He would spend the rest of his life living on the memory of love.
Federica watched the Andes mountains simmer below her window as the plane soared into the sky with a rumble that shook her to the bones. She yearned to stay. Like Hal she felt she belonged in Chile, it was in her blood. But she longed for Sam and her longing nearly choked her. She compared the childish
infatuation of long ago with the mature love she now felt for him and deduced that her marriage to Torquil had been vital. Without it she would have continued to search for her father in the arms of other men, like Torquil, and she would never have realized that she was a victim of her own making and always had been. Sam had liberated her and she hadn’t even thanked him.
When the air hostess came up the aisle with the newspaper Federica took one just to have something to look at, even though she didn’t understand the Spanish. She flicked it open and glanced at the first page, relieved to be able to concentrate on something other than her tormented thoughts of Sam. When she saw a photograph of the frozen body of a young Inca girl discovered in the Peruvian Andes she caught her breath and sat up in astonishment.
She turned to the man sitting beside her and asked him if he spoke English. When he replied that he did, she asked him if he would be very kind and translate for her. He was only too happy to engage in conversation with his pretty neighbour and began to read it out loud.
Federica bit her thumbnail as she listened. The mummy was that of a young woman, preserved by the cold conditions of the mountains for five hundred years. She wore a fantastically elaborate cloak made out of the most intricate
weave, her hair was still studded with crystals and on her head she still had the remnants of a headdress made of white feathers. It was believed that she had been sacrificed to the Gods. When the man handed her back the paper Federica studied the face of the young girl. She relived the horror of her last moments in the words of her father’s story.
‘Clasping the box to her breast she was dressed in exquisitely woven wools, her hair plaited and beaded with one hundred shining crystals. Upon her head was placed a large fan of white feathers to carry her into the next world and frighten the demons along the way. Wanchuko was unable to save her.’
After a few attempts to make conversation the man realized that she wasn’t going to respond and returned to his book, disappointed. Federica sat staring into the face of Topahuay as if she had seen the Resurrection itself. All these years she had believed the legend in spite of her reasoning that had told her it was a myth. She smiled to herself. Perhaps the butterfly box was magic after all.
Sam woke up early due to the restlessness in his soul and walked across the cliffs with the dogs. He could see the first stirring of spring in the emerging
buds that endowed the forest with a vibrancy which seemed to waft through the branches like green smoke. But it did little to lift his heavy spirits. He pulled his coat around his body but the cold came from within and he shivered. He hadn’t heard from Federica since she had left the week before and he had the terrible premonition that she might never come back. After all, she had said so herself, there was nothing to keep her here. The potency of those words was in no way diminished by the frequency with which he thought of them and they still managed to debilitate him.
He still hadn’t thought of anything to write. It had been years, literally, since he had quit his job in London to make use of his creativity, as Nuno had put it. But his creativity was barren. He had tried once or twice to begin a novel but his mind had drifted to Federica, which had only resulted in the most morose poems about unrequited love and death. So he had picked out books from Nuno’s library and instead of writing he had sat in the leather chair and read. Anything rather than surrender his thoughts to the rapacious appetite of his anguish.
Alone on the cliffs in the fragile light of dawn he considered his options if Federica was never to come back. He had to face it. He couldn’t allow himself
to wallow in self-pity indefinitely. After all, wasn’t that what he had taught her by way of the notes? Like a doctor he wasn’t too keen on his own medicine. He had to pull himself up, decide on something to write, buy a cottage of his own, perhaps a dog and a pig and crawl out of his self-imposed exile.
Federica’s journey wouldn’t have been as long or arduous if it hadn’t been for her feverish impatience that caused her chest to compress with anxiety and her head to ache by the force of her will attempting to change things that it couldn’t. The plane was forced to circle Heathrow Airport for twenty minutes before finally landing with a bump. She felt sick from worry as much as from the relentless spiralling of the plane, then hiccuped all the way on the tube to the railway station. It was cold and drizzly, the usual grey skies of London - a cheerless spring. She just managed to catch a train where she sank into a seat by the window and watched the monotonous grey city outside. She closed her eyes for a moment only to open them a few hours later stiff and groggy to find herself passing through the familiar countryside of Cornwall.