The Burning Man

4

Church followed Ruth back to their room where he found her staring disconsolately out of the window. Since they had landed in Norway she felt more distant than she ever had at any point during their two-thousand-year separation.

‘Look at it,’ she said without turning around. ‘It’s such a bleak, frozen place. I hate it here.’

Church rested a hand on her shoulder, but she remained rigid. ‘Tell me what’s on your mind.’

‘No point,’ she said. ‘There’s no space for you and me. We’ve got a job to do and that sucks every iota of energy out of everything.’

‘What is it? You weren’t like this when we first got back together.’ With an aching clarity, he recalled her kiss that had woken him from the Sleep Like Death, and the joy of their time together as they travelled to Cornwall for the confrontation with Veitch. And then, with a chill, it hit him: that was when it had all changed. So subtle at first that he hadn’t noticed it, but now he could trace the lines of dislocation directly back to that point.

When Ruth turned, he could see she’d reached the same conclusion. ‘He got his revenge in the end, didn’t he? One last attempt to ruin something good.’ She brushed away a stray tear. ‘When Veitch leaped on his sword to kill himself, that bolt of black lightning burned through the three of us. What did it do? I feel it inside me now … drawing me away from you.’

‘Fight it,’ he said.

‘For some reason, it’s growing stronger.’ She stared at her hands as if she would be able to see what had infected her. ‘I feel cold, distant, tired, negative. I feel tearful, irritable and depressed. I can’t see any good in anything any more, just at the point when I’ve finally found it.’ There was a moment of silence before she added, ‘If Veitch wasn’t dead, I’d kill him with my own hands.’