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In the car, parked near enough to the ocean to hear it whisper and sweep at the sand, Ling sat in the back seat, a child on either side of her, wrapped in blankets, both of the children asleep, warm and safe again, exhaustion claiming them.
Her heart was still pounding from having found them both. When she’d seen them running towards her, she’d thought for a moment she was hallucinating, her vision blurring, and her heart lurching so high in her chest she was sure it would jump right out. The relief of their sudden presence had felt like a plunge into warm water. And ever since she’d been bathing there, feeling the spreading warmth, the glow of relief that two of her children were all right, and that she was with them.
She tried not to hear the slip and slide of the sea outside the car. When she’d listened to it, she’d thought she heard it talking about Jordan, but Jordan was drowned, and knowing that made Ling want to step out of the car and walk into the water herself until it was over her head and she didn’t know how to swim anymore.
But these two needed her. She hugged them tighter, listening to them snuffle in their sleep. She tried to feel outrage at her ex-husband for taking them into the forest like this – didn’t he know they were dangerous places? What had he been thinking? Didn’t he know what sort of things lurked in the undergrowth? In the highest branches? Behind the thickest trunks?
She twisted her head, squeezing her eyes shut. No, she didn’t want to think of it. She didn’t want to remember. She didn’t want to believe a single word of what her mother had said – forest demons weren’t real, there was nothing in a forest except far too many trees, and dirt, and bugs, and she hated both dirt and bugs and wasn’t fond of trees, either.
Hearing a sigh, she looked around, but it was her own, and she held her breath, because there was nothing she could do anyway. Even if her crazy mother was right, and Jordan was still alive, there was no way to find out, no way to find the girl, not now, not when the night was drawing in, and she had to stay here in the car, warm and safe, keeping her youngest children warm and safe. She hugged them tighter, squeezed her eyes shut tighter, tried not to listen to the little worm of a voice that spoke in her mind from high up in a tangle of branches.
She had nothing that would or could help. Nothing. She’d seen nothing. Never seen anything the few times she’d played in the woods. Nothing.
Relaxing against the car seat a moment, she repeated the words to herself. Nothing. She’d seen nothing. Knew nothing. The determined ignorance settled her for a moment, and she opened her eyes.
The car was wreathed in shadows that hadn’t been there before. The night had crowded close while she’d had her eyes shut, and now she looked out the window and gasped as something looked back. Twin eyes, large and round, glared in the window at her, and she shrank back against the seat, jostling the children.
‘What is it, Mummy?’ one of the twins asked, voice heavy with sleep and the sharp edge of fear.
But Ling couldn’t answer. The words stuck in her throat like pointed sticks, piercing her voice box. She swivelled her head away from the window and confronted another pair of eyes that looked into the car at her, looked into her very mind at her, then blinked slowly as if to ask what was she going to do?
She was not going to do anything. There wasn’t anything she could do. She didn’t believe any of her mother’s nonsense. She was a Western woman, didn’t believe in any of the old superstitions. She liked shiny cars and coffee makers and dryers that tumbled her clothes out warm and soft and ready to put on. There were no such thing as forest demons, or forest anything for that matter.
‘There’s another one, Mummy,’ Karel said and she didn’t want to look. The owl sat perched on the side mirror, head cocked to one side, looking straight at her. ‘And more of them, look! What do you think they want, Mummy?’
Ling didn’t care what they wanted. She didn’t think she believed in owls either. That seemed safest. No owls, no forest, no woods at the back of her mother’s house.
‘They’ve come to tell us Jordan needs us,’ Bree said, awake now too.
‘No, they haven’t,’ Ling said, voice sharp enough to slice. ‘Don’t be silly. I'm sorry, guys, but you know what you said – Jordan went into the river.’
There was silence for a few minutes from the twins, and during the silence more owls landed on the car with the soft scratch of claws and a muffled whisper of wings being folded. Golden eyes glowed at them. Ling hugged the children tighter.
‘What do they want?’ Ling whispered, to herself, but the twins heard her.
‘It’s Jordan,’ Bree said. ‘I just know it is.’ On the other side of Ling, Karel nodded his head.
‘You have to go look for her, Mummy,’ he said. ‘She needs you.’
It was reflexive to squeeze the eight-year-olds closer. ‘Don’t be silly, you two,’ Ling said. ‘We need to wait here until help comes. The police and everyone will find Jordan.’
‘But you didn’t call them, Mummy,’ Karel said. ‘You know you didn’t.’
She hadn’t called them? Straining to remember, Ling thought about it. Surely she’d called the police? After all, her daughter was somewhere lost in the forest, presumed drowned. Then there was her ex-husband and his girlfriend. Of course she’d called the police.
