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I see it.

I feel it as the cultivator carves the land. As we raze it to its roots, I don’t need sound. I need to move, and we do, across my farm and onto the next, Folk holding the line behind me.

I’ll follow you.

And he does, mirroring every turn I make, widening the strips of exposed earth, etching twin scars through the fields.

At the next pasture, we come to a closed gate, cattle packed by the hedge, bewildered by the smoke.

I jump down and set them free, the latch warm to my hands as the gate swings wide.

The cows stare at me with big bovine eyes. Then they break into a lumbering run, spilling through the opening and away from the advancing flames.

I climb back into my cab. Folk is already at the next gate.

It’s locked.

He drives through it anyway and we carve a path through that field and the next and the next, over and over until my existence is a blur of gates and orange skies. Of laboured breaths and scorched earth.

Fences disappear.

Hedges become shadows.

I become aware of the lights of other tractors. I see men beating gorse with fire-beaters as clods of dark earth fly behind me, and yet somehow, I know it’s not enough.

We need to push harder.

Sweat stings my eyes. I scrub a hand through the tacky mud and blood on my face.

Folk.

I check on him. He’s right behind me, alert in his seat, one hand gripping the wheel while the other wipes the windscreen.

I’ll follow you.

The words echo with startling clarity, forcing their way into my thoughts as we push on to the next gate. As we mow it down and blast through crops as tall as I am and the heat of the fire feels closer.

Because it is.

For the first time, my skin truly burns, and what we’re doing here, what I’m asking of my brother, hits home.

He chose to follow you.

And Oscar would have too, if I’d hung around long enough to let him.

Images of Aras and Ivy playing in my parents’ garden swamp me. At Folk’s wedding, when he married the love of his life. I thought that day had dragged because I’d been counting the hours until I could get back to work. But that’s not what it was.

I wasn’t bored, I was lonely, enduring every stretched minute and hour while everyone around me seemed to belong to somebody.

Until Oscar.

Until Aras and Oscar, and it finally dawns on me what I’m asking of myself.

I want what Folk has.

I want a family. I want Oscar to have that too, and I’m going to tell him when this nightmare is over.

You already told him you love him.