Devotion(28)

‘I know. I feel nervous.’

‘You’re trembling.’

‘I don’t know why.’

‘Here,’ Thea said. She bent and picked up two sticks which she placed on the ground nearby, one across the other. ‘This can be the altar.’

‘Is this blasphemous?’

‘No, we are building a church so that God may come amongst us and hear our prayer.’ She hesitated, glancing around us. ‘Hanne, what is singing to you?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Remember when you said the snow sounded holy? Let’s gather all the things here that sound hallowed. We’ll build our church from the music you can hear.’

I closed my eyes and listened. The wind was a ribbon of worship around the trees. ‘How do we gather the wind?’

‘We can raise our palms against it,’ Thea suggested.

I nodded. ‘The moss,’ I added. ‘The moss sounds sacred.’

‘Really?’

‘Yes. And the lichen. It sounds like a note in harmony with everything else.’

I watched as Thea picked up a stone covered with moss and set it next to the crossed sticks. ‘What should I do with the lichen?’ she asked.

‘Maybe we can hold some.’

‘What else should we do?’ she asked softly.

‘I think we should kneel here, with the sun on our heads,’ I said.

We kneeled, facing one another, the altar next to us. The ground was soft. I could smell resin and conifer. Thea passed me a scratching of lichen and I held it in my left palm and raised my right hand to the air. Bible of breath. Thea did the same.

We closed our eyes.

‘Dear God,’ said Thea. ‘We pray that you hear us.’

The trees creaked above us. A pine cone fell from a height.

‘We yearn for our freedom,’ I added. ‘We pray that we will not be parted from one another.’

‘Please, dear Lord, let us stay together. No matter what happens.’

I felt Thea take the lichen from my hand and thread her fingers through my own. Somewhere above the forest canopy came the cry of a goshawk. Pine needles shivered in the shadows. Roots pushed into deeper soils.

‘Please, dear God,’ I whispered. ‘May we be with each other always.’

‘Yes,’ breathed Thea. ‘We pray this in Jesus’s name. Amen.’

I opened my eyes and saw that Thea was no longer bending her head in prayer but was looking at me intently.

For one strange moment I felt that I was on the verge of something important and that, if she did not look away, something rare and precious would happen. Branches would suddenly, noiselessly erupt into flame. Birds would fall out of the sky. Milk would run down the trunks of trees.

She closed her eyes. ‘“And all things, whatsoever ye shall ask in prayer, believing, ye shall receive.”’


We walked to the river from the forest in silence, both of us lost in thought. My head ached; I felt as though days had passed since I had pushed past Thea’s front gate.

‘Do you think it will be enough?’ I asked her when we reached the bank.

‘Yes,’ Thea said.

‘When you know, you must come and tell me. I don’t know when I can visit again. I cannot bear to wait. I . . . I feel sick at the thought of it.’

‘I will leave you a sign . . .’ She cast about her, then picked up a smooth stone from the river’s edge. ‘This stone. On the sty gate, so you can see it from your bedroom window.’

‘If you are coming?’

‘Yes.’

‘And if . . .’ I paused. ‘If God will not allow us to remain together . . .’

Thea leaned towards me. ‘It won’t happen.’

‘But if it does?’

‘I’ll leave something else. I’ll tie my headscarf at the same place.’

I took the stone from her, felt the comfort of its weight. ‘And then I will know.’

We fell back into silence, passing the river stone back and forth between us.

‘You will come, won’t you? You will leave a sign telling me if we are to remain together? In this new place . . . this new life . . .’

Thea rested against me. I could feel her breath against my neck and felt rather than heard her response. ‘Yes.’


I could not fall asleep that night. My body took up my mind’s anxiety and I could not keep still, rolling in my blanket until my bedclothes were twisted, fingers worrying at a hole in the mattress until husks spilled out across the sheet. Hermine, perhaps sensing my restlessness, woke often, and when my mother came in to feed her, she placed a hand across my forehead and asked if I was unwell.

‘No,’ I said.

‘You feel warm.’

I leaned into her palm. Part of me wanted to confide in her, but I had the feeling that she already knew of my distress and did not entirely understand it.

‘You picked at your dinner.’

‘I wasn’t hungry.’

Mama sighed in the darkness over the sound of Hermine swallowing. ‘It is a great change,’ she said. ‘It is natural to be nervous about the new life that awaits us.’ She paused. ‘And the journey, too. So long.’

She pulled her hand away to adjust my sister and I lay down, my legs pressed against her warmth. When Hermine fell asleep and Mama carefully laid her in the crib, her hand sought out my forehead once more. I breathed in the smell of baby, of sleep and the caraway seeds that had studded our evening’s bread.