It is memories like these, of past Christmases, past family gatherings, that circle through Alana’s mind that night as she approaches bed. Her mind is buzzing, like it always used to do on Christmas Eve. Only, this time she knows that it is not excitement over presents and the magic of Christmas morning that keeps her from sleeping. This time she is replaying every argument, every confrontation, every terse, unloving look, ever pregnant silence; and in the story they tell, pasted as they are together in her mind, she can see tomorrow unfolding just as every year has done before.

Looking towards Peter’s faint outline in the light of the nearly full moon, she thinks, as she so often has done before, of waking him. She listens for his breath; it is soft, shallow almost. Perhaps he is still awake.

“Peter,” she says.

A pause.

“Yes?” he replies, a vaguely startled sound to his voice, as though just awoken.

“I can’t sleep,” she says.

He moves in towards her. “No?” he replies slowly, still not quite awake.

“Can you…do you think you could pray for me?”

Another pause.

“Sure,” he says, a hint of uncertainty still in his voice. She cannot remember when they last prayed together. She knows it is a strange request; yet somehow she feels that nothing else will help tonight. Their stories have worn out their welcome; she knows she would not be convinced by them tonight.

“What do you want me to pray for?” asks Peter.

“That I can sleep,” she replies, simply.

“Okay,” says Peter. “I can try.”

And so, his eyes still half-closed from sleeping, he prays – a quiet, hesitant and simple prayer. The words have little power in themselves, and for a moment Alana wonders if it was absurd to have done this. They are silent, lying there a little awkwardly, wondering what to do next. And yet, something within her begins to feel a little more still, a little more at peace, and so she thanks Peter and once again they lie silently, Peter soon asleep again, Alana not yet sleeping but not as fearful as before.

And slowly, as her mind begins again to play over the thoughts from before, she shifts from the memories of past Christmases, and she finds she is in a room, seated beside the Christmas tree, neither a woman nor a child but somehow both at once, and she knows that this is not a Christmas that has ever happened before. She knows, however, that she is in the living room of her childhood home, and the tree is much like other trees they have had before, decorated just as she and her sister and brothers had always decorated the tree.

Turning her face from the tree she sees a man sitting beside the tree, a little like her older brother, a little like her father, a little like neither of them, and he is holding a basket, like a Christmas hamper but made, seemingly, of hay or dried reeds.

And the man looks at her and says, I brought you your present.

And, feeling inside herself that same surging excitement that always used to keep her awake on Christmas Eve, she takes the basket and peers into it, seeing, at first to her confusion, then to her joy, a baby, sleeping quietly, clearly a new-born. But then her heart sinks, because she knows, in that way of knowing we have sometimes in dreams, that this child is not hers, and she looks back at the man with disappointment, as if to ask him why he has given her this child that is not her own.

Look again, he says.

And so she looks again, only this time the child has changed – still the same baby, yet now covered in blood, as if only just born; and the baby turns a little in its sleep, as though distressed by a dream, and as it turns Alana can see the baby’s face, and she shrinks back in disgust, for the baby’s face is the most distorted, disfigured face she has ever seen. Unable to look any more at the face, she looks up again at the man beside the tree and asks, this time aloud, Who did this?

The man looks into her eyes and says slowly, You did.

And Alana begins to cry, at the sight of the baby and the thought of what she has done, for she sees in an instant not the moments of pain she had seen before, but sights of herself, her insides, and she knows that what the man said is true. As she cries, she looks back at him, though she is sure he will only look at her crossly, just as she feels sure she deserves, but looking at him now she finds that he too is bleeding and disfigured like the baby. And yet – he is smiling, not cruelly, as she feels would surely fit the blood and disfigurement, but peacefully, even triumphantly.

Look again, he says. She can tell from his voice that it hurts him to speak.

And though she cannot bear to look at the baby again, neither can she bear to look at his face, and so she looks down again and sees that the baby’s face has become new again, clean as though just washed, and she fancies that the baby’s face is the same as the face of the man beside her, in the way that dreams can unite two objects that are distinct from each other as if they were one. And she cries; though the baby is now clean, she cries with a pain that she cannot understand but can feel pulsing out of her like a primal energy.

