FLAMES OF THE FOREST
Voices in the garden, just beneath the sunroom window, wrenched Fable out of sleep. She rolled with an unwilling groan, finding herself sticky with sweat, with a heavy discharge at her groin. She didn’t want to get up – not now, not ever. She just couldn’t seem to escape the heavy lassitude of the last few days. A piquantly sweet odour pervading the sheets made Fable swipe between her thighs: gloopy, blood-streaked yellow jelly came up on her fingers.
Showtime.
Fable dressed in the only thing left to fit her: one of Grandmother Lois’s hideous floral dresses. Her faerie-tale green gown was a thousand years ago, another life entirely.
One she must summon forth now.
She slipped out of the garden gate and on towards the creek line; oversaturated green against the blue-black sky fast encroaching. Heat was a wall, pushing back. Her feet burned on the grass. She struggled to even draw breath.
Quickly now, quickly!
Fable guzzled cool air as forest shade fell blessedly upon her. To the bridge she went, hearkening for the river rush. Never had she seen Serpentine Creek so depleted.
Summerlinn, seen across the bridge, glowed vividly – the last vale of sunshine holding out against the storm.
‘Come,’ Fable whispered. ‘Come home.’
She smoothed the floral monstrosity over a bump much lower than the night before. She stared at her belly, past the mothballed flowers, allowing her eyes to lose focus. Slowly the vintage print unravelled, blurred into peridot lichen, morphed back to tiny waist and flat stomach, flowed to her feet, spread with iridescent sparkles.
When she looked up again, a spangled net of darkness had fallen over the bridge. A figure stood on the bridge, in a ring of lamplight, waiting.
She raised her own lamp, peering.
*
‘Oh it’s you!’ she said, taking a step onto the first sleeper.
Raff stopped halfway across the bridge. ‘Is the party over?’ He raised the copy of Faerie Falls in his hand. ‘I wanted to come back and see you – I just finished reading your book.’
She took another step.
‘It’s everything you said it would be.’
‘Not everything, Raff. There were a few pages omitted. Editorial decision – I still don’t see the sense in it. They were my best ones.’
‘Material for your next book?’
She advanced another sleeper; bolder now. ‘I hope so. But why did you want to see me?’ The buoyancy of her tone belied the tension of her throat.
Raff spoke with equally fragile lightness. ‘I think there’s something amiss with my copy.’ He placed the lantern at his feet and opened the first pages of Faerie Falls. ‘Here, on your dedication page – the one with the bonus handkerchief? Nice touch, by the way. But, unfortunately, my hanky has already been used.’
She’d traversed several sleepers as he spoke. They were only two apart.
He held up the cloth. ‘You see?’ Even in lantern glow, the hanky’s imperfection was apparent, embroidered R long since unravelled.
‘You were the only one who got a hanky, Raff.’
‘I was wondering about that.’
Fable stepped onto the final rung before him. She stooped to place her lantern on the bridge. His eyes followed her every move.
When she straightened again, there was a wobble in her chin and voice. ‘You’re wrong, though. It’s not used – just pre-loved.’
Her words hung in the shifting night air.
Raff grappled with his response. ‘And so . . . the dedication . . . was for . . . ?’
Fable contemplated her answer. Her dedication was still true, and it wasn’t. She understood this now. Faerie Falls had been for Mama and Raff equally – and the vital force sliding beneath them this very moment.
‘Yes,’ she said, ‘for you.’
‘But I thought it was just a schoolgirl crush,’ he said, shaking his head.
‘What part, exactly, didn’t you understand at Moria Falls?’
‘Adolescent passions are strong, but they rarely last. You were my kid sister’s age. It wasn’t the first time I’d seen that happen.’
‘When did you see?’
His eyes were gentle. ‘Your drawing, at Faerie Falls . . .’
Fable flushed but did not retreat.
‘I thought you’d outgrow it,’ he said, ‘if I gave you half a chance.’
She shook tears away.
‘I’m sorry I hurt you that night, Fable. It’s tormented me since.’
She kept her eyes from him, watching the dark sheen of water coursing beneath.
‘It felt like the lesser of two wrongs. For years I’d had you on a . . . pedestal. I tried to look out for you. I couldn’t take advantage of you, or expose you to hurt from my family.’
‘Yet you were willing to hurt me, all the same.’
Fable’s eyes fixed on the quickening rise and fall of his chest. Her own breath had long since shortened.
‘You must understand: for a long time, I thought myself a grown man infatuated with a girl.’
‘How long?’ she asked, holding him to the point.
‘You’d always had this sort of . . . poise. A quiet strength and depth to you, different to anyone else. Then the year Iris hit us, you hit me. But you were only sixteen, and it made me no different to anyone else. So, I tried to stay away from Noah. I couldn’t do that of all things, to you of all people.’
‘Because of the brotherly protectiveness,’ she said. There was the sting, still.
‘No. There hasn’t been anything brotherly in my heart of hearts – for a long time.’
Fable took one last step forward, to share his sleeper, trembling in his proximity, and under his ragged breath.
‘It was a lover’s protectiveness.’
She lifted eyes ashimmer. Raff’s hands rose to her elbows. He held her for a long, steadying moment, then up along her bare arms his hands slid, unbearably slowly, raising goosebumps in their wake. She drew a breath, lips parting, and he lifted her chin near to his.
‘It was because you’re Fable of the Glade.’
She gave a little sigh and his mouth flew down upon hers. Her arms sprang to his neck, as much to possess him as to stop herself from falling. His kiss opened her, entered her, and went deeper still.
Along her skin his lips moved, to her ear. ‘I was always waiting for you to grow up.’
