The Boundless Sublime (43 page)

We’re living in a group home – a halfway house for teenagers who have lost their way. Fox and I keep to ourselves, trying to figure out who we are now. The cast came off Fox’s broken leg a few days ago, but he’ll be on crutches for a while longer. The doctor says he’ll probably always walk with a limp.

Fox sinks onto my bed, propping his leg up on a chair. The group home assigned us separate bedrooms, but they don’t particularly seem to care that we spend most nights together.

Fox is getting better. Slowly. He’s learning how to exist in the real world. Sometimes it’s hard to know how to help him. The Institute broke me in a few short months. Fox was there his entire life. I don’t know if he’ll ever be whole again – I think he’ll always have cracks and missing pieces. We talk about it a lot – Zosimon and everything that happened.

I showed him TV for the first time the other day. He really likes nature documentaries. He likes music too, especially ‘Blackbird’ by The Beatles, and Allegri’s
Miserere
. He listens to them and cries, and I cry with him. It’s good to feel again, even when we’re sad. When we lie wrapped up in each other, we give ourselves over to sensation and just
feel
, with no guilt or shame or self-consciousness. There’s an old piano in the recreation room, and I’m teaching him how to play. Next week we’re going to the beach. I can’t wait to see his face when he sees the ocean for the first time. I’ve also promised to show him the movie of
Les Miserables
.

I turned eighteen two weeks ago. We had a little party with a cake. Fox liked the candles, and I taught him the song. We’ve been talking about finding a place together, once the craziness dies down. I want to finish school, go to university. Fox wants to learn to make bread and swim and build things from wood and nails. I know that as long as we’re together, we’ll make it work. Maybe we’ll even get a dog called Barker.

I lean over and brush his lips with mine. He lets out a soft, contented sigh as our fingers lace together.

‘Did you call her today?’ Fox asks.

I shake my head.

It’s been six weeks, but I still haven’t spoken to Mum. She’s in hospital. I’ve talked to her doctor, who says she is very emotionally fragile. Aunty Cath has visited her, though. She says Mum has good days and bad days. Sometimes she seems almost normal, going for walks in the hospital garden and chatting to people. Other days she can’t get out of bed, can’t do anything but stare at the wall. I don’t know how she and I are going to deal with what happened, but I hope she gets better. She’s suffered enough.

I’ve talked to Dad, on the phone. I understand him better now. After confronting my own darkness back in Zosimon’s
laboratory, I can see how Dad must feel. You can’t turn it off. Even though Dad didn’t mean to do it. Even though it was an accident. That stain of death is on his hands, and he’ll never be able to scrub them clean. I know that now. But I think I can see a way through it. How to live with that darkness and not be swallowed up in it. To rise up through the black tide and stand in the sun, where everything in the world is illuminated – the ugliness alongside the beauty. I hope Dad will find a way through too. It seems a bit much to hope that one day we can go back to being a family again, but … maybe. This is a start.

‘How did your interview go?’ I ask Fox. We have regular meetings with our lawyers to prepare us for court.

Fox’s lips purse in a tight smile. ‘The usual.’

It doesn’t get easier for him, talking about it. As well as our lawyers, we also meet often with psychologists and psychiatrists and social workers. They’re good people, and they’re helping us, but some days we get sick of talking about our feelings.

‘Did you have any of the chocolate pudding at lunch today?’ Fox asks. ‘Do you think Nerida has tried chocolate pudding?’

The Monkeys are in another group home, all together for now, although some of them might go back to their real parents after the legal stuff is sorted out. A team of psychologists are helping them work through everything that happened. Fox and I visited them last week. Their hair is growing, and they all look so different. They have names, now, that they chose themselves. The one who helped me ran up to us when we arrived and proudly announced that her name was Nerida, which means
sea nymph
. She gave me a picture she’d drawn, of herself at the beach, orange corkscrews of hair erupting from her head, an ice-cream clutched
in her fist. Her social worker told us that they aren’t sure who her parents are. From what little Nerida remembers, it seems that her mother was briefly at the Institute, and abandoned her daughter there before vanishing completely. I hope now Nerida has a chance at being a normal kid. I hope we get to stay in touch with her.

