They move through the dark house, Heinrich held tight to Nethe’s chest. Lisbet eases the outer door open, and they see Fluh running joyously in the gathering rain. Beyond her, Lisbet spies the absence of the skeps, levelled and planted. She steps barefoot into the yard. Those first cooling drops are like a blessing, and she feels transformed by them, sanctified. They give her the courage to approach the furrowed ground. There is where the first skep she wove stood. There is where she homed the wild bees she led from the dance tree. There is where she planted herself, and calmed the swarming bees. This is where she killed a man, to save her son. The rain begins to fall in earnest, hammering the parched ground, and she tilts back her head and drinks.

‘Are you all right, Bet?’

When Lisbet says yes, it is the truth. She takes her boy, takes Nethe’s hand once more. She does not need to stand there any longer. There is somewhere else to be.

•

A hundred or more years ago, an impossible time, the Pope forbade miracles: prohibited starvers, healers, the raising of the dead. There had been too many wonders, the marvels wreaking havoc. But here she is carrying her own, through the driving rain, and Lisbet wants to laugh for joy.

Nethe does not need to ask where they are going. They listen to the thrumming of the forest, coming alive under the clouds. The river will fill and swell, make clean the harrowed streets. Lisbet shifts her son in her arms. He is perfect. He is divine, an angel – these things she feels truly and without reservation. That she has made something good and pure and holy. Now his eyes are open and they are the darkest blue. She loves him so deeply it is to make the word hollow – her love for him sucks the marrow from her bones.

The dance tree is as she left it. There are her babies’ ribbons, their sacrifices made so her son might live. Nethe takes Heinrich so Lisbet can climb, passes him up before following.

The rain makes a drumming sound on the leaves overhead, but barely a drop reaches them. The platform feels vast and solid beneath her feet. There is Eren’s kettle, his mother’s sole inheritance. There is Eren’s lute. Lisbet hovers her hand over the silent strings. He didn’t come back for it – a wise choice, but her heart aches for all he has left. Here is where they kissed and lay together, where she thought her life might grow larger than any she had ever planned for or imagined. Eren’s music comes to her, the slow lilt of the tune he played on their night together.

Lisbet leans out, careful with her child in her arms, to the branch she led the bees from. Gently, she dislodges the wadding of tarred sticks, and lets them fall to the ground. Maybe they will come back, her bees. Maybe they will share this place, her babies and the bees, both.