No parachuting, luminous fall. No skirts swirled up around me, no motes of light. Just the relentlessness of gravity; a steep, sickening plunge. And luck—the bushes skirting the cabin had doubled themselves since their original planting, invasive honeysuckle multiplying faster than it could be rooted up, opening its arms to us, heavy with snow. A popping lurch in my ankle upon landing was soon overwhelmed by the cold.
I LAY ON my back, broken branches a halo around the leaden sky. My tailbone hurt. A tiny bead of blood welled on my wrist. Soapy snowflakes hovered in the air. I rose to my knees, looking for Clara, my leggings cold and wet and clinging. A nearby tree had spouted icicles of pinesap; its trunk seemed to be weeping.
And then there she was in the bushes in front of me, her eyes open, her lashes starry from the wet, her cheeks a phosphorescent pink. She was looking up at the extraordinary slate of the afternoon sky. I was bent over her, and she was looking up at me.
NEVER HAD I been so in love and never had I been so afraid and never had I been so aware that Clara and I were alive, and that we were alone.