A Shadow's Breath

by Nicole Hayes

  As she stepped outside into the brilliant sunshine, it seemed as though she could see the layers fly from her, like discarded clothes, her bare arms free to absorb the sun’s rays on her skin.

  It’s the heat she notices first.

  Tessa sits up unsteadily, feels in the darkness for a sense of where they are, what occupies the space around them. She peers out of the cave, into the murk, but can’t make out where sky meets ground. She runs her hand over the length of the cave entrance, such that it is. It’s deep enough that they’ll be safe from the flames, but will there be enough oxygen?

  The temperature is rising, the air closing in, and she can hear the distant roar of the fire. Or maybe it’s the wind.

  ‘I can’t see it,’ she whispers.

  ‘It’s near,’ Nick says.

  ‘We’ll be okay,’ she says, as much to herself as to him. She feels him move beside her. ‘Hold my hand?’

  They sit there together, waiting, listening to the rush of the wind and the sound of the fire drawing closer. While the impossible darkness grows impossibly darker.

  She’d slept on it first. Ignored Nick’s messages, her mum’s careful prodding, the tug in her chest that refused to let her sleep. But after she’d woken early, lying in bed as long as her restless heart would let her, she decided she couldn’t delay it any longer. She waited until she heard her mum leave, then headed out the door.

  Tessa stood on Nick’s front porch, sweating from the sticky bus ride and the effort to stifle her desire to simply flee. To avoid this conversation, avoid the inevitable hurt she would feel.

  ‘Hey.’

  Wordlessly, he stepped out of the house, and she thought he was going to block her entry, but instead he pulled her into his arms and held her long after she felt comfortable.

  ‘Please.’

  He let go, nodded. ‘Come in.’

  His room smelled like he did, both salty and sweet. They stood in the middle of it, the door closed behind him, neither seeming to know where to start.

  ‘You’re angry,’ he said finally.

  ‘So are you.’

  ‘I’m not going to Sydney.’

  ‘I don’t care about that,’ she said, even though she did.

  Nick flinched. ‘I just …’

  ‘What? What is it?’

  ‘I don’t know!’

  ‘Are you sure? Because I think you do.’

  ‘I don’t know what you want from me.’

  Tessa shook her head and sat down on his bed, let her legs dangle over, staring at the carpet on the floor. ‘Where is everyone?’

  ‘No idea where my brother is, but Mum and Dad are at work.’ He shrugged. ‘It’s Friday.’

  She nodded. How quickly school holidays allowed you to forget.

  He pushed his hand through his hair. ‘I worked late last night. Barely slept.’

  She felt a sharp twinge at this. Wanted to let it go. Wanted to forget everything and just move on. Or go backwards. But then she thought of all that effort her mum had made. Surely they could see what that meant?

  She tilted her chin, eyes blazing. ‘I’m sorry if you’re embarrassed. I know you didn’t want your parents to come over and meet my mum, but she tried really hard –’ Tessa’s voice caught, and a stifled sob crept out. ‘And I’m not going to feel ashamed of her again.’

  Until that moment, she hadn’t realised how true that was. Her mum had sat through an entire dinner with people, strangers some of them, cooking and hosting, offering them her home, watching Nick’s dad drink alcohol. She’d done things she’d not been able to do for years. And it had all been for Tessa.

  ‘I’m sorry, but that’s it,’ Tessa said firmly, standing up and heading for the door before she could change her mind.

  ‘No! Jesus, no.’ Nick stepped towards her then, his hand reaching for hers. ‘You’re wrong. I wasn’t embarrassed. I mean, I was – am – but not of you.’

  She shook him off, not trusting herself to resist him when she could feel the silk of his skin, the warm, engulfing strength of his hand.

  ‘My parents … They fight all the time. Dad … cheats.’ He folded his arms and faced her. ‘The “holiday” in Greece? He wasn’t away. It wasn’t business. He left.’ Nick eyed her evenly. ‘We’re pretty sure he was seeing someone else.’

  She leant against the door, hugging herself, torn between her own shame at misreading this, to relief that it wasn’t what she’d feared. Feeling worse because of this.

