‘It’s not—’
‘Wait.’ Callum holds up his hands. Kira pauses, angling away. ‘Physically. That’s what I’m getting at. I’m six foot, your dad’s taller, and Romy’s just…not. She’s taller than you, but she’s skinny as anything. How can she possibly have taken your dad, in the early morning, without—’
‘I don’t know.’ Kira’s voice judders with cold and irritation, defence, desperation, doubt. ‘I don’t know, okay? But she did. All the windows were open, and…’ She rubs her face, up and down. Her skin is raw and numb. Her hands fizz, mottled. Unprepared. ‘And, I don’t know, Callum. You saw what she did to me in the hotel, and what she did to herself. Dad could barely control her then, when she was half dead and he was awake. If she caught him when he was asleep, and she’s fully recovered?’ She ducks her head. ‘I don’t know. I really don’t know. I just know she’s strong and that none of this is right.’
Kira stares through the snow until it glints an afterglow. Callum just stares through the snow. ‘I know that normally,’ she continues softly, ‘Romy can’t overpower Dad. She can’t take him anywhere, no way. But none of this is normal.’ She looks up at Callum, open, raw. ‘I keep saying that, as if it makes it okay. That none of this is normal, so anything is possible.’ She shakes her head. ‘I don’t know. But I think…’
The thoughts are incense. They smoke, they smoulder, they form shadows from nothing. Kira breathes. It takes an age to exit her lungs. ‘I think I know why she’s taken Dad.’
Callum nods. For once, he’s watching, eyebrows down, mouth lined. In a planetary ski coat, he’s a beacon in the clearing. ‘Why?’
‘Dad wasn’t there when I got back.’ Kira tugs on her split ends. The thoughts are still unrolling. ‘Still. When he did get back, he said he’d spent a long time telling Romy everything—and I mean everything—even though she was asleep. He wanted to get it straight in his head, to figure out what’s going on. He said talking to her was as good a way as any.’
Callum nods again. ‘And you think…?’
‘That Romy wasn’t actually asleep.’ Kira holds up her hands. ‘Maybe. I don’t know. Maybe, while he was talking, she realised where Mum is and left the hospital to follow her.’ She lets her hands flop, loose by her sides. ‘To stop whatever she’s doing.’
Callum frowns. ‘Which we haven’t figured out.’
‘No.’ Kira taps on her jeans, one, two, three. The air is growing colder, a sharp, tangy curtain anchoring around them. Knocking on her pulse, her nerves. ‘But Romy was insistent that we don’t go back to…’
‘Whiteland.’
‘If you really want to call it that.’
‘I’m calling a spade a spade.’
Kira narrows her eyes at him. ‘You choose to do that now?’
Callum shrugs. ‘Yeah.’
Folding his arms, he says nothing more. The word twists through her chest, dragging blood behind it. Blood, or a vaccine, or anything else that pierces your veins and floods your body with cold. ‘Okay.’ She rubs her arms through her bobbled sleeves. ‘Um. I don’t know if it’s better or worse that you’re with me.’
Looking up, Callum meets her gaze. ‘Madness loves company, right?’
A smile plucks Kira’s lips. ‘That’s misery.’
‘Same difference.’ Callum shrugs. His eyes catch hers, wary and snagging. He works his hesitant mouth. ‘Why…ah.’ He shakes his head and looks up. ‘I’m sorry. I’m only really good at being blunt. Why did Romy take your dad?’
Kira shivers. It’s easy to forget where they are, in the middle of a forest that taunts them. ‘To try and blackmail Mum into stopping?’ she suggests. The trees sigh. She shivers again. The atmosphere is dead, airless. ‘For company? I wouldn’t put anything past—oh.’
Her head jerks up like a puppet on a string. Something’s changed. The air was pressured, but now it lifts, a glittered sharpening of the trees, the snow, the clouds. Kira sweeps her gaze across the clearing. The hollow tree, the way they came. She lifts her chin. ‘It’s happening.’
The snow is close to a painful brightness. The trees grow focused, angular.
‘Is that a good thing?’ Callum asks. Lifting his bandaged hand, he lowers it again. ‘I can’t tell.’
The breeze sighs. Kira can almost see it, skittering over the powder. ‘You feel it,’ she murmurs. ‘It’s sharp and kind of strange. Like when you’ve had too much coffee and the world seems detached. Also…’ She turns in a slow, slow circle. ‘Ah. As much as I hate to say it, it looks like a video game.’
