The Soldier's Wife

Once again he could hear water flowing, not the rushing of a stream in a rocky bed like the one they had crossed at the bottom of the hollow on the way here, but a steady, quiet sound of water hitting water.

The path made a sharp bend, and as he came around it, he saw a woman lying on the ground next to an overturned bucket a few yards ahead.

“Rorie!” he yelled, moving as quickly as he could down to where the woman on the ground lay, still trying not to lose his balance. He could immediately see a gash in her forehead that ran into her hair.

He couldn’t hear Rorie coming, and he yelled again. “Rorie!”

“Oh, no, what is it!” she cried from somewhere behind him.

“I found her!”

He knelt down by the woman.

“Is she—?” Rorie called. She came down the path as far as she could make it without falling.

“No,” he said. “No, she’s breathing. Looks like she might have hit her head on one of these rocks. I don’t think she’s been out here too long. The place is still bleeding a little.”

“Get her up from there, Jeremiah. Don’t let her lie on the hard ground like that. Oh, no, I hope she ain’t snakebit. I’m going to get the other bed ready. You carry her in,” she said, and she was running—hobbling—away again.

He grabbed the bucket Sayer Garth must have intended to carry back to the house and filled it in the small pool that collected the water running in a steady stream from a split in the rocks. She was very pale—and thin—unnaturally so. Hers was the kind of thinness he’d seen far more times than he’d ever want to count. It was the kind that came from starving.

He took off his neckerchief and wet it, then began wiping the dried blood from her face. She stirred after a moment and caught his hand. Her eyes opened.

“Thomas Henry... Oh, Tommy,” she whispered as her eyes closed again.

He picked her up as carefully as he could and began the long climb back up to the cabin, going down on his knees once when his feet slipped. He didn’t drop her, but the jarring made her rouse again. She reached up her hand and grabbed on to his shirtfront, gripping it tightly, not because she was afraid of falling, he thought, but because she still believed he was Thomas Henry. He could smell her soft woman smell—soap and rosewater—and he realized suddenly that she was crying.

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