She was a burning tree.
With bobbing ghost balloons.
Thea couldn’t shake the feeling that all of this was wrong. Why had they been allowed to get this far? Why wasn’t anyone chasing them, or already waiting for them on these steps? Had they really escaped the full might of whatever was hulking behind Ing Enterprises, a shadowy beast of a corporation that could wipe out what happened here with one smack of its paw? She wanted to think she was clever enough to escape, but she couldn’t quite convince herself. It was chance that had got her this far and now … something else … was taking her the rest of the way.
‘Wait!’ she called out to Rory.
He stopped on the step below her and swivelled awkwardly.
‘What?’
Thea rubbed her hands together, trying to rub some warmth back into them. They were out of sight of the beach and below them swirled the sea, gulls diving with raucous shrieks, freewheeling in the air.
‘Doesn’t this feel wrong? We should have been caught by now …’
‘Is this about me again? Do you think I’m leading you into a trap? God, Thea, I just want to get off this island as much as you do.’ He glared at her, the hollows of his eyes a bruised grey, his jacket too thin for the cold.
‘No, I—’
‘How many more times do I have to tell you?’
She stood on the steps with screeching above her and swirling below.
‘I believe you,’ she said, her voice hoarse, not able to meet his eyes at first, but when she did she saw how his own had softened. There was a lot in the gaze that passed between them, a quiet calm binding them together on those steps at the edge of the island.
It was Rory who started moving again in their absurd, almost comical descent of the steps and Thea was left sitting where she was. Burning tree, bobbing ghost balloons – lab rat in the maze. The only difference now was that they had widened the maze, made it so big she thought it was freedom, until she came upon the inevitable dead end and sharp jolt of electricity.
It was just a matter of time.
She kept going because at least down in the cove there would be more shelter from the wind.
She didn’t expect to see a boat waiting for them in the dark arch of the cove.
She expected Delores to have been lying, as she had lied about so many things before. She expected it to be somewhere else, somewhere further from the beach, somewhere more hidden; God she half expected Delores to be there waiting for her, her spike-heeled boots planted firmly on the slippery rock, her bright hair holding back the shadows.
So it was a huge surprise when she thumped down some more steps and the cove came into sight.
With a small, empty boat in it.
Chapter 62
The small boat was jauntily painted in blue and white, with a motor at the back and varnished wooden seats set into the sides.
Jaunty but no longer moored.
It had been at one time, but high waves, or faulty knot-tying, meant that now it had floated over to the other side of the cove and got itself stuck on a rock.
‘We could walk across …’ Rory offered.
This was not a pleasant sunbathing cove where couples would go to jump off the cliff edge into the clear waters below, shrieking happily. If they did, they would shriek only because, as they landed, the rocks would tear them apart. Instead, this cove was a shelf of slick rock interrupted at its deepest point by a cave, guarded by huge boulder teeth so jagged and steep there was no way they could climb over them.
They could see the boat but they couldn’t get to it.
Rory slithered to the edge and looked at the water that separated them from the bobbing boat.
‘We could swim it.’
Rory could, perhaps – if his heart didn’t seize up in the cold water.
‘I can’t swim.’
‘What?’ Rory gaped at her. ‘Everyone can swim! You just can’t swim very far. You can float, right?’
Her first ever swimming lesson had been when she was about six or seven. It had been centred on learning to float. She’d worn her little inflatable armbands and the rubbery swimming cap that snapped tightly on her forehead. Holding on to the edge of the pool, she’d kicked out her legs and let them float behind her, feeling that this swimming thing was going to go well … until she let go of the side as encouraged, and promptly sank. She’d never again got past the sinking stage.
‘Everyone can float!’ Rory said.
She started to shake. She was not a burning tree; she was a freezing woman who couldn’t swim.
Rory held the tops of her arms. ‘I’ll help you. It’s not far and it’s probably not that deep either. We have to. It’s our only chance.’
Thea stood and eyed the rocks at the cave mouth that were blocking their path. Maybe it wouldn’t be so hard to climb them, after all? All it would take was a delicate balancing on a knife edge and a few impossible leaps …
Easy.
Her foot slithered on a patch of slime and shot out from under her. She flailed her arms ineffectually as Rory caught her around the waist and steadied her. They held on to each other like that for a few seconds, scared to move in case they slipped again.
Around them the sea slapped against the rocks and the dark cave loomed behind, taking the sound of the waves and dragging it into its depths, so it could twist and torture it. There would be bats in there, maybe, or maybe years ago smugglers had used this cave to store their loot taken from shipwrecks. Thea had read somewhere that on islands like this the whole community would come down to the shore if there was a ship floundering, not to help, but to take it apart with pickaxes and strip it of its cargo. Perhaps even beacons up on the cliff had lured unsuspecting vessels to their doom.
Thinking about smugglers and bats took her mind off how she was still clutching Rory, his bulk steadying her and also sheltering her from the wind. From far away it would look like they were caught in a fervent embrace, the cave and the rocks providing a dramatic background.
‘All I could think about was you.’