  ‘He probably still is. I think Mum and Dad are only together because I was doing Year Twelve.’ Nick’s tone is twisted and wry. ‘I haven’t told anyone. My brother can’t bear to be around them.’

  ‘I’m really sorry.’ How could that possibly be enough? She took his hand, but he pulled away. ‘There’s something else, isn’t there?’ she asked gently, no longer angry.

  He breathed in as though to brace himself, the words spilling out. ‘I’m not going to uni next year. Dad doesn’t know. I think Mum’s guessed. I didn’t know how to tell you.’

  Tessa felt the heat rise to her cheeks, dull pain deep inside her. ‘You feel sorry for me, don’t you? That’s why you didn’t tell me.’

  He shook his head, his hand on her arm. ‘No. Not pity. I … I want to do what we’d planned, but …’

  ‘So what then?’

  Nick levelled his gaze on her.

  She moved out of his grasp. ‘You’re going away. Aren’t you?’

  He nodded.

  ‘Greece?’

  ‘Europe. Greece. Asia. As many places as I can. I want to take time to decide what I want to do.’ He turned his hands over, showing his palms. ‘With Mum and Dad, everything that’s happening, the lies they’re telling each other, and us – it’s made me think. Life is … now. And it’s mine. I can’t live it for him or Mum.’ He closed his eyes. ‘Not even for you. Not yet.’

  She felt the force of that in her bones. ‘But your results. The offers are due any day.’

  ‘I’ll defer. People do it all the time.’

  The beginnings of panic gripped Tessa at the idea that he’d soon be gone. Now it wasn’t just a few hours’ drive away, but across oceans. She wouldn’t see him all year. Not until he came back.

  If he came back.

  ‘I have to do this.’ His voice barely a whisper. ‘I’m really sorry, Tess, but I have to.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘End of January.’

  ‘No.’ She heard the word catch in her throat and frowned, searching for the right words. The right thing. The temptation to feign cool, that neutral hard voice she’d hidden behind for so many years, the one that drove people away.

  He was watching her so carefully. This tall, strong boy – who had stolen her heart, who had ignored all the stories, braved her mum’s illness and the arsehole’s rage – looked brittle and lost.

  No. No more. She wouldn’t be one of the people pulling him in a different direction. ‘I mean, no, don’t be sorry. It’s okay.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘It really is. I really am.’ She smiled then, a little shaky. ‘You should go and you should have fun.’ Tears stung the backs of her eyes. She wiped them away before they could fall, and straightened. ‘I’m sad and I’ll miss you, but I’ll be okay.’

  ‘I’ll miss you too.’

  She believed him. Could feel it even now, the beginning of what they would lose.

  ‘We’ve got time, though. I’m not going yet,’ he said quietly, wiping at his eyes.

  ‘Yes. We’ve got time.’ Then she closed the space between them and, taking his face in her hands, stood on her toes to touch her lips to his. The salt of his tears, or maybe hers, stealing her breath, but soon she could feel the tension leave her body, the heat course through her, as she pressed herself against him, his body moulding to hers, their arms encircling each other, closer, tighter.

  Their kiss deepened, and she felt a sense of abandon. And she couldn’t imagine a better feeling on Earth. She wanted sudden
ly to just stay there with Nick and disappear into the pleasure of being together.

  ‘I love you,’ she whispered.

  He kissed her again, lingering, before pulling back, his eyes shining. Uncertainty there despite his kiss. ‘Are you sure?’

  She told herself she was going to be brave. ‘I do. I love you,’ she said again, louder this time. ‘And yes, I’m sure.’

  His thumb traced her lips. ‘I love you too.’

  She moved against him, feeling the length of his whole body react, until they were closer than they’d ever been, the lines of her melding with the lines of his body, time disappearing into the air around them.

  They sleep in stretches, dozing, watching as the smoke thickens for a time and then slowly recedes. The heat also begins to fade, and the close air brings with it some moisture, some bulk, that only hours before had seemed to vanish.

