn’t that when the lowest of the low tides are?” Olivia asked.
“Yeah. I think that’s right. The spring tide. Twice a month…” Owen’s face lit up. He saw what Olivia was driving at. He shook Heather.
“What is it? Is everything OK?” she asked.
“We know a way to get out of here,” Owen said.
45
Back up in the backcountry. In the shadow of Slemish.
Aye, take it back. Somewhere in those high hills, the monster.
Escape it. Escape the poverty and the rain. Go with your ticket on the big boat. Make a new life in another land across the sea. Good luck, love, they said. Good luck, love, and that was it.
This new land. This empty land. This land of luck.
The monster following after.
I don’t need this at my age. It finds you. From under the shadow of the black mountain, it comes.
I know all about her. I know the meaning of her. Morrigan the crow knows her too.
These good-for-nothing layabouts. I didn’t get sick. Water? I wouldn’t touch the stuff. These eejits. These larrikins. Me with my bad legs. I could do a better job. She will destroy everything I’ve built if I don’t fix this.
“Matty! Matty, get up here! I have a plan. Matthew, where are you? Get up here!”
Him the only one not soiled by the blood.
“What is it, Ma?”
“Get up here! Your plan didn’t work, but I have a plan to catch the bitch.”
“What plan?” Matt said, opening the door.
“Go to the dresser. Give me that grog. My knees. My bloody knees. Who is she? How did she wreak all this havoc, Matthew?”
“I don’t know, Ma. Tom said she was his massage therapist before he married her.”
“She’s not one of these university types?”
“No, Ma.”
“Then what? What does she have? She looks like a stiff breeze would knock her over.”
“Yes. I sort of thought the same thing.”
“Is she lucky or is she smart?”
“I don’t know.”
Ma swallowed her grog with satisfaction. It was the good stuff. Well over twenty years old, but smooth. And the seaweed under the still reminded her of Bushmills. “Sit next to me on the bed, that’s it. Drink?”
“I’m OK, Ma.”
“I sometimes wonder if we’re made of shit or if we’re made of light—what do you think, Matthew?”
“Um, I don’t know, Ma.”