CHAPTER NINE: Julian

It was just one of those stupid things that happened sometimes, a few wrong-headed decisions in a row and then the odds stacked up against you. If one went wrong, you were OK, two and you could probably handle it. But if all three went wrong, you had trouble on your hands.

Julian had finished the work in the garden, at least for the week, and yet he was still filled with the need to do. To write, yes, but also, to move, to work, to spend this energy that was churning inside him. There was a sort of nervous vibration under his skin, one that seemed mostly quelled when he was banging at the typewriter, making progress on his work, and when he was toiling with the earth, with fences and weeds and rocky soil, with mulch. When the muscles of his body finally had reached their limit of work, he could eat – late usually – write some more, and then around midnight or one he would find a brief moment of peace. He would sit on the balcony of the house, in the shadow of Mount Echo and drink Scotch and reflect. He spent hours there, most nights, just staring out into the darkness, watching the stars, watching the night, feeling the universe, his universe around him.

Sleep was a nuisance, a few fitful hours, and then he was up again, crashing words into the typewriter or moving earth from one place to another.

Maybe he could have relaxed if these Evan and his wife weren't here. But he didn't want to relax. He had never needed much sleep, and now it seemed two or three hours was as much as his body and mind would allow -- even at that it was only after great physical exertion to tire his muscles, with a long spell of quiet thinking to wind down. He wondered if it was his knowledge that was giving him such ability to keep going, such stamina. Wondered if such infinite knowledge might possess physical properties that changed the make-up of his body, giving him reserves of physical energy beyond the realm of normal human experience. The same force that had given his mind these new powers of comprehension. Maybe it was the understanding itself, his new agreement with God that impelled him to get to know kinetics and the raw stuff of the earth more intimately, not just in the abstract sense of his geology lectures and research. He would write about that later, perhaps tonight.

But first, he would get the old chainsaw working.

Behind the house and past the garden was a rocky, evergreen-needle-covered stand of birch, maple, spruce, poplar and the odd cherrywood tree. The forest was sparse, built as it was on the thin soil and organic matter that accumulated in the small valleys of the rock outcroppings, where water, dead leaves and animals collected, decayed, and over years provided the sustenance needed to keep the trees growing. Trees that themselves lost their leaves, their branches, and fell themselves to decay, providing nutrients that let a new crop grow.

The woods filled up quickly with weed-like growth – bushes and little saplings a few feet high, the tallest now ten or twelve feet. Every few years these had to be cleaned out to keep the trees healthy and the walking pleasant. It had always been Julian's job, and it needed clearing now. Or rather, maybe it didn't need clearing for any particular reason, except that his mother had always insisted it be done, and she was gone, along with his father, and now that he was finished with the garden, he could not stay still. Maybe it was a kind of celebration of his mother.

Julian found the chainsaw, and oiled it with a sort of reverence, using the same little dimpled oilcan that had been here for ten years at least, maybe twenty for all he could remember. He cleaned it with the same cloth made of an old tshirt, that might have been here back in the Cretaceous period; and filled the tank from the same red canister of gasoline that his mother bought before she died.

He tested the machine outside the little shed. It jumped in his hands and he felt the vibrations up his arm, the pleasant physical tonic that released the love in his heart. Amazing, he thought, how much this chainsaw meant to him. He found some work gloves, and a pair of protective goggles. He marched out to the back and attacked the brush with a sort of reckless abandon, the pleasure of destruction for the purpose of growth and health intoxicating. Chaos cleared and ordered, the way we humans tend to like things, a natural world wiped clean so that we could better shape it's evolution, so we could see and make the patterns. And also so that Julian could better see the rocks.

