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 signaled 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 color 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 farther 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 were 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.”