The words remained between them, like static.
‘I have a memory stick,’ Thea blurted out, not quite sure why she was speaking but barrelling on. ‘Moses gave it to me in the lighthouse. Proof of what the technology can do.’
Rory tilted his head. His face was very close to hers.
‘You should take it, in case – I mean, it’s got to make it out and I can’t— I might …’
His expression when she finally looked him in the eye was enough to make her breath hitch. ‘You will make it,’ he said. ‘We will make it. Okay?’
She nodded because any words were jammed tight in her throat.
‘But,’ he added, turning to the waves again and letting go of her arms, ‘you should put it in the zip pocket of your jacket to be safe. It’s waterproof.’
She felt dizzy without his support but squared her shoulders and edged closer to the flat rocks where the water swirled, trying to remember everything that swimming instructor had told her years ago.
‘Should we take off our shoes?’
‘They’re pretty lightweight. And they’re another layer against the cold water.’
‘It looks quite … choppy.’ She swallowed.
‘But …’ Rory bent to grab at a bit of frayed rope that had been tied around a cone-shaped rock. ‘I think this is where the boat was moored. So if we go in here, maybe the current will just carry us straight to it.’
That “if” was so big, it dwarfed Thea. It was best not to think about it, or about anything.
She edged out some more and then sat on the rock, holding her feet up, ready to push herself in. Rory sat down next to her.
‘It’s going to be really cold. Remember to breathe. Keep hold of me.’
Experimentally she dipped her feet into the water but the iciness of it grabbed at her and she yanked her feet back.
If the past few days had taught her anything, it was that the key to bravery was not to th
ink too much about what you were about to do. Thea pushed herself in.
Chapter 63
The air in her lungs was driven out and replaced by ice.
Thea opened her mouth to gulp and more freezing water slapped in. A huge iron bar wrapped itself around her chest and started its inexorable crushing. She couldn’t feel her body, couldn’t see the boat, couldn’t tell if Rory still held on to her arm. The only thing she could focus on was keeping her head above water.
She was a burning tree.
Her ghost balloons would keep her afloat.
She tried to keep her eyes on Rory, but the water was a hand that batted her this way and that, twisting and turning her until all she could think about was “water” and “not water”. It was a strong hand too, much stronger than she had expected and she spat out the salty water it tried to shove into her mouth.
Rory was in front of her and he had her by the arm.
Then he was gone.
A half-scream, half-strangled gulping noise came from her throat.
There was nothing to hold on to, no tiled side of the pool to grab whilst she kicked her legs behind her. She flailed but the water was now a long icy sheet. The more she struggled, the more it wound around her, a shroud, dragging her down.
‘Thea!’
She couldn’t see him, but she felt a tugging, something trying to pull her on, not down, but the icy sheet was stronger than either of them had imagined and it yanked her away.
It was not a rollercoaster ride, because when you sat in one of those you knew that eventually it would end and you would get out again, possibly a bit wet, possibly a bit nauseous, but free to carry on your day eating candyfloss and trying to win cuddly toys.
There was no candyfloss waiting for Thea.
Without Rory’s arm there was nothing to cling to, just the water that ‘wanted to help you float, you just had to let it,’ according to her old instructor. But then she’d been in a calm, chlorine-scented leisure centre pool, not this twisting, churning, slamming water that didn’t want anything, and it certainly didn’t want to help.
Water closed over her head.
There was a horrible feeling of pressure, pushing up against her eyeballs, filling her ears, shoving fingers up her nose. A plunger had sucked itself over her face so tightly, she almost heard the pop. She breathed out.
For a second it was peaceful, dark and quiet, all sound muted to a gentle blur. A warmth came from inside her, such a beautifully delicious warmth that it made her want to curl up in it and close her eyes. She went limp.
So peaceful.
Warm like a burrow, like her mother’s living room with its joss sticks and hot tea and women talking.
Then it wasn’t.
She tried to take a breath in and suddenly she was sinking and choking and flailing and fighting all at once, the warmth swiped away and her heart hammering at the icy band across her chest as if it could crack. There wasn’t time to think about anything apart from breathing and moving. She had to move. She kicked and pushed herself upwards, her arms reaching for a surface she knew was there; she just had to find it. And she kept kicking, she kept moving, even though her lungs were bursting and soon her eyes would follow. She kicked and pushed and eventually her hand broke through into air.
Someone grabbed it.
She reared out of the sea, coughing and gasping, expecting any second to be snatched back under again. The cold dropped over her head like a frozen wet cloth and she felt arms under her armpits, dragging her, stopping her from sinking.
When she reached out, she felt smooth, varnished wood and she tried to cling to it, her throat beginning to burn as Rory pulled at her but her hands slipped on the polish and she felt the world tilt once more, the dark, waiting depths opening its mouth for her again …
Rory hauled her up.
Chapter 64
Thea was a burning tree.
Her lungs, chest and throat were on fire. She slithered onto the boat and lay where she’d collapsed, retching and coughing until she vomited sea water. It was only when she sat up a little and wiped at her mouth, pushing her hair away from her face, that she noticed Rory sprawled next to her. His chest heaved and water seeped from him.
