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Ben was eager to get going as soon as he could. The longer he waited the more time there was for something terrible to happen to her. “Do you think they lied about anything important?”

Nicholas considered the question before replying. “I suppose not. I expect she did go to Back Field.”

That was good enough for Ben. He left Nicholas with his anger and went to find little Kirsty Lorimer.

3

Ben had managed to talk the girls father out of coming but old Groche had insisted that his two sons, the girls uncles, join the search party. He wasn’t sure how much good they would do, he knew for a fact that the elder of the two, Peter, was a drunk on the same scale as the girls dad. He just hoped they wouldn’t get in the way.

They travelled to Back Island in two boats. Groche’s boys in the old mans fishing dugout; Ben and Aaron on his raft. The air was still and heavy with moisture. It would be raining by midday, he thought.

As they approached the field he saw the markings of the girls’s boat in the mud from the night before. They landed their boats next to the spot and climbed out.

The mud had been churned up for a distance of a couple of metres along the coast. Someone had paced the beach over and over again, a fact that did not fit in with Margaret’s explanation of what had happened. He expected there would be many such examples and that it would not help his job to dwell on them.

He led the three other men up the muddy slope. There were indentations in the grass where the girl must have walked, except he could imagine her running, afraid of the decision she’d made to leave the beach and wanting to get wherever she had been going quickly. It seemed impossible that the job would be as easy as following a trail but so far that was what it looked like being.

At the top of the hill the land opened up and he could see the cluster of trees to the west that everyone called the forest. Without discussion they stopped together at the top of the hill and checked their weapons: a crossbow apiece and a quiver of arrows on their backs.

They crossed the field without a word. Ben tried to stay calm but despite his best efforts his fingers tightened around the handle of his crossbow. He saw to the north areas of the field that had already been ploughed, ready for seeds to be planted for the first Sanctuary farm. The workers should be there already but salvaged ploughs stood idle.

The walk down the hill and across the field was painfully short. Ben realised at once that if the girl was in the woods and unharmed she would have seen them and come running out. If she was still there she was hurt or worse. As they walked he glanced at the two uncles but all he saw in their eyes was a keyed up fear which would do no good if he needed them to do something. In fact it could end up being more of a liability. Fortunately Aaron seemed more in control of himself, although Ben couldn’t help but notice the way he chewed on his bottom lip.

They didn’t find her in the forest. There were some broken mushrooms on the floor beside a tree and he guessed she had done it but there was no sign of where she had gone. It took them less than five minutes to search the cluster of trees without enthusiasm. They could all tell that she wasn’t there but each felt the need to confirm it.

Once they had finished they stood on the far side of the forest and stared back across the field. Ben knew that their real destination was behind them but it seemed to offer some comfort to look back in the direction of home. None of them wanted to say it, least of all Ben, but they hadn’t found her and they knew what that meant.

“Lets keep moving,” said Aaron and Ben was grateful to him for breaking the silence.

He turned and through an arch of trees he saw the unexplored fields beyond the forest. The light looked darker there, the sun less warm. He nodded and sighed. “Come on then.”

They walked more slowly now. The weight of the task before them more apparent. They were no longer following a trail that they hoped would lead to a frightened but unharmed little girl. There was no more trail and that she had left behind the relative safety of the forest meant it was impossible to deny the likelihood something even worse had happened to her.

He let Aaron lead them through the forest. When he stepped out the other side he shivered. There were no depressions in the grass to follow and the field seemed to stretch out to the horizon.

“Which way should we go?” said one of the brothers, he thought Peter but didn’t turn to check.

There wasn’t an obvious way to go. If she had come out here then she could have gone in any direction. Of course there was always the possibility that she was still in the forest and they had missed her but this seemed like the most optimistic approach to take. So it didn’t really matter which way they went, their chances of finding her remained the same: low.

“We should stay by the river,” he said. At least that way they couldn’t get lost. He didn’t think any of them had any experience with land navigation, at least nothing in the past twenty years.

For want of a better idea the others agreed. So they headed south towards where the rivers flowed. He tried to think that this was the most likely course she would have taken. Alone in the dark she might have got lost and finding the river would at least have meant she was getting closer to home. Instead he thought that if Zack or Adam had been turned he would want someone to find them and put them out of their misery.

They reached the river where it ran around the back of Sanctuary. Here it was all mud planes that smelled like sewage. In the distance he could see the Island and for a brief moment his heart skipped a beat as it looked like someone standing in the middle of the mud flats. It could have been her. She wouldn’t have been able to see the mud in the dark or known how solid it was if she could. She might have seen the Island and the river in the distance and thought she could walk to it. A foolish idea in the light of day but in her panic she might not have remembered. The truth was that the south beach was the closest crossing point.

“It’s not her,” said Aaron.

He handed the battered black binoculars to Ben and he looked through them. It was a tree, somehow growing in the middle of all that mud, it’s bare branches reaching for the sky like a little girl stuck in the mud.

They walked on down the river bank. The sun rose in the sky and Ben brushed away flies and other bugs drawn towards them by the mud banks. The heat continued to intensify and by mid-day he was looking around for shelter. A few trees grew along the banks but none of them very big. Any protection they might offer was negligible.

The Island disappeared from view and eventually so did the suburbs of Sanctuary. Only then did the mud banks give way to more solid ground.

Ben didn’t go hunting anymore but even when he had he’d never ventured this far from the village. If a journey of this distance had been required his instinct would have been to make it by boat. Now he was out there on land, exposed to the elements with nowhere to hide. The whole enterprise began to feel like too much effort to him and, when he considered how unlikely they were to find the girl, pointless.

After some time they came to another cluster of trees. Though the sun was beginning to lose a lot of its intensity they were all glad of a chance to sit down and rest. Aaron built a fire and Ben shot a rabbit. By the time they had eaten and rested the sun had begun its slow decline towards the hills in the west. It would be dark before long.

“Should we go back?” said Ben. He had almost forgotten the brothers who sat by themselves a little way back from the dying fire. Even if he had remembered them he wouldn’t have asked for their opinion on the matter.

Aaron looked out at the night sky and appeared to consider the question. “Maybe give it another hour?”