Thea lay back down after her mother left. I could tell she was listening, was stilling her body to better hear the world around her. She closed her eyes.
I lay down beside her. I placed my ear to her mouth, felt the fluttering of her breath against it.
‘Hanne,’ she said. Her voice around my name, gentle summons, undid me. I rested my head on her chest, filled my mouth with my balled-up shift and cried silently, feeling the soft reverberation of her beneath me saying over and over, ‘I miss you. I miss you.’
I slept with my hands in her hair. She woke in the night, once, and said my name again, and I answered her with her own. She smiled and I wondered if she had heard me. Our names, passing between us in breath.
The next morning rose gently over the ranges. When Thea and Anna Maria left the shelter, they noticed a small grey mound resting in a shallow hole in the dirt, a little charred on one side, and a pile of tubers lying beside their packs.
‘Oh goodness,’ Anna Maria said, picking up the ball. ‘Look, it’s burning somehow.’
Thea took it from her mother and blew on it. I saw a little smoke issue, a red flare of live ember. ‘It’s smouldering. Like incense. What is it? It’s too light to be wood.’
‘Some kind of fungus?’
Thea’s eyes travelled to the kindling scattered by Friedrich the night before. ‘They thought we could not light our fire.’
Mother and daughter shared a look.
Friedrich did not touch the tubers. He sat in front of the now-roaring fire, stiff from sleeping in the open. But he did not say anything when Anna Maria and Thea tried them, tentatively at first, and then with relish.
‘Are you sure you don’t want any, Papa?’ Thea asked, holding out the root. ‘It’s sweet. A little nutty.’
‘It’s good, Friedrich,’ Anna Maria said. ‘Not bitter at all.’
Friedrich shook his head. ‘I’ll have ship’s biscuit,’ he said.
‘Really?’ Anna Maria raised her eyebrows. ‘You’d rather eat from what little stores we have? Our preserves? When all we have is debt?’
Friedrich hesitated. I could see him bristle at Anna Maria’s words, but he could not deny the truth of the matter. He took a root and ate it quickly, eyes closed.
‘Good, isn’t it?’ Thea asked.
Friedrich swallowed.
‘Your daughter asked you a question,’ Anna Maria murmured.
Friedrich sighed. Then he lifted a hand and gently cupped Thea’s cheek. ‘It’s good,’ he said.
‘I didn’t hear that,’ Anna Maria interjected.
Friedrich ran at his wife. I braced myself for violence, closing my eyes, but I heard only a loud shriek of delight, and when I looked again I saw Friedrich had lifted Anna Maria in his arms, was spinning her in the clearing as Thea looked on, chewing and grinning.
‘Why did I marry you?’ Friedrich was shouting, swinging his wife so that she had to grip onto his shoulders. ‘Such a nag and harridan!’
Anna Maria threw her head back and laughed. ‘Because you love me,’ she said. ‘And you know I’m always right.’
From that night onwards, Thea spoke to me. Through the long and upward climb she whispered my name under her breath. Her voice tied me to her. I could not have walked away even if I had wanted to. During the day she stayed close to her parents. Even though there was a faint track to follow, the possibility of becoming lost hung over them on every misty morning, or whenever, in their fatigue, they imagined other tracks, other ways, and found themselves sliding down steep embankments, slippery with leaves. But at night, when Anna Maria and Friedrich fell asleep, Thea crawled out of their improvised shelter and walked from tree to tree, placing her hands on trunks glowing ghost-white in the dark, fingers tracing coarse bodies of bark. Only then, in her solitude, did she whisper my name into the night air.
‘Hanne.’
Saying my name as though she were calling me. As though she were not the moon and I the ocean, tidal with longing, ever turned to her.
‘Hanne . . .’ She paused. ‘I feel you like a knot in my throat.’
I placed my hand on top of hers, splayed my fingers between her knuckles.
‘Today there was a fire burning. I smelled the smoke first. There were ashes in the air. I climbed the rise and saw the plume, some flames beneath it. Papa thought it was a wildfire and became anxious – Pastor Flügel’s warnings and so on. “The breath of the Lord, like a stream of brimstone . . .” But it was a ring. The fire was burning inwards from all directions. Coming together upon itself. And when we had climbed the next rise and could see again, the fire was out.’