Page 72 of The Vanishing Place
“Far too short. Not like—”
“Out.” Effie pointed at the door. “Now.”
“I’m going, I’m going.”
Effie placed a pillow on the floor. Then she sat by Anya’s bed with her arms resting on the edge of the mattress.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered.
After thirty minutes or so, Anya’s eyelids fluttered, her mind half in and half out of the world.
“You’re back in Koraha,” said Effie. “And you’re in bed in June’s house. You’re safe.”
Anya stirred, life leaking slowly into her body.
“The nurse sedated you in the bush. He put you to sleep.” She swallowed. “I’m sorry, I didn’t know he was going to do that. He was just worried you might hurt yourself.”
Two green eyes—far older than any other part of her—opened, and Anya stared at Effie, her little body still. The following minutes slipped by in silence—just aunty and niece. Then slowly, Effie reached a hand forward and set it on the bed a few centimeters from the girl’s arm.
“I don’t want to have to restrain you.”
“I won’t run away.”
Effie blinked.
“I’m not allowed back there now.”
The girl curled tighter, shrinking, then she rolled over with her back to Effie.
“I’m not clean.” Her voice was barely a whisper. “You dirtied me. Just like Mum.”
March 2005
She was alonein the dark. And she was going to die.
Effie tried to move, her legs first, then her arms, but she couldn’t. She couldn’t, because her body was dying. She was going to die alone in the trees.
Pain shot through her head, like a knife gutting out the bit behind her eye sockets, and she let out a whimper. It was dark, so dark that it swallowed up the bush around her. With no moon to carve out the shapes of the trees, and no torch, she couldn’t see anything. Just a wall of black.
Just blackness and the piercing cries of morepork. Effie sniffed and blinked her eyes. She shouldn’t have angered him.
She shuffled forward an inch, her bare arms and legs trembling, but her weakened body collapsed to the cold earth.
She shouldn’t have said those things.
I bet there’s some girl. Some girl that you’re fucking.
The muscles in her neck spasmed as she strained to lift her head, a tiredness rooting her body to the ground. The heavy rain had stopped, and the ponga draped in front of her like a curtain. But the ground was wrong. There was no softness to it. No dirt. No dampness. It was hard and flat and rough. Like slats of wood.
Like a box.
Fear beat in Effie’s stomach as she strained to remember—to think—but the blade behind her eyes kept slicing up the memories.
His face.
His outstretched arms.
She shouldn’t have made him angry.
