Fire Fire (28 page)

‘O
h, Ursa,' Acantia sighs. ‘The way out of anything will always be up there.' She slaps Ursula's forehead with the palm of her hand, knocking Ursula backward a little off the branch, and then catching her. Ursula laughs. She knows what Acantia means.

‘What do you mean?' she asks innocently.

‘The Power of Art,' Acantia says dreamily and suddenly Ursula is unsure.

They are sitting together on a branch halfway up a giant radiata. Acantia puts her arm around Ursula's little, wiry body and Ursula stiffens with delight.

‘What do you mean?' she asks softly, softly, controlling her breathing, making sure she doesn't sniff her snot up or spit.

‘The Imagination, Ursula! No walls, no torture, can take that away.'

The tree sways slightly, like a stiff gentleman too proud to bow.

They are level with the point where the smoke dissipates into the air, rising from the chimney way below. They sit on the branch, two fat birds who cannot fly. Then Ursula sees an angel, holy wings outspread, hovering above the smoke, garments glittering in the bright air. It is giving her the eye.

‘Do you see that?' she gasps, sniffing and pointing. ‘An angel!

The angel!'

‘Oh, Ursula. Imaginitis.' Acantia sighs heavily, scrapes Ursula's arms off her neck and climbs down, branch by branch, without looking up.

The angel is gone as if it had never been.