The Moonlight Healers

10. Helene

10

HELENE

As Helene’s eyes adjusted to the brightness of the sun outside the truck, they found the channel. For as long as she could, she held onto the pale blue horizon of the world she knew, the waves that broke in gentle white swirls, the sea birds that dived recklessly toward the surface, the sights and sounds of her childhood, of every memory in her heart that was good and solid and beautiful.

But she couldn’t prevent the new, broken world in front of her from crashing into swift, unstoppable focus. The avenue before them was clogged with a web of machinery. Military trucks lurched past, spewing fumes and smoke, making slow progress through the crowds of soldiers, a sea of men in black and olive and brown. There were groups of German officers in clean uniforms, their heads high and faces smug as they marched prisoners past, boys with filthy cheeks and shocked expressions. There were horses tied up near carts, their coats shiny, and dogs and cats that anxiously followed the men, lured by the promise of food.

When they reached the promenade, the full view of Helene’s coast, her ruined home, hurtled toward her. There were only the sounds of the channel, the cries of birds, as Helene looked out onto the gray stone beach fringed by cliffs.

Even from a distance, the bodies were unmistakable, dark clusters strewed along the shore like driftwood, some half in the surf, others floating in rhythmic motions in the shallows of low tide. There had to be dozens, hundreds even, some in piles, others alone. There were too many of them, abandoned on the shore like debris from a shipwreck. But for every lifeless body there were many more wounded, dozens on stretchers, others crouched over on the hard pebbles of the beach. Still more walked in groups away from the sea front, hands over their heads.

Helene’s eyes traveled along the length of the beach, lingering on the ruined tanks, their twisted metal frames pouring smoke into the clear blue sky, the piles of guns and packs and equipment, the ruined landing craft, smoldering and useless, the only signs there had been any kind of battle. Everything else pointed only to a slaughter, a thousand men pushed off boats to be mowed down before their feet even reached dry ground.

“Come now,” Cecelia said behind Helene. “Move, Helene.”

Helene followed Cecelia down a set of stone stairs and onto the pebble beach. Up close, the channel seemed more violent, its waves pummeling wrecked ships and gear as the tide flowed in.

“There,” Cecelia said, her steady voice cutting through. She turned Helene by the shoulders. “Start on the other side of the tank. The boy there.” She pointed toward a figure lying by the wreckage of one of the Allied tanks.

There was a film over everything, a shiny haze that muffled all the color and light. She tried to take a step and stumbled.

“Go,” she commanded herself. And with great effort she moved forward past a body, and past another one, past men she told herself were sleeping, past boots blown off their owners, packs and canteens scattered over the rocks.

She forged forward until she was right beside him. When she knelt down, she saw that his face was gray, his blond hair mat ted with ash and dried blood. Beneath it all he was very young, maybe twenty. A little stream of blood bubbled out of his mouth.

“Are you here to help me?” he said in English, his voice hoarse. “Please help me.”

Helene could only nod as she felt his wrist for a pulse. After several moments she found it, rapid but barely detectable. His hands were cold, the skin waxy.

“I’m a nurse,” she said, dredging up the rusty English from her former life as a schoolgirl, when things like the proper way to conjugate a verb in a foreign language mattered.

“Please don’t let me die,” he said, his eyes blinking in and out of focus. His muscles bulged beneath his skin as he writhed. “Please,” he said again, barely a whisper, the whites of his eyes laced with red. “I want to go home.”

The boy was beyond saving. Helene had seen death enough to know what it looked like, the rattling sound lungs made as they gasped for air, the waxy sheen of skin. She thought of her father, how at the end there was so little left of him, to the point where he felt like a stranger, nothing like the man whose arms were so strong, who sang to her at bedtime and brought her home chocolate at the end of the day. She felt the tug in her chest to run. She couldn’t do what Cecelia had asked. She would fail again. But then the cadence of the waves filled her ears until it was all she heard, the crash of the water against the smooth stones, a sound she had known before she could even comprehend what it meant.

And suddenly she was six years old again, petulant in the kitchen as Agnes held out a tiny robin wrapped in a towel. Helene had found it on the street, lying listlessly near a shop window, and she had brought it home, breathless, so excited to give it to her mother to fix.

“We can help it,” Agnes had said gently, its red chest visible beneath the white fabric. “Just not the way you want.”