Tears continue to pour and pour down her cheeks, until she fancies that the air around her has become damp with her tears, only then she sees that she is now outside and the dampness in the air is rain – torrential rain. And she finds she is standing waist-deep in a river full of reeds, with the man still standing beside her, and the baby’s basket in her hands is now floating off in the current, but she does not cry now to see it happen. Standing for a moment in the water, she becomes aware that Peter is there too, standing on the river bank, separated from her by the stretch of water; and seeing this she begins to cry again, for it is just like the dream she had only a few weeks earlier. Only this time she does not cry to be separated from him but instead cries at the thought that he does not know or understand what she has seen.

Do not cry, says the man, resting his hand for a moment on her shoulder. I will go to him, he says.

And so Alana stands, watching as the man walks out into the water, walking, waking, until the water seems almost to cover his head, then rising from the water, taking its vastness in his stride, until he is nearly at the riverbank, Peter standing silently, watching blankly, almost as if he cannot see; and though the man does not turn back to face her, she can hear him as though he is still at her side saying once again, I will go to him. And though she sees him there, walking ever closer to Peter, she cannot stop crying; and so she cries and cries, for decades and hours, and stands with the river rushing all about her, with centuries of life washing off around her, and there she stands watching, watching, until night-time comes and she finds herself washed onto the bank to sleep, tears turning to peace, peace turning to sleep. And somehow as she sleeps she knows she is cradled, the sands of the bank comforting her with their warmth.

~

In the morning, Alana wakes, Peter beside her, the early morning sun now shining. Vivid impressions of her dream linger with her: the child in the basket; the young, old man comforting her, stretching between her and Peter and the water’s vast expanse. Lying there, circling over memories of the dream, she has no answers, no perfect solutions, but a sense of understanding, of being understood, appeased.

“Merry Christmas,” she whispers to Peter while he sleeps.

He does not stir. She lies in bed waiting for him to wake, the gift of her dream still with her as she waits.

End of the Fourth Candle. Go to the Fifth Candle.

Arriving in Albury just after noon, Alana says, “Let’s have lunch first.” Something makes her want to delay going to her parents’ house just yet. The afternoon stretches out before them, and they are not expected until later in the day. There is always the chance, of course, that they run into her parents in town, but she is willing to take the risk. And so they park in town and walk down the street to a coffee shop they both like. This one is playing more appropriate carols – less snow, and less schmaltz – and the room is cool; it is a peaceful place to stop and rest in an otherwise busy town. After lunch they walk to the river and rest for a time in the shade of some trees, but soon it is too hot to be outside and so, with a kind of quiet resignation, they return to their car and drive to Alana’s parents’ house.

Her parents live out of town, in a new house they built there a few years ago. When they arrive, her father is in the garden pruning some trees that have grown dramatically since they were last here.

“Hi Dad,” says Alana, giving him a hug in the driveway. “The garden looks great.”

And for a moment they stand in the driveway, shielding their eyes from the sun, while her father tells her what he has done with the garden, which trees are flourishing, which ones are struggling with the heat. And then her mother appears in the doorway and Alana turns to approach her. The Christmas holiday has begun.

~

Alana has a memory of being six years old, or thereabouts, and her mother reading a story to her in the living room of their old house. Alana was learning to read herself by then and from time to time she would look over her mother’s shoulder at the words, but she still preferred to have the words read to her, on the rare occasions that that happened. It was comforting to just look at the pictures and trust her mother’s ability to turn those small, mysterious shapes into words to entertain and amuse her. And her mother was a dramatic and expressive reader, far more dramatic than she herself could be just yet.

The story, she remembers, was about some animals – a little tiger and a little bear – and they were best friends, until one of the animals – was it the tiger or the bear? – met a little pig who replaced the other in his affections. And the two of them would spend the whole day lazily in bed, eating “sloppy, gooey uncooked cake” as their staple meal. Alana would always squirm at the thought of eating uncooked cake, although she herself liked to lick the spoon or the beaters when her mother was baking. Somehow eating a whole bowl of cake mixture did not seem the same as licking the spoon, and so Alana would protest at how disgusting the pig and the tiger (or bear) were being, though secretly she loved to be disgusted by them; the disgust was half the appeal.