Peter, for thirteen hours straight, hooked on Red Dead Redemption. Herself, for a meagre seven hours, capering on a CGI horse.
‘A really good game, though,’ she adds, ‘that’s close to being real. The recent kinds that are still too bright and jerky but are great otherw—’
‘Cliff.’ Abrupt and alarmed, Callum grabs her arm. ‘In this game, there’s a cliff.’
‘Wh—’
‘Don’t move.’ Hauling her toward him, Callum stumbles back farther into the clearing. The forest whirls. His gloves grip her in place. His heart beats against her chest. Kira’s fizzes. He’s so— ‘Over your shoulder. Look.’
Gingerly turning her head, Kira looks. ‘Oh, wow.’
‘Exactly.’ Carefully, Callum slackens his grip, and carefully, Kira turns. Where there should have been trees, a sheer cliff face falls, bare rock and drifts of snow tumbling into a gully. On the far, far side, the forest continues, rising in shrouds of cloud.
Dusted shadows in a sandstorm. Telegraph poles as the sand takes over. Kira moves back, back, back, bumping Callum through the snow. Her eyes stretch wide. Her mind is cold, dropping by degrees, leaving her losing her breath. Are they safe? If the forest can do that at will, what’s to stop it from creating a chasm, and…
‘…There, and then it was,’ Callum says. Kira snaps her spell of chaos. It could be another burning ocean, reeling her in to its maw. ‘I didn’t see it happen, but we were standing on the edge.’ He eyes the cliff face uneasily. ‘I guess we’re in, boys.’
The drop is clean, vertical, down to a river no wider than rope. If Callum hadn’t grabbed her… ‘And I guess we’re not getting out.’
Doubts rise up to burst their banks. Get out now, or ever? If the forest does change at will, how will they find their way? How will they search for Anna and Romy? How will they survive, unless the forest wants them to?
It’s too late for that. They’ll have to plan as they go. Whiteland is beckoning, and they can only obey.
On a bench at the tip of the mountain, Lena stills, looks up, and knows. As surely as she knows her own name, she knows. Whiteland has opened its doors.
Idiots. Standing, she scans the play park for her children. Even after her warnings; even after the Whispers sent the mist. What absolute, godforsaken idiots. ‘Karl!’ she barks, spying her brood. ‘Julia! Time to go.’
Throwing snowballs at an older boy sheltered atop the slide, the brood reluctantly migrates. ‘Come on.’ She claps her hands, and they scuttle behind her. Performing a smart one-eighty, she slides down the snowy hill toward the train line. ‘Oh, my days, come on.’
The train, a tiresome locomotive if ever there was one, chugs into motion. ‘Come on, come on, come on. I don’t have—yes.’ Grabbing the twins’ hands, she hauls them over the tracks, ploughing through snowdrifts to the footpath and skidding down to the village.
The ten-minute descent takes five. Karl and Julia gasp for breath, whining to slow down, but Lena can’t. Won’t. There’s no time. Mounting the snow-sprayed steps in a heartbeat, she ducks the frosted arch and struggles up the slope to slam her fist against the door.
Carol answers at once. Lena ushers her grumpy children in and they topple onto the sofa, loudly lamenting their awful ordeal to the boys in front of the screen. Carol turns to watch them go. ‘Come in, by all means.’
‘You have to take them.’ Lena cuts her off. It isn’t a plea but a statement, intent
beneath her breath. ‘I don’t know how long for, but I can’t ask anyone else.’
Carol’s eyebrows only rise. She pulls down her cardigan sleeves. The winter is blowing in cold through the door, but there’s no time to go inside. ‘Take who?’
Lena splays her hand on the doorframe. Tense, taut, fingers tapping. ‘The children.’ She nods at the sofa. ‘Karl and Julia. I have to go somewhere, and they can’t come with me.’
Carol glances over Lena’s shoulder warily, suspiciously, as if the somewhere lurks behind her. ‘Where?’
Lena merely looks at her.
‘No.’ Carol’s shoulders slump, deflating like the wind has been whistled from her wings. ‘No, no, no, Lena, why?’ Her voice pitches, high but hushed. ‘Why would you go there?’
