Devotion(32)

Thea shrugged. ‘They were both snoring. They’re so tired from all the preparations. I fell asleep too. I would have slept through and forgotten to come, but I had a nightmare and woke up.’ She shivered. ‘It was awful.’

‘Tell me about it.’ I pointed at the ground. ‘Let’s sit down, shall we? It seems quite dry.’

We sank to the forest floor. The smell of resin rose over us.

‘I was in the ship,’ she said, ‘and it was on fire. I was burning in my bed. My hair was on fire. My nails were melting over my fingertips.’ Thea reached for a pine cone and began prising the seeds out. ‘There was screaming all around me, and I was unable to move or cry out. Ash was falling into my eyes.’

I could picture it. The sound of a ship splintering. Flames creeping along the beams. A bonfire upon a howl of water.

She threw the pine cone, watched it scuttle along the forest floor. ‘My last thought was, let me die before I drown. Then I woke. My heart was pounding. I had to pat the blankets to make sure they weren’t smouldering. Had to make certain I was not in the ship. Not dying.’

‘Where was I?’ I asked. The moon was so bright I could see the crease from her pillow against the side of her face. A slight pucker on the soft round of her cheek.

Thea gave me a long look. ‘I don’t want to say.’

‘Was I there?’

She nodded.

‘What was I doing?’

‘You were dead beside me.’

I lowered myself down onto the forest floor and lay on my back, staring up to where the highest branches of the pines tilted at the moon, where the stars cried out in all their pincered light. There was a moment of silence. I heard Thea lie down beside me.

‘I was so relieved when I woke,’ Thea whispered. ‘It felt as though I had been returned to life. It felt like a gift.’

‘It is a gift. Look, it’s so bright.’

‘I remembered then that you’d asked me to meet you here, and I could hardly believe it. One minute I was burning alive and you were lost to me, and the next I was awake and walking to meet you.’ Her voice was soft. ‘A reprieve.’

The smell of sap thickened. I imagined us caught up in amber.

‘I know I should be frightened by the dream, but I was just so happy to wake and know that I was alive. That you were alive.’

I turned my head so that I faced her. I could feel the heat of her arm against my own and it lifted the hairs upon my neck.

Thea laughed. ‘It was just a dream.’

We smiled at each other, then turned back to the sky, tattered with light.

‘Why did you want to come here?’ Thea whispered.

‘I wanted to say goodbye.’

‘To the forest?’

‘Mm.’

Thea sighed. I felt her head rest against my own and the forest seemed to shudder at the sweetness of it. The soil depressed beneath us. I imagined we might fall into a web of outstretched hands, outstretched roots, become part of the forest, sprout mushrooms and home ants. Bones becoming one long exhalation of earth.

‘I can’t quite believe we are leaving.’

‘We will never see this place again.’

Thea smelled of vinegar and smoke and her own skin. I leaned into her side and was surprised to feel my eyes quicken with tears.

Thea propped herself up on one elbow and looked down at me. Her face was in shadow but her pale hair, wound in a braided crown about her head, was lit with the moon.

‘You have a halo,’ I whispered.

Her stare was deep.

I felt my breath catch. ‘What is it?’

She kissed me, then.

Her mouth was warm and soft and sweet, and in the brief moment when her lips pressed against my own, my heart leaped with perfect understanding, perfect recognition. It melted with the heat of her, was sealed under a new covenant.

The forest was still. The trees guarded us.

Thea pulled away, eyes wide. Said nothing. She was trembling violently. I could hear her teeth chatter. It wasn’t cold.

Neither of us said anything.

Eventually I reached up and touched her shoulder and gently pulled her back down to the soil. She lay still beside me, staring into the canopy. If it weren’t for the rise and fall of her chest, the tremor of her body, she might have been dead.

We lay there for years. The moon waxed and waned over us, and our hair knitted into the forest floor. Our open palms grew skins of moss.

‘Goodbye, trees,’ I whispered finally, to say something. To say anything. ‘Goodbye, bark and moss and birds. Goodbye, Kay.’

Thea said nothing. She was a fire burning into my side.

‘Goodbye, moon. Goodbye, stars. We will remember you.’

‘Remember us.’ Thea’s voice was a rustle of leaves.

‘Yes. Remember us.’


I did not sleep that night. As each hour passed, I remembered and felt again the pressure of Thea’s mouth on mine, and the immediate answer of my own body. The yes, this, sweeping through me like breath, like water, like the spirit of God. And then, again and again, the remembrance of Thea’s expression of disbelief and something else. Hunger. Revelation.

I did not know what it meant and I was afraid to ask.

I thought of Thea’s dream. The burning flesh. Beams alight.

Let us burn together, I prayed. If that is what is coming, let us burn together.