Alex’s face melted into a real smile as he hugged the man, it was clear that this was someone he cared about. The man was tall, taller even than Alex, who himself was at least six foot one. His dark skin was smooth and glowing with health, and his muscles taunt with strength.
She watched their easy interaction, the way they welcomed each other with careless, practiced movements and her heart clenched. Loneliness crashed into her with a suddenness that sent the air rushing out her lungs.
She missed it.
She missed the closeness with another human being, the bonds of love and friendship that could only be built on foundations time and trust.
She missed Jamie.
She stood quietly.
Apart.
Waiting for one of them to remember her existence. Eventually Alex turned to her, “Allyra, this is Mandla.”
Mandla let out another loud exclamation and tore towards her with the same exuberance he’d shown for Alex. She flinched as he got closer – there was a lacking in his gaze – an absence of knowing. The childishness in his eyes didn’t match the well-formed, adult body. It was as if one had grown while the other withered away. He grabbed her face roughly, searching her eyes and she gamely tried to stand her ground.
“Gently.” Alex admonished as he might to a child.
Mandla let her go and turned to Alex, “The grey lady?” he asked excitedly, as Alex nodded – reluctantly, wearily.
*
Much later, when Mandla was sleeping, gently snoring within the depths of the cave, Alex disappeared up Sanctuary Hill. Allyra hesitated, but eventually followed him up.
Alex was sitting at the top, staring out over the open vista and she was suddenly struck by how tired he appeared. She dropped down onto the springy grass next to him and they sat together quietly, though, for the first time in days, the silence was companionable rather than tense and awkward.
“How?” She asked.
He didn’t ask her what she was referring to, “It’s easy to loose your mind in the Between. The lack of time, the knowledge that you can’t just go back – it plays on the mind and some people eventually lose themselves.”
He paused and she felt echoes of regret and sorrow. His eyes closed wearily and there was something dreadfully sad about him, this boy sitting on a hill surrounded by nothing, in a world that didn’t really exist. She itched to touch him, to ghost her fingers of the beautiful lines of his face, to tell him it was all going to be all right.
She didn’t.
She twisted her fingers into a fist and clenched her hands to her side. He was a complicated, unknowable creature, one she was a little afraid of.
She was afraid of his pain, of his past. She wasn’t sure she wanted to be tangled in it and most of all, she didn’t know if it was going to be all right, because it might never be all right again.
It was obvious, for some reason, he felt responsible for Mandla’s situation. She was too afraid to ask him why.
“It happened slowly with Mandla. I think it might have been easier if he lost his mind quickly, if I just woke up one day to find him gone. Instead, he lost his mind in pieces, breaking away bit by bit until there was nothing left.”
Allyra realized that this was what he saved her from – the loss of herself, becoming nothing more than an empty shell. “I’m sorry.” She said quietly.
He didn’t respond for a long time, lost in his own remorse. “Why were you at the tree, Allyra?” He asked, abruptly changing the subject.
She wavered, “It’s a long story.”
He smiled wryly and using the same sentiment she had used on him previously, “I don’t have anywhere else to be.”
She nodded, but struggled to find the right words. She’d never been much of a storyteller. “I guess the correct place to start is with my father. He was the only family I ever knew. My mother died during childbirth and there was never any extended family, so he was my whole life – the center of my universe. He wasn’t just my father, he was my best friend, my confidant. I would’ve said that I knew everything about him and he knew everything about me.”
She turned to Alex and flashed him a quick smile, “I guess what I’m trying to say – in a round about way – is I loved him – dearly. And then on the twenty-first of September, when I was fourteen, he died.” She said it quickly, trying to gloss over it because, despite all the time that had passed, it still hurt.
“He was on a trip, a yearly holiday he used to take, the only one that I was never invited to. That particular year, he’d taken Rob with him. Wait – I guess I should explain who Rob is.”
She glanced at Alex, with a wry, apologetic smile, “I’m sorry – I’ve never told this story before and it’s all a little jumbled.”
“It’s fine – I’ll ask if I don’t understand something. You were about to explain who Rob was.” He prompted.
“Right – well Rob and his family were our closest neighbors. We lived in a rather out of the way place – I think my father enjoyed the solitude – so the Thiessens were pretty much our only neighbors and our closest friends too. My father was a vet and when I was young, and he had to rush off to some vet-related emergency, he would just drop me off at the Thiessen’s on his way out. There was Juliet and Werner Thiessen and their three children. Rob was the eldest, about two years older than me and then there were the twins, Jamie and Emma who were only a few months older than me. My father and Juliet had