Lena shoots a glance at the children. Engrossed in a garish, glaring cartoon, they aren’t even half-listening. ‘I have to.’ Urgent, her fingers tap-tap-tap. ‘Carol, that’s where she’s gone. You think she’d know better, or at least be subtle, but no. That stupid bloody woman.’
Carol’s expression hardens. ‘So?’ Windows shut, shutters down, she battles for control. ‘The whole point of watching is to watch, not to follow. I can’t believe you’d risk yourself—’
‘I’m not. Not for her.’ Lena’s face twists into a bony grimace. ‘I’m following Kira. That goddamn family. I tried to warn her off, but she’s gone looking for her mother, and now I have to go and get her back.’
Behind them, the TV hops. Advert, news, a snippet of music. ‘Why?’ Carol raises her shoulders, her palms. ‘We don’t know her. Why does it matter if she’s followed her mum? I assume it was her choice.’
She’s going to have to spell it out. ‘Carol.’ Lena shoots another look at the children. Jay, giggling, shoving the TV remote up his T-shirt. Julia, trying to grab it. A gastric band tightens her chest. ‘Carol, Callum went with her.’
The shutters drop. Carol’s face is disbelief, horror, ash. ‘What?’ she whispers. Her crow’s feet crease at the corners. ‘Why? I knew I shouldn’t—I shouldn’t have let her in here, but…’ She shakes her head. Her mouth opens, shuts. ‘I thought he had more sense. I thought he’d be able to fight it. How is he already so—’
Her voice catches and snaps at the end. Lena looks away. Her twins are inside, sprawled beside the dog, and Callum is lost. Out there, unprepared, doing the very thing she told him not to: following Kira McFadden into hell.
‘Does he know?’ Carol pushes out, each word a flutter. ‘Does he know what he’s got himself into?’
Lena doesn’t answer right away. It might be easier for her to believe he doesn’t.
It might, but it’s a lie.
‘He knows.’ She sighs. Lying is unsavoury. ‘From what I can tell, he knows as much as she does, which apparently isn’t enough. If it was, they wouldn’t have—Carol.’ She takes her friend’s hands and grips them. Pale and pained, close to distraught, Carol has started to shake. ‘I’ll find him. You couldn’t have stopped this from happening, so don’t you dare think you could. You know that Callum was the one who found Rosemarie, which was godawful timing, and you know what they’re both the daughters of. He didn’t stand a chance.’
Carol’s face caves in. Lena grimaces again; it was meant to be a comfort but came out like a slap. ‘All I meant is that it’s not your fault.’ She squeezes Carol’s hands, hard. ‘Look after my children. I’ll get Callum out.’
Releasing Carol’s hands, she steps back. Whiteland is beckoning, and she can only obey.
Dusk falls so fast it takes Kira by surprise. One second it’s daylight, in three more it’s night; and in a world that’s not her own, she’s not herself.
They passed the wooden window almost straight away. The symbol had quietly vanished, and they peered through the frame for the fork; but there was nothing. No change to the tree-lined road ahead; no change to anything at all. After that, they could only walk.
It was so monochrome that Kira ceased to think. Ceased to see anything but the road, slowly sloping, ceased to hear anything but flat, dull steps.
Until the night flicks on like a light.
She sways. ‘How long has it been dark?’ She spins on the spot. The road tapers off into darkness, their footprints hardly there. As monotonous as if they’ve been walking in place, hour after hour after hour. Disquiet unfurls behind her ribs. They’re anywhere and nowhere. ‘How did we not see it happen? At least, how did I not—’
‘It’s the same as yesterday,’ Callum muses.
Kira bristles. Rude. ‘I was speaking, Callum.’
‘Mm.’ He stares off into the darkness. She shoots a glare at his cheek. ‘I know.’
Rude. Disrespectful. Uncouth. Kira clenches her fist. She could almost hit him. If she did, he wouldn’t interrupt again. He’d have neither the breath nor desire, bruised in the throat, in the teeth—
Oh, God. Kira grabs her fist. It was reeling up and back, and she chills from her skin to her roiling insides; he’s right. It’s exactly the same as yesterday. Turning her back on Callum, she stretches out her fingers, one by cramping, clamping one. The redness, the fury, is fading fast, but she can’t take any chances. Yesterday, she let it win. Yesterday, she hit him.
‘Are you all right?’ Callum touches her back.
Kira jerks away. ‘Don’t touch me.’