Funny, these things we do to show love, these far away things, symbolic actions that are meant to demonstrate love and affection. Cutting trees, doing the dishes, shoveling the walk: chores that can be code for the words and actions that families like the Hands, intellectual, reserved, have trouble expressing in more direct ways. As a boy, he was always surprised and made uncomfortable by the extravagant expressions of love between family members of his friends. The fathers who hugged their sons and said "I love you." The mothers who cuddled their teenaged boys and girls. The Hand family was not like that: he shook his father's hand and he did not remember ever hugging him, though there were pictures showing that it happened, when he was small. He suspected hugging his teenage or adult son never would have occurred to Cedric Hand, and really it hadn't occurred to Julian either when his father was alive. As if their family was from a different time, the Victorian era when such emotions were not displayed in public. Or at all. The fact of them was enough, Julian thought, the existence of such emotions was more important than their vocalization and demonstration, and for him, clearing out this little back wood area was one of his concrete expressions of love for his family, for this place, for his mother.

He tossed the cut trees into a pile, to be chopped into smaller pieces and burned in the old rusted oil drum for that had served this purpose just about every year for the past quarter century.

He finally turned to the big sickly maple, a tree that had been damaged in an ice storm some years before, and had never recovered. It should come down. He planned its fall, sawed out a wedge on one side, and then began sawing on the other side, testing once in while with a push, the palm of his hand on the flat tree. He had always found something so sexual about touching trees, especially big maples with their soft smooth bark, the hardness below, built perfectly for the human hand, the way a woman's athletic thigh was. He caressed the tree, with his eyes closed. Pushed a little harder. He heard a crack, and sawed some more. He put down the chainsaw. He pushed again with his hands, felt the motion, heard the loud cracking of success as he pressed harder into the tree with his shoulder. The tree came down, its branches and leaves slowing the fall through air. It landed with a loud thump, the earth shaking. He sawed off the branches, piled them with the smaller trees. He cut the tree into movable lengths, hauled them up beside the shed, cut them again, and set about splitting them with the axe.

Such honest work. His mother would be happy.

SUSO

He was halfway through his task when he made those three decisions. He had a wobbly piece of wood that wouldn't stand on the stump he was using as his cutting block. First, he decided not to smooth the end of the piece with the saw; next he steadied the piece of wood with his foot, and finally he decided against all the reaction in his body and mind, to swing the axe anyway.

Probably it was his very own second guessing that started the chain reaction: he swung the axe at the unstable piece of wood; instead of splitting, the log flew away from his steadying foot; the axe continued on its path, redirected by Newton's laws of mechanics, and the equations governing conservation of momentum, catching him on the inside of his right boot, just to the left of the laces. It cut though the leather.

He thought the worst, immediately, but he was surprisingly clinical: Oh, he said to himself. Have I just cut off my foot? Is it possible I will never walk again? Why didn't I saw the bottom off that piece of wood? This is going to hurt very badly, very soon. Even as I was swinging the axe I knew I made a mistake and now I've done it.

He felt the blood draining from his face, and thought for a moment he would faint. He put the axe down on the ground. The pain just hovered. He could feel the dullness of where the impact had been on those delicate bones. He was sure he was cut, he had felt a cut, pictured those little bones breaking. The leather was cut, and his foot would be too. The question was: how bad was the damage to the bones? It was the kind of pain that felt as if, any second, it would get much worse, unbearably worse, as if his foot was about to really explode into the sort of pain that one experiences only a few times in ones life. Shit, he thought. I'd better take a look at this.

Here, sit, let me take a look. She gently unlaced his boot, pulling gently.. He winced, but it hurt less than expected. I think it might be pretty bad, he said. I really got myself. I think I'll have to go to the hospital. I think there are some broken bones. It's really starting to hurt.

We'll see, she answered.

The axe had cut through the leather of his hiking boot, the cleft looking like a wound itself. She wore a v-necked T-shirt, and he could not avoid the view of her cleavage as she leaned forward over his foot. The edge of a white bra. He averted his eyes, looked out the window. Where is Dominique? He wondered. Why hasn't she come yet? He calculated: Evan and Annabel had been here four days now. Dominique had called five days ago? What day was it today? Thursday? Friday? He had no idea. He considered calling her. She would be worried of course, and now that he thought about it he was worried too. Why hadn't she called again? Or come? His foot was really throbbing. This might be a serious injury.

