Angela and Chloe Wilson Cross into Clivilius

The crossing began at the Wilson family's brick house in Ashwood Close, on the northern edge of Singleton, nine days after Brett Wilson had left it in the early hours to take part in the raid on the Army's Q14 store. In the days between, Angela Wilson had kept her daughter, Chloe, home from school, answered two visits from Military Police investigators looking for her absent husband, and told her mother on the telephone that all was well. She had packed two suitcases each for herself and Chloe several days earlier and had unpacked and repacked them more than once.

Eli Smith arrived at the front door in the evening. He explained to Angela before anything else was done that the crossing ran one way, and that only the Guardians went back. She said that she understood. Chloe, who had been told only that her father was away for work, was given ten minutes to choose what else she could carry. She took a small hammer her father had given her, a photograph of herself and her friend Isla Fenwick in a half-built cubby house, and a stuffed koala.

Angela added her husband's box of chisels at the last moment, at his request. Before leaving she wrote a short letter to her parents and her sister, Emily, and left it on the kitchen bench. It said that she and Chloe were safe and with Brett, and that she was sorry. It explained nothing further. The house was left with its lights off and its contents in place, and neither of them said goodbye to anyone.

Eli opened his portal in the hallway. Angela and Chloe stepped through together and came out onto the open ground beside the Bixbus portals, among stacked stores and a few working settlers, with the light already going. Eli walked them along the track towards the Tent Community, where the fourteen tents from the raid now stood in rows, and left them there.

Brett was walking between the rows with a clipboard. He had known that his family would come but not on which day. Chloe saw him first and ran to him, and he lifted her off the ground. Angela stayed where she was, beside the suitcases. That night the three of them slept on cots in a shared tent, and the family's first weeks in Bixbus began with the question that sat between husband and wife unanswered.