NOW

57

Saturday. November.

Damon

I’m running my fingers over Ashlee’s collar. The police took the photos they needed of it and I’ve cleaned it up. It’s buckled and ready. I go to where she died, on the edge of the clearing round Shepherd’s bunker, and I lay it there. I don’t look left, don’t want to see the mess of that bunker – don’t want to think about how I’d wanted to hurt Mack there either. Shepherd’s drawings were burnt off in that fire – that’s what the police said – I don’t want to check. I watch a beetle marching slowly forward. Then I dig about in my pocket, find my own collar. I lay that on the ground too so Ashlee’s collar is circled inside.

‘You won, Ash,’ I whisper.

But she lost too: lost everything. And somehow I don’t think she’s in Fairyland right now, neither. I bite down hard on my lip as I think about all that again, taste blood. Mack should be here, doing this with me. I thought about asking Charlie and Ed, but they’re not speaking to me all that much right now – too weirded out by everything; they still can’t believe what Mack did, what Ashlee wanted. Or maybe they feel guilty for their part in it all. They’ve been in the police station pretty constantly, but they won’t visit Mack in custody. Though Ed, at least, will probably end up there soon enough anyway, maybe his brother too – seems the cops are coming down hard on their drug possession.

I sit on the cold winter ground and stare at those two collars. I hear birds singing, even now on a freezing mid-November day, even when there are puddles iced over and only a few berries left on branches. If Emily was here, she’d be able to tell me what those birds are, give me some fact that makes them special. Hearing these birds makes me think of the first day I saw Emily in Darkwood, that very same day I’d heard that my old man had died. That was the first day I’d fought Mack in here too. Sometimes I wonder whether I should’ve stayed with Emily that day, whether anything would’ve been different if I’d watched the birds instead of running off with Mack . . . taken that other path.

I dig my teeth into my lip again. I should be thinking about Ashlee right now, not Emily, that’s what I came here for. But I’m thinking of all sorts of things, everything inside me blurring into one mess of noise. Strangely, I’m thinking of my old man most of all. How it’s about a year since he died. How he would’ve been ashamed over the Game I started in these woods. I grab a stick and draw his tree tattoo – and mine – into the dirt; I do it just from memory. I’m remembering Emily’s face when she’d looked at my tattoo in the bunker – she’d thought I was a mystery then, someone with stories. I want her to look at me like that again.

When I’m done, I rub my hand over it all, smudge the tree into the earth again, smash it up like that bomb smashed Dad. I guess whoever built and buried that IED out there in the desert will never know how far that blast travelled. But all things ripple out, cause shrapnel. Maybe if I’d never started the Game, Ashlee would never have died. Or maybe Ashlee would’ve got to Fairyland some other way. I don’t know. But I’m still responsible, still could’ve stopped it . . . If I’d just seen what Ashlee was doing all those nights . . . realised.

Maybe.

I hear a noise behind me, a light cough. I turn. Emily. Found me. How long has she been there?

I get up silently, leaving the collars circled into each other. I don’t even bother to wipe the water from my eyes as I walk to her, because she’s seen it all anyway, hasn’t she? She knows who I am, the all of me. Somehow she’s still here. I wrap my arm around her shoulder. I want to keep her safe and exactly like she is – this girl who sees the whole of things, who, even now, isn’t scared of these woods . . . who’s not scared of me . . . who, even now, is helping.

I try to turn us away from this place, but she resists.

‘Squirrels,’ she explains, pointing.

I follow her gaze and see them. Two of them, darting in and out of Shepherd’s bunker. I’m looking at it again before I even realise. ‘Hiding food?’

She nods. ‘For winter.’

I don’t look for long. The bunker’s too blackened and ruined, too dark.

‘Come on,’ I say.

But Emily stays, looking, listening. ‘There are deer here too,’ she whispers. ‘They’ve been watching us.’

I see them when I look in the spaces between the trees. I see sunlight falling through bare winter branches and on to their backs.

‘You’ve got eyes like an owl,’ I say, smiling a little.

I squeeze Emily’s shoulder tighter, rest my cheek against the top of her head. And the deer are gone, leaping quicker than a heartbeat and jumping deeper into the woods.