Page 4 of The Vanishing Place

Effie stumbled back to the bedroom door with the baby hugged into her chest, unable to look away from the strange figure that lay in Mum’s bed. It had Mum’s clothes on, and Mum’s face, but the important bits were all wrong.

“Mum?”

Effie gripped the baby, her voice shaking as tears dripped down her face and her tummy threatened to spill out.

“Mum?” she said again, louder.

Mum needed to wake up. She needed to stop playing.

The baby wasn’t meant to be here. Mum hadn’t mentioned having another one—three was plenty, she said.

There was no cot set up in the corner. No nappies on the line.

Mum had sewn for weeks before Aiden came, but there were no lengths of fabric on the table. No reels of thread.

Effie jiggled the baby a bit until his little eyes closed fully.

Then she took a step toward the bed—toward the thing that was both Mum and not Mum.

Like, from a distance, Effie couldn’t be sure.

The thought tingled in her skin as she inched closer.

Securing the baby—his sleepy body like water—Effie reached out a shaking hand and touched her mum’s forearm.

It was warm. Effie inhaled. Mum’s skin was still warm.

“Dad!” Effie screamed as she clutched the baby and rushed from the room. “Dad!”

Dad had got it wrong. He’d made a mistake. Dad always said that it was impossible to skin possums when they were still warm—that you had to wait until they were cold and proper dead. But Mum was warm. She wasn’t proper dead. Effie hurried from the door and out onto the porch.

“Dad!” She shouted his name at the dense bush. “Dad! Come back.”

Then she hurried across the deck and down the steps, the baby screaming, and aimed her scrawny frame at the wall of ferns and rimu and rātā trees.

Dad would have headed for the river. It was the only way out.

There were no paths or tracks other than the occasional deer trail.

Every few months when they went to town, it was the water that guided them out.

Other than the Roaring Billy River, it was just bush—thick green forest for kilometer after kilometer, farther than Effie’s legs could take her.

“Shh, baby.” She kissed his head. “You need to come with me.”

Effie turned, her mind in a whirl, as she scanned the outside of their small hut. There was no Aiden. No Tia. The only sign of her siblings was an upturned basket, the fresh pikopiko ferns spilled out on the ground. And next to it was Aiden’s wooden rainmaker.

“I can’t leave you here, baby. You have to come too.”

The baby’s face crumpled as he screamed.

His eyes wrinkled into two slits, the thin lines lost in puffy flesh, and his mouth formed a dark hole.

The noise hurt both her ears and her heart, like how she loved and disliked him all at once.

The confusing little thing made of the same stuff as her, the same blood and other ingredients, flailed his tiny arms and legs, and she tried to soothe him.

“Don’t cry, baby.” She didn’t want him to be sad. She didn’t want him to hurt or cry. “Shh. Shh.”

But she didn’t want him there. She wanted Mum. It wasn’t a fair trade. No one had asked her. Having both of them might be okay—the baby and Mum—but not just him.

“Come on. Let’s get Dad.” Effie bounced him in her arms. “He can help Mum.”

Spying a length of rag on the deck, she picked it up and wrapped the baby to her chest, just like she used to do with Aiden.

It helped a bit, having him all squished in; it quietened him a little.

Then she headed into the forest. The river wasn’t far—fifteen minutes if she didn’t miss the marked trees.

As Effie slipped into the bush, the kahikatea and tōtara towering above her like green giants, she felt the first drops of rain falling from the high branches.

Her feet stumbled with the extra weight as she navigated the carpet of ferns and moss, but she bashed through the thick vegetation without pause, digging her feet in as it got steeper.

Effie was Dad’s favorite. He never said it, never did anything to make the young ones suspicious.

But Effie knew. Dad always kissed her last before bed, and he let her do things that the others couldn’t.

Like cleaning out the trout and going bush with him to check traps.

Mum said that Dad loved them all the same.

But he didn’t. Dad had given Effie his red hair and his green eyes—made her just like him.

And when Dad had been out all night, tracking deer or chamois, he’d always leave a handful of supplejack tips on the table for her, and Mum would fry them up in oil.

Even when Dad was tired and grumpy, maybe a little scary sometimes, he aways had a smile for Effie.

But not that afternoon. He’d left without even looking at her.

Like he wasn’t Dad at all.

Effie pushed the ferns aside, using her other hand to shield the baby’s head from the spits of rain as the first rumble of thunder rolled through the green valley.

She paused and looked up through the thick trees, the blue sky almost gone as the storm clouds moved in.

On any other day, she would have turned around, respecting the black sky, and curled up in the safety of Mum’s bed.

But on no other day had her mum been almost dead.

