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been sent away, I did not know. He did not return by the time dinner ended, nor by the time, shortly thereafter, Poppa hustled me and Alona to bed. I waited up as long as I could, huddled onto the side of the bed that faced my door, waiting for it to slowly open, waiting for Hendrik to appear. I wanted to be awake for him, to comfort him, to reassure him. But the day’s ministrations and the evening’s tension had utterly worn me out, and soon, despite my best efforts, I drifted off to sleep.
    I woke the next morning to discover that the rest of my bed was still empty and the entirety of the household was awash with tension and the buzzing news that Hendrik still had not returned. Men had been dispatched to hastily roust him out, but he had not been found. Now a wider search was being organized. At the moment, all they knew was that Hendrik was not at the inn or the common house, so neither his father nor my own had any idea where else he would go. But I knew. Dressing quietly, I stole into the kitchen and took some bread before slipping out of the house and beginning the long trek back up the mountain.
    Hendrik was there, in the monastery courtyard. There was a purple bruise over one eye and a long scratch on his cheek from one of Uncle Sandor’s rings. I sat down next to him and handed him the bread. He took it wordlessly, without thanks. For many minutes we sat there, saying nothing, him devouring the bread rapidly and me trying to imagine what I could do to make this all better. But I could think of nothing.
    “I’m sorry,” I finally told him, putting my arm over his shoulder. It was all I could think to say, an apology perhaps more for my inability to comfort him than for anything Uncle Sandor had done. But it was enough. Hendrik buried his face into the crook of my neck and softly wept, wrapping his arms around my waist, clinging possessively, needily. His brow was pressed against the side of my head; his hair fell across my cheek. His runny nose sniveled in my ear, and his lips pressed against my neck. It was perhaps a moment or two before I realized that he was, in fact, kissing my neck, gentle kisses so soft that I barely felt them. I was surprised. I moved my head an inch. He pulled his face away from mine. With one hand I braced myself against the cool blades of grass. The other I used to do what I had wanted for so long. I brushed the stray hairs from Hendrik’s face and looked deep into his eyes. They were virid pools, still and bottomless.
    And then he kissed me.
    Moments passed swiftly from there, moments that are forever etched into my mind—but just moments, as if I can only recall glimpses of the afternoon so long ago. The texture of Hendrik’s lips and the taste of the honey and beer from the coarse bread my mother had made; the firmness of his nakedness, the sharp corners of his body; the tight coils of dark hair under his arms, and the trail that led down his stomach and past the waistband of his pants. Hendrik took the lead in our lovemaking, showing me what to do. It was he who brought my lips to his first, and he who took hold of my prick and directed it between his legs. I remember the sound Hendrik made, a gasp, an acute inhalation of air that suggested both pleasure and pain. Not a word passed between us, though many, unsaid, were felt. Afterward, we lay together on the cool grass, desperate to cling to each other’s forms, desperate to never be separated again.
    “There was a man,” he finally spoke, the first words he said to me since yesterday, “in Budapest. He was—is still, I am sure—a dancer in the national ballet company. Andros. That was his name. Just a member of the corps, still starting out. We—he and I—we were intimate this way.” Hendrik paused here. His voice took on a rich sound of remembrance. “We exchanged letters. It was foolish, perhaps, but we were ardent and in the throes of a great affair.” He voice rang with a hollow irony, and he struggled to