‘Best for us, or best for everyone?’ asked Dalip.
‘It is the same thing. If Grace believes she gains something by getting to the geomancer first, we must seek an advantage of our own. We must stay together and act together. If we three all argue that we should leave here in the morning, we should persuade at least one of the others to join us. If we do that, it is likely that they will all come.’
‘But that’s going to happen anyway,’ said Dalip. ‘The door back to London won’t open. We haven’t any other choices.’
‘Well, that’s not true is it?’ Mary kicked the bottom of the net pole. ‘If Grace fucked off on her own, she’s going to be halfway to the geomancer already. And Mama, she’s going to want to go back to the door tomorrow, and the next day, for as long as it takes her to see it’s not going to open.’
‘Dalip. Listen to Mary.’
‘Someone had to make those wolf chains, right?’ Mary hefted the net again, and looked to the river. ‘That must mean there’s somewhere else we need to be.’
‘She is right. What do you say, Dalip?’
He gave in. Searching for Grace was going to be futile, especially if she didn’t want to be found. ‘Yes, yes okay. Let’s try that.’
‘No,’ said Stanislav, ‘we must be more determined than that. We must move on, we must go together and we must not let anyone else leave us. Talk to them. They will listen to you.’
‘Me?’ He raised his eyebrows. ‘They’ll listen to Mama.’
‘Then do not speak to her, but to Luiza and Elena. Use Grace’s absence to scare them into agreement if necessary. Mama will not remain here while the rest of us go upriver. Here,’ he said, and reached into his pocket for a wide, flat stone. ‘You will need this.’
Dalip took the sea-worn rock and hefted it in his hand. ‘What’s this for?’
‘For sharpening your knife. You must grind an edge on it for it to be useful.’
The rock was smooth, fine-grained, black and heavy. ‘I’m sorry,’ said Dalip. ‘I don’t know how.’
‘Then I will show you. Now: tell me where the eggs are to be found. If we are to walk far, we must be fed.’
9
The moon rose later and less full than the previous night, but it still resembled a huge skull of cratered bone hanging over their heads, casting its light through the canopy. Beneath its ponderous orbit, they spoke, argued, shouted and finally decided. There were tears and red faces, and eventually capitulation and sleep.
In the morning, Mary went down by the river to wash, scrubbing at her skin and scalp with her fingers. The water was cold when she wanted hot. She had sand when she wanted soap. She told herself that there was no point in wishing for things that none of them had, but it didn’t stop her wishing anyway.
Stanislav had emphasised that none of them should ever be on their own, just in case. So Dalip was nearby, and she wasn’t watching him as such. Not closely. He was downriver from her, secluded but not private, going through the ritual of washing his hair, combing it straight, tying it up and imprisoning it under his turban. Every so often, that plain steel bracelet he wore high up on his forearm slipped down, and he’d reposition it again before carrying on.
And when it was time to go, they just left. There was nothing to carry, except the net, nothing to pack, except Dalip’s sharpening stone. Stanislav raked out the fire with the end of a branch and gazed at the embers as they grew dull. With everything unspoken, he threw the stick he’d used on the ashes aside, and simply started. One by one, they followed, leaving the coast, and the door, behind.
She remembered that stupid kid’s joke◦– she couldn’t remember where from or who told it to her first◦– about ‘when is a door not a door?’ Who knew there was another answer, one which involved the door merging with a sheer cliff?
They kept to the tree line for a while, but as the estuary narrowed, so did the distance between the bank and the forest, until it became necessary to walk amongst the trees and keep an eye on where the river was.
The sun slewed around behind them, but they were shaded. It was cool under the canopy. Insects turned slow loops in the shadows, and skittered over the face of the running water. Sometimes a fish rose for one with a soft approach and a powerful escape. Birds called unseen from the upper branches.
Back when social services were still trying, they’d tried to make Mary do one of those adventure holidays◦– they said it’d be character building. The pictures they’d shown her to encourage her, the ones of stark rock ridges and barren, boggy moors where the wind and rain spotted the camera’s lens, had the opposite effect. She wasn’t doing that. Why should she? What possible purpose would it achieve? She’d started with a hearty ‘fuck off ’, and it escalated from there.
She hadn’t gone.
Perhaps the mistake they’d made was making it too safe for her. Where was the challenge in climbing a hill thousands had already climbed that year, and getting roped up to abseil a few metres down a rock?
Now, with no one to plead with her, cajole her or compel her, she was walking and camping out, foraging for food and eating with her fingers, all the things she swore she’d never do, because she wasn’t a fucking animal.
She didn’t even want a cigarette. She couldn’t normally make it five minutes after waking without one.
With slow inevitability, they became strung out. Spotting each other was easy enough, though; there was nothing that particular shade of orange in the forest. Stanislav was always out in front, Dalip not far behind as if he had something to prove◦– which perhaps he did, if only to himself◦– and her third. Elena and Luiza walked close together, with Mama in the rear.
Mama really didn’t like the idea of the journey, let alone the journey itself. Every step was further away from her babies, as she called her seemingly endless collection of children, grandchildren, nieces and nephews.
She could remember all their names, and their birthdays. For someone like Mary, that seemed astonishing enough, but Mama knew every part of their lives, too. Mary would have found it all too claustrophobic and oppressive, but apparently the kids were all fine with it, voluntarily surrendering every intimate detail without the threat of sanctions hanging over them.
Mary was happy being on her own, happy that no one was questioning her, happy that her life which had swung between chaotic to strictly ordered had found a third path she’d never actually known existed.
Stanislav stopped. Dalip caught him up, and the older man pointed at something ahead of them. They looked behind them and saw her approaching, and together they waited for her too.
She saw it before she had to have it explained to her. It was a house. Or at least, it was a corner of one, deep green with moss, the same colour as the forest. She moved her head this way and that. What had been a complete structure, four walls and a roof, was little more than sagging timber uprights being inexorably reclaimed by nature.
‘I don’t think anyone lives there,’ she said.
‘No. Not for many years. Twenty at least.’ Stanislav stared at the ruin as if it had been his own once.
‘How can you tell that?’