She whimpered, and his mouth sought to cover the sound. Water rushed beneath their feet; eternal flow seeking ever a path of least resistance. One hand buried itself in her long tresses, the other slid to her lower back, pulling her firmly against him. Aching heat and moisture filled her groin. She moaned into his mouth, pressing nearer still, every curve lush against him. He groaned back, steadying her against the need threatening now to sweep them away.
She broke away. ‘Raff, we have to get off the bridge.’
Together they went – half dancing, half stumbling – across the sleepers. On solid ground he rounded on her again. Her breasts arched high against him, pressing; her hands slid under his shirt to clutch at his back, pulling. His lips burned along her neck, her décolletage. She threw back her head. ‘Please, Raff, please . . .’
‘Where?’ he gasped, capturing her face between his hands.
‘Where else?’ she said, enchanted.
Yes, where else could this night have led them, if not their starlit waterfall?
Raff’s lantern was already hidden in the cave, transforming the waterfall into a flowing stream of gold.
He was treading water below her, waiting. Fable stood on the jutting ledge, as the canopy undulated in the balmy breeze. Soon, the first ribbons of dawn would ripple across the starry night, and birdsong begin. She would not make it home before the world awakened.
Their gaze held across the Glade – across the Cathedral, the ruins, crowd, boat, bridge – for this asking now, and her assent. Moonshine and lamplight glimmered in long waves of rose. Fable bent to place the lantern at her feet. Shadows danced up around the high rock basin as she twisted to unzip herself. Her gown fell: a silken slide from curve to aching curve, into a shimmering green puddle at her feet.
His desire was a flame leaping across the water, skimming her hardening nipples, to flare, hot, in her belly. Wordlessly, she stepped out of her faerie ring and descended the stone staircase into the pool.
Raff waited in the deep. What was one minute more, or two?
She stroked out to meet him and face to face they circled, panting as though they’d swum the length of the valley just to find one another. Behind him, the flame-lit falls tumbled into inky darkness. They could not stay treading water here, not when the weight of wanting might sink them both.
Side by side, they paddled over to find foothold before the waterfall. Only there did he give hesitant pause, turning back to her. She smiled at the boyish diffidence casting their roles in a sudden reversal, erasing the years between them.
‘I’ll be gentle,’ he said, ‘but it still might—’
‘Nothing could hurt so much as waiting has.’
In a single, answering sweep she was cradled in his arms – cool and wet and hungering against him. She felt the shake in his grasp, and placed a steadying hand on his bare chest, over his thudding heart. ‘Don’t worry. It’ll be just like—’
‘Coming home,’ he finished, stepping through into the hidden chamber.
The rushing curtain of light closed behind them, and the glade was still.
The cascade absorbed the forest song, the dipping bats and dripping leaves, and Raff’s roar as he took Fable.
*
The long walk home, with her gown tucked up at her hips and hand cradled in his was, for the most part, silent; every footstep another too close to home. Her body was tender and soft – a mango in fullest summer bloom, sticky with sap. She stole glances at Raff in quiet, marvelling memory of his face, contorted with the pleasure of being inside her. So there was an expression she loved more than his smile, after all.
‘I’m coming home with you,’ Raff said, without preamble. ‘I should be there when you tell your family.’
She shrank to a stop. Concern creased his face at the sheer terror of hers.
‘I can’t, Raff. I don’t want to tell anyone! It’s just – too soon, and Sonnet will be . . . she’ll say . . . please don’t make me do that today!’
He gathered her to him. ‘It’s your secret to keep as long as you want. You let me know when you’re ready.’
She breathed in his scent. ‘I think I’d prefer to phone the news in from Brisbane, actually.’
He laughed. ‘Can you at least give me warning before you do, so I can be prepared for Sonnet to turn up on our doorstep?’
She drew back, searching his face. ‘Will you stay on in Noah then?’
‘I’m still on compassionate leave here until . . . Dad . . .’
She raised a hand to his cheek, and he held it there, closing his eyes.
‘I’ll help with the harvest, too,’ he said, voice rough, ‘and we’ll sort out the will and the rest of it. But after, I do have to go back to London, at least for a while. I’m in the middle of a few big projects. And you’ll be on your tour anyway, then working in Brisbane.’
‘I don’t want to go! I’m staying here with you! I don’t give two hoots about Brisbane.’
‘I do. You’re leaving today. No way I’m letting you abandon your dream for me.’
‘You are my dream, Raff.’
‘You’re going, Fable.’
He brought her hand to his lips, his breath a hot stone in her palm. She shivered as heated slickness flooded between her legs once more.
‘Again?’ she asked hopefully.
He laughed. ‘All day long, if it was up to me. I can’t get enough of you. But you have to go back before we cause alarm.’
She sulked. He grew serious. ‘Fable, I need you to understand, I will come back to Noah.’
‘But – London?’
‘Self-imposed exile doesn’t serve me anymore.’
‘What about your work?’
‘I might have to design mango tree houses – at least until we figure something else out together.’
She hid her face in his chest. He stroked tendrils away from her forehead. ‘But I need you to wait, once more. Is that too much to ask?’
Fable gave him no answer.
‘Just one more time, I promise.’
She flew across the field to a cottage stark cream in mid-morning sun. Cerulean eyes followed her journey home. Three times she turned back to the forest figure, only to be waved firmly on. Her watching sentinel did not himself turn away until she’d made it through her window, and had blown a kiss from the sill.
Fable’s gown fell in a leaf-strewn puddle at her bedside.
So, she would wait then . . .
*
Lamplight sputtered out, summer seared back. Stars receded under a blanket of furious charcoal. A tear struck her face, sliding forehead to chin. No, not a tear, but the first raindrop; warm as blood, solid as stone.
She tipped her face. The sky erupted.