“We’ll be okay, baby.” Effie reached out, touching the pink strip of plastic that Dad had tied around a tree. “Not too far now.”

The bush thinned as she neared the river, and the ground became less steep. But the rain had turned from spits to heavy drops, and the baby was too quiet. Holding the back of his head, Effie sped up.

“Dad!” she tried screaming, but the wind gobbled her words.

She kept running another fifty meters or so, until she caught sight of the Roaring Billy River—a thread of dark silver that cut through the trees.

Then she saw him. Dad . He was wearing his waterproof poncho and he was waist-deep in water, already a third of the way across the river.

Effie blinked against the rain as she stepped from the cover of the trees.

Her heart raced and she tried to shout, but the sky was too heavy; it squashed her voice.

She stumbled across the small white rocks, getting closer to the river.

Dad was in the wrong place. He wasn’t at the shallow bit.

He was too deep. Too far down. They always crossed farther up where the river got thinner over the gravel bar, where Dad had shown them, again and again, that it was easier to wade across.

There the water was only thigh-deep and the current was slow enough that Effie could catch herself.

On their last trip to town, Dad had encouraged Effie to cross the river by herself, rather than on his back.

She’d waded out slowly, positioned between Mum and Dad, fighting as the water tugged at her feet and cringing as the icy liquid neared her waist. Twice she’d felt the river snatch her. Twice her dad had saved her.

“Effie?”

She turned at the whisper of her name. “Tia?” Effie stumbled across the stony ground, the baby silent now, and knelt down. “What are you doing here?”

Her little sister, tiny for six, sat on the rocks with her knees tucked under her chin, swatting away sandflies. Her wet top clung to her shoulders, soaked by rain and a mass of sopping black hair.

“You’ll freeze out here,” said Effie. “Or get eaten. Where’s Aiden?”

“Dad said that…” Tia’s face streamed with tears. “That if he gets swept away…that you’ll watch me. But I don’t want him to get swept away.”

Effie pulled at her sister’s arm as thunder tore through the sky and she tried to shield the baby from the rain.

“Where’s Aiden?” she shouted.

“He wouldn’t stop crying,” Tia sobbed. “He was screaming and screaming.”

“Where is he?”

Tia raised an arm, her body shaking violently, and pointed at the river. “He’s…”

Fear seized Effie’s chest as she turned and squinted through the rain. Dad wasn’t alone. He was hunched under the weight of his big rucksack, and Aiden was in it. His little head popped out of the top, lolling from side to side. The river was too high. It was too fast.

Effie lurched forward and screamed into the air. “Dad!”

The rain lashed down in sheets, heavy and threatening.

Crossing in the rain wasn’t allowed. Dad and Aiden were going to die.

They wouldn’t make it to the other side.

Then Mum would die too. The baby stirred against her chest, the wild beat of her heart forcing him alive, and five little fingers clutched her thumb.

“I want Mummy,” Tia sobbed.

Effie stared at the river. Meter by meter, Dad moved farther away, pushing his way through the water, the bottom of the backpack dipping into the waves.

Dad never left Tia on her own. And never by the water.

During the summer, when the sun turned the river bright turquoise, Tia spent hours bobbing and splashing in the shallows, but Dad was always close by.

Laughing. Skimming stones. Fishing for eels.

Dad never left her. He never left any of them.

Effie wiped a hand across her eyes. Dad was wearing his travel rucksack, the big one with extra pockets that he used for long hunting trips. Effie wanted to scream, to shout for him to come back, but the fight in her had thinned, diluted by the rain.

“Effie.” Tia tugged at her sleeve. “I’m cold now.”

She reached for Effie’s hand, her fingers like ice, and Effie wanted to cry. The cold of her sister, and the tiny warmth of her brother…it was too much. It was too wet and too cold. They needed to be inside. The baby needed milk and warmth and dry clothes. She needed to get him back to Mum.

Mum.

“Come on.” Effie squeezed Tia’s hand. “Let’s go home.”

“But we need Dad.”

“Dad will come soon,” she lied.

Effie took a final look at the river. They were past the halfway point—only one way to go now.

Dad always had a smile for Effie. Even if he was busy or tired.

Whenever he headed into the bush, he always stopped at the last visible point and looked back, one arm raised, and smiled at her as she sat on the hut steps.

But Dad didn’t stop. He kept striding through the water, his body lurching with the current, and a black ache closed around Effie’s heart.

His head didn’t turn. He didn’t look back.

“Come on.” Effie guided the three of them back to the cover of the trees.

The crowded ceiling of branches sheltered them, easing the rain as Effie’s insides drowned.