Annabel removed the boot completely, and he only winced, he did not scream. He realized that he was at once trying to convey to Annabel that the pain was excruciating, and that he was tolerating that excruciating pain with much manly stoicism. He wore woolen work socks, and as she turned his foot gently, he could see that the grey sock revealed a circular stain of red, disappointingly small in diameter.

You're cut, anyway, she said.

He winced again, sucked air in through his teeth. That doesn't look too bad, he said. And to Annabel, he said: Are you OK? He worried that the sight of his bloodied foot might be too gruesome for this young wife of his brother's.

I took first aid, she said. With the mission in Indonesia. I've seen worse than this. One of the guys was out walking, got hit by a car, and I was the first one there. It was pretty ugly. Just be glad you didn't get hit by a car.

Julian felt dizzy.

He was OK though, she said. Had to go back to America, but he was OK.

Well, Julian answered. You don't know what it looks like under that sock. He laughed a nervous little chuckle, as she manipulated his foot to remove the sock.

He wondered just how bad it would be, whether there would be broken bones, a need for surgery.

She slowly peeled off his sock.

It hurts, he said, Jesus.

Don't use the Lord's name in vain, she muttered.

She said it just loudly enough for him to hear, but it sounded like an automatic response, not really meant as a rebuke. For some reason he thought that was sweet. As if such an admonishment was completely instinctive – like bless you after a sneeze. She pursed her lips; she had that concerned look that women get on their faces when tending to wounded men. They were so serious, weren't they? So worried all the time. Yet she seemed at ease, and Julian realized this was the first time he had felt comfortable with Annabel since she and Evan had arrived. He still hadn't felt relaxed with Evan, and perhaps he should try to do something about that. It was awkward having a brother you didn't know, and not having any idea how to get closer, even if you wanted to. Yes. Yes he did want to, and yet here he was feeling comfortable for the first time not with Evan, but Evan's wife. Maybe she could help.

How does it look, he asked, leaning forward. Annabel had fetched a bowl with warm soapy water, a cloth, and some gauze and bandages ready to staunch any serious bleeding. She turned his foot gently in her hands, dabbed it with the cloth. It's just a scratch, she said. You are very lucky. You're going to have a bruise, but I think that's it.

He was struck by how ugly his foot was: pale, clammy, long bony toes, green veins, black hair. He was indeed very lucky, and he felt a little silly too, having made such a production over such an unimpressive wound.

She pressed around the laceration, on the tender bones of his foot. Asked him to wiggle his toes. Does that hurt? She asked.

Not really. I mean, not any more than it already did.

You don't need stitches, she said. And I don't think anything's broken. But you must have really whacked yourself. You cut right through your boot.

It seemed to Julian that she'd said that just to let him know that she didn't think any less of him, even though he'd been panicked over an injury that hardly even broke the skin. He appreciated the effort. She continued cleaning his foot.

Well, I think I'm through for the day, he said.

You going to write?

No…No, not today. He didn't feel like writing, which was strange. Was his drive disappearing?

Where is your wife? Annabel asked. Evan told me you're married.

Yes, that's right, he answered. Evan was out at meetings and wouldn't be back till later. It wasn't completely acknowledged in his mind, not completely out in the open, but it was there, somewhere at the back, hidden, under wraps, dangerous: certainty that she was drawn to him. The way she moved, the way she looked at him, the way she gently touched his foot. He did not want to let that fleeting …impression …grow to a fully formed thought. No no no, don’t be stupid. She's just taking care of your foot, that’s all. So he did not think those things, would not think those things, he took his gaze away from her body, a moving body just there in front of him, kneeling before him. He looked out the window at the mountain. He wondered why he hadn't thought of his own wife, of Dominique at all in the last few days. In the past, he was sure, he thought of her constantly, but now he could hardly picture her in his mind. Curly black hair, sharp eyes, that faint accent, but the rest of it, the real woman behind that vague image was a mystery to him now.

