Wiping her hands, Mama went to the door and opened it. I heard low voices, saw a deep red headscarf against the lane beyond and the heavy sky, then Mama called for me.
Thea stood on the flagstone bundled against the cold, clutching the basket that had held the gift of cheese, eggs and sausage we had delivered to her mother.
‘Hello,’ she said. ‘I’ve come to return this.’
‘You must be Fr?ulein Eichenwald,’ Mama said. I noticed she was staring at Thea’s light hair. Next to the unquestionable beauty of my mother, most other women seemed dull, but in that moment I thought Thea the more striking of the two. Her asymmetry was made starker, her strangeness more rare, more precious.
Thea’s smile faded a little. ‘May I come in?’ she asked. ‘Es ist kalt.’
Mama remembered herself then and held the door open, as Thea stamped the mud from her work clogs and stepped inside, pushing the scarf off her head. We smiled at each other, unsure of what to say next. I felt a blush creeping up my jawline.
My mother peered inside the basket as Thea handed it to her. ‘What’s this?’ She removed a small clay pot.
‘It’s a gift from my mother,’ Thea explained. ‘For Hanne’s cut.’
‘What cut?’ Mama glanced at me, brow furrowed.
I brought my hands to my face to cool the heat of my cheeks. ‘I nicked myself with the knife when I was mushrooming.’
‘Where?’
‘On my palm.’
‘Show me.’
I held out my hand and Mama examined the slight wound.
‘You didn’t tell me you’d hurt yourself.’
‘It doesn’t hurt.’
‘It’s deep. You could get an infection.’
‘The salve will help,’ Thea suggested.
Mama nodded, letting my hand drop to my side. ‘So you two have met?’ She set the pot on the table a little too hard. ‘Hanne, why don’t you offer Thea something to eat?’
‘Oh, I only came to return the basket. But thank you.’
‘Why don’t you walk Thea back home then, Hanne?’
Thea looked at me. Smiled. Again, the teeth barbed on the lips. Red headscarf on that strange hair. Blood in the snow.
She waited as I wrapped myself in a shawl against the weather, then followed me through the door, nodding to my mother on the way out.
‘Give my thanks to Frau Eichenwald,’ Mama said. Her eyes found mine. Be friendly, she mouthed, and then shut the door firmly.
The winter air outside was a whip-crack.
‘I’m sorry.’
Thea glanced across at me. ‘What for?’
‘I don’t know. Saying the wrong thing.’
‘You didn’t say anything at all.’ Thea reached out and took my wrist, gently unfolding my clenched fingers. Her hands were cool, firm. ‘How is your cut?’
‘Better, thank you.’
‘Your mother seemed cross about it.’
I eased my wrist from her fingers. ‘She is cross about everything I do.’
Thea raised a pale eyebrow. ‘Why? What do you do?’
‘I wish I knew.’
She nodded, wrinkling her nose.
We walked up the lane. The sky above us was a low, thick yellow, the horizon a bruise. I could see my father and brother in the field beyond the orchard, repairing a broken fence.
Thea followed my line of sight. ‘Who is that?’ she asked.
‘My father and my brother,’ I replied. ‘My twin.’
‘Oh, do you look the same?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘Everyone thinks I’m his older sister. Because I’m tall.’
Thea nodded. ‘You are,’ she said, but there was no judgement in her voice. She agreed simply because it was true.
I felt my spine uncurl.
‘You have a lovely voice, you know,’ she said suddenly. ‘I mean, I heard you sing at service. It is very clear and true. You’ve been blessed with a gift.’
I stared at her. No one had ever praised my voice before. No one had ever praised me before; it was not my parents’ habit to praise anyone or anything but the Lord.
‘I love to sing,’ I said.
‘Yes, so do I,’ Thea replied. ‘Music is freedom, don’t you think? Sometimes, when I sing, I feel my soul lift up out of myself. Do you ever feel like that? Mama once told me that when we sing together, our hearts beat in time.’ Thea laughed abruptly and wiped her nose on her sleeve.
I slowed in the lane. I knew exactly what she meant. ‘Do you . . .’ I hesitated. I wanted to tell her how even the dourest hymns lifted me out of my inwardness, relieved me of the sense of weight I felt, the burden of being.
‘What?’ Thea stopped walking and faced me. She brought her fingertips to her mouth and breathed on them. She wasn’t wearing mittens.
‘Can I ask you a question?’
‘Of course.’
‘Do you ever hear sounds?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Trees and . . . and things,’ I stuttered.
Thea frowned. ‘Blowing in the wind?’
‘No. Well, yes, that, but also voices coming from them. Like singing.’
I waited for Thea to suppress a laugh. But instead she took a step towards me. ‘Human voices?’ she asked quietly.
‘No. No, it’s not like that. Not like human voices. It’s a little like when someone is whispering and you can’t make out the words, but you feel that if you leaned in, it would suddenly make sense.’
‘Noises.’
‘Not noises. Sounds. Like singing. Crying, sometimes. Music.’ The words rushed from me then, pouring out as though from a wellspring. I told Thea that I could hear the high pitch of swarming sunlight in an open field. That the sound of snow falling was like chimes. I told her that I hated the silence of the house in the daytime, that it felt dead, that the only living thing seemed to be the fire in its grate. I told her that I loved to be outside, because that was where the world sang to me.
‘You think I’m mad,’ I said, when Thea had not spoken for some moments. She was looking at me intently. ‘I’m not mad.’
‘Have you told anyone else you can hear these things? Have you always heard them?’
‘Always,’ I said. ‘I thought it was normal. Matthias, my brother, he knows. He believes me. My mother thinks I’m making it up.’
Thea nodded. We walked on, lifting our scarves up over our mouths against the cold.
‘Maybe that is why you sing so well,’ Thea said eventually, pulling the wool from her face. ‘You hear things other people can’t.’
‘Please don’t say anything to anyone. I don’t know why I brought it up.’
‘Can I tell my mother?’ Thea asked. ‘She hears things too, in her way.’
I nodded, relieved at her acceptance of me, of my oddity.
‘I know why you brought it up,’ Thea added.
I waited for her to go on but she said nothing more, only slid her arm around my elbow and pulled me into her side. I was surprised by her warmth.
We walked in silence. It grew colder still, and as we left the lane and crested the rise towards the forest, walking through the fallow field, it began to snow. Heavy flakes caused the meadow around us to disappear. The thick air whirred; it was impossibly beautiful. The pines at the edge of the forest gathered a hem of white before our eyes.
Thea stopped and tilted her head to the sky. I watched as she let the snow light upon her cheeks and chin. It dissolved in the heat of her skin.
‘It feels like a blessing,’ she said, eyes closed. ‘What does it sound like, Hanne?’