I am nearly finished. This will be the third morning I have seen the sun rise in the east. Here it comes. It rises so golden the world seems an altar to its glory. Here it comes.
My voice is held by the wind. Let me write my story on the air, and when it rains, let it pool upon the earth so that the valley may drink of it. Let this testament return to soil. Bones in the water. Voice on the land.
When I am gone, these things will remain.
My thoughts circled Thea, always.
But one evening as I lay on a slab of rock in stony high country, feeling the warmth of the day within it, my mind saw her face and my ears heard her voice in such a way that I sat up. I had spent so much time committing her to memory, and now memory unmade me. In my mind I saw again her lips, the curve of her chin, the sun on her eyelashes, fringing her gaze with light. The evening sky became the looming softness of pines.
‘Hanne.’
I heard her. My skin prickled.
‘Ersurgant mortui, et ad me veniunt.’ Her voice, again. I felt her leaning above me, eyes moving upon me, and when I reached into the dark to touch her face, I felt fire.
Thea, alight, my flame swimming in the dark. Calling me. Summoning me.
The warmth of the stone deepened and grew warmer, until it was so hot I had to stand.
‘Hanne!’ Her voice was there again, but this time it carried distance. Thea was calling me from some place far away. It was not in my mind, it was not imagined. I could hear my name thrown again and again into the air, miles away, but it reached me. I heard her.
I did not imagine it. It was not the work of a broken heart. She was calling me.
And so I left to find her.
I walked all night, following the sound of my name. I didn’t know where I was headed, only that I must keep going. Dawn rose red and violent; the sky was on fire. I was compelled. The day widened into a glory of sunlight. And then I heard children’s voices calling in German and, looking up, saw that I stood at the upper shelf of a valley at once strange and familiar to me.
It took me some moments to assure myself that I had returned to Heiligendorf. It had changed since I had left it, and the realisation was like a blow to the heart. I had not understood just how much time had passed; I had fallen out of pace with the steady footfall of the world.
The slopes surrounding the village had been cleared of remaining bushland in my time of absence, the wheat crops extended. As I walked down into the cluster of houses, I saw that most had been replaced or improved beyond recognition. Thatch was now straw, not kangaroo grass, and I could see none of that bronze grass anywhere, nor the yellow flowers of the yam daisies I remembered from that first summer. Every available space had been given over to farming and pasture for sheep and cattle. Houses had been built right to the road to allow more space for vegetable gardens; orchards were now in full blossom behind. All had outbuildings of silvered red gum slab with haylofts, horse tack and wagons, hand ploughs and harrows beneath. Piles of manure beside pig sties. There were squat chimneys on pitched roofs, barns made of sapling rail, outdoor bake ovens.
They have recreated Kay, I thought. All this way and they have disfigured the land back into Prussia.
The only marked difference came from the gum trees still dotting the settlement. Yet these were fewer than I remembered, and I found myself unsure of exactly where I was without their old, familiar bearings. Adding to my sense of disorientation were the animals everywhere, the noise of them loud and unrelenting. The milking cows were more than I could count, and as the children herded them past me, their voices sweet with laughter, I could hear a background chorus of triumphant crowing, goose gabble against the higher sweetness of singing magpies.
The afternoon was full of spring haze. Everything growing was young green but the song of the place was different. Muted, somehow. Only the red gums and the occasional untouched acacia chanted deeper, older notes. Then the sound of hammer on anvil rang out and spoiled it all.
‘Hanne.’
Her voice again. A sudden riptide of need dragged through me. Somewhere in this valley of rough gables and neat gardens was Thea. I said her name out loud and it was a prayer filling my body, already moving me closer to her.
The Pasches’ farm teemed with activity. I could see Hermann and Georg in the yard with Christian, the brothers now older than Hans had been at his wedding. They were strong, upright men, and I noticed Georg pause to speak to a woman I did not recognise but who seemed to be his wife. I watched her raise a hand as he left, then duck her head under the door to a lean-to.
I hesitated then. I had envisioned walking to that lean-to and find ing Thea there, stepping out of its shadow into the sunlight, but as I waited, only Georg’s wife emerged, a wailing newborn over her shoulder.