END

I used to go fishing with Evan, when he was a kid, he said, only half-aware that he was changing the subject. But Evan didn't like fishing much. He didn't want kill fish, he said he thought it was murder. I don’t know why I was so intent on taking him fishing. But one time I told him that the big fish ate the little fish, and since we'd be fishing for the big fish that meant it was morally OK to go fishing. Protecting the little fish. He didn't really believe me, but we went anyway.

Are those your fishing rods? she asked.

That one, Julian answered, pointing at the wall where a red Daiwa graphite rod with a Abu Garcia reel hung, that one was Evan's. The black one was mine. That's an old Mitchell reel. Dad's was … well I guess dad's is gone. Funny, he said, I wonder where it went?

And where, she asked again, is your wife?

In the city. She's at home in Montreal. She's letting me get some work done. And as he said these words, he felt a sort of shifting under him, and he strained to remember what had happened when they had talked last. It seemed so long ago, ages, and where indeed was she? Why hadn't she come yet? I'll probably call her tonight, he went on, but he knew he wouldn't. He didn't feel like calling Dominique. He'd never felt o far away from her.

What are you writing about on that old typewriter?

She was leaning forward, and he could see down her shirt again. No, Julian thought, I am misinterpreting friendliness. This is nothing more than friendliness.

Why had he not told them what he was writing? That was the question that he kept puzzling with as he felt Annabel's assured and firm fingers ministering to his wounds. Here they are, my brother and his wife, believers of the most strident nature, evangelicals. They had not really talked about it, but he saw the way they prayed. He knew why they were here. A twenty-five year old and his young wife, come to Canada to start a new Church singing the praises of God the Almighty. They would be interested in Julian's vision, and yet he didn't want to talk with them about it.

He told himself that he wanted to finish whatever he was writing first, but there was more. Maybe it was that Evan and Annabel would never understand, these mere believers, with their own definitions of what it was all about, these followers of rules, these indoctrinated humans who had been told, based on an old book and some preacher's interpretation of what they should believe, when in fact Julian knew. Julian was not following a script preached by some ignorant men with political agendas. He'd read about them, these Evangelicals, and seen them on television, and he had been baffled by them, had despised them, feared them, and ridiculed them like everyone had. Maybe that was it, maybe he feared a battle with these two, a battle he did not wish to engage in, a battle about the nature of God and faith that would take him from his real task: writing out his knowledge.

There was something else too, he thought, something about his relationship with Evan that made him cautious. How would Evan react if he found out? Poor Evan who was always so angry at the world, angry at Julian for reasons he could never quite figure out, except that everything in Evan's life was always someone else's fault. And here was Julian possessing intimate knowledge of the one thing that Evan now wanted – falsely, based on flawed belief – to build here, this project of theirs, their Church. How would Evan react to his brother saying to him, as he always did, You are wrong Evan. You are mistaken. You are wasting your time. I know the answer. I know that what you believe is not right, I can show you the way. As he had always tried to do, which is what Evan hated him for. Evan had never forgiven Julian for being right and successful, and now Julian was ready, once again, to show how terribly wrong Evan was.

It pained Julian to imagine what Evan would think when all the world was talking about Julian Hand who knew God, in ways that Evan and his pretty little wife never would. Maybe he should tell him now, tell Annabel now and get it over with…

He looked down at this girl kneeling before him, washing his feet – not with her hair, like Mary Magdalene, not with oil, but with sterile gauze and soapy water. She was very pretty wasn't she? She seemed to grow on him every day. He'd started to recognize little traits that reminded him of his dead sister Natasha: the way she chewed, the way she screwed up her mouth when she was thinking.

What would Annabel think about his book? Certainly she would react differently than Evan, but Julian didn't know anymore what to expect from Evan. He was an Evangelical Christian now, but he still had that chip, that distrust and anger, Julian could feel it. He could hear the defiance in the way he spoke when Julian was in the room, a defiance that revealed everything it was supposed to combat: that Evan was scared, unsure, uncertain.

No, Evan and Julian had too much history between them for Evan to understand what Julain had to tell him about God. But Annabel…

He had a headache and his foot was throbbing again.

I'm writing about God, he said. I had a vision of God.

Her response surprised him.

