Is this what she does? I wondered.
‘Thea.’ Hans’s voice was husky. He was breathing quickly. ‘Who is here?’
From his shoulder I saw her look up.
She looked at me. She saw me. ‘Hanne,’ she said softly.
Hans turned and for one moment we regarded each other. For one brief moment he saw me and his eyes were wide and soft with recognition, and Thea smiled through her tears and brought her hands to her mouth. I felt my bones turning in the ocean, felt my mouth fill with sea water. Salt salt salt.
And then it passed. I was blanketed by the air, and I saw Hans search the darkness, heard the sob hook in Thea’s throat.
I knew they had seen me. Hans’s drowsiness was gone.
‘Was she . . .?’
Thea was looking for me. ‘She’s still here,’ she whispered. She sat down on their bed. ‘Hanne, stay.’
She was luminous. Pearl in the water. Moon in the night. Hans kneeled down before her.
‘What did you do?’ he whispered.
Thea’s eyes flicked to the open book on the table. ‘I called her here.’
Hans gazed up at her, full of wonder. ‘Is this a dream?’
I felt the sight of her quicken through him like wind over water. As it did me. As it always had.
Thea slowly shook her head.
I stepped forwards and placed a hand on Hans’s shoulder, and I felt his lust, so different from my lust, which was a deeper love, which was the ache of years, the weight of waiting.
Don’t, I thought. And then I did. The hunger of my heart led me.
It was as easy as slipping into water.
We kissed her. I thought I would die from the force of life I felt, from the softness of her mouth on ours, which was the same softness I had remembered, had thought of every day since I had first felt it. Then I felt her tongue against ours, and then her hands around our neck, fingers pulling us into fire. I felt the need of her for me. I knew that she felt me there beside him, with him. And I knew he felt me too: in the us of our body, I felt him accommodate me, felt him pull me with him in his desire, then felt him relinquish his self to me so that I might act on mine. We were in the forest again. The blanket desiccated beneath us into pine needles, the thatch peeled back to stars.
Thea pulled us back down onto the bed, she pulled us against her, and I felt the slow roll of her hips against us, and I gave myself over to feeling. She sat up to undress, her eyes closed, and we looked at her, the unfathomable hidden beauty of her, perfection of rib and breast and navel, of hip and thigh and neck. Rapture swept through us like a wave until we could not bear it. I could not bear my own desire for her. It was sharper than Hans’s. It carried a different sound.
Holy nail, to crucify me to such a cross.
And Hans closed his eyes, which were also my eyes, and I felt that I was in my own body, that she felt me as myself. We shed the clothes upon us and when I felt her skin against our own, I knew she felt me, was seeing me there with Hans, felt my warmth as she had imagined it. We ran our lips over her body, heard her breathing hard in our ear, felt her wet and sweet under our fingers, smelled sap, soil. We touched her again and again; we were inside her. My heart was yearning like a root ball for water, and she was tributary, she was river, and when she came, she called for me by name.
I woke later. I kept my eyes closed; I could not bear to feel myself away from her once more. But as I lay there, I felt Thea move next to us. I had not yet been thinned out of life, although I could feel it coming. I felt the darkness approach. I felt Hans sleeping and myself awake within him, Thea’s bare arm curved around our waist, her head resting on our shoulder. I felt the press of her lips against the ear that was not my ear but might have been.
I could not speak. But I kissed her hair, and I brought her fingers to our lips.
‘Don’t go,’ she whispered. She was half in sleep. ‘Don’t leave me. Not again.’
I did not know what to do. I could feel the pulling outwards from the intensity of life. But I wanted her to know I had been there, that they could both trust the memory of the night and find assurance that it had happened amidst its unreality.
As I felt again the gathering momentum of leaving, I placed Thea’s hand over the initials on her pillow cover. H and T, entwined. She opened her eyes and saw them there, and stared back at me, and she saw me. Hans was asleep in the bed next to her, his hand over hers, and I was standing beside the bed, and she knew I was there.
Her eyes found mine. ‘Don’t go,’ she whispered.
It was as much as I could do to walk three paces before I felt darkness close around me and was thrown up into it and knew no more.