‘Lisbet?’

She turns to see Eren’s eyes small with sleep, his hair mussed as a boy’s. Her heart lifts at the sight of him, the memory of his body so warm and precise against her, his hot breath in her ear.

‘Are you all right?’

‘Can you smell that?’ she asks. Eren sniffs the air, doglike.

‘Is the fire still going?’

‘No,’ says Lisbet, and makes to stand, her legs stiff and whole body aching. She will never again curse a bed however ill-stuffed.

Eren leaps up and is beside her, helping her carefully to her feet. He rubs her upper arms and she leans momentarily against him, his lips again on her forehead. Ulf barks twice, louder and more urgent.

Eren’s body tenses. ‘Can you hear that?’

Lisbet listens, drawing away from him slightly so her desire and his heartbeat don’t muddy her listening. Beyond Ulf, she can hear the forest shifting—

‘No birds,’ she says.

‘And that.’ Eren holds up a finger, his musician’s ear picking out a strand of sound that slowly comes to Lisbet, the crackling she heard earlier, but resolving now, becoming like water, the low rumble of an approaching wave.

‘Fire,’ says Eren. ‘Not far off.’

He grasps her hand, drags her towards the steps. ‘We have to go to the river.’

‘Eren,’ she says, her throat very dry. ‘Eren, it’s coming from the farm.’

She can hear it now her ears have latched onto the sound, knows it is coming from their land. When they reach the bottom of the steps, Ulf circles her once in a panic, then shoots toward home.

‘Ulf!’ she calls.

‘You go to the river. I’ll fetch the miller and the children.’

She starts to argue, but he pushes her bodily in the direction of the river. ‘I’ll meet you there.’

He takes off running, and though Lisbet knows she should obey him, instead she follows.

He is already out of sight. Soon she has no fear he will hear her, for all the sound is roaring, and hissing, fire swallowing and strengthening. She cannot run, not with her belly and her legs still aching, but she goes as fast as she can, and soon she is at the forest boundary.

There is no mistaking the heat. Lisbet is suddenly afraid, though she should have been always, should have been since she went with Eren to the clearing. She shouldn’t have believed him, shouldn’t have believed she could be free of the rot, of all she is. Even her mother’s sacrifice couldn’t save her, so why did she believe his words could?

Then there is smoke over her head, filling the gaps between the trees with blackness. Dread-filled she goes, until at last she sees it, not a wall of flame engulfing the trees and making them impassable, not even the farmhouse ablaze like a pyre—

The skeps. The skeps are small heaps of flame, contained each to each in precise, burning mounds. The smoke is sickening sweet. Bees are flying from them, little sparks, chaoses of light, and their buzzing rises to such a pitch it is all she can hear.