Stolen

  “I didn’t mean to scare you,” you said, your voice level and reasonable again. “I was worried about the painting. I’ve been working on it … for a long time.”

  “I thought you were going to … I thought …” The images were too horrible to get the words out.

  “I know.” You ran a hand through your hair, turning parts of it red from the sand in your fingers. You seemed serious. Your face was tired and empty-looking, your forehead wrinkled up.

  “Just relax,” you said again. “Please. Just relax. For once. Neither of us can go on like this. Just trust that it’s all for the best.”

  Your face was earnest, like you really did want the best for me. I stepped through that strange painting of yours and came up pretty close to you, closer than I wanted to be.

  “OK,” I said. My body was shaking again; it was all I could do to keep upright. I had to keep my voice light and friendly. I knew that much about crazy people. As long as the tone is right …

  I summoned up the courage to look you directly in the eyes. They were wide, not so red as before. “Just let me go,” I said. “Just for a bit, a little while. It’ll be OK.” I tried to make my voice soothing; I tried willing you to say yes. Again, I glanced toward the door.

  The tears were running down your face again. You couldn’t hold my gaze. Instead, you leaned your forehead against one of the piles of sand. The red grains stuck to the wetness of your cheeks. You gulped as you swallowed your tears. You brushed some of the sand, sweeping it into a neat line, and hid your face from me.

  “Fine,” you said. You said it so softly that at first I thought you hadn’t said anything at all. “I won’t stop you. I’ll only save you when you get lost.”

  I didn’t wait to hear it again. I stepped past you. I was so tense, waiting for you to grab me, waiting for those rock-hard fingers on my thigh. But you didn’t even move.

  The door opened easily. I pushed down the handle and stepped out into a white, hot blast of sunlight. You made a sort of sobbing noise behind me.

  I started running, past the second building and toward the rocky outcrop of the Separates. I kept looking behind me, but you weren’t following. Sweat was pouring off me before I’d even gone a few feet. I jumped over small bushes and stumbled over dry, exposed roots. I closed that hundred feet in about ten seconds, I think. I was glad for those leather boots.

  I slowed down when I neared the boulders. Again, I noticed the wooden stakes sticking up from the ground, evenly spaced around them, and the line of plastic piping leading from the house. I could follow that. I looked down the small crevice where the pipe entered the rocks, the gap that had looked like a pathway from the veranda. But was it the right way? The other option would be to follow the edge of the boulders, skip going through the middle entirely, and get to the other side that way. But that would mean losing the pipe. And I still thought it was part of some larger water system, that it would lead me to another building on the other side.

  I heard a thud from over near the outbuildings and made a quick decision. I would follow the pipe.

  The path was rocky and uneven, getting narrower all the time. But it was cooler in there straightaway, as if the cool was radiating off the stone itself. My eyes took a moment to adjust to the shadowy light from the boulders towering above. The path became so narrow I had to walk with one foot on either side of the pipe. Soon the rock sides felt like they were starting to close in on me, pressing me like a flower. I stretched my arms out and laid my palms on the cool, dry stone, as if pushing it back. I tripped over the pipe as I hurried, using my hands to steady myself. The path got narrower still but I could see light at the end. Was it the other side already?

  Another few feet and I got there. But it wasn’t the end. Instead the path opened into a clearing. The light was brighter but greenish, filtered through vegetation. I stopped. The clearing was the size of a large room, but with thick bushes and trees around the edge, some growing up the rock sides and spreading out above. There were other pathways, too, leading deeper into the rocks. It was so different from the stark openness on the other side, a different environment entirely. It was the first real bit of green I’d seen for ages.

  I took a few steps to the middle of the clearing. The pipe curved around to the right and down one of the larger pathways. There were some cages just before it. The chickens! When I walked toward them, they started clucking. I knelt and looked through the wire. There were six, scrawny like rags. There was another cage next to them with a rooster inside. I stuck my finger through the wire and stroked his black tail feathers.