Helene’s shoulders shook as she looked down at the kitchen floor. She hadn’t understood why her mother wouldn’t simply make the bird better, touch it and heal it and let it fly away.

“You’re old enough now.” Agnes had shifted the bird into the crook of her arm and took Helene’s hand. “It’s not just a scratch or broken wing. She’s very hurt, Helene. But you, you are special, my love, because you can make the pain go away, help her go peacefully.”

She guided Helene’s hand down to the bird, until her fingers brushed its delicate feathers. Helene had felt it then, little sparks in her fingertips, like touching candle wax. After a few seconds, the robin stopped its fruitless attempts to free itself from her grip. Its body softened, then went rigid.

“It may not seem like it now,” Agnes said. “But that was kindness. That was healing. It’s a tremendous blessing, to be able to help a creature die with dignity.”

Back on the beach, Helene tried to hold on to Agnes’s face, her voice, her composure. Without another thought she reached out her hands. The warmth spread through her before she even touched him, and she was overcome with an almost unbearable sense of relief, finally, as though after years of gray silence, her world had once again exploded with sound and color.

“Breathe,” she said kindly as she pressed into his bloodstained shirt, as the heat grew, until she could feel it leave her and pour into him. With a gasp, the boy’s body relaxed and his face went slack. He tilted his head up toward the sun that shone above them.

Helene kept her hands on the soldier’s stomach as his breathing slowed.

“I don’t want to die here.” His eyes were filled with understanding as the desperation drained out of him with the pain. “Will I go home? Will they send me back home?”

“Where is home?” she asked. The blaze in her hands intensified. She willed it to go deeper, to seek out every last devastated nerve cell, every shattered bone, the arteries and organs still at war inside of him, to flood every part of him with peace. She tried to hold on to the image of the bird, the way her mother had stopped its suffering.

“Canada. Elora,” he said, his voice nearly lost in the noise around them. “Do you know it?”

Helene shook her head, trying to remember the English words. “I never leave France.”

He nodded slightly. “I had never left, before this.”

Helene pulled a piece of gauze from her medical kit and wiped his bloody lip. “You have family? Brothers, sisters?” she asked as she adjusted her hands back on the wound.

“Two sisters,” he said, the words now slurred. “My parents own a seafood restaurant. Right on the water.” He looked at her, but his eyes were becoming unfocused again, heavy. “It’s nice. You should come. After all of this.”

The blood flow from the wound beneath her hands slowed. “Tell me,” she said. “About home. Your papa. And mama.”

The force began to reverse, out of his body, into her hands. She knew what she was doing. She had seen her mother help people die, elderly men and women whose bodies clung to life even as they begged for it to be over. It was what Agnes had encouraged Helene to do with the little bird, not simply take away its pain, but help it to die because its death was inevitable.

Helene had always been terrified of this kind of healing, of what it must feel like to end a life. But as the warmth from his body flooded her own, as images of the boy’s life flashed across her mind, a mother’s face, a sister’s laugh as they played as children, she understood that it had nothing to do with her. She wasn’t taking his life from him. She was helping him find peace.

“I want you to think of them,” she said in French, fervent, the closest to a prayer she had spoken in years. “Your sisters. And parents. Think of them all, waiting for you together at the table, so happy to see you again. Because it’s over now. It’s all over. You can return to them.”

Her hands were cold as his chest stopped moving. She knelt there on the rocks, the bottom of her dress wet with sand and mud and blood, his vacant body beside her.

After seconds or minutes or maybe even hours, she felt a firm hand on her shoulder.

“There are more of them,” Cecelia said, the words a plea.

Cecelia took her place beside the soldier, her eyes closed and lips reciting as she made the sign of the cross on the boy’s forehead.

“You think that matters?” Helene asked, unable to stop herself. They were surrounded by countless dying men. If there was any proof God didn’t exist, they were living inside of it. “Here?”

Cecelia made another sign of the cross on the soldier’s forehead and gently shut his eyes. “I think it matters here more than anywhere,” she said.

Repeatedly that afternoon, as the sun crested above them, Helene followed the screams. She lost track of how many she tended, their faces indistinguishable, soldier after soldier, boy after boy. She was vaguely aware of the other sisters and nurses working near her, the living carried off on stretchers to medical tents, the walking wounded hustled up the beach at gunpoint.

