‘If Adil was free of your control, why didn’t he attempt to hurt Niema earlier?’
‘Because if he had, Magdalene’s life would have been forfeit,’ I say. ‘Those were the terms of his exile.’
Emory shudders, watching as Clara walks back to the flags, peering into the distance longingly.
‘Hui could be out there,’ she says. ‘Please, Mum. I need to go and look for her.’
‘It’s too dangerous.’
‘The fog will be here in less than two days. Everything’s dangerous now.’
Emory stares at her daughter, helplessly. ‘Abi, please ask Thea whether Clara can come with me. I won’t be able to make it alone.’
THIRTY-SIX
Emory lets out a little cry as she slides backwards, fighting to keep her footing on scree that’s desperately trying to drag her down the hill. They’ve spent the last hour following splinters of wood and the odd preserved footprint through fields of razor-sharp volcanic rock and along crumbling ledges, through battalions of nettles and along ancient tarmac roads, reduced almost entirely to rubble.
More than once they have had to double back, realising they were completely lost, until one of them spotted the faintest outline of a heel in the earth, not yet washed away by the drizzle. Anybody else, out here for any other purpose, would have given up entirely by now, but Emory keeps imagining the fog rolling through the village and Clara’s screams as it falls upon her.
Her daughter’s near the top of the rise, moving effortlessly. Hearing her mother struggling, she scrambles back down and offers her a hand.
Emory takes it with a mixture of envy and pride. As a little girl, Clara used the struts of the radar tower in the village as a climbing frame, leaving her friends calling after her, as she got higher and higher. Unfortunately, her prowess did not extend to getting down again.
Emory smiles sadly, thinking of the times she had to reassure a crying Clara from the ground, while her husband, Jack, scaled a ladder to reach her.
They crest the hill together, arriving at a grassy plateau with a shack built on the banks of a stream and a forest beyond.
‘Is this where Adil’s been living?’ asks Clara disbelievingly.
It doesn’t appear fit for habitation. The walls are logs lashed together with rope, resting directly on the mud. The roof is a sagging net, made heavy by the grass and leaves piled on top of it. Five golden orioles are nesting amid the mess, singing their hearts out, trying to chip away at the misery holding everything together.
The missing cart has been abandoned outside the shack, one of the wheels cracked. Four stallions are playing around it, chasing each other and whinnying, swishing their manes and tails.
Emory envies them their energy. The sun is finally down behind the volcano, but they’ve been marching in its merciless glare all afternoon. She feels like halloumi left too long on the skillet.
‘Hui?’ calls out Clara, running towards the shack. ‘Hui, are you in there?’
‘Be careful,’ says Emory, eyeing the frolicking horses warily. She’s seen a few out by the farms, but she’s never been this close before.
They’re unnervingly enormous.
Undeterred, Clara disappears through the filthy cloth that serves as a doorway, only to pop her head back out a few seconds later.
‘It’s empty,’ she says disappointedly. ‘Can you come in here and do that thing you do?’
‘What thing?’
‘Where you see everything.’
Noticing her mother’s reluctance to move, Clara glances at the prancing horses, currently headbutting each other in a dazzling display of testosterone.
‘Are you worried about the horses?’ she yells.
‘No, course not,’ replies Emory, in the tone of somebody who hadn’t even noticed them.
‘It’s the horses, isn’t it?’ Clara asks me, in her thoughts.
‘Yes,’ I confirm.
Clapping her hands and whistling, Clara strides towards the horses, scattering them.
Satisfied, she walks back inside without looking back.
‘It wasn’t the horses,’ mutters Emory, examining the abandoned cart. The handles are smooth and oiled, but along with the wheel, the axle’s broken, which isn’t a surprise given the rough ground it was pulled over. There’s nothing in the cart, except for one of Clara’s carved birds.
Inside the shack, dirty plates are piled high on old tree stumps that serve interchangeably as tables and chairs. They’re surrounded by hissing rats, obviously annoyed at being interrupted during their dinner.
‘We were both out here last night,’ says Emory, tossing Clara the carved bird. ‘That leaves one set of footprints to identify.’
Emory walks over to a canvas propped against the wall. It’s a portrait of Magdalene and Sherko picnicking with Adil on the pier.
‘Mags painted this two years after Adil was exiled,’ she says, wiping dust from its frame. ‘She did a few of them, all things they’d have done together if he’d stayed in the village. After a while, she realised they were just making her sad and she put them into storage. This one was kept in the warehouse where I found Niema’s body this morning.’ She peers closer, seeing bloody fingerprints on the frame.
‘He saved it from the fire,’ says Clara.
‘Which means he probably lit it, or knew it was going to happen.’
Clara sees a note sticking out from beneath a plate. She tugs it loose, wiping away the crumbs of food.
7–7:15 – Breakfast
7:30–5 p.m. – School (breaks at 10, 1 and 3)
5:10 – Infirmary
8 – Lighthouse
‘That’s Niema’s schedule for yesterday,’ says Emory, listening to Clara read it out loud. ‘Adil must have been watching her.’
‘Why would Niema go to the infirmary after she was finished in the school?’ asks Clara. ‘Aside from the furnace, there isn’t anything in there.’
They look around for a few more minutes, before retreating back outside, and going immediately to the stream. The gloom of the shack is smeared across their skin, and they’re both keen to wash it off.
Clara cups the water in her hands, splashing her face. Emory dunks her entire head under, sighing in pleasure when she emerges again.
‘When I was on expedition with Thea, I found a message etched into a train carriage,’ says Clara suddenly. ‘It said, “If you’re reading this, turn back now. Niema buried us. She’ll bury you, too.”’
‘That’s ominous,’ replies Emory.
‘Seeing that shack makes me think Adil wrote it.’
Emory perks up. ‘Why?’
‘Who else would it be? Nobody else was allowed to go out there, aside from apprentices. We know he was following her. Maybe she hurt him somehow?’
There’s a strange vine on the other side of the stream that’s burst through the dry ground. It has grey, almost translucent skin, with spots of light inside. There’s an axe head shattered nearby, the handle tossed aside. From the criss-crossing gouges, it appears Adil was trying to destroy it.
‘Do you think we came out here with Adil last night?’ asks Clara, staring at her mother expectantly. ‘The third pair of prints could be his.’
‘Whoever came with us had to steal Shilpa’s boots to make the journey. Adil lives out here, which means he’d be wearing boots already. I suppose he could have used the cart to move the painting, but why would we have come with him?’