  “Poor feller,” I murmured.

  I pulled the lid of the hens’ cage until it swung open. I stuck my hand inside and felt for eggs, thinking I could take them with me before I disappeared. But there were none. I wondered about setting the birds free, but I didn’t want them to come clucking back to you and show you where I’d gone.

  There was a thick patch of vegetation behind the chickens’ cages. Strange yellowish berries hung from some of the branches, and small apple-shaped lumps peeked out from deep in the undergrowth.

  I glanced back down the narrow path. I was taking too long. You could catch up to me any moment. So I left the chickens. The quicker I could get through the clearing, the better.

  I followed the pipe. The path it went down was wider and flatter than the last, and I had to step through several patches of thick grass. I wondered about snakes. What would I do if I saw one? I saw a movie once where a man tied rope around his arm above a snakebite, but he tied it so tightly that later he had to have his arm amputated. I tried to push that thought out of my mind; it wasn’t exactly helpful right then. I kept going, hoping I was traveling in the right direction. It seemed like I was walking in a straight line toward the other side. The sun was above me, beating down strongly, but it wasn’t the same kind of stifling heat as near the house. The vegetation was getting thicker. Inside those boulders, it wasn’t like the desert at all. I hadn’t walked far before the path opened up into another clearing. It was smaller than the last and even denser with plants. I followed the pipe through the middle.

  The pool was so closely screened by foliage that I almost walked straight into it. Instead, the thick arm of a tree caught me just in time.

  Rock overhung the pool, sheltering it from the sun. There was a cave at the back, just above the water, with moss growing around the entrance. That dark hole could have been hiding anything. Snakes, crocodiles … bodies. I shivered.

  I clung to the tree arm and stared out, faintly listening to the birds chattering somewhere above. The water was deep and dark, but it wasn’t murky. I could see right down to the sand and weed at the bottom. I should have known there would be water at some point. Why else would all those trees be there? They certainly weren’t surviving on rain.

  I knelt at the edge and stuck a finger into the water, then gasped and took it back. The water was cold, ice-cold, almost. I wanted to jump in … jump straight in and drink it all up. But I just sat there, resting on my heels. I was so stupid. I was looking at all that water, dehydrating more every second, and not touching a drop. I didn’t know if I could drink it, you see. I didn’t know what was in it. All I could think about was a TV show where an explorer guy drank from a river and a tiny fish swam into his stomach and started eating his insides; then a doctor had to stick a long tube inside him to get it out. There were no doctors around that pool. And I didn’t want a tiny fish in my insides, so I gave up on the water idea. I stood up and walked around it, trying to find where the pipe came out the other side.

  But it didn’t. The pipe stopped in the pool, not leading anywhere else. I ran my hands through my hair as I glanced around. You were right, it seemed. There were no other buildings using that water supply.

  I tramped around the small clearing, looking for another way out, a way to get me to the other side of the boulders. There were two other pathways, but they were even narrower than the one I’d come in on, more overgrown, too
. I stepped gingerly down the larger one. If I had been worried about snakes before, it was nothing compared to my thoughts about that path. The grass was up to my knees at points, and there were things moving and rustling around me. I thought I saw something in the rocks near my hands, something slithering away. Loudly buzzing flies were hovering around my head, too, being drawn to my sweat. I kept walking until that path turned into a dead end of rock and I had to turn back. I tried the second, smaller pathway, but that soon became too narrow.

  I went back to the main clearing, but the other paths out of that were no better, either. I just got more lost, tangled up in the maze of the Separates. I don’t know how long I spent trying to get out. It was hard to keep an idea of time in that place. It felt like forever. But one thing I did know, you hadn’t followed me. Not yet. I clung desperately to the hope that you thought I’d run somewhere else. I tried another, smaller path, squeezing myself flat to fit between the rocks. But when I came back to the main clearing yet again, I realized I was going around in circles.

  That’s when I finally woke up and had my idea.