With each soldier, she found it quicker, the source, the pulsing fatal wound. She worked without conscious thought, the heat palpable as it transferred from her skin to their cooling bodies, until the screams eased, and their bodies stopped trembling, until they were able to speak again, for a few moments, look up at the sky, feel the sun on their skin.

Eventually, Helene took a break. Beneath her dress her knees were raw from kneeling on the hard rocks. Her back ached and her head pounded from the sun. She hadn’t had any water or food in hours.

She wanted only to rest, to stop kneeling beside dying men. But then, out of the corner of her eye, Helene caught a flicker of movement. A man, a dozen or so meters away, so close to the water that his feet were covered by the rising tide. He was almost completely still, but whenever a wave washed over his legs, he twitched.

When she reached him, there were no obvious wounds on the soldier’s abdomen or chest, no signs of major trauma, just occasional moans as he stirred. She shifted him carefully onto his back, her hands tingling, but there was nothing visible there either, no bloodstain even in the fabric of his coat.

His eyes were closed but his eyelids moved rapidly, as though he were dreaming. As Helene’s adrenaline slowed, she really looked at his face, something she had avoided with the others. His skin was pale but not ashen, his cheeks still pink. He had thick, wavy brown hair and dark, long eyelashes. His features were round and soft, almost childlike, but he was tall, nearly six feet, with broad shoulders, as though his face hadn’t quite caught up to the rest of his body.

“Where are you hurt?” she asked, her fingers finding a bounding, energetic pulse in his wrist. She inspected his legs, and this time a dark bloom of crimson on his right leg caught her eye. She felt the fabric behind his knee, soaked from the waves, and searched until she brushed a piece of something sharp and metallic protruding from the skin.

Relief washed over her. He wasn’t dying. He was hurt, wounded, but nothing that couldn’t be fixed in a hospital. She rummaged through the medical kit Cecelia had given her for a bandage. She knew enough from watching her mother to apply a basic dressing. Her hands shook as she pulled it out, clumsy in a way they hadn’t been for the last few hours.

As she tied the tourniquet above his knee, she eyed the beach ahead of her. It was quieter now, with groups of mostly uninjured men and a dozen or so on stretchers in the direction of the large seafront casino. Before the war it had been a grand destination. Now it stood like an uncaring monolith, blank and empty and blackened by smoke.

“Who are you?”

Helene jumped and found the soldier staring at her as he tried to lift himself up.

“Christ,” he said, wincing. “Still here then. Never going to get off this godforsaken beach, am I?”

He spoke in fluent French, the words easy, but his accent was unfamiliar.

“I tried to pull it out, you know.” He looked down at his wounded leg. “They kept telling me to wait, the German medics, said they’d get to us eventually, although not as politely as that. And I thought I could just do it myself.” He grimaced as he propped himself up on his elbows. “I gave a little yank and that’s the last thing I remember.” His eyes, pale silty gray, nearly the same color as the channel, met hers. “You didn’t answer my question.”

Though his wound was minor, it felt impossible that he could be speaking to her, that such a thing as conversation could exist in this space. “I’m sorry, what was your question?” she managed, her voice sounding very far away.

“Who are you?” he asked.

But she was gripped by dizziness. She held a hand to her temple to fight it.

“Here, drink this.” Something hard and cool was shoved into her hands. “There’s only a little left. But it’s something. Come on now, drink a little.”

Helene fumbled with the metal top of the canteen and took a long drink of the lukewarm water. Her mouth and throat were so dry she could barely swallow. She resisted the urge to gulp the last drops, wiped her mouth, and returned the canteen to him.

“Thank you,” she said. “And I’m a nurse.”

He was watching her closely, his gray eyes reflecting the sun. “And I do speak French. You’re not hallucinating.” He smiled. “You’re not the only ones who do. I’m from Montreal.”

Helene shook her head. “Of course.” She leaned over to ex amine his wounded leg again, remembering why she was there. “You need to be seen by a surgeon.”

“So it seems.”

Helene straightened and searched the area for a soldier who could transport him to the medical tent, but there was no one nearby. “They’ll just need to remove the shrapnel. Maybe some sutures. You’ll be fine.”

The boy winced at that and lay back down. “I look forward to my convalescence in a prison camp.”

Helene didn’t know how to respond. He wasn’t wrong. She had seen countless men that day marched off at gunpoint, had heard the stories of what happened to captured paratroopers, sent off to the same work camps or prisons as her uncles, or worse, executed in cold blood.

