Free The Solitude of Thomas Cave by Georgina Harding

untouched surface of the
snow. As the aurora dims she becomes no more than a shadow, wavering and faintly drawn. So the Lord led His People through
the Wilderness, a cloud by day. On he walks in a state of strange elation, out over the frozen sea, past rocks whose outline
he might know and others that he does not know. Ahead she goes, becoming fainter before him until at last the aurora is gone,
as if it had never been there, and she is gone with it. Quite gone, not a sign, not a track of her remaining, so that he must
know the truth that he has held ignored within him all the time: that she was never there. She was a delusion, his warm and
lovely apparition. And if that, then who had brought her to him? Could it be that it was God, bringing solace to him in the
darkness, or was it some other? He wakes, it is like a waking, and sees where he has come to. So far. A little time more,
another step and another, a dimming of the moonlight, and she might have led him to his death, drawing him, enticing him so
far out on to the ice on this night of all nights, this stark night when the snow has fallen deep and orientation is lost.
And he had likened her in his mind to the Lord who led the Israelites in the desert. What pride, what blasphemy! He feels
the breath chill before his lips and questions if he deserves to live. Yet God is merciful and the moon stays with him. Looking
down, he can see his footprints in the snow, and they are indented just enough and the light is just enough for him to make
his tentative and shamed way home.
    He bends first one and then the other stiffened knee onto the wooden floor, puts together his frozen hands and prays, begs
forgiveness for his temptation. She is no work of the Lord, he knows that now; she is not to be confused with any sign of
Him. She is weakness and superstition, the softness of his mind. He sobs out contrition along with thanksgiving and vows that
he will be seduced by her no more.
    His flesh feels sore as if he has been beaten by the cold. One of the fingers of his right hand is blistered by the frost.
He rubs it with alcohol, wraps it, and writes with great awkwardness in his log. He chooses not to record his misadventure: December twentieth, by my reckoning, a Friday. I shall keep this day following the cessation of the great storm as a day of
     fast in gratitude for my deliverance.
    No recognition, but only the memory of her will he keep. There cannot be sin, he tells himself, in memory.
    As that winter hardened the baby grew within her. She seemed healthy as a cow, he thought, and he saw her fatten all over,
saw her cheeks become round and red as apples and began to laugh to see the size of her coming through the narrow cottage
door.
    As she approached her time her back began to ache and her ankles to swell and she was awake often changing her position in
the night. 'I cannot lie comfortably,' she said, 'he is pressing against me.' He, she was sure that it was he, on account
of his apparent length within her and the size she was with him. And she would take a pillow and arrange it beneath a part
of her and for some time the new position would allow her to rest. Thomas Cave however lay wakeful those nights watching her
shadowy outline and listening to the steadiness of her breath. He knew that soon enough she would wake again and that in the
darkest hour of the watch there would be fear. The child would turn within her and she would wake again clutching her belly
as if he were already breaking out of it.
    'He is too big for me, Thomas. I dreamt that he had the long bones of a whale. I saw the bones that came from Greenland, long
curved bones that you said came from the jaw of the beast.'
    'Nonsense,' he said, and moved on to his side behind her so that he wrapped her in his length. 'You must not let such thoughts
prey upon you. You who are so young and fit. It is only that you do not have a mother to tell you so.' He put his arm about
her and stroked