That's what I thought, she said. I could tell, felt it about you.

A new sock was on now, and though his foot still ached, the bandage, the attention, and the knowledge that it was not serious all coaxed the pain away.

She stood now, and said, I would like you to tell me about it sometime, when you are comfortable. And then she turned, saying she had more paperwork to do, and she disappeared into the basement.

I'm comfortable now, he wanted to call after her. I could tell you now.

But he said nothing.

At breakfast the next morning, they all sat around the table sipping at their coffee. They ate. Silence. Evan seemed angry, clanked his knife and fork on his plate. Julian wondered whether she told Evan about what he was writing. What was worse? Annabel knowing and Evan not knowing? Or Annabel telling Evan when Julian had not done so? Telling Annabel but not Evan was probably the worst thing he could have done.

Are you coming or not, Evan said sharply to Annabel.

No, she answered. I need to finish that paperwork.

Well I have to go to the bank, he answered as he stood. And the notary. And the real estate office. And we agreed that you are not planning to do anything major until we discuss it together with Pastor Dawes. No big purchases, right?

Yes, yes, Evan answered. Didn’t we just talk about all this? Didn't we spend a half-hour this morning, and all of last night talking about it? I will not do anything without getting the express permission of my wife. May I go to the bathroom now? I need to piss. May I piss?

Julian stood and took his breakfast dishes to the sink.

There she was, walking along the ridge. Did she know he was here in the woods, sitting on a rock taking a break? She must know, he had been making a racket with his chainsaw that would have been heard for miles. She walked carefully along the fingerlike protrusion of rock that pointed into the centre of the forest, waving mosquitoes away with her hand. He watched, and thought about calling out, but didn't.

Because it was dark in the shade, he supposed, because he was silent and motionless, she did not see him until she was upon him.

Oh, she said. Hello.

Hello.

She touched her hair. Hi. I was just… just going to go for a walk in the forest. I haven't been in here yet. Evan said he'd take me around, but we’ve been so busy. So I thought I would just you know see what it looked like myself.

Would you like a tour guide?

Where are you from? California, right. Well this rock here, this schist, is part of the Apalachian range, it comes all the way up from central Alabama, up through the States, to here and then it jumps over to Newfoundland, Scotland, parts of Scandinavia. Sweden? She asked, and he said, Yes, yes, you see the same rocks, exact same rocks in Sweden and Scotland, same composition, same minerals, same age. This is the stretch of rocks that proved plate tectonics. In Newfoundland, on one island they found hunks of three different continents, that was the puzzle piece that let us put it all together, made us sure that these massive chunks of rock that make up the continents, and the sea floor, actually move around the globe, they pull apart, like two ships floating away from each other, inching, year by year, millimeter by millimeter away. Who would have ever thought that was possible, that these things that were so close to each other, so solid, so big, could just pull away from each other like that. But year after year, millennium after millennium that's what happens, you look at the map one year and those plates are cozied up against one another, and then a couple of hundred millions of years later they're on other side of the planet. At the boundaries between the plates we can see what happens, we can measure the movement, the same speed as your fingernail grows, he was holding her hands now, he realized all of a sudden, but didn't stop, which is nothing year to year, he went on, just a fraction, tiny movements. But over time, over time that you and I can't even imagine those plates, the plates we build our houses on and our countries on move from one side of the world to another. And of course, he said, at the other end of the world they come together, just as slowly, but that's where the real mess is, not where they come apart, but where they come together, these huge slabs of rock, hard and melted, pushing into each other, and it’s a painfully slow build up of pressure and tension in the rocks, with occasional burst of release – Like the big tsunami, Annabel said, I knew people who were there, from my Church – Yes, Julian went on, tsunamis, earthquakes, some volcanoes, signs of stress when plates rub up against each other. The rock actually gets folded up like bed sheets. That's what the Rockies are, the Alps, and these mountains here, plates crushing up together, pushing rock up into the sky. When they push together everything changes, everything gets destroyed and remade, twisted and gnarled, and swirled around. And once mountains are made you'd think they stay the same, but nothing does, Annabel, that's the thing, nothing stays the same, not even mountains. These were big peaks once – you're from California; and she nodded and said, Yes I'm from California, I've been to Lake Tahoe, I've seen the big mountains -- And one day, he went on, the mountains in Tahoe will look like this, not the jagged rocky mass they are now, but soft round hills like these ones, worn down with hundreds and thousands of years of rain and wind and ice and gravity, and the slow work of entropy, the evening out of things, the spreading, the uniformity of chaos.

