Suddenly I heard stick-break, the cracking of wood, and someone appeared out of the fog.
She was an apparition walking between hazy columns of trees, her outline growing clearer as she walked. It seemed, for one small moment, that we were underwater. I saw her breath stream as she heaved a crooked weight of kindling; I saw her through the cloud of my own breath and held it, the better to see her.
She looked up and, seeing me watching her, stopped.
I exhaled.
The air hung with water. Held its own breath as we regarded one another.
The girl freed a hand from her bundle of sticks. I watched as she raised it, uncertain, then lifted my own palm.
‘I thought you were a ghost,’ she said. Her voice was low. Unsteady.
‘I thought you were too.’
‘You scared me.’ She hoisted the bundle of kindling onto her hip and approached me through the fog. ‘I’m Thea.’
I remembered myself. ‘Hanne.’
The mist between us thinned as she drew closer. Her face was round, smooth-cheeked, and I saw that her hair was white-blonde, her eyebrows fairer than her skin. It looked, not unpleasantly, as though she had been dusted with flour.
Against the silence of the forest, her footsteps upon the twigs and needles sounded impossibly loud.
‘You’re not, then?’ She continued walking until she was standing an arm’s length away. I could see that her eyelashes were translucent, surrounding eyes that were deeply blue. Fathomless blue, winter’s blue.
‘What?’ Water dripped from the tree above me and fell inside my collar. Trickled down my back.
She smiled. ‘A ghost.’
I noticed then that, while her front teeth were small and neat, those next to them stuck out at an angle. It gave her a hungry, slightly wolfish look.
‘No. I don’t think so. Unless I died in my sleep.’
‘Maybe both of us died in our sleep, and here we are, two ghosts. Telling each other we’re alive.’
I laughed. For a moment I wondered if there could be truth in what she said. The mist had thickened, and with her white hair it looked as though she might suddenly be absorbed into the cloud about us.
Pain licked across my hand. I had unthinkingly closed my palm across my blade.
Thea placed her load of kindling on the ground and picked up the knife I had dropped, fingers careful around the handle. ‘Have you hurt yourself?’
‘Not much.’
She peered at my palm, creased with blood. ‘You should probably go home and wash it. Dress it with a little honey.’ She smiled at me. ‘At least I know you’re telling the truth.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Ghosts don’t bleed.’ She stooped to bundle up her sticks again.
‘How do I know you’re not a ghost?’ I asked.
‘You don’t.’ That smile again, lip catching on pointed tooth. ‘Pleased to have met you, Hanne. I hope your hand heals quickly.’
She walked on. I watched her disappear into the white.
The next time I saw her was at worship.
The elders of Kay had continued to hold services in the forest after the church was locked, although not every Sunday. Communion was only held on clouded nights, or, if it was clear, under a small sliver of moon. Attending families were asked to take different paths into the forest so as not to arouse suspicion. Hymns were sung through the nose.
On this night it was Papa’s turn, as an elder, to hold the lay service. The single lantern had already been lit and the men and women were standing in their separate groups. Mama pulled me with her into the cluster of waiting women, tight smile on her face, as my father cleared his throat, looking, like any disfigured man with a Bible in hand, rather unsettling. There was a low murmur and, while at first I thought it was the kind of muted approbation reserved for latecomers, I soon realised that the Eichenwalds were there amongst us, and that this was the reason for flutterings of interest. It had been many months since anyone had joined our dissenting group of worshippers.
As Papa commenced the prayer meeting – lamenting, as always, the absence of the persecuted pastor and comparing our congregation to the early Christians, facing down the Union Church as lion’s maw – Anna Maria turned around and nodded at me. Then she gently nudged the person standing next to her.
It was the girl from the forest.
Thea.
She wore a headdress in her mother’s fashion, but it was lazily done, and in the darkness I saw white hair escaping from its bindings. Thea looked over her shoulder and her eyes met mine. She held my gaze for a long moment, then, as my father began his sermon, turned back around.