couldn’t believe he’d been so stupid! I should have waited. I bet the others came back after all.
There was no going back though. He and the dog had been walking for ages, probably in circles. He’d never find his way back to that inselberg.
* * *
“Where’s Leo?” asked Treasure, when she noticed he wasn’t outside with the rest of them. She stood on tiptoes and peered into Eva’s Land Rover, thinking he was probably asleep on the back seat.
“He’s with you,” said Eva. “Isn’t he?”
Treasure dropped her cold drink. The can clattered on the tar. “No!” she gasped, clutching her face with both hands.
“Hau!” exclaimed Humphrey. “We’ve left him behind.”
* * *
Stumbling after the dog, Leo tripped on something, his own feet perhaps, and fell face down.
Spread-eagled on the desert floor, he felt his strength ebb away. He tried to get up, but couldn’t move a muscle. It’s the end. No one will find me. I’m going to die.
A peculiar feeling came over him, like he was drifting off, beyond himself, away from the thirst, the heat, and fear. The red-hot world around him drifted away until everything went bright white, like a star exploding. Just when he thought he couldn’t stand the brightness any longer, blackness flooded in and extinguished it.
Oblivion.
Or was it? The nothingness gave way then and he began to see his life flash before him. First, he saw himself as a small boy splashing about in a paddling pond with another young boy who seemed vaguely familiar. An old man came into view, and Leo thought he recognised him: his long-dead grandfather, perhaps?
Like the next scene in a movie, the picture changed suddenly to a vision of his home in the village of Salt Rock on the east coast of South Africa. As clearly as if he was standing in front of it, Leo saw the white cottage perched on the cliff high above the Indian Ocean. Seagulls wheeled above the roof in air so salty you could smell it and taste it on your skin.
Sounds came to him along with the pictures, ones he’d known his whole life: the shrill call of gulls, the pounding of waves on the rocky shore below the cliffs, the howling of wind on stormy nights. And voices now. Leo’s best friends, Noel and Roddy, calling to him. “Are you coming to the beach, Leo? The surf’s brilliant.”
Leo pictured them in his mind: Noel, tall like Leo, but two-and-a-half years older, his hair sun-bleached and his eyes blue like the sea, and Roddy, the same age as Leo but shorter than him and with curly dark hair, brown eyes, and an accent that everyone thought was American until he put them right. “Canadian,” he’d say.
More voices now. Leo’s parents, Marius and Zara Knight, talking late into the hot, humid night on the veranda of that white cottage.
“What are your afraid of, Zara?” Leo’s father was saying quietly. “That he’s still vulnerable?”
“Well, he is,” came the answer. “Especially as they’ll be passing through Aus. And you know only too well that that gang will never give up.”
Aus? What about it? And what gang? Leo had wondered.
“They’re ruthless, but they’re not complete fools,” Marius argued. “They’ll be miles from Aus. They’re probably not even in the country anymore, otherwise they’d have been picked up by now and Axel would . . .”
Zara’s voice cutting in. “I know. Perhaps I am being paranoid, but which mother in the same situation wouldn’t be?”
“I suppose so,” said Leo’s dad in a gentle tone. “I’ve been thinking lately that it’s time we told Leo. He has no memory of it, but it’s only fair that he knows the truth.”
The truth about what? It all sounded very interesting! Leo sat up in bed and leaned toward the window so he could hear everything clearly.
But his mother put the lid on it all. “No!” she said firmly. “Not yet.”
“Well, when?” said Marius.
“When he’s in high school and can deal with it better,” said Zara.
That’s next year! Ages away. Bursting with curiosity, Leo nearly got up to go and ask what the secret was. But he knew his parents would be cross that he’d been eavesdropping (“It’s rude to eavesdrop,” his mother would probably say) so he stayed where he was. How he wished, though, that she wouldn’t treat him like a ninny who couldn’t handle serious things. Hey, I surf in the Indian Ocean where sharks swim! he wanted to call out to her. And you’re not worried about that.
“Apart from everything else,” Zara was saying, “I’m not sure he belongs with that astronomy crowd. He’s only just twelve. The others are so much older: nineteen, twenty. And Dawie’s twenty-two. Should Leo really be . . .?”
“They invited him,” said Marius, “I’m sure they’re responsible people, even though they’re students. And ABSO’s all he can talk about right now, remember. Think about it. How many twelve-year-olds are keen astronomers, and have the gumption to join a university astronomy club?”
Zara sighing. “Very few, I suppose. It just shows how deep things run in families.” A pause, then, “Who would have thought that? After . . .” She hesitated again, “. . . everything.” Spoken very softly, her words were almost drowned by the swish of the waves on the beach below, but nothing could smother the bitterness that laced them.
“You’ve got to let go,” Marius, gentle again, diluting the bitterness. “Or it will destroy you.”
“It already did, Marius. A long time ago. And not just me. All of us. Axel most of all.”
Axel? That name’s familiar. There came a fleeting vision of a small dark-haired boy but it didn’t last long enough for Leo to work out who he was.
“We’ve somehow kept going,” Marius went on, “and we still have each other.” The creaking of the wicker chair as he leaned forward, or settled back into it. “Always remember, we did all we could and more. And I’ll never give up hope. Deep inside, I believe that . . .” He stopped abruptly, then changed the subject. “Look, Zara. We’ve got to move on. It’s the least we can do for Leo. Nothing will change the past, and we can’t let it ruin the future completely. We can’t let it restrict our son. We have to let him – you know – spread his wings, explore.”
Silence for a while, then Zara sighing again. “You’re right.” Sniffing now like she was fighting back tears. “I only wish that ABSO was somewhere else. Anywhere, but . . . but . . . where it all happened.”
Six months later, thousands of kilometres away, sprawled out on the desert floor, hearing the conversation so clearly again, Leo might have been in his own bed, lying awake, listening to his parents’ voices drifting in through the open window, wondering what had happened that had destroyed their lives. Now he’d never find out.
He should have listened harder that night. He should have taken notice of his mother’s worry instead of wishing she wouldn’t treat him like a baby. He might have stayed at home.
And