  Tessa eases herself from the cave floor, wincing as she feels a jolt in her ankle. ‘We need to get moving,’ she says to Nick, the sickly pallor of his skin contrasting with the dark of his hair.

  ‘Is it safe?’

  She would have laughed if she had the energy. ‘No. I don’t know. We’ll see.’

  ‘You’re the local,’ he says, arching an eyebrow.

  ‘Hardly.’ But she likes the sound of it more than she should.

  She finds a better vantage point nearby, just above the base of the rockslide, and can actually see beyond the smoky cloud. She can’t see the fire, or how far it is, but it seems to have turned. The sparse bush around them, while choked in smoke, isn’t charred or burnt. It’s essentially as it was when they first made their way into the cave.

  A part of Tessa is disappointed because fire would have meant rescuers. Though, in truth, she knows that a fire like that, in scrub as dry as kindling, would be almost impossible to escape. And sometimes, when the area is really remote, they just let them burn out. Let nature take its course.

  ‘I think we’re safe, for now,’ she says, gathering their stuff. ‘But we have to keep going.’ The idea as appalling as it is exhausting.

  ‘Yeah. I figured you’d say that.’

  ‘No one will find us here,’ she says.

  As they continue on their trek towards the bottom of the mountain and, if Tessa’s right, towards the road, she realises she hadn’t considered until now how stultifying, how paralysing fear can be. How it robs you of clarity and certainty and, sometimes, hope. How she’d lived with it for so many years that it had controlled her every move. Her mind travels briefly to her dad, when it had all started, those last few memories she’s not sure are real. The tremble in his hand. The wobbly smile that seemed only to surface when Tessa was in the room. The effort it took him to move his mouth unevenly, unconvincingly. She could see it was more than he could manage when she wasn’t in sight. The emptiness of that smile that no longer reached his eyes, as though the distance it had to travel from mouth to brow was too much. The weight of it like a thing pressing him down. Pressing all of them down. Except her mum, who had hung on and on, believing that he would get better. Refusing to accept it was over when it was. The way she’d disappeared in the months after, the grief consuming her so completely that, for a time, she wasn’t there at all. Drifting in and out of rooms, ghostlike. And then she’d opened the door to the arsehole, and Tessa was sure this thing, whatever it was, was lost.

  This thing she now knows is hope.

  Hope, she decides, as they near a large drop-off, is painful. Frightening. Cumbersome. But the absence of hope? That’s something far more terrible.

  The forest of boulders has given way to a more elaborate series of rocks laid out like an enormous staircase that stretches as far as Tessa can see. She hesitates at the edge, considering their options, when she senses a shift in the air. She looks up. The grey clouds that once nudged the sky have gathered and multiplied. They’re almost purple now, bruised and heavy.

  ‘Can you feel that?’ she says to Nick, a smile touching her lips.

  Tessa straightened her tank, tugging it so it hung loose over her shorts. Smiled at Nick, who was watching her from the bed, one hand behind his head, the other resting on his bare chest.

  ‘We could just stay here, you know.’ He smiled at her from under hooded eyes. ‘Just you and me.’

  ‘Tempting,’ she said, but then thought about Yuki. She’d made a promise. That meant something.

  Her phone beeped in her pocket and she stepped away, putting space between them. She swiped her phone, glancing up at him when she held it to her ear. He smiled, ran a hand through his hair. We’ll be okay, she decided. It will all be okay.

  ‘Hey, Yuke,’ she said, the warning beep of the phone battery sharp in her ear.

  ‘Have you packed yet?’

  ‘Yep,’ Tessa fibbed, thinking of the pile of clothes from her washing basket still in a mess on her bed, her denim shorts balled up on the floor since Casual Day. Still, it’s a beach house. Swimming. Hanging. She didn’t need much. A few T-shirts and a couple of pairs of shorts. Undies and bathers. A towel.

  ‘Yeah right.’

  ‘I have!’

  ‘We’re meeting at Lara’s – at two. Then we’ll head to the coast together. Convoy style.’

  ‘You told me already.’

