Why was he still talking to her? Maybe he was waiting to be thanked. The pills were a hard mass in her gullet – she made spit and swallowed again, forcing them down. The co-driver started the engine.
The man took a step back and spoke under the noise. I left something else for you back there. I hope you find your kid.
She watched the truck pull away, the acceleration of it. When it was gone and the dust had settled she saw the melon on the road. Small and perfect, the size of a rain globe. She limped over and picked it up and it fit in her hand like it had grown there.
She walked into the dark and through the dark. There was enough moon and the pills cleaned out the pain and cold and exhaustion and everything else she didn’t need. Her brain buzzed and cut with precise instructions for each nerve and muscle. North. She was a wave that wouldn’t break. A fine thread floated free inside her brain, high enough to observe with clarity and detachment how she surged across the night. She felt the full waterbag moving like blood against her back, the perfect weight of the melon. She ground her teeth and covered the distance. When morning came she was still walking through a country that had fallen away in the night and seemed to be still falling, redder, barer, flatter, wider, with the sky expanding into the space between. Dry-mouthed, dry-eyed, jaw clamping, her stomach in knots but she was close. And the thing driving her had shifted gear again. Not fear now. Hope. That this was where her child had walked, what her child had seen. That they would look at the world together again.
On the morning of the eleventh day she reached the lake.
The inland sea
Matti wasn’t there. No one was there.
The whole expanse of the lakebed was empty, all the way to the horizon. But the track she’d come in on was a beaten mess of footprints and there were fresh signs of a camp on the shore. A big one. Tent holes and flattened patches, dead remnants of fires, more footprints all around them and out onto the salt. Small bones and bits of ready packaging and plastic bottles. She shouted Matti’s name until her voice cracked and then she went down on her knees. She’d missed them by a couple of days at the most.
She crawled a few metres alongside one set of prints that led out onto the salt pan. A child’s feet, not much longer than her hand. The same drive that had got her here told her to get up now and go, keep going. That Matti was still in reach. But when she tried to stand the pain was so intense that she couldn’t believe she’d walked for more than twenty-four hours on that ankle. Her stick was useless, she couldn’t get up.
Li smelled mud beneath the salt. Cracked the crust with her fingers. Whatever the truckie had given her, she was paying for it now. Her head rang. She was parched, her vision was blurring and her chest was tight. A long way down there was the pulsing of her swollen ankle. She worked her pack off and fumbled inside for the melon, laid it beside those small footprints. She said Matti’s name again and then she let her body go down all the way onto the dry lake and rocked herself and cried, a ragged circular noise.
It was late in the day when Li woke, in pain and cold and thirsty. The wind had picked up and layers of sand and salt had crusted on her skin while she slept. Now her eyes filled with the same grit. The sun’s heat had thinned and the night was coming behind it.
Mechanically, she registered the danger. Put her thermal layers and her jacket and cap back on and drank four capfuls of water. Her ankle throbbed. Under the compression bandage the swelling had spread in a dark purple mess along the side of her foot. She rubbed in more anti-inflam and put the bandage back on. Then she got on her hands and knees and dug a solar still. She should have done it earlier, but at least this way it would start working as soon as the sun came up. There was moisture not far below the crust. She cupped an empty ready pack into a hollow at the base and covered the hole with one of her smaller plastic sheets. Heaped salt around the edges to seal it and weighted down the centre with another handful. Cut down a discarded water bottle for the second still. Three would be better but two was all she could manage. The temperature was dropping. She needed shelter now.
In the dunes, out of the wind, she got out her torch and started to dig another hole, longer and shallower this time, banking the sand up on each side to maximise the windbreak. She was warmer when she finished but her ankle hurt worse. After she’d unrolled her big plastic sheet she realised there was nothing to raise it up on, to keep the condensation off her. Closed her eyes and felt a weight pulling her down, heard Angie say, Everything’s a decision now. Nothing just happens.
Then Li remembered the stick. She crawled back onto the salt crust to get it and stuck it upright in the sand at one end of her hole, twisting and forcing it down as deep as she could manage on her knees and then building up sand around the base. Draped the sheeting over it and weighted down the corners on both sides. Then she dragged her pack inside and laid down more plastic and the mat and the sleeping bag. Thought again
