The chambers of my unpumping heart filled with love and sea water.
Anna Maria raised her head, shifted her weight so that she was leaning on her elbow, studying her daughter. ‘Do you dream you wake, or do you wake?’
Thea paused. ‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean, are these dreams, or have you seen Hanne beside you?’
Thea hesitated and I could feel the question pass through her.
‘Perhaps you have a shadow.’ Anna Maria studied Thea, bending her head to look her in the eyes. ‘You know what I mean.’
Thea’s eyes were wide in the dark. I found her hand. Squeezed it.
‘I feel her everywhere,’ she whispered. ‘I feel her here.’
‘Hanne.’
Thea nodded.
‘Here.’
‘Yes.’
‘In this shelter with us, or in your heart?’
‘Both.’
‘And does it frighten you?’
Thea shook her head.
‘Well then,’ said Anna Maria, and she leaned back again, eyes fixed on Thea. ‘There have been a few times.’
‘What do you mean?’ Thea spoke in a whisper.
Anna Maria was silent. ‘Someone. A presence, but only when you are with me. At your shoulder. Once, when you were sick and sleeping, I looked at your hand and your knuckles were white, your hand pink, as though someone were squeezing it. I wondered then.’
There was a small smile on Thea’s face. ‘I dream she holds my hand.’
‘Perhaps it is not a dream.’
They both looked down to Thea’s hands, which I held still, my fingers tight around her own. I could not hold them tight enough. I squeezed them until my bones ached.
Anna Maria inhaled slowly. ‘Do you ever talk to her?’
Thea shook her head.
‘Maybe you should. But, Thea, it would not be wise to tell anyone of this. It would be an unkindness for Hanne’s family –’
‘Of course.’
‘– and it will raise suspicions. People will doubt your faith. You know what Magdalena says of me . . .’
Thea nodded.
‘You understand?’
‘Yes.’
‘But you should talk to her. You are not afraid?’
‘No. The thought that Hanne . . .’
Tears slid down my face. I leaned forwards and rested my forehead on our entwined fingers, kissed Thea’s knuckles. I was trembling.
Anna Maria’s eyes did not leave her daughter and I wondered if she guessed then, in that moment, what we had been to each other. I wondered if it filled her with fear or whether Anna Maria, who trailed her fingers in stranger rivers, accepted that there was little she understood, and that not understanding was no reason to be fearful. I have never met anyone who so willingly surrendered to mystery, to things beyond their knowing.
‘Well,’ Anna Maria said eventually, ‘I’d best go speak with your father.’
Thea caught her sleeve as she crawled towards the opening. ‘What do I say? To Hanne?’
‘Whatever is in your heart, Thea. The dead are drawn to the heart, wellspring of love that it is.’
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.’