“I’ll go and get help. They’ll need to bring a stretcher. Get you to the medical tent.”

He sat back up abruptly and gripped her wrist. “Please don’t.”

She tried to ignore how soft his palm was, how smooth his skin. She wanted to be professional, clearheaded. “You need medical care.”

“Didn’t you just say you’re a nurse?”

“Oh, no. I mean, yes I am. But like I said, you need a surgeon for this, someone to remove the shrapnel.” She looked around again for transport. “I’m only supposed to be doing triage.”

To her surprise, the corner of the soldier’s mouth twitched. “They finally send us some nurses but ones who are useless. Wonderful—I’m sorry,” he said immediately. “You should know that I can be an idiot. I’m sure you’re a wonderful nurse. All of you. My leg just hurts is all.”

Helene reached for her medical kit. “It’s fine. But I do need to get you some help. That wound will get infected. It’s wet and filthy.”

“Please don’t leave,” he said. “Please just stay. For a little while?” She couldn’t help him further, but when she looked at his face again, beneath the charm, she saw real vulnerability. “What’s your name?” he asked.

Her hand was still on her medical kit. If she stopped working, stopped moving, allowed herself to exist as herself again and not simply a nurse, she didn’t know if she would be able to get up. But his expression was so kind, and trusting, and Helene couldn’t unsee it. “Helene,” she told him.

“Helene,” he repeated. “It’s probably stupid, but I thought it might be nice to have a few more minutes. Before all that. Just to sit here in the sun and talk to a pretty girl.”

Helene felt her cheeks flush. She had never been called pretty by a boy. She had hardly even talked to a boy. Even before the war, she’d never lived the kind of life that some of her neighbors or classmates did, where she could put on a nice dress and go to a dance and talk to a handsome boy. By the time she was old enough to go to dances, her father was already sick, and after his death, she never had much interest. Music reminded her too much of him, of the way he sang to her, the old fisherman’s ballads he knew by heart.

“There’s no reason for you to leave, Helene. There’s no one left to help,” he said quietly as his eyes scanned the beach. “The Germans are taking care of anyone too injured to be brought to the tents.”

Gunshots echoed in her mind. She had been ignoring the sound all afternoon, but she knew he was right.

At this reminder, some last, remaining prop inside of her collapsed. It was all over, and for what? All those men, all those bodies, and nothing had been gained or changed.

“I’m Thomas.” He offered his hand and she accepted it. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Helene.”

“You as well.”

He peered straight at her, his gray eyes curious. “How did you end up here exactly?”

Helene set her arms back at her sides and crossed her legs. Her arms were covered in sand and dried blood. Her hair was loose from where it had been tied back that morning, sweaty and sticking to her forehead. She smoothed the wrinkles in her lap, automatically, but stopped when she saw the dark red stains on her apron.

“Why did you decide to be a nurse?” His voice was softer now.

“I…” She thought of giving him a vague, polite answer, the kind of agreeable pleasantry told to strangers. But for some reason she couldn’t bring herself to lie to him, not after what’d she witnessed today. “I didn’t. My mother. My mother wanted this for me.”

Thomas nodded. “Why is that?”

“She was one. In the last war. She sees people in our town now. Helps with the pain of childbirth. Takes care of people who are sick. Anything people need. I assist her. Or try to at least.”

“What is the name of your town?”

“Honfleur.” Something inside of her loosened as the word left her lips. It was almost like saying the name could bring it closer, her grandfather’s rough wool coat, her mother’s dried flowers hanging in the closet, the creak of the loose floorboard on the stairs, the light through the windows in the afternoon.

Thomas cocked his head. “Is that near here?”

Helene gazed out toward the channel. “Not too far. It feels far, though, sometimes.” She knew she was only a short train ride from Honfleur, and yet Rouen felt like its own continent, separated from her old life.

“I know what you mean.”

Helene looked back at Thomas. She couldn’t help but note how handsome he was as the sun kissed his skin. She felt awkward, unsure of how to talk to him. She settled on the simplest question she could think of, an easy one. “How old are you?”

He squinted at her. “Why do you ask?”

Had she embarrassed him? “I’m sorry, I didn’t—”

“I’m eighteen, nineteen in October,” he said before she could finish. “Why? Do I seem young to you?”

“No,” she said. “Or, I mean, yes. Not too young.” She felt herself blush.

Thomas studied her in a way that made Helene’s stomach somersault. “How old are you then?”

