“Are we dead?”
“Always so many questions, my Katharina.” He grinned, taking my hand and lacing our fingers together. “We’re free.”
“Heinrich, I’m sorry. If it wasn’t for me, none of this?—”
He shook his head. “Come, I have something for you.”
He led me between the trees. The orchard was quiet in the early morning, the kind of quiet that belongs only to places that have been tended and loved for a very long time. The grass was wet under my bare feet, perfectly cool between my toes. Somewhere above us a bird was making its small, repetitive call to the morning’s light.
“Where are we going?”
“You’ll see.”
I watched the back of his head, the way the early light caught the edge of his jaw when he turned slightly to check on me. He was so beautiful it made my heart squeeze, made the air around him shimmer until he was all that I saw.
Everything around me was thick and green, and the air was filled with the hum of insects and life. I pushed through broad, heavy leaves that caught the light and held it. I couldn’t see beyond the growth, but no part of me was afraid. I had him, and that was all that mattered. As if my body and mind had never even considered the concept of fear. I was comfortable and cared for and loved. Of that, I had no doubt.
The orchard grew denser ahead of us. The trees here were older, their trunks broader, bark rougher and darker—larger than any tree I had ever seen before. The hum grew stronger as the leaves overhead stirred, though there was no wind, and I understood, in the wordless way one understands things in dreams, that I had been here before.
Compelled by a memory I couldn’t quite reach, I moved ahead of him, now dragging him behind me.
I ran, and he ran with me. The hum of the forest rose to a deafening buzz, and my heart pounded in my chest, but we did not stop.
Not until the growth before us broke open and revealed what had been calling to me, calling to us both.
The tree before us was ancient in a way that made my life, and the life of everyone I knew, feel very small. Its roots broke the earth in great, slow waves. Branches overhead dropped back down like vines until they dug in deep to the dark soil, spreading like a temple in this unknowable place. Where the roots met the earth, small luminous flowers grew in impossible colors, colors I had no names for, colors that existed only here.
My head fell back as I tried to see the crown of the massive life before us. Heinrich stood with me, his fingers still laced with mine.
We stood for a long time without speaking. The branches moved in a slow dance, the way a sleeping creature breathes. As if the tree was not a tree at all, but a deity that had decided one day to take root.
And the fruit.
It hung heavy on every branch, and my eyes could not decide what it was. It shifted when I looked at it directly, blood red deepening to the softest blush peach, and then to the dark purple of the sky just before true night falls. It was every fruit and no fruit. It smelled of warm honey and sweetness that made the inside of my mouth water with wanting.
Then Heinrich spoke, and his voice was not only his.
“You found your way back.”
I turned to look at him. He was still Heinrich, but his edges had that quality again, that shimmer, and his eyes held flames far older than either of us.
I reached for him, cupping his face in my hands.
“Let him go.”
“Katharina, I cannot?—”
“You said you were made to serve me.” My voice was steady. The ease of it surprised me. “You said I had only to command you. So, I’m commanding you. Let Heinrich go and come out yourself. Stop hiding inside him, and let me see what you truly are.”
The silence that followed was absolute. Even the insects stopped. Then he leaned in, his nose nuzzling my cheek.
“I am afraid, Katharina. I am afraid of losing you—losing you both.”
“Be not afraid, my angel.”
His eyes widened. Then Heinrich closed his eyes, and when he opened them again, they were only his—dark and warm and suddenly confused—and he drew a sharp breath like a man surfacing from deep water. His knees buckled slightly and I caught him by the arm, steadying him, and he gripped me back hard.
“Katharina, what?—”
