Still, there were imperfections. There was a sadness about Klara, and Lucy was more than a little intimidated by it. The sadness was buried but existed in her every movement: the way she folded her hands; the way she pulled a lock of hair away from her face and hooked it over her ear; the way her eyes were drawn to the open spaces, as though in search of something familiar, or possibly something new, unknown. It existed in her silences. Lucy was surprised to discover how badly he wished to combat her sadness, to better it, to eliminate it. And if he accomplished this, what would there be to take its place?
Increasingly Klara withdrew, taking walks in the woods for an hour, two hours. Lucy felt an instinctive mistrust of these solitary outings. He asked her,
“Where do you go, when you go into the forest alone?”
“I go into the forest alone.”
“Why do you?”
“To be alone in the forest.”
“But why?”
“Because I want to be.” She looked at Lucy. “You don’t.”
“I don’t want to be any more alone than I already am,” Lucy admitted. He was not proud to say this, and neither was she proud for him.
One day he was buying vegetables at the marketplace when he saw Klara stepping through the crowd and away from the village. She wore a lonesome look on her face, and Lucy followed her. She moved toward the tree line, walking slowly but unhesitatingly; it seemed she had some destination in mind. Lucy might have called to her, but didn’t. When she slipped into the forest, he hurried after.
The sunlight was thinned and the wind dropped away. Klara came in and out of view, disappearing behind trees in the distance, then reappearing. Lucy felt ugly to be spying, and he was made anxious by the fact of it, but he couldn’t stop, and vowed to see it through. Klara entered a clearing, in the middle of which stood a lone tree, a squat and knotty oak, dead and leafless, its branches filled with ravens. As Klara came nearer, certain of the birds rustled, shaking their heads, unfolding and refolding their wings. She stood before the tree; Lucy thought she said some words to the ravens, but couldn’t be sure. When she continued on her way, Lucy resumed trailing her, giving the tree a wide berth, for there was something fearsome about it to him.
Klara walked on and on, and now she was standing before a river, roiling and risen high from snowmelt. When she took up her skirts to sit on the bank, Lucy crept closer, hiding behind a fallen snag, that he might steal a glance at her face and glean just what she was thinking of. The noise of the river was so expansive that it pushed through Lucy, vibrating in his chest. People think of a river as a body of running water, when in truth its physical properties are secondary to its sound.
Klara was watching the sleekly slipping surface of the river, and her face had gone cloudy. Soon she began to weep; she did this openly, frankly, and without shame. In watching this transpire there appeared in Lucy’s mind the knowledge that the life she and he were sharing was finite. Its rareness was its leading attribute, after all, and such a thing as this couldn’t be expected to carry on forever. A feeling of gratitude was born in him; and it was so powerful as to produce a sensation of lift. In a little while Klara dried her face and stood, walking back in the direction she’d come. Lucy ducked as she passed, and afterward sat alone for long minutes. Something went mute in his mind as he walked away from the river.
He was moving into the clearing when he stepped on a branch; it snapped crisply in the air and the ravens, as a body, burst skyward. This produced a noise so unexpectedly large, and so violently whole, that it seized his spirit in terror. It was as though some centered part of him had come loose, and it ached, and made him fretful.