“Seventeen.”

“Ha!” Thomas exclaimed. He tried to shift his weight but grimaced at the movement. “Knew it.”

“Knew what?”

“That I was older than you.”

“That’s a strange thing to be excited about.”

“I’ll take whatever victories I can get today.”

Helene started to smile. “What’s it like?” She wanted him to be light again, to keep pretending. “Your home. Montreal?”

Thomas shook his head. “No disrespect intended, but a hell of a lot nicer than what I’ve seen of France.”

Helene couldn’t argue with that.

“I’m from just outside of Montreal, a little town called Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu.”

“That’s quite the name.”

Thomas removed the top of his canteen, swigging the last few drops before wiping his mouth. “We can’t all be from lovely-sounding places like Honfleur.”

Helene wanted to steer the conversation back to Thomas. She much preferred to ask him the questions, to learn about his life. Her own existence had been filled with the hopelessness and tedium of occupation for so long. She needed to remember a world away from the war, one with the possibilities only peacetime could allow. “What is there to do in Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu?”

“There’s a river,” Thomas said. “And a canal. A fort and a railroad. It’s all quite grand as you can imagine.”

“And your parents?”

Thomas opened his mouth to speak but then hesitated. He looked down at one of his hands and picked at the dirty nailbed. “My father owns a textile factory. My mother was a nursery school teacher, before they met.”

“They must be proud of you. For coming here.”

Thomas swallowed. “No, not really.” He looked back up at her. “I enlisted, right after I turned eighteen. My mother cried when I told her. My father left the room.”

“I don’t understand.” Helene had never seen her grandfather prouder, even through his sorrow, as when his sons went off to fight the Germans before the surrender.

Thomas picked up a smooth, black rock and tossed it out toward the water. It landed with a splash. “They don’t think it’s our war. Not my father. Not most of the people where I’m from. When my father finally did speak to me, he said I was being reckless, acting like a child, fighting someone else’s war.”

So many in Helene’s country, too many, believed the same as Thomas’s father, that as long as their lives continued in a faint outline of what they had been before the war, it wasn’t their business, that collaboration was preferable to fighting. It was why France’s leaders had surrendered so easily, chose capitulation to Germany. Thomas had lived on the other side of the world, in safety, and yet he was willing to fight for the good of the world.

“I don’t think it’s childish,” she said.

Thomas picked up another rock and turned it over in his hand.

“I think it’s brave,” Helene continued. Her voice was shaky but she plunged forward, the words inside her suddenly urgent. Because he was kind and held her gaze when she spoke. Because soon they would take him away. “It’s not childish. Your father was wrong. No one is fighting here. We’re all just living beside them and letting them do whatever they want and take whatever they want.” She paused. “And you all tried.” She could still hear the sounds of the dying soldiers in her ears, all those boys who would never see their homes again. “And that matters.”

“Does it?” Thomas asked.

Helene wanted to memorize his face, the way his nose curved slightly at the bottom, the scar on his chin, the swirls of white in the gray of his eyes, the crease on his forehead as he watched her.

“I think it’s all that matters,” she replied.

There were footsteps on the rocks behind them, a nurse perhaps, or a German soldier, rounding up the last of the walking wounded. Thomas eased himself onto his back. “It’s time to leave now, isn’t it?”

“Yes, I think it is,” she said as she shifted her weight to look over her shoulder.

Her body went rigid. Lieutenant Vogel stood a few feet away, one hand on his pistol as he blinked into the sun.

Helene tried to rise to her feet, but her legs were unresponsive. She put out a hand as Vogel stepped toward them and raised his gun. She scrambled onto her knees, trying to place herself between them. But Vogel was focused on Thomas, who lay on his back, eyes closed, his chest rising and falling.

“No,” Helene heard herself say.

Thomas opened his eyes and lifted his head, his mouth half-open in surprise.

“Get out of the way,” Vogel said through gritted teeth. He pointed the gun at Thomas, whose face drained of all color.

“Stop!” Helene screamed, so loud it ripped through the air like an explosion. “He’s not dying. He’s barely hurt. Please.”

Vogel ignored her, his gun still outstretched. He set his finger on the trigger.

Thomas lifted himself to a seated position and raised his hands in the air. “Please,” he said in English. “Don’t.”

Vogel’s finger twitched. Helene felt the world around her slow and draw inward, pulled toward the long black barrel of the pistol.

