She saved the message, the glint of him following those northern rivers back to the source. Went with him for a moment because, after everything, she wasn’t ready. To listen to the next message, press one.
She had stopped walking, was standing where the gravel met the open side of the hill, facing east. Torn-off pieces of cloud and below was the valley and the wall and the camp outside the wall. To listen to the next message.
She pressed one.
Li. She’s alive. Call me.
Li sat down on her pack to make the call. She dropped the phone on the gravel, scrabbled to pick it up with hands that didn’t belong to her. She felt boneless, unable to take the next step. A living child. Not a body. Not a witnessed statement of time and cause of death. She was the living mother of a living child.
She looked at the hand that wasn’t holding the phone and then slapped her face with it, hard. Then she called Chris back.
He answered like he’d been waiting. She’s in Permacamp with the unaccompanied minors. They processed her more than a month ago.
A month ago. When Matti was crossing the range Li had already buried her. Couldn’t let herself believe in her again yet. Not till she was sure.
How do they know it’s her?
DNA match. And she verified everything on her record: status number, parents’ name, date and place of birth. It’s her, Li.
Then what was wrong with his voice? Why was he talking so slowly, what hadn’t he told her yet? She said, How did she get there? How did she get across the range?
She came in with a few other kids in a truck. Apparently they got picked up early on, that’s why they made it. She said there were a lot more kids. Some of them died, some of them got into other trucks. A lot of them are still unaccounted for. She was lucky.
Lucky. That slowness in his voice again, like he was medicated. You’ve talked to her?
No, I read her file. You gave me access, remember?
What else did she say?
She confirmed her father’s place and cause of death.
What about me?
He didn’t answer and it made her afraid. Does she think I’m dead too?
No, he said reluctantly. She doesn’t believe you were in the camp when the fire started.
And what, Chris? What else?
She says you were claiming for the Deep Islands. She thinks she’s going to meet up with you there. Apparently she’s tried to get out of Permacamp a couple of times.
Everything that had been too big, too borderless to wrap feeling around, came down on Li now. She couldn’t breathe. This this this.
Li. Li? She’s all right, are you listening to me? She’s alive.
Then what’s wrong? There’s something wrong. What’s wrong with her?
He sighed, a terrifying sound. She waited for him to find the words he needed and lift them, one at a time. It’s not her. It’s Aaron. We lost Aaron.
You lost?
He died. Three weeks ago. Flu.
Lucky, she thought. She was lucky, said Chris.
He said, We thought. Never thought we could have a kid. Suyin tried before. But then we had him. But we were right.
She felt the distance from their childhood to now, with this waiting for them all the time. I’m sorry, she said. I’m sorry for you. Both of you.
He was silent. She wondered if Suyin was there, listening.
Chris?
I’m still here.
Thank you. For what you’ve done. I won’t ask you for anything else. I’m going to go to the camp now.
Wait, he said, but she had to hang up the phone, the weight of it. When she placed it carefully at her feet, she felt the gravel against her knuckles, skin on stone, barely tethering her to the hill. Her child was alive. Her brother’s child was dead. Get up, she told herself. Go and get her.
But was this how it worked? All the weight that had lifted off her had to fall somewhere else? Robbie had to drown so Matti could run towards her through the miracle rain? And Carl and Angie had to carry it. Chris had to. He was her little brother but when they played families he was always the dad.
She was suddenly terrified of Matti. Of what had happened to her and what she was now. What she had cost. Of standing in front of her and looking into her eyes.
Mum! Look! She tried to. And in and out of focus she started to see her again. Her road-to-Valiant freckles and the gaps between her teeth, the nut-coloured crop of her hair three weeks after lice. All lost to the months of searching. But there would be new teeth, new gaps. The top of her head had come up to Li’s bottom rib but she would be taller now. Li was starving to see what she had become. It opened her up and shook the air around her, the idea of Matti down there in the camp, holding onto the idea of Li.
Get up, she’s waiting for you.
She could make it there in daylight. And if she couldn’t, and if they wouldn’t let her in after dark, she would sleep outside the gates.
She put a hand on the pack underneath her, saw that the phone was ringing. Grabbed at it with both hands. Matti.
Li, Chris said and his voice was different. Don’t hang up.