Fox reaches out a hand and pulls back the gauzy curtain that hangs over my window. A shaft of sunlight falls over his face and he closes his eyes and tilts his head back. It was how I first saw him, smiling up into the sun. Fox had seemed so charming then, so innocent and full of wonder. But now that memory is overlaid with another – Zosimon standing in the courtyard with his face turned up towards the sun, pretending to be holy and pure when all along he was rotten, full of lies and hate and corruption.

‘Did you know that you can make electricity from sunlight?’ Fox has discovered the internet, and spends hours soaking up new information, learning all about the world.

‘I did know that,’ I say.

‘I guess he was right. Sunlight really is a kind of fuel.’

Fox doesn’t say
Daddy
or
Zosimon
. Only
he
and
him
. Fox is trying to purge himself of Daddy, but there are so many unconscious things that remind me of him. Rhythms of speech. Turns of phrase. A certain similarity in profile, in gesture. The same long, delicate fingers. Fox can never truly be free from Zosimon, because Zosimon is a part of him. Nature
and
nurture.

‘Kind of,’ I agree. ‘Just not for people.’

‘No. Not for people.’

Zosimon is in jail while he awaits his trial. Sometimes I wonder if he’s in the same place as Dad, and imagine them running into each other. Dad and Daddy. A bizarre thought.

The media went nuts when the story broke, and we’ve learnt a bit more about Zosimon – Glen Ardeer. Some ex-members of the Institute have come forward with grizzly tales, and the list of charges against him keeps expanding. Kidnapping. Murder. Conspiracy. Fraud.

We try not to look at all the reports in the newspapers and online, but it’s hard to avoid it, sometimes. The crazed murderous cult leader planning to sterilise the population with free water is a pretty amazing story, and if I hadn’t been wrapped up in it, I know I would have been fascinated too. We get lots of mail, letters of support, and some less kind messages. Our social worker screens it all, and just lets us see the occasional piece. We’re famous. We’re the ones who got away. The ones who ended it all.

The trial isn’t for months, but we have lawyers and police officers working with us to build the case against Zosimon. As Fox and I witnessed him confessing to killing Maggie, our testimony is vital. My lawyer tells me Val is testifying too – apparently he helped Daddy dispose of Maggie’s body. I can’t imagine hearing him speak in a courtroom, in full sentences. I hope that he gets one of Nerida’s pictures.

Tomorrow we’re going to see Lib. Fox knows everything, now. They’ve been exchanging letters. She wants to learn how to be his mum, and I think he wants that too. But it’ll take a long time. Her lawyer thinks it’s likely she’ll go to prison, even if she testifies against Daddy. She knew too much, was complicit in too many lies.

We’ve heard snippets about the others. Pippa was in hospital for a while, but has now gone home to her family. She’s not pressing charges against me, which makes me feel both guilty and relieved. Her baby is due in a few weeks. Ash and Toser have separated. Newton is trying to make things
work with her husband. A few are missing, though – Welling, Stan, some others. We think they are still loyal to Zosimon, in hiding and awaiting further instructions.

‘Is the video for them?’ Fox asks.

I nod. ‘Kate says she thinks they’re waiting for a message from Zosimon, or from me. They’ll be looking for it.’

Kate is my lawyer, and has promised to help me get the video to the missing Institute members.

‘Do you know what you’re going to say?’

‘Sort of.’ I’ve thought about it a lot. About how easy it was for Zosimon to twist words around. About how comforting it was to give in to him, to let him dictate my thoughts and feelings and desires. About how huge and frightening the world is when you have to make every decision for yourself.

Fox looks over at the little camera mounted on a tripod. ‘Can I help?’

I move over to sit on the chair I’ve set up. ‘You can press
record
.’

