Hans stood up a little straighter. ‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘I would like that.’ He stood for a few more excruciating moments before bowing and stepping backwards, away from the girls exchanging knowing expressions. Henriette gave Thea excited little nudges as she rose and allowed Hans to lead her away from the wedding, down towards the waterhole.
I could not move. I could feel my very being flicker, could feel myself dissipate into the weave of the blanket beneath me, the heat of the sunshine, the dappled shadow of the remaining sister gums behind me. I looked at my body; grass seeds were falling from my hair, my toes were crumbling into soil. My skin flowed with water, and I could feel the slight, white lines of mycelium creep around my knees. I was dissolving into the earth.
I stood, then. I ran after them. I wanted to feel force, needed to feel the hard slap of my feet hitting the ground, arms propelling myself forwards as though I were running from wildfire, as though I were running for my life. I wanted to run the distance of the world and never stop. I wanted distance and oblivion because this was too much, seeing the woman I loved, would bleed for, being drawn into a life I had no place in. How could I guard her at night if she had a husband? I could not sit there and watch him sleep beside her. I could not watch her serve him his dinner, pour his coffee. That would be true suffering, loving Thea as I did while another stepped through life with her. She would forget me. She would be taken up into that woman’s life and leave behind all things of her unformed self, all of me and what I was to her.
I stumbled to a stop just before I fell down the bank to the waterhole. I could feel the force of my movement still running up my heels, felt my ankles bleeding, saw the blood lifting off my skin into nothingness.
Hans and Thea stood by the water’s edge, staring at the reflection of the sky and canopy. Thea was absently pulling at the tops of reeds as Hans spoke to her, hands deep in his pockets.
‘You are a hardworking and respectable girl . . .’
Salt water rose in my throat, tidal through the marrow of my bones.
Hans smiled at Thea uncertainly. ‘The land here is good, but it isn’t mine. I am a man now. I would like to make my own life. And I will need someone to . . . Well, to manage a home. To . . .’ He cleared his throat and took off his hat. ‘Thea, I know . . .’ He faltered, tried again. ‘I know that there are suspicions against your mother. I know that there are some who would see your family lose their place in this congregation. Lose their allotment . . .’
Thea stiffened, lips parting in understanding. I could see she was thinking, see that there was a storm under her skin. I knew her; I knew what her stillness meant.
‘Thea, I will be good to you,’ he said softly, looking down at the water before them. ‘They would not send you away.’ He ran a hand through his hair. ‘My father is an elder. He . . .’ Hans sighed.
Thea glanced at Hans, eyes moving over his face.
‘We could be great friends,’ he added.
Thea scattered the seeds from the bulrushes into the air. They floated down and settled on the skin of the water. ‘Are you asking me to marry you, Hans?’
‘Have I made a fool of myself?’
‘No.’ Thea’s voice was so faint I wondered that Hans could hear her at all.
Hans broke into a smile. ‘You will?’
Thea hesitated.
I was breaking into pieces. I was being knifed apart. The sea was sweeping in.
Thea nodded.
Hans laughed and dropped his hat, snatching it up just before it rolled into the water. ‘We had best get back,’ he said, smiling broadly. ‘They will wonder where we’ve gone!’
‘In a moment. You go on ahead. I . . .’ Thea motioned that he should walk on without her.
‘Are you all right?’
‘Yes.’ Thea smiled at him and I thought that she had never been so beautiful. I was breaking.
Hans left reluctantly, turning and smiling at her and throwing his hat in the air before he rounded the bend and was gone from sight.
Alone, Thea’s smile vanished. I stared at her as she studied her shaking fingers. She was trying not to cry.
And then, as I reached for her, sought to hold her to me and find reassurance in her closeness, in the smell of her skin, Thea ran splashing into the water, skirts billowing out with air as she waded in. Her face disappeared below the surface and she emerged again, gasping, chest racked with sobs, wet hair slick across her forehead, surrounded by a distorted reflection of eucalyptus and reed.
I could not tell if she was crying from happiness or sorrow. My own heart was broken.
I walked. I walked away from the waterhole, up past the celebrations and onwards through the wheatfields. I walked until dusk fell, groping my way up the escarpment, away from the village, not knowing where I was going, following only an urgency to move, to flee. I stumbled through the bush beyond Heiligendorf until it was dark, and then I sank to the ground and curled into a ball. My suffering was so acute I felt that I was on the cusp of tearing, as though my skin would rend and my insides come blowing out like feathers. Thea does not love you as you love her, I told myself. Thea does not love you. She does not love you.
And yet, and yet.
Again and again I remembered Thea throwing her arms around me, her laughter making me feel the same as when I saw light glance off a body of water. The sun warm on our shoulders. Hands brown from summer, fingers entwined with my own. Her face before she bent to me in the forest.
She had kissed me.
A sudden memory of Thea in our berth, in the darkness, burned through me. Neither of us speaking, our heads so close together I could feel her breath upon my skin. Thea slowly sliding her finger across my cheek, then her tongue.
‘Salt.’
One word whispered, hot and held. In the morning I had woken with my heart racing, wondering if it had happened at all, unable to ask her, the thought of it knotting inside me so that I felt tight and bound and waiting.
Her hands briefly, wondrously upon my body in the darkness of the ship.
I felt betrayed and ashamed and unsure about everything. The thought of her wedded to Hans made me feel utterly forgotten.
Dawn came. I watched sunlight split the land from sky and then, in the corner of my eye, I saw a black creature emerge from behind a blue gum, something wet and feathered in its mouth.
Hans’s cat, I thought.
She stared at me, a growl wavering in the back of her throat, before vanishing into the bush.
The ocean rose in my mind. I thought of my bones in that vast coldness, and when the darkness came, I let it take me.
That was the first time I came up here. And now I am here again, waiting for an end.