I cut the engine and we freewheeled down to the camp. The tires thrummed over the hard-packed dirt like a hearty soup plopping on the stove. But there would be no home comfort for us. The sun shattered into rictus fingers as it slumped behind the hills. If the hermit was correct, the helicopter that circled right over us had “nefarious intentions.” “Otherwise,” he had said, “why didn’t it land and pick you up?”
The old man was paranoid, ranting and raving about long-past wars—neighbor against neighbor—and how Europe had been waiting for a chance to turn on the outcasts. As the hermit had scurried away from Moton Hall with his teacup in his pocket, Charlie had tugged at my elbow—“What about Peter, Mummy?”—so I’d let the old man go. He was a nut. Even so, I couldn’t stop asking myself: Why didn’t that helicopter land?
“Look,” said Billy. An owl sat on a fence-post, its feathers backlit to form a white aura, and watched us with sunset eyes as we passed. “Buh-bye, little owl,” called Billy. “Buh-bye,” we echoed around the car.
The camp was mercifully quiet. Even the kids hushed as we stepped up the slope to the tents. Charlie slipped his hand into mine, and I squeezed it three times. He squeezed back.
Joni sat by the empty firepit. She stood as we reached her, forcing her torso up from the ground by pressing down on her thighs. She said something as she turned toward the yurt, as stiff and flat as a figure in a cave painting.
“Joni?”
“I’m done.”
My legs carried me into the food tent where Peter lay on the trestle table, covered with a thick sleeping bag. Joni’s sleeping bag. I laid my hand on his chest, but there was no rise and fall. His stillness spread up my arm like creeping anesthetic, until we were suspended in silence, stuck in the pause between breaths. A long groan rose from inside me, as though my last breath were also being sucked away. I snatched my hand from the body and hugged it to my chest, spinning round to see a row of questioning eyes behind me.
“Go,” I said to the kids, pointing in the direction of the stream. “Get some water.”
Billy and Maggie shot away in obvious relief, dragging the Lost Boy with them. Charlie dithered, building up to saying something.
“Sit down, Charlie.” In the dirt beside the log where Joni had been sitting was a pillow. We both sat down, and I laid the pillow over my knees, letting Charlie’s head rest on top. My hand settled into the cool hair of his nape. Up close, my parched skin stretched in a fine web of triangles across my knuckles. Like toughened glass under pressure, it had shattered. Charlie was tracing the pillow with his fingertips, the butterfly-wing shapes of brown stains. I finally let myself focus on the blood and mucus that smeared the white cotton.
“Is this Peter’s blood, Mummy?”
I agreed that it was Peter’s blood on the pillow.
Joni. What have you done?
For a second I thought I might cry.
That must have hurt, Joni. It must have hurt you so much.
But like a lost sneeze, nothing came.
Chapter Fifteen
“Once upon a time, long ago, people didn’t die but instead they shed their skin, like a snake.”
“What’s a shed of skin?” asked Billy.
“It means the skin peels off,” I said.
“Urgh! Why?”
“A snake sheds his skin so he can grow a new one.”
“Don’t want a snake story!”
“Hold my hand if you’re scared.”
“So one day, a long time ago, when people didn’t die but shed their skin like snakes, a mother told her children that soon she would shed her skin. But the children started crying. Children don’t like things to change, you see. They get frightened. And these children cried and cried so much that their tears kept their mother’s skin moist so it didn’t shed. And every time her skin started peeling, they all cried over it. This went on for many years. But one day, the sun saw what this mummy was doing. The sun got very angry, because she has to be brave and leave her children of the earth all alone every night. She thought this mummy was cheating. So the sun shone as hard as she could on the mother’s skin, and this time, when her skin parched and cracked, the children’s tears made no difference. This time, her skin didn’t just shed—it wrinkled up like a walnut, and she died. And ever since then, people have to die and can’t come back to the earth ever again.”
There was a long silence in the tent.
I probably should have stuck to The Gruffalo. But I wasn’t sure they would have swallowed a plucky-little-underdog story. I was swaddled in the limbs of my three children. Maggie’s face brushed hot and soft against my shoulder as she turned it up to me.
“Is that story true, Mummy?”
“No. It’s a myth. My nanny told me that story a long time ago when I was feeling sad. Because my friend died.”
“Why did your friend die?” Charlie, of course, wanted hard details.
“He caught a disease called malaria.” I said. “You get it from—”
“Mosquitoes.”
“That’s right. But let’s not talk about that now.”
“Are you feeling sad?” Maggie asked.
“Very sad. What about you?”
“I’m very sad, too. And so are Billy and Charlie. And him.”
The Lost Boy gave a little moan of agreement, no louder than a bird’s sigh. But we all turned to him: it felt like a breakthrough.
“Do you want to come and sit with us?” I asked.
When he didn’t answer, I disentangled myself and scooted across the tent on my bottom.
“You can come and sit closer if you like. You must be very scared.”
He faced the back of the tent. His take-everything-in eyes were almost covered by a sweep of glossy hair. I scooted closer.
“Why don’t you tell us your name, hey? Can you tell us?”
He braced his shoulders up round his ears.
“It’s okay. We just want to help—” I laid a hand on his arm; with a swinish cry, he writhed out of my grip and clamped his teeth down on my wrist. Then he was up and floundering over mattresses to escape the tent into the dark. Maggie seized his gray blanket and raced after him. In the torchlight, I saw a perfect red crescent embossed on my skin.
I followed. As though she could follow his scent, Maggie dashed through the darkness toward the yurt and almost collided with the Lost Boy as he shot back out again, still making the same piglet noise, and we all chased him down the slope, where he scurried on his belly under Joni’s car. Maggie bent down and held out his blanket. A skinny wrist emerged and drew it out of her hand.
She nodded once, satisfied. “He just needs his blankie.” And they all turned back to the camp, leaving me in the dark, alone once more with the muttering trees.