‘No!’ she cried. ‘We have to go after him. We have to find him!’
‘We’ll never find him, Junie.’
‘We found him before!’
Marlon caught her trembling hand in his. ‘He found us, remember? We can’t hope to go back in there and hunt him down. You’ve seen how thick the jungle is, and how dangerous. It’s impossible.’
‘The only way we will ever see him again is if he wants it,’ Felix told her. ‘If he walks out of that forest one day, remembering who he is and looking for help.’
‘It could happen,’ Joseph said, but they all knew it never would.
‘I drove him away,’ she sobbed. ‘I said too much.’
‘No, Junie. He wasn’t hearing anything you said; there was no comprehension.’
Junie looked at John, her face stricken. ‘But now I…I’ve lost him twice.’
The doctor shook his head sadly. ‘Michael was lost a long time ago. Let him live out his days in the way he can deal with them – simply, with the Kurelu. Not in some asylum or veteran’s home. You know that’s no kind of life for him, Junie.’
‘Life,’ she repeated, her eyes drawn to the forest once more. ‘Is that what he’s doing? Living down there?’
‘It would be no life at all in our world,’ Marlon said gently.
‘But his family – his mum and his dad and Dorn and Beryl. You don’t understand. They thought they lost both their boys in the war. They…they should get to see him again.’
‘You can go to them and tell them what you saw. You can give them that much,’ John reminded her.
‘Maybe they’ll come looking for him, maybe they’ll see there’s no point – either way, you’ll be giving them more than most ever get. You’ll be giving them an answer,’ Joseph said.
‘And a son, somewhere on this earth still,’ Marlon told her, opening her hand and placing the feather inside it. ‘Let him live there on his own terms, Junie. I think he was trying to tell us that in his own way. Let him go.’
‘Some people want to stay lost,’ Joseph reminded her and she knew now that it was true.