  There was a tall, white-barked tree with thick branches growing against one of the boulders. I was glad of its strength as I swung myself up into it. I loved climbing trees when I was young, though I’d never done much of it. Mum was always too scared I’d fall out. It felt weird to be in a tree again, and I couldn’t work out where to put my feet at first. But I soon got the hang of it. I hugged the trunk and pulled myself up its bark, using the branches as steps. The only time I stopped was when I saw a small brown spider scuttle away in front of me. It was pure determination that made me keep going after that.

  It was annoying when I got to the top, though. There were branches and leaves everywhere, and I couldn’t see out. I took a deep breath, closed my mouth and eyes, and tried to sweep the branches aside. Things fell on me as I did. I didn’t want to know what they were so I brushed them off before I looked too closely, but it still felt like they were crawling on me. I could feel their legs in my hair. I clung to the uppermost branches and rested a foot against the rock face, dragging myself up it a little way.

  And then I looked out.

  I shielded my eyes. There was nothing but sand and flatness and horizon. I used the branches to turn myself around, grazing my leg a little on the rock. But there were no buildings on the other side, no towns … not even a road. It looked the same on that side as it had looked near the house. Long, flat emptiness. I wanted to scream, probably the only reason I didn’t was because I was worried you would hear me. If I’d had a gun, I think I would have shot myself.

  I sank down into the top of the tree and leaned my head against one of the branches, sticking the heels of my hands into my eyes. Then I wrapped my arms around the branch, and pressed my face into the bark. A rough part of it scratched at my cheek, but I kept pressing against it, trying to stop the sobs.

  It sounds crazy, but right then all I could think about was my parents at the airport. What had they thought when I hadn’t turned up for that flight? What had they done about it since? I leaned my cheek against the bark and tried to remember the last thing we’d said to each other. I couldn’t. It made me cry even more.

  I was almost calm again when I heard the car. Quickly, I scrambled back up the tree and out onto the rock. I grabbed a branch, nearly losing my balance. I looked out at the horizon first, then at the land beside the Separates. There! Your car was driving slowly across just underneath me.

  It took me a little time to figure out what you were doing. At first I thought there had always been a fence. Then I realized you were putting it up, right then. My heart sank. So that was why you hadn’t followed me—you’d been driving around the Separates the whole time, boxing me in, trapping me like an animal. I’d been so caught up in trying to get through the rocks that I hadn’t even noticed the sound of the car.

  I watched you make the fence. You had a long roll of what looked like chicken wire, and when you got to the wooden stakes, the ones I’d seen stuck in the ground earlier, you hammered the wire to them. You worked quickly, stretching to nail in the tops and then crouching to secure the bottom. It only took a couple of minutes per stake and then you were driving to the next one. It looked like the job was almost finished. I was already fenced in.

  I leaned against the rock. Up there, above the trees, the sun was strong on my face, and I was suddenly exhausted. Beaten. I shut my eyes, wanting to block it all out.

  When I opened them again, you’d stopped driving around. Instead, you were waiting on the other side of the fence, car stationary and the driver’s door open, your boots resting on its wound-down window. I saw the smoke rising from a cigarette.

  I held on to the branches and looked back at the house, at the desolate land around it. There was a slight breeze blowing about some bits of vegetation. In the far distance, I could still see those hill-like shadows. They were such a long way away, but still, they gave me a tiny spark of hope. Apart from those, the rocky outcrop I stood on was the only bit of height for as far as I could see. For the first time, I wondered how you’d found that place. Were there really no other people anywhere? Was it really just us? Perhaps any explorers had given up halfway, or died. There was something astonishing about being able to survive in that land. It seemed more like another planet than earth.

  I felt my throat close up, and I wanted to start crying again. But I wouldn’t let myself; I had to be stronger than that, otherwise I would just stay on top of that tree until I died of starvation, or thirst. Dad said once that dying of thirst was the most painful death of all, a person’s tongue splits and then the internal organs pack up one by one … busting open as they expand. I didn’t want that.