  ‘We have to swing by the pub,’ Nick said, interrupting. ‘I left my phone.’

  Tessa nodded as Yuki said, ‘Just making sure.’

  ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

  ‘Nothing, love. Just be there, will you?’

  ‘I told you I would. We would.’ She smiled at Nick, a slow languorous smile, and she watched his chest rise and fall, his smoky eyes following her. ‘See you then. Now, go so I can finish packing.’

  ‘I knew it!’

  ‘Smartarse,’ Tessa said affectionately.

  When she hung up, Nick was beside her, running his fingers along her arm, kissing her bare shoulder by the strap of her tank top. Moved it the slightest bit and kissed her skin there.

  With difficulty, she pulled herself away. ‘Yuki will kill me if we’re late.’

  He grinned. ‘But you want me, don’t you?’

  She ran her hand along his arm, felt the curve of his bicep, the smooth silk of his skin. ‘Yes.’

  When he leant in to kiss her, his lips hovered just close enough to make her stand up on her toes, then he dropped a quick, chaste kiss on her cheek and said, ‘We’ll never get out of here if you keep that up.’

  She drew a ragged breath. ‘Come on, then.’

  ‘Wow. That’s a serious sky,’ Nick says.

  ‘How long have we got?’ Tessa asks, almost to the storm itself.

  The words have barely left her mouth before the sky lights up with a jagged bolt of lightning, splitting the clouds and crashing to Earth in a thunderous roar.

  ‘Jesus,’ she whispers. They stare at the sky, dumbstruck, and then realisation dawns.

  Tessa grabbed her backpack and began to shove clothes into it while Nick flipped idly through her sketchbook.

  ‘This is amazing, Tess.’

  She looked up, struggling with the buckle. ‘I hope they have an iron,’ she said, a little embarrassed by the sketch Nick was holding up. She pulled a shirt on over her tank, leaving it unbuttoned.

  ‘This is what I meant,’ he said, as though they were in the middle of a conversation, the sketchbook open to one of her more recent drawings of him.

  A thin outline, very loose. He was sitting on a chair facing backwards, his arms hanging over the seatback, his face turned away. She’d sketched it from memory, but wasn’t sure how it would work.

  ‘You’re incredible,’ he said, nodding at the picture. ‘This is just a sketch, right? An outline for something else.’ He shook his head, half smiling, half frowning. ‘But it’s me. So completely me and it’s not even finished.’ He laughed then. ‘Maybe it’s truer than I realised.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I mean, I’m not finished either,’ he said.
He pulled the sketchbook closer. ‘You can see things no one else can.’

  She clutched the backpack to her chest, feeling exposed. ‘I’m not sure I’ll add anything to it. Not every sketch is a blueprint for something else. Some are art in themselves.’ She took the sketchbook from him and slotted it back on her bookshelf. ‘Like this,’ she said, and kissed him full on the lips.

  He stopped her, though, before she could move away. His eyes searching hers. ‘This is what you should do. You get that, don’t you?’

  Tessa looked down. ‘I guess.’

  ‘So you’ll talk to Mum? To the school?’

  She pulled back, and he let go of her. ‘I will. I’ve got time.’

  ‘Except I don’t believe you.’

  A hot flush coloured her cheeks. ‘There’s a lot of stuff to consider.’

  ‘Like?’

  ‘I’m not sure art school is for me.’

  ‘Are you kidding?’

  She shrugged as if it were no big thing. ‘Or university, really. It’s not for everyone.’

  ‘But this work … You need to do something with it.’

  She frowned. ‘I’m not ready.’

  ‘For what?’

  For anything, she wanted to say. For the future. For a future. It had seemed so easy before: 1. Get out of Carrima; 2. Get to Melbourne; 3. Start again. It wasn’t really a plan, after all, she realised. And now, suddenly, a future had been presented to her, shiny and bright, and she had no idea what to do with it. ‘My art – it’s not meant to be for anyone else.’

  He shook his head, bemused. ‘You’re good, Tess. Very good. I just don’t understand.’

  ‘Understand what?’

  ‘What are you waiting for?’