Page 2 of These Immortal Truths
There is no place Anna knows better than this patch of forest. She has learned its every landmark, watched the saplings grow into trees over the course of years. Every day she’s gathered logs for her fire, leaves and branches to thatch her roof, and food for her table. They pass her favorite spot for foraging mushrooms, wet their skirts running through the stream where she bathes and washes the filth from her clothes.
Anna’s lungs burn with every step, but the pulse drumming in her ears urges her onward. The pain in her chest is no different from the hunger in her belly; there is comfort and there is survival. There is no doubt what fate awaits them both if the men—soldiers, she realizes with a pang—find them.
Seeing the roof of her cabin through the trees has never brought her so much relief, but she doesn’t allow her steps to pause or her grip on the woman’s hand to weaken. Not until they are under her roof, the door shut tight against her back, does Anna allow herself to justbreathe.
Legs weak, she slides down the door as she struggles to find the air she needs to push against the black spots in her vision. In the middle of her dirt floor, the stranger stares back at her—not a hair out of place. Anna wipes the sweat along her temple, but can dolittle for the bead rolling between her shoulder blades. She wets her lips.
“Do, do you speak English?” she asks between gasping breaths.
The woman’s head tilts, dark eyes curious. Anna wonders how she can be so composed when she’s struggling to breathe. “Yes.”
Anna nods, closing her eyes and leaning her head back against the wood as she wills her breathing to slow. “Good,” she rasps. “That’s good.”
“Thank you for helping me.” Her voice is a song; lyrical and sweet. When Anna opens her eyes, she finds the stranger crouched in front of her—tan, slender arms braced against her silk-wrapped knees and chin resting on her knuckles. There’s gold rings adorning nearly every finger; patterns inked into her skin there. “What’s your name?”
“Anna,” she breathes, gaze tracing over the unfamiliar designs. Her eyes lift to her face. “Yours?”
There’s a wicked curl to her lips as she stands, holding out a hand in offering. “I have many names.” Her head tilts, amusement flickering in her eyes. “Which would you choose for me?”
Anna fumbles, baffled by her strange answer (and even stranger request) but takes the offered hand. “You wish me to give you a name?”
“It’s only fitting,” she says, pulling her up effortlessly. There’s a strength that seems unusual for her slender frame. “Tell me, who shall I be to you?”
It’s such a bizarre request, Anna shakes her head. “I don’t—” She catches the direction of the stranger’s gaze, and her voice catches.
Her chest.
Her marked skin.
Anna flushes, pulling her collar closer to her neck. It must have shifted, the stays loosening, during the mad run home. “It’s not catching,” she assures her, but it sounds weak even to her own ears. “They think it is, but it’s been there since I was a girl and I’ve no pain or lesions.”
Sun-kissed hands cover her own, coaxing them away. Anna is too stunned by her proximity, by the gentleness of the taller woman’stouch, to resist. Her lips twist into a frown. “They believe it to be leprosy.”
Anna nods, throat tight. Her hands tremble, waiting for the look of disgust. For the pulling away. For the abandonment.
The sigh she breathes is soft, but weighted with disdain. “Fools.”
It’s so unexpected, it takes Anna a moment to recognize rejection isn’t coming. The relief is nearly enough to make her sick. “You’re not afraid?”
“There are many things worth fearing,” she says, meeting her eyes. “This is not one of them.”
Anna swallows, trying to find her voice hiding in the strangle of emotion making her chest ache and her eyes burn. “Would … would you like something to eat?” She doesn’t have much, hardly enough to share, but there is a sudden desperation building within her. It has been so, so long since she had anyone to sit with. To talk to. She will sacrifice a meal if it means this unnamed woman will linger even just a little bit longer.
There’s a pity softening her gaze that makes Anna suspect she knows. “I would like that.”
Tightening the stays on her collar, Anna goes to the corner where she keeps her stores while the stranger takes a seat at her tiny table. The dried fish, painstakingly caught in the creek, is too precious to offer, but she takes some of the dense acorn biscuits and some blackberries she harvested yesterday.
It’s not until she sets it on the table, eying the sweet, dark berries that she remembers the bounty she left behind.
She thinks of the cascade of red hawthorn berries hitting the dirt—the feel of them crushing underneath her foot—and goes pale. There’s no way the soldiers will miss it. They don’t know the forest like she does, but they’d have to be blind not to see a footprint and abandoned food and put two and two together.
They know enough to know where she lives.
“You need to go,” she whispers, fighting to suppress the tremor in her voice. “Before they come. You need to go.”
The woman plops a blackberry into her mouth, her eyes piercingly intense. “You’re afraid.”
Anna swallows, throat tight and chest aching. “Yes.”