Nothing, not even a mountain, not the most jagged, highest mountain peak can withstand that force, Annabel, the forces of the universe, the outside world wears mountains down. And as mountains are coming down, there are other forces making new mountains, a roiling mass of heat and energy, undulating in the earth's core, hot and melted, a mass of heat and movement and melted metal and rock that pushes two plates together, pushes up to the surface, drives plates together, and there is nothing for them to do but go up up into the air, up to the heavens, towards the sky, together, two plates…

His voice was hoarse, he'd been whispering, he realized, and Annabel was leaning in towards him, her hand on his chest to hear, and he couldn't tell what that was in those eyes. Had he frightened her? Had he scared the girl with his long rambling talk and the wavering in his voice? He had almost frightened himself, the sound of him reciting this litany like a prayer, which it was in a sense, a prayer to explain his revelations, his understanding and he knew then that he had to keep writing, that it would be so difficult to explain this thing he had to tell the world. He laughed, and it echoed in the forest. She kept watching him. What's going on behind those eyes? He wondered.

She looked down at her feet. Science isn't everything, you know.

He wondered whether they were about to debate Creationist doctrine. Did she think the world began in seven days 5,800 years ago? But he felt nothing hostile from this quite beautiful, fresh-faced young woman beside him. She was staring off into the distance now, they were sitting side by side on his rock, where his first collection of stones still sat, all in a row, patient rocks that had watched the nights and days, waiting, waiting for their fate, for their next incarnation, thousands, millions of years from now, maybe even billions, for that time when they would get melted and crushed, rearranged, and reborn, and again, and again after that until the heat at the centre of the Earth, the energy that could be neither created nor destroyed, that molten core radiating the heat of so many nuclear reactions, finally fizzled out, and froze, eventually, solid, and the engine switched off, and the plates stopped moving, forever, and waited for the whole planet to begin the slow process of disintigration, answering the call of entropy, the pull of the chaotic average, that would spread little bits of frozen earth eventually around the whole expanding universe.

He was exhausted, and she was too he realized, but she was not scared of him, or not scared of what he was saying, not in the way he first thought she might be. There was something else that he recognized now in those eyes, that pull that he had felt yesterday, and he wondered now, what he would do about this situation, in front of these rocks, in the face of the next eleven or so billion years before all life on earth would disappear, the hundreds of billions of years before this planet would no longer exist. His head hurt, and his foot started throbbing again.

What should we do about this, Annabel said, matter of fact.

He was surprised to hear her voice in the forest, coming from somewhere nearby, yes coming from right beside him. He looked at her, focused again on those eyes of hers that contained more than he had ever expected, not least of which was the honesty and boldness to say what he was not even able to articulate fully in his own mind. He felt a stirring between his legs at those words, and realized suddenly that somehow or other all this surprising and frightening tension would need to be released.

I don't know, he said. I don’t know what we'll do.

What they did was predictable enough. They could not stop it, or rather they did not stop it, though they tried: they discussed it for as long as their words could protect them from the forces that were driving them together. And in the end the pressure was too much, and there on the bed of moss, where Julian had had his first ejaculation, he pressed himself into his brother's wife, slowly, feeling the Biblical sin and repetition of it, the Biblical weight of what he was doing, which made it more terrible and wonderful, and he could not recall a time when the feeling of sliding into a woman had been so wonderful.

