and a vague blue of the sky. ‘There is a place not far from here where we go and pick mushrooms in the autumn. Travellers don’t know about it. It’s pretty.’ Her eyes sparkled and in one moment I saw, really saw, that she had once been young. ‘I’ll tell you how to get there.’
After breakfast, we rolled up our sleeping bags and packed our things.
‘Just walk, about four miles straight through the forest from the Marianki junction,’ the woman said, standing by the entrance of the house. ‘You’ll know when you’ve arrived.’
‘Thank you. You’ve been very kind,’ I said.
She took my face in her solid waxy hands and kissed me drily on the cheek. ‘Come and see us on your way back. Have a good trip.’
In a nearby village we found a small truck going in the right direction. The driver was bringing a load of cherries up north, and the only space he had for us was in the back, in the mountains of fruit. We ate beyond hunger. Stuffing our faces, staining our hands, we spat the pits into the passing fields. The sky was infinite and light; it felt like we were flying through it. Almost every farm we passed had a stork’s nest on the roof, with the elegant creatures atop, resting or flying off to look for food after their long journey from Africa.
We drove without stopping. We passed people working their fields with their carts and horses, men and women and children with large wooden hoes. Wild flowers and high yellow fields met the blue sky, and then the land became flatter and the first cerkwie came into sight, the first Orthodox churches, black and small and mysterious with their bulbous domes. They signalled a different land, the beginning of the wild and unaccountable east, where kings used to hunt for bison and where the plains are infinite. The driver stopped at an almost invisible crossing, stuck his head through his window. ‘This is it, boys.’ We jumped off and found ourselves standing at the mouth of a pine forest.
‘Are you sure?’ I asked.
He nodded and wished us good luck, then drove off, leaving a cloud of dust behind. We looked at each other, hesitating.
‘Are we sure about this?’ I said, suddenly aware that it was just you and me again, nervous like on the first day I’d met you.
‘What else can we do?’ you said calmly, smiling. ‘Let’s go.’ You put your hand on my lower back and pushed me with you into the forest, sending a shock of warmth through my body.
There was a narrow path, just like the woman had said. We walked into the sea of pines. Inside it was cooler and darker than in the heat of the sun. Side by side we walked on a bed of dried needles the colour of cinnamon. The previous night floated on the surface of my mind like a buoy: the rain on the roof, the weight of your head on my shoulder. I tried to shake it off. You were wearing the same white linen shirt as the day before, dried overnight, cherry-stained, unbuttoned to reveal your collarbones, the dark halos of your nipples guessable beneath the fabric.
As the forest grew denser and thicker, the sky seemed further away and the sunlight barely reached us. But the small path, made by the feet of those who’d walked before us, was always there. You walked ahead swiftly and I followed. We didn’t speak, and you never turned around to check whether I had fallen behind, as if there was a thread attached between us.
‘They were nice, weren’t they?’ I said at one point to fill the silence, to cover my thoughts.
You nodded, without turning round. ‘Yes. They were.’
You seemed as deep in thought as I was. We walked on and the trees became less dense; the sun trickled through again. And not long after, in the distance, we could see the forest ending, something shimmering there. We quickened our steps, almost ran now. As we came to the last rows of trees we saw it: a clearing filled with a large brilliant lake, lined by high grasses like a secret. We moved closer, my knees weak with discovery. The water’s surface glistened in the afternoon light, a deep, calm blue. There was not a soul around. We walked to the edge and let our bags drop to the ground, looking across the lake, gleaming like a mirror hit by midday sun.