Oh, Ted, I say, trying to reach him. I am sorry, so sorry. Please forgive me, I didn’t mean to hurt you …

“You can’t hurt him,” Lauren says, voice both a whisper and a scream. “We take his pain. You take it from his heart, I take it from the body.”

Be quiet, I say. You’ve done enough talking. Ted, I call. Ted? How do I fix it?

He is bleeding from the mouth, a thin line of red. The words are slurred but I know him well so I understand. “Listen to them,” he says. All around, in the dawn, the birds are singing in the trees.

The cord is white and soft, glowing. It connects the three of us, heart to heart. Then the white light grows, spreads over the earth, and I see at last that actually the cord runs not only through us, but also through the trees, the birds, the grass and everything, out across the world. Somewhere, a big dog bays.

The sun has risen. The air turns warm and golden. The LORD is here, before me, a burning flame. He has four delicate paws. His voice is soft. Cat, He says. You were supposed to protect. I cannot bring myself to look up into the LORD’s face. I know that, today, it will be my own.

TED

Dimly, above, someone is pressing their hands to the hole in my stomach. Someone’s breath is warm by my ear. He presses down harder and harder but the blood comes out all slippery anyway. He curses to himself. He is trying to draw me back up from the black, into the sunny morning.

We could have told him it was no good. We are dying, our flesh is cooling to clay. We feel it as it happens, each one of us. Our blood comes in slow pumps, spilling out all our colors and thoughts onto the forest floor; each breath is harder, slower, leaving us colder. The safe tattoo of our heartbeat is broken; now it beats like a kitten playing or a bad drum: growing fainter, more irregular.

There is no time for goodbye, there is only the cold stillness that creeps over our fingers and hands, our feet and ankles. Crawling up our legs, inch by inch. The little ones are crying, deep down in the pit. They never did anything to anyone, the little ones. They never had a chance. The bright burning world falls into darkness.

Sun lies in long stripes across the bloodied forest floor. Nearby, far away, a dog whines.

Now nothing.

OLIVIA

I’m back in the house, I don’t know how and it doesn’t matter. There is no time to feel relief at having my lovely ears and tail again. It’s anything but safe here.