  So I decided to make my way back to the main clearing. I’d wait until it got dark, then creep out to that fence and test it, see if I could get over it or under it. How difficult could it be? Then I’d run back to the house, get supplies and clothing if I had time, some water, and head off across the desert toward those shadows in the distance. Eventually I’d find a road, some sort of track. I had to.

  It got cold before it got dark. My whole body was shaking long before the moon had risen. I curled myself into a small ball and sat hunched against the rocks, my teeth tapping against each other.

  I hadn’t been outside at night before. I knew it was colder at night than in the day, as I’d felt the temperature drop even when I’d been inside the house, but I hadn’t expected that kind of cold. Right then, it felt colder than a winter night back home. It seemed crazy for the desert to be so stupidly hot in the day, and then so stupidly cold at night. But I guess there are no clouds out there; there’s nothing to hold the heat in. The heat just disappears like the horizon. I suppose that’s why it was so light that night, too: There was nothing to hide the moon.

  I was glad of that. It meant I could still see my way around the rocks fairly easily. It meant I could watch the ground for snake-shaped shadows. I started pacing, anything to keep warm. Eventually, I couldn’t wait any longer. I picked my way back along the thin pathway to the edge of the Separates.

  From there I looked out at the fence you’d built. It was pretty tall but it didn’t look that sturdy. I ran my hands over my arms, rubbing them. I was too cold to think much beyond getting warm again. Occasionally I heard the rumble of your car engine approach as you circled past on one of your patrols. One thing that was pretty good about this plan was that I could hear you coming for ages before you actually arrived. My teeth were clacking together so loudly, though; I was worried you would soon be able to hear them, too. I wondered what you were thinking: Did you know exactly where I was?

  I wrapped my arms around me as tightly as I could, and stared up at the stars. Had I not been so cold and wanting to escape so badly, I could have stared at them forever: They were amazingly beautiful, so dense and bright. My eyes could get lost up there if I left them looking long enough. Back home I was lucky if I even saw the stars at night, what with the
pollution and city lights, but in the desert I couldn’t miss them. They swallowed me up. They were like a hundred thousand tiny candles, sending out hope. Watching them made me think that everything might be OK.

  I waited until you next drove past me, and then I stepped away from the boulders. I was surprised when I took my shoulders from the rocks, surprised again at the cool of the air against my back. The rocks must have been soaking up the sunlight all these hours, becoming warmer. I took a couple of steps into the sand.

  I felt instantly exposed, as if I were naked and you were watching my every movement. I ran quickly to the fence, with my head bowed. Those few feet felt so much longer than they were. All the time I was listening for your car, and I heard it, too, but only as a dull rumble on the other side of the rocks.

  I stopped when I got to the fence. It was made of tightly stretched chicken wire, towering a few feet above my head. I couldn’t get my fingers into its tiny holes. I tried sticking my boot in to get a grip, but it wouldn’t hold, and I ended up sliding down the wire, skinning my fingers. I tried again with the other boot. No good. I kicked the fence. I pushed against it, but it just bounced me back.

  I started shaking then, whether from the cold or the fear, I don’t know … probably both. I forced myself to focus on the problem. I couldn’t get over the fence so I’d have to go under. I fell down to the sand and started digging. But this wasn’t normal sand, like on a beach. This was hard, desert sand with rocks and thorns and bits of plants stuck inside it. It was as tough and as difficult as everything else out there. I gritted my teeth, tried to ignore the way the dirt was scratching my hands, and kept digging. It was like being in a war movie, digging out of a prison camp. But things never work out like in Hollywood. The hole I made was only big enough for a rabbit to get under. It was hopeless. I crawled onto my stomach and tried lifting the fence from the bottom but it wouldn’t budge. I got my fingers underneath, but that was it. The wire was pulled too tight. I lay flat out in the sand, nose against the fence. My heart sped and sped, my breathing, too. I got up and tried again to get over the wire. I was almost screaming in frustration. Everything was closing in on me: the fence, the rocks …