But before Helene could plead again, her vision was obscured by the full white skirt of a sister’s habit, covered in dirt and blood.

Cecelia stood in front of Vogel, her chest inches from his gun, her arms at her sides and body as rigid as a wall.

Vogel registered her presence, but he didn’t lower his gun. “Get out of the way,” he said to Cecelia, his chapped lips barely parting.

Cecelia’s head was held high, even as Vogel’s gun waved in front of her. “No.”

Vogel sneered. “That wasn’t a request.” He took a step to his right, but Cecelia again placed her body between his gun and Thomas.

“There’s only been a misunderstanding,” Cecelia said calmly. “This soldier has minor injuries and is ready for transport. Your services are not needed.”

Helene braced herself for a torrent of anger, but to her surprise Vogel’s mouth twisted into a grin. It made him appear even more ratlike. “You think you get to tell me that?”

He raised his gun until it was in her face. The white fabric of her veil rippled slightly in the breeze, but her body was still.

“Listen to me now, Sister.” He leaned forward, his gun shaking. “I am doing more for these men than anyone else on this beach. More than they deserve. You say you’re a woman of faith. Well, what does your God think of leaving someone to suffer and die like a wounded animal?” He put his free hand on his chest. “So, I will ask you, once, and only once more, to move and let it be done.”

She shook her head again. “No, I will not.”

“Then you’ve made your choice.”

Helene sprang to her feet, even as she felt Thomas reach out to try to stop her, and stepped directly beside Cecelia, her legs shaking violently underneath her skirt.

“You’re hurt.”

There was a long, unbearable silence.

“You’re injured—your arm,” Helene continued. She pointed to Vogel’s left arm, where she had noticed a small, black hole in the fabric near his elbow, raw skin visible underneath. “It doesn’t look bad, but it could get infected.” She knew only that she had to keep talking. “It needs to be washed out, the sooner the better.”

Without moving his gun, Vogel inspected the hole in his sleeve, perplexed.

“You were here then?” Helene asked. “You were here for the battle?”

There was a faint flicker of recognition in his eyes. “Only the end of it.”

“You served bravely then,” Helene said. She couldn’t look at Thomas or Cecelia. “You saved all of us. It’s not even your home and yet you fought for it. That takes tremendous courage. Thank you, Lieutenant.” She tried to make her features neutral, smooth out any of the fear left in her voice. “Now let us tend to him. Get him ready for transport. His delay getting to the medical tent was our fault, our mistake, an error in the triage, and you were so kind to offer your help. But you need medical attention yourself now.”

Vogel glanced at Cecelia and then back at Helene. For a horrible moment, his face hardened.

But then he nodded and lowered his gun. “Fine then.” He eyed Cecelia for a long moment, hatred radiating from every inch of him, before turning and walking briskly away.

Once Vogel was gone, Helene crouched beside Thomas. “Are you okay?”

“Of course. Was never worried. Just another German trying to kill me today.” He studied his hands, covered in dirt and dried blood. “Still, thank you,” he said softly. “For that.” He squinted into the sun at Cecelia. “And you, Sister.”

Cecelia inhaled through her nose, as though it were her first real breath in hours. “I was only doing God’s will.”

“God’s will was for you to put yourself between me and a Luger?”

Helene tried to stifle a smile as Cecelia narrowed her eyes.

“Go,” she said to Helene. “Have them bring a stretcher.”

Helene leaned in so Cecelia couldn’t overhear. “I’m sorry,” she said to Thomas.

“For what?”

Helene could see the afternoon sun reflecting in his gray eyes. He seemed lit from within, despite the events of the day, with a brightness, a hope Louise hadn’t seen in years. She had spent hours surrounded by death, by the destruction and carnage of war, but something about her proximity to Thomas, simply being next to him, made her feel like not all was lost.

“That you have to go.”

Thomas’s right hand toyed with a rock next to him, then he looked up and smiled. “Don’t worry about me.”

Helene tried to return his smile, the profoundness of the moment welling up inside of her.

Cecelia’s hand clamped down on her shoulder, the final axe falling. “Go on now, Paré. Back to the tents. Send along help.”

Helene smoothed her skirt as she rose. “Good luck, Thomas.”

He reached out his hand. “You as well, Helene.”

She tried to memorize the feel of his skin against her own, the weight of it, both nothing and everything all at once.