Only, this time her sister Sarah had walked into the room moments before her mother had reached the part about the cake and had said, Mum, you need to drive me to my dance lesson now, and her mother had said, Oh yes, that’s right, sorry Sarah, and had slammed the book shut. When Alana had asked, But what about the story?, her mother had said, Later. I need to go now. And Sarah had said, Can’t you read it yourself? And Alana had known somewhere in herself that Sarah was right, that she could read for herself, yet all she felt at the time was the injustice of her mother being taken away from her. But Mum never reads to me, she had complained, and her mother had said, Oh, don’t be ridiculous, Alana, and had grabbed the car keys and gone out the door.

Her mother had not finished reading the story that night. In fact, Alana could not remember her reading another story to her. There was always something to do – dancing lessons for Sarah, soccer practice for Simon…And when she herself was old enough to have her own places to go to, her mother drove her there just as she had driven her siblings. But it was never the same as sitting inside her arms while she read. Nothing was ever quite like that. And when she complained about what she was missing, it always sounded like ungrateful whinging and was always dismissed as such, until she started herself to think that she was whinging and there was nothing wrong, only her inability to make things right, her inability to accept the fact that she had grown up and that there were some things she could not expect any more.

Go to Day Twenty-Three

In the morning, they hurriedly finish packing for the trip and then set off, the sun already beating down its heat. As they drive, Alana is quiet, but seems alert. Peter, however, has not slept well, his mind recycling snatches of prayers and Bible verses and moments of obscure liturgy in an unsettling way. The calm that Alana seemed to take home with her confused him, as it does now.

He drives the first leg of the way, more out of stubbornness than anything else. Early as it is, the roads are still slow, and the cars exiting the city seem trapped in a morning haze. There is roadwork on the Ring Road, as there always seems to be, and they slow down to a point almost of stasis when the road shrinks to a single lane and they sit, blinkers flickering, waiting to merge.

They stop at Wallan for coffee and a muffin. The cafe is playing “Winter Wonderland”, a song more inappropriate than ever on this already hot day. The break wakes him up partially, but there is a muteness to their conversation which could perhaps be dismissed as a symptom of tiredness if they did not know each other better. Alana drives the next leg and he sleeps; at times, he wakes up to hear her singing to herself. He keeps his eyes closed and pretends to sleep.

As her song fades out, he can see himself walking, through a place that seems an amalgamation of memories – streets he has walked down, buildings he knows well – and the people who walk beside him and around him are also a collection of people from key moments in his life, people who never knew each other and who occupied his life at different times but now united by his fluid subconscious. And as he walks through this place, he is plagued by a familiar night-time sensation – a feeling of tightness as he tries to talk, and a sense of urgency, even of danger, that, strangely, cannot translate itself into action, as though there is within him an engine that consumes all its fuel solely in order to stay still. Here the signal of danger is found in a rustling of leaves in the trees that line the street, and above the trees he can see a whitish kind of light with no obvious source and of a very different quality to the light of the sun. And, as he stares at the light, for a length of time that you would never normally stare at the sun, he becomes aware of a voice, perhaps coming from the trees, perhaps from the light source. And the voice says to him, Peter, then, Peter – wake up.

~

When he wakes, they are in Seymour – too early for lunch. They get out to walk and stretch their legs, but then continue on their way. It looks like they’ll be in Albury by noon.

Back in the car, Alana keeps driving, Peter feeling more alert yet strangely willing to let himself sit while she drives. The sun, now high, blazes through the window. The temperature’s set to hit nearly 40. In Peter’s head he sings, “In the meadow we can build a snowman…” Alana turns up the air-conditioning while Peter stares out the window at the open, dry fields.

Go to Day Twenty-Two

The Story of Hannah’s Song

Elkanah had two wives. The first wife, Peninnah, had given him several children, but the second of his wives, Hannah, was barren. Elkanah, however, loved Hannah more than he loved Peninnah. Knowing that this was so, Peninnah would often taunt Hannah, gloating about her children, relishing the power this gave her over Hannah. Elkanah would try to comfort Hannah; Aren’t I worth as much as seven sons to you? he would ask. And Hannah would not reply. Much as she loved her husband, nothing in their relationship could make up for the daily pain of Peninnah flaunting her many children in front of her.