Annabel, like most women he had slept with, peeled off her non-sexual self slowly before his eyes and revealed to him another woman, one he did not recognize. This new woman appeared only when the boundaries of their bodies touched and then joined, and they melded and melted and rocked together, heaving and pressing and rocking, yes rocking, the core of the earth slowly driving them to the tall lofty heights of mountains, mountains he had not felt for a long time, he realized, and he thought of everything at once. Of his wife Dominique, and the time she had made him bite her shoulders, and Liz Johnson the first time, those six quick strokes, six seconds that was over far too quickly; and that older woman, in New York, he could not remember her name, when he was twenty-one, with her high heels and lipstick, she would be younger than he was now, he realized, a lawyer with red nails who was the first woman he had slept with who screamed when she came, his first true female orgasm from intercourse, and he remembered that mix of sudden fear, intense excitement, and pride he had felt as the woman's body shuddered into his, how she had quickly transformed from woman, to beast, and back to woman again. He thought too of his brother, while he fucked Annabel, it was amazing that the human mind could drive so much through as he fucked this woman, he thought of his poor brother who could do nothing right, and of Dominique's abortion, one he supported with his mind, but not his heart or the pit of his stomach, and how they had worked to get through that hard time, and made it, she was a good woman, Dominique, he did love her, he loved her very much, more now, it seemed to him, more than ever as his hands pressed against Annabel's breasts, her nipples hard and astounding as only nipples can be, her hip bones, the inside of her thighs, these women and their bodies, each of them, each of them with their eyes closed in pleasure, lips pursed in their own peculiar way, they were something astounding to him, these women, even now, even as he thought of his own wife and her orgasms while he fucked his brother's wife, and he could feel her now, the speed of her breath, could feel her moving the way only she would move, the way only she could move, the signature of a woman, as unique and beautiful as her fingerprint, as a snowflake, could feel that moment approaching, watched her face now, she was biting her lip and her face was averted, her hands up behind his head, pulling at his hair, her blond hair, his brother's wife's blond hair, what am I doing fucking my brother's wife, so beautiful, sweating in the heat, the feel of the moss on his back, this moss-covered hollow in the rock, his rock, so perfect for two human bodies, never would have he imagined, and yet it made sense to him, sense that his rock, his universe, which had spoken to him, would provide this space for him and this young creature, this beautiful body to join like this like two plates, two plates pushed in motion by the heat and movement of the world, no more able to avoid the crash of their flesh than plates could avoid making mountains, and now a low moan, a secret moan came from her lips, a secret moan not for her husband, his brother Evan, and yet not even for him either, a moan that was Annabel's moan, that was between Annabel and the universe itself, between Annabel and her Creator, a moan that like all such moans was as deep and everlasting and ancient and final as the dark deep universe, as old as life, and her eyes tightened, and she leaned forward towards him, nails digging into his chest, and then it came, she came, she shuddered, her thighs, her stomach, her legs her back, and a long, not loud sigh came from her lips, from her throat, from deep within her, an sigh that was hers and not his, but it was enough to bring on his own shudder, his own tectonic shift, his own release, and as they shuddered together, once, twice, again, and again, he wondered how long it was since he had come last, it was more than weeks, months he realized, and finally she collapsed on top of him, and he breathed her hair and her smell, closed his eyes, and pictured again her breasts shuddering, and the way his wife laughed, and then she rolled over, and in the softness of the moss they lay there, and he pulled this girl to him, to his body and to his warmth, put his arm around her.

She stroked his face, What have we done, she asked, what have we done? She said it not with regret nor anger, but said it with quiet wonder, as if she really did want to know, what, exactly, they had done, mysterious and beautiful, and dangerous and terrible all at once.

He had not slept more than three hours a night since he had been out here, and though he hadn't felt the slightest fatigue since he'd arrived some time after the big bang, he felt it now coming on, days of tired, a year of tired, maybe a lifetime, perhaps this was the fatigue of several billion years of existence of the universe, and he felt it coming to him, pulled to him as Annabel had been pulled to the inescapable centre that was Julian Hand. Julian Hand who had spoken to God. She was snoring lightly on his chest, and then he too fell into the deep dark depth, holding the fact of what they had done in his mind, as it was, with nothing more along with it, just the fact.