Page 61 of The Magic of Provence

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The forest didn’t feel peaceful today.

There were horrors lurking in the quiet stillness and bloodstains on the churned-up carpet of dry leaves and acorns.

Didier’s brother Alain was there. He had shifted all the donkeys to another area in the forest.

Apart from one.

Mary lay on the ground, barely alive, with a hideous, deep gash in her neck that still had a slow trickle of blood escaping.

Fi knelt by her head, so horrified she was barely able to breathe. She smoothed the hair away from the donkey’s eyes that were half open but had an ominous milky glaze to them.

‘Oh, my God…’ she whispered. ‘What’s happened?’

‘Asanglierhas attacked her.’ Christophe’s tone was grim. He took his stethoscope out of the kit he’d brought from his vehicle and he bent his head but hesitated for a moment before putting the ear pieces in to listen to Mary’s heart and breathing. ‘Alain thinks she was defending her foal. She’s just given birth.’

Fi gasped. She looked sideways at Alain, who was standing close to Mary’s back feet but he hadn’t been following the conversation in English.

‘Le bébé?’ she asked, her voice cracking.

Alain’s face folded into deeper lines and he turned his head to look down at what Fi had thought was a sack he’d packed the electric fencing into. It became even harder to drag in a new breath as she saw a tiny hoof resting on a fold in the sack.

‘See if it’s alive,’ Christophe said quietly. ‘I’ll stay with Mary. I don’t think there’s anything we can do for her. She’s lost too much blood.’

Fi knelt beside the sack and peeled back the folds. The newborn donkey was lying on its side, completely limp. Its coat was still damp and so dark it was almost black, but it had a white belly and chest. It was automatic for Fi to reach out her hands to touch this beautiful little creature who had a muzzle that was also white except for a black smudge around the nostrils and… oh… there was white fluff inside ears that were also limp, flat against its neck. The baby’s eyes were half shut, like its mother’s.

But it was warm.

And when Fi moved her hands to the foal’s ribs and pressed gently, she could feel a heartbeat.

‘It’s alive,’ she told Christophe. ‘What should I do?’

‘Keep her warm,’ he said. ‘I’ll be there in a minute.’

The sack wasn’t enough. Instinct drove Fi to scoop the baby into her arms so that she could share the warmth of her own body. She curled her back to wrap it even more securely into her arms, and it was only when she could feel the chill of the damp beginning to recede that she lifted her head to see what Christophe was doing.

He was very close. He was also kneeling on the ground and he was also bent over. He had Mary’s head on his lap and he was stroking her face. She could hear the comforting murmur of his voice but couldn’t tell which of his languages he was using, and she could also hear the awful sound of the last breaths before Mary’s struggles were over.

Then there was only silence.

It felt as if the forest around them was absorbing the death with a serenity that simply gathered it into the circles of life that had been repeated endlessly for thousands upon thousands of years.

Nobody moved for a long, long moment.

Alain had turned his back, his hand over his eyes.

Christophe had Mary’s head in his arms, his own head bent so far over it they were touching.

Fi had tears streaming down her cheeks as she watched Christophe.

As if he felt that gaze, he looked up and his eyes held hers. The moment they were sharing was bigger than the tragedy that had taken place here. The bond of friendship and trust between them was experiencing a fire that was forging it into something so much deeper that Fi could feel it in every cell of her body. It was in this precise moment that she knew, beyond any shadow of doubt, that she would never feel like this about any other human on the planet.

She loved him more than she had believed it was possible to love anyone.

She wasinlove with him.

She had no choice but to silently, privately, gift her heart and soul to this man.

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