The fury simmers. She closes her eyes. Unclenching her fists, she breathes. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘No, I’m sorry.’ Callum’s voice is full of love notes and tacky romantic films. ‘I really am. What did I do?’
Cautiously, Kira turns to face him. Her anger spikes and dies. ‘Nothing.’ She lets out a breath of relief. His eyes, his anguish; none of this is real. None of this is real. ‘It’s this place. It’s messing with us already. It’s making me a psychopath, and you’—she points—‘a lovesick fool. Again.’ She circles his face with her finger. ‘You’re looking at me like Frodo looks at Sam.’
Vacuous, Callum blinks. ‘What?’ He lifts a hand, lowers it. At the fourth blink, his face clears. ‘Oh, fuck me.’ He rubs his eyes with his knuckles. ‘Why has that become a thing?’
Kira grips her arms and shivers. ‘Because we let it in.’
Her own words chill her. Now that she’s awake, there are other things, too; the icy air, the lifelessness, the night’s uncanny quiet. How did she not see it, feel it, hear it, smell it, even? Were they so far away inside themselves that the outside ceased to exist? There should be owls. There should be foxes. There should be rustling, the smell of pine, the wild scent of snow.
There should have been a sunset.
‘I don’t remember seeing anything since we passed the window.’ Kira casts a baleful eye around them. This is all feeling like a huge, giant, supernova mistake. ‘Do you?’
Callum opens his mouth. ‘We gave up looking for the fork.’ She nods. ‘And then…’
His face goes blank.
‘I.’ He mouths for two seconds, three. In her mind, his thoughts go tick, tick, tock. ‘Well, that’s a bit of a bugger.’
Kira flashes her eyebrows. ‘That’s one way of putting it. We really need to…’ Be careful is an appalling understatement. Stay awake? Stay sane? Stay them? ‘We need to have our thoughts on guard, or something. I know it sounds stupid, but whatever “it” is, it’s getting to us way too easily. We should stay distracted. We should, you know.’
Her voice trails off with her thoughts, eclipsed by a sudden, sweeping sense of what the hell are we doing? This, all of this, this risk, this madness…they have no idea—no idea—what they’re getting themselves into. If they let it, this place will chew them up and spit them out for fun.
‘You know, we can still turn around,’ Callum says, as casually as if it’s an option. His voice cuts through the deadened night, and at once she knows: they can’t do that. She can’t do that. Yes, this is crazy, and she’s basically bringing an apple to a battle, but she can’t go back. It’s cowardice. This may not be bravery, but it’s c
ertainly bravado.
‘No.’ Folding her arms, Kira hugs her elbows. The word feels more real, more hefty, more anchored than anything else so far. It’s a commitment. She needs to find her family. She will find her family. ‘I mean, you can.’
‘Don’t be daft.’
‘But I—’ She stops and blinks at him. ‘I’m not being daft. You could go back. You have every right to leave.’
‘True.’ Callum crooks a finger at her, the trees, and the sky. ‘But I’m not going to. What kind of shitty man would I be if I left right now?’
Kira digs her nails into her arms. ‘Yes, but—’
‘No “yes, but.”’ Callum shakes his head. ‘No, no. No, no.’
Kira turns away from him. ‘But I really don’t want you to—oh.’ Her voice pitches. Reality bends. ‘That’s new.’
Callum barks a ‘ha!’ of surprise. Kira flinches. The sound travels on, and on, and on. ‘Amazing,’ he remarks. ‘Some more moving trees. Did you see it coming?’ Shaking his head, he sticks an elbow on her shoulder. ‘I didn’t. I definitely didn’t see it coming.’
His sarcasm lightens what could have been dread. Instead of its endless forever, the road cuts off abruptly, a dark, dense, dead-end line of foliage in its place. With a fairly delirious disbelief, Kira surveys it. A thin, wood-chipped path winds in, and slicing the snow in front of her, its message is clear.
Fine. Fine.
‘You know.’ Leaning into Callum’s elbow, she sighs heavily. ‘I’m not sure, but I think’—she points—‘and correct me if I’m wrong, but I think the forest wants us to go this way.’
Callum snorts. ‘The forest is annoying.’ He calls up to the treetops. ‘Do you hear that, guys? You’re annoying.’
‘Shh.’ Kira elbows him.
He grins. ‘What? It is annoying. Ordering us around like this; who does it think it is?’
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