My name is Ruby Jane Galbraith, and I’m no Messiah.

I know you’re confused. I’m confused too. You feel like the earth has been ripped from beneath you, and you’re just falling through space with nothing to hold on to. But that’s not true. You can hold on to each other. And hold on to yourselves.

It’s a paradox, really. If Zosimon was telling you the truth, then I truly am the Scintilla, and you should believe every damn word I say. But if I’m not the Scintilla, then Zosimon was wrong, and if he was wrong about me, how do you know he wasn’t wrong about everything else?

Either way, you lose. We all do.

You want someone who has all the answers. Someone to guide you to freedom. Well, here it is, then. My guidance. My commandments. My first and last testament.

Live.

Go to a shop and buy a chocolate bar. Hand the money over to the cashier with a smile. Take your chocolate somewhere quiet and open the wrapper. Take the tiniest nibble from the corner of the bar. Inhale its aroma, let it melt on your tongue. Eat the whole thing slowly. Savour every bite.

Spend time outside and feel the wind in your hair. Find your family and tell them you love them. Try new things. Eat strange foods, read books, visit new places. Listen to people, but never stop listening to yourself. Ask questions. Don’t be afraid of contradictions – the world is complicated, you are complicated. Find the things that make you happy, and do them. Try to make others happy too, but never at the expense of your own wellbeing.

Live somewhere with a mirror. Look into it every day and learn about the person looking back at you. You will need to look after her, love her, nurture her. She may look fragile and delicate, but inside she is strong, made of flesh and bone and determination.

Zosimon wanted us to be boundless. He said that we needed to cast off the things that tethered us to the earth. He was wrong. Without anchors, we just drift away into nothing, like wisps of smoke. Let yourself be bound – to the people you love, to the things that make you happy, to sensation. If these bonds constrict you, let them go, and find more comfortable ones. The right anchors let you fly free when you wish to, but are always there when you return to ground.

Your body isn’t a cage or a prison. It’s who you are. Enjoy it. If you want to, you can share it with other people. Feed it. Care for it. Learn its likes and dislikes. Run as fast as you can. Learn to be still.

Forget about him, and forget about me. If you must worship, then worship knowingly. If any person, living or dead, claims to hold all the answers you seek, know he is a charlatan.

Life isn’t about self-deprivation, or purity, or immortality. It’s about love, and comfort, and music, and ducks on a pond and ice-cream on the beach. It’s about pain and grief and joy and sex and boredom and chocolate. Life is for living.

So go live.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Thanks as always to the magnificent Onions, especially Jodie Webster and Hilary Reynolds for their unsurpassed editorial wisdoms, and Susannah Chambers for early feedback and advice.

Many people read
The Boundless Sublime
as a work in progress and helped me make it better: Sarah Dollard, Justine Larbalestier, Scott Westerfeld, Carole Wilkinson, and John Wilkinson, to whom this book is dedicated.

Thanks to Michael Miller, for his unconditional love, for his brainstorming assistance, for co-parenting our beautiful son, and for creating the music for
Let’s Talk About Sects
, an online video series that documented my research for this book.

Thanks also to Alex Farrar for her guidance and legal expertise, to Stuart Mutzig for his paramedic knowledge, and Ev Hill for her police procedural mad skills and to Anna Ryan Punch for advice on orthorexia.

I was supported in the writing of this book by grants from the Australia Council and Creative Victoria. These grants are essential to the vitality and diversity of the arts in Australia, and I hope they can survive and continue to support Australian creators.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Lili Wilkinson was first published at age twelve in
Voice-works
magazine. After studying Creative Arts at Melbourne University and teaching English in Japan, Lili established
insideadog.com.au
(a books website for teen readers), the Inky Awards and the Inkys Creative Reading Prize at the Centre for Youth Literature, State Library of Victoria. She has a PhD in Creative Writing and lives in Melbourne with her husband, son, dog and three chickens.

liliwilkinson.com.au