Ann folds her arms protectively across her plump middle. "Is it absolutely necessary? Can't we catch the deer as we are?"
"How exactly will you explain the stains to Mrs. Nightwing?" Felicity is naked now. Pale, like bark whittled raw. Her voice, hard and aching, cuts through the rustle of dry leaves. "Stay if you like. But I won't go back to the way it was. I can't."
Pippa sits on the grass and pulls off her boots, starts removing her petticoats. Ann follows suit.
"Ann, Pippa, listen to me. This isn't right. You can't do this. Please listen to me!" They're paying me no mind, peel' ing off their garments with frantic fingers. The deer's head darts up. They crouch low on the forest floor. Felicity holds up a finger for silence. The deer senses danger, bolts for the cover of trees.
With a grunt, they're up, naked and shining, running toward the woods till they're nothing but a flurry of white, a flapping of angel's wings in the moss-covered night.
I chase them as they chase the deer. It slips in and out of trees. Felicity is in the lead, her skin a beacon. I hear the sharp cracking sound of twigs trampled, hear the heavy panting of my own breath in my ears. And then something that sounds like a great crash up ahead where I can't see.
When I reach the ravine, Ann and Pippa are poised on the edge, breathing hard. The deer is nowhere to be seen. A great chunk of earth wall has been torn away. Carefully, I scoot to the edge. My boot sends showers of dirt and rocks into the ravine, and I have to grab hold of a low-lying root to keep from falling in.
The deer lies wounded at the bottom, struggling to lift its head, making the most awful sounds. Felicity crouches low, creeps closer. She leans over it, stroking the brown fur, making comforting shushing noises. She's not going to do it . A feeling of relief floods through me as I wait for her to scramble up the embankment.
The clouds shift, stretch out thin as a scream. The moon is dazzling us with its hard fair light. It bathes Felicity in a white like plaster, turns her into a statue frozen in time.
She's fumbling with something down there in the dark. In an instant, her hand flies up. She brings the rock down with a sickening thud. And again. Again till there's nothing moving in the ravine but her and creatures too small to detect from where we stand above her. Slowly, Ann and Pippa scuttle down the slope in crablike movements and each take their turns with the rock. Their bare backs, arched and taut, shine in the night. When they move away, the thing at the bottom of the ravine no longer resembles a deer above the neck. The head is pulpy, an overripe melon fallen on the ground and split open in surprised outrage. I turn and vomit into a sparse bush. When I stagger over again, they're crawling back up the steep slope on hands and knees. In the dark, the splattered blood looks black as ink on their alabaster skin. Felicity climbs up last. She still grips the blood-slick rock in her hand.
"It's done," she says, her voice ripping the still of the night.
This is how the fire starts.
This is how we burn.