Sometimes Hannah’s mind would drift back to the stories of her ancestors – stories of Sarah, Abraham’s wife, who had a child well into her old age, and stories of Hagar, the servant girl, who had taunted the barren Sarah with her son Ishmael; of Leah, the unloved sister with weak eyes, and Rachel, the loved one who was barren for much of her life as a punishment, it seemed, for being more loved. At times the stories comforted her; at times they did not. Which of these women, she would wonder, was she most like – Rachel or Sarah, Leah or Hagar? Was she beloved or oppressed, blessed or rejected? She had her husband’s love; but her womb was a dry, unyielding field. She cried out to heaven, but her cries fell flat. There was no reply, just a taunting vacuum.

When the time came for the family to offer their sacrifices at the temple, and eat a meal together, as the tradition went, Elkanah made his sacrifice and then served portions to all of his family – to Peninnah and her children, and then to Hannah; and, as usual, he gave Hannah an extra portion as a sign of his love for her. Peninnah no doubt saw it and scowled; perhaps she turned to Hannah and snapped at her, as she often did – some failure, perhaps, on Hannah’s part to prepare properly for the meal; some reason (there were many) why Hannah could do nothing right.

Perhaps it was this she had in mind – the taunts of Peninnah, the unloved wife – and took with her into the temple when she prayed, rocking back and forth, arms held up in desperation, lips moving wildly but voice silent. Inwardly she cried: Lord, have mercy; Lord, show kindness; Lord, take away my crushing shame. But outwardly, nothing – just the mad movements of one on the brink, the edge of what can or cannot be handled. And as she prayed, she wrestled and writhed and bargained in her mind. Lord, if you hear my prayer then I swear I will give him to you. The child shall be yours. And on and on she prayed, shaking and bribing, whispering and crying.

To Eli, the priest who stood by and watched, she was clearly drunk, or out of her mind. Sometimes it happened; some celebrated too wildly, too extravagantly. Looking at Hannah, he made up his mind that she was such a one.

Will you stop, woman? he said to her. Stop making such a display of yourself. Go home and sleep; sober yourself. This is no place for drunken displays.

Please, she said to him, her voice begging him. I am not drunk; I’m just desperate. I’ve been praying and praying; can’t you see that?

Eli relented, his heart drawn to her. Her cheeks, he saw, were stained with tears. Her eyes were shot through with lines of red.

Go, my child, he said to her. May the Lord grant your request.

Hannah stopped crying, not quite appeased but no longer frantic. She left the temple and went home with her family, and though Peninnah said to her, What was all your fuss about? and How nice of you to leave all the work to me, she did not react. It was as if her ears were immune to the sound of her words.

And that night Elkanah and Hannah went to bed together, and soon Hannah began to feel that something was different. Before long it was clear – her prayer had been answered. And though she knew in her heart that she would have to keep her bargain, she rejoiced to know that her shame would be gone.

Hannah kept the child with her – a boy called Samuel, whose name declared that she had been heard by God – until she had weaned him. And when the time came for her to give him up she went to the temple with her son, and with flour and wine and a bull to sacrifice, and there she killed the bull and gave her son to the priest Eli to raise him.

Did Hannah cry when she gave up her son? No doubt, she did, though we are not told. What she saw, in her mind, that day in the temple, is all that we know – the song that she sang. For somewhere inside her spirit there now was music, and the words to a song that took her through time: to the felling of empires, the reversal of pride, kings brought down low, paupers raised up, grace to the scrap-heap of human refuse. And there, on the scrap-heap, she saw now herself, glowing bright, shining – the end of her shame.

~

The words hit Alana with unexpected impact; they sound to her like a song, rhythmic and fluid, yet they cut deep like swords. She does not remember when she starts to cry, but when Peter looks at her, her eyes are red and flowing, and he does not know what to say.

They stay back longer after church this time, Alana seemingly wanting to linger and talk. Peter gets himself a coffee while a man about his age starts a casual conversation with him. Out of the corner of his eye he sees Alana talking with Emma. They are seated towards the front of the church. Alana is saying, “But what about Peninnah? I never thought about her…” It looks as if she has tears in her eyes still but it is hard to tell from this distance. Peter watches her, forgetting that there is someone talking to him, waiting for a reply. Then, returning, he says, “Sorry – what was that?”

“What are you doing for Christmas?” the young man asks.

Peter pauses and glances again at Alana. “Um…I’ll spend it with my wife’s family,” he replies, Alana still in the corner of his eye, her voice sounding somewhere faintly in the noise around him.