This time, when she began to shake, she was certain that it would never stop. It came from her very core, some tuning fork within her that had been struck hard.
Rory staggered to his feet and the boat rocked violently.
‘I’ll …’ But his voice ended in wordless chattering.
The boat had a little covered wooden-framed front with wildflowers painted on it. Thea wondered why the wildflower person had sold their treasured boat to Delores.
Maybe the wildflower person had been Delores. Once.
‘Here.’ Rory handed her a coat and a blanket. ‘They were all I could find. Take off as many of your wet clothes as you can.’
With fingers that seemed to have doubled in size she wrapped herself in the dry clothes and they both huddled in the front of the boat where the covered wooden frame offered some meagre protection from the cold.
‘Do you know how to work the motor?’ Thea asked as she found gloves in the pocket of the coat.
‘No, but how hard can it be?’
The engine actually proved harder to work out than Rory had thought. But one of the books Thea had read in her wide-awake nights at the Centre had featured just such a boat as this. The engine was an outboard motor, she told him. She lowered the propeller and plugged in the kill switch – the device that would shut off the motor if they were thrown overboard and save them from being chopped up by the propellers. She then looped the cable over her wrist.
Together, they pushed themselves away from the rock and pulled the handle of the motor for the third time, Rory’s mouth a grim line of determination.
‘Can you flood a boat engine?’ Rory asked anxiously. ‘Shouldn’t we just wait a few minutes before you try again?’
He looked like he wanted to kick it, but instead stopped and let go of the handle.
A few minutes was a long time. Especially when Thea was anxiously scanning the cliffs and jumping at every scrape of the boat against the rock. It was also probably the longest time lately that she’d had to just think without reacting to whatever latest horror was unfolding around her.
She thought about her mother, perhaps at this very minute making up placards with Thea’s face on them (hopefully a good shot, not one of her awful passport pictures) ready to storm the Ing Enterprises building. Not that that would do any good – it was just a building, the people within it easily removed to another location at a whim. Anyway, Ing Enterprises itself was owned by Aspire, the bigger parent company calling the actual shots. And Vivian would have no clue how to go about finding them.
Stay away from it, Mother, Thea thought, tears stinging her eyes. Stay away from this because it’s too big for you. It’s not your world and it will eat you up. The idea of her mother in danger because of her stupid decision to take part in the trial was too much for Thea to bear. She pushed the thought down, but her brain was a badly packed suitcase and it had had a lot stuffed into it over the last few days, much of it waiting to spring back up again.
She was a burning tree.
With bobbing ghost balloons.
In her hallucination, the boat she’d been in with her mother had been full of baby owls and this boat was full too. She was taking the dead with her. Rosie and Ethan, but also all the others: Moira, Richard, the guy with the shark-tooth necklace who’d spoken to her during yoga, and every other person who’d joined the sleep trial with her. Kyle. Even Delores and Moses. They’d be with her for the rest of her life.
‘What are you going to do? If we make it?’ Thea asked.
Rory considered her, both of them moving gently in time with the waves. A gull screeched and Thea couldn’t help but flinch; it sounded like a warning, like panic.
‘Forget this ever happened.’ Rory sniffed. ‘Hide. Get a normal job and change my name. Su
rvive.’
The word was unspoken between them: if. If we get to the shore. If we don’t capsize ourselves or get intercepted. If there isn’t a crew waiting for us on the mainland. If we find a way to get from the tiny deserted ghost village to a city, any city. If, if, if …
And then if she got to that mythical city, before she got warm, or a shower or food, first she would have to get that memory stick out – that was still in the zip pocket of her jacket, and she would have to … do something with it.
Right now, she couldn’t think what that something should be, but she knew it would be a big task. It would require someone equally big to take it on. Fearless. The thing was, despite being a burning tree with bobbing ghost balloons, despite everything that had happened to her on the island and everything she had done in response (wet, thudding sound of an axe meeting flesh) she wasn’t sure she was the right person.
But she was the only person.
Her thoughts were her own. Her own head, her own dreams or nightmares were not tampered with, taken out and held up to the light, squeezed or moulded like plasticine. What went on inside her brain – be it weird, disappointing, or depressing – was hers. Ing Enterprises, Aspire, whoever they bloody were, did not respect that.
She would do it for the dead who crowded into the boat with her. Not because she wanted to, but because if she didn’t do it, no one else would. Maybe then the ghost balloons would float away.
A few minutes was up.
‘What are you going to do, when we get to the shore?’ Rory asked as she once again choked the engine, put the motor to neutral and grasped the handle on the pull rope, pulling it back until all the slack was gone.
What would she do?
Once the contents of the memory stick were out in the world, what would she do then?
She was a burning tree. She wouldn’t let that fire go out. If they made it, she would sleep the hours she was meant to sleep whenever she was meant to sleep them. She would stop battling and instead accept it as a part of her, much like the shape of her nose or the colour of her hair. In those hours in which she was awake, she would live for once.
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