‘The owls are waiting for you, Mummy,’ Bree said. ‘You have to go with them. They’re going to show you where Jordan and Grandma are.’
‘Don’t be silly,’ Ling chided her daughter. ‘They’re owls. Just birds.’ She wished the owls would leave, but instead another plumped down on the hood of the car and stared at her with that same golden-eyed stare and she couldn’t help it, she stared at it mesmerised, and started to remember. Violently, she shook her head, sending her hair flying. ‘No,’ she hissed. ‘I’ll not remember, not for anyone.’
She blinked and looked down to find both the twins staring at her.
‘Do you know how to save Jordan, Mummy?’ Karel asked.
She stared at him a moment, then shook her head. ‘No, of course not. What a silly thing to say.’ She glanced out the window again then looked back down at the child in a swaddle of blankets at her side. ‘We have to face facts, love. It’s probably too late for Jordan.’ A tear slid down her cheek at the thought.
But Karel was shaking his head, shrugging out of his blankets. Ling tried to pull them up around him again, but he scooted away from her hands and wrestled with the door handle. On her other side, Bree did the same, and a moment later both children were standing outside the car and Ling could hear the slither and rustle of the sea, and it sounded like the wind in the trees. For a moment she wanted to slam the car doors closed and huddle on the floorboards of the car, pulling the blankets over her head, because this was really turning out to be the stuff of her nightmares.
She’d had a childhood plagued by nightmares, and here they were happening all over again. The owls fluffed up their feathers and their claws squeaked on the car as she scooted over to the door and got out on unsteady feet. She flapped a hand at the birds, not knowing she was crying.
‘Go away, you dirty birds,’ she said, and the sobs made her voice thick.
Someone touched her and she leapt away.
‘It’s all right, Mummy,’ Bree said. ‘They’re here to show us how to get to Jordan.’
Ling shook her head. ‘That’s nonsense, Bree. They’re birds. That’s all, just birds, and their claws are ruining the car!’ Her voice raised to a screech that several of the owls matched.
‘No, Mummy, we have to find Jordan. She needs us.’
It was impossible. Ling wanted to believe it was impossible. ‘How would you know?’ she asked.
‘Because weird stuff happens when Jordan has one of her fits, and this is weird stuff.’
There was a certain logic to the child’s statement, but Ling still couldn’t bring herself to believe. If she believed, then she’d have to remember, and she’d spent so long making sure she never did.
‘That doesn’t mean they know where she is, honey,’ Ling said.
‘Sure they do,’ Karel piped up. ‘Watch.’ He grasped his mother’s hand and tugged her away from the car. She followed on reluctant, wooden legs and the owls fluffed themselves up further and hopped around as though just waiting for her to move off so they could take flight.
‘See?’ Bree said. ‘They’re waiting for us.’
Ling stared at the birds, then at the forest leaning over the river, then at her children. Her fingers worried at a button on her shirt and loosened the thread. She shook her head again.
‘We’re imagining things,’ she said.
There was no reply from the twins.
‘You said yourselves she’d fallen into the river.’
‘But what if she got out?’ Karel said. ‘What if she really does need our help?’
There. That was the crux of the matter, and the one argument Ling couldn’t ignore. ‘Grandma’s looking for her,’ she said. ‘I need to make sure you two are all right.’
They just looked at her. Them and the owls, all eyes on her, waiting. She flung her hands in the air.
‘All right! All right.’ Her chest heaved. ‘I’ll go look, and maybe the owls will even show me, but you two are staying right here where it’s safe, you hear me?’
Two heads waggled negative at her but she raised a shaking finger to point at them. ‘I'm not going to argue on this one. Back in the car, and stay there.’ She drew her phone out of her pocket and gave it to the nearest twin. ‘If I'm not back in...’ She thought for a moment. ‘One hour and thirty minutes, I want you to call the police. Can you do that? It’s very important.’
Both twins looked as though they wanted to argue, and then Ling saw them both glance at the dark forest and a cloud passed over their faces, so that they turned back to her and nodded.
‘Follow the owls, Mum,’ Karel said, and he pushed his sister towards the car again.
‘An hour and thirty minutes, remember,’ Ling said.
Bree clambered into the back seat and scooted over to close the door on the far side. Karel got in beside her and stared out at his mother. She looked at them and shivered. What was she thinking – about to leave them here on their own?
‘Lock the doors,’ she said and swallowed the lump in her throat. Karel nodded, then turned his gaze away from her and back to the owls. Ling followed it. She listened for the dull thunk of the doors being locked, and after she’d heard it, sucked a deep breath in.
‘Come on, then,’ she whispered. ‘Take me to my daughter.’