Go to Day Twenty-One

The days of the week pass quietly, uneventfully. The disappointment of Tuesday gone, they seem somehow calmer, less angry but also less active, as though they are only limping through the day, unable to fight, unable to run. When the dates circled on the calendar arrive, although no longer carrying the meaning they had done a week ago, they go to bed together with efficiency: disciplined, not passionate, but with a kind of quiet affection that makes it a little more than a routine. And then they sleep, and in the morning they go to work and into their days. Alana’s stomach cramps pass, anticlimactically, and she settles into the quiet stoicism of the week.

When Sunday arrives they go to church as if by reflex, without discussion or agreement. The fourth candle is lit, the Bible read; and because it is Christmas in two days, they sing only carols. The boy and girl who prayed for them last week smile when they see them; at the greeting of peace, the girl, introducing herself as Emma, speaks to Alana and says she is praying for them. Alana thanks her; they swap phone numbers. They will catch up, they agree, for a coffee after Christmas. And then briefly they exchange Christmas holiday itineraries, with a mutual interest that might be more than just polite: Emma is going to Sydney to see her family; Peter and Alana will travel to Albury tomorrow, for Christmas Eve. Alana’s siblings will arrive on Tuesday morning. Then the greeting of peace ends and they return to their seats.

When it is time for the sermon, they feel strangely tired, as though it would take energy to sit and listen tonight. The topic – “Mary’s Song”, it is called on the screen – means little to them, and describes a state that they cannot quite understand. They have sung carols tonight, yes, and there was something comforting in an act so like childhood that they had been for a moment transported out of their pervasive dryness, but now there seems little to sing about. The walls of the church seem flat and dull.

Alana’s attention is caught first when she hears Hannah’s name mentioned. Ears pricking up, she turns to Peter. It seems somehow a sore topic to hear tonight; Peter frowns, and Alana shifts in her seat. When Mary heard the news that she was pregnant, the minister says, she broke into song. And her song mirrored another song earlier in the Bible – the song of Hannah. Perhaps Mary was inspired by Hannah, or perhaps she simply felt moved to say the same things. But they should look, he says, at Hannah’s song, and Hannah’s story, to help them understand what Mary is expressing. And so he begins to tell the story, and Peter and Alana sit awkwardly listening to the story they have never finished and now doubt that they want to hear.

Go to Day Twenty

“I came home early today,” says Alana, when Peter gets home. “I felt…sick.”

“What kind of sick?” Peter asks.

“Like I was going to vomit,” she says. “I had cramps in my stomach all morning. But then I didn’t vomit. It just passed.”

“So nothing serious?”

“Maybe not,” she replies. Then a pause. “But I’m late.”

“Late?” It takes a moment to process. “But I thought…last weekend…”

“I know,” she says. “I thought so too. I felt so moody all weekend, and I was due to get it. But then I didn’t. It just…passed. I’m nearly a week late now. I’m never usually late.”

Peter is quiet.

“I don’t want to jump the gun,” she says, “but…do you think I should see a doctor?”

“Maybe,” he says. “Maybe give it it a few more days. It might be best.”

Alana nods. “I guess,” she says. “But I’ve heard that it can be worth having the test after three or four days.”

He shrugs. “Then make an appointment,” he says. “It couldn’t hurt, I suppose.”

“It’s worth doing,” she says, studying his eyes as she speaks. “I’d like to know.”

“Of course,” he says, walking closer to her. “Of course.” He takes her hand and kisses her cheek. “Of course you would want to know.”

She smiles. “Good,” she says. “I’ll call tomorrow.”

They kiss; she smiles at Peter, calmer than she has been in days. Peter can hear his heart pounding.

“Are you happy?” she asks.

“Yes,” he says. “I’m happy.”

He makes dinner for them both and Alana rests. She goes to bed early. Peter watches television until his eyes are tired. Alana does not wake when he goes to bed.

~

When he gets home the next day, Alana is in the bathroom crying. There is a discarded tampon wrapper on the floor. He sits beside her while she cries. They say nothing. In the morning, he calls the doctor’s surgery to cancel her appointment. She phones in sick and sleeps through the morning.

End of the Third Candle. Go to the Fourth Candle.