Spring 1925

Katherine might as well have been made of stone. The sun had gone, and with it all the warmth of the day. She was huddled in the passenger seat of the Ford, an old blanket wrapped around her. Her eyes downcast, her rising and falling chest and anxious fingers fraying the edge of the blanket the only moving parts of her. There was that heavy feeling in her face that comes just before weeping, but she wasn't able to cry. She was all dried up. Normally, she wouldn't have been able to feel the cold, but in her condition, it turned her limbs to lead. The temptation to stay where she was - moving was so difficult, so energy draining - was powerful.

Nneka was leaning against the hood of the automobile, her arms folded, staring up at the big farm house. Katherine watched her with dead eyes. Though her face remained expressionless, Katherine felt a warmth melt the heavy ice behind her face and tears started to wet the corner of her eyes once more. Nneka was the one thing that reminded Katherine that there could still be life before death. She wanted to say something, to let Nneka know that she was still here, behind the stone, behind the grief, that she would remember every time Nneka had reminded her to feed, had urged her out of bed in the evening, had reiterated again and again that the steady pace and beat of life would go on, unstopping, and that Katherine must keep pace or be left behind.

"I'm sorry," was all she managed to say, when really what she meant was 'thank you'.

Nneka looked at her, turning her head so that the moonlight caught off her sharp cheekbones. Her expression was both sad and affectionate, like a mother, and Katherine looked away, unable to tolerate feeling like a child.

"Let's go in," Nneka said. "We need to unpack."

"I can't… the books…"

"I'll unpack the books. You can take care of the clothes. Ok?"

Katherine was silent. The car seat was so comfortable, the blanket so warm. If she were to move, then the cold would seep in. She could almost convince herself that she could simply stay there, unmoving, forever.

But no. It was time to get up.

With stiff limbs and fingers, she snapped open the car door and clambered out, looking small and pathetic in her blanket. Nneka reached out to take her hand and Katherine took it, letting her friend lead her up the driveway to what was now the third rebuild of her family home, and now her asylum from the world and it's horrors.

Time seemed to stand still here, as if it were bubbled off from the world. When she was here, every day felt like the last, and she couldn't imagine a time after tomorrow. She could live here, reading and doing chores, as if no time had passed since her twelfth birthday. At the moment, and for quite some time after, she would be too fragile to do much else. Nneka would wait, would share her bed, would cook for her and drive with her down to the city to sell their harvest and wait on her while she took blood. She would let Katherine lay her head on her lap while she read or listened to radio broadcasts.

When the holes in her heart, left there by the war, were so large and gaping that she couldn't breath, Nneka held her. So she lived, one day at a time, picking about the rubble that used to be her identity, a whole and steadfast castle. The Great War had beaten at it like a storm, wearing it's walls smooth, cracking the battlements, weakening its foundations. The loss of Alexus had destroyed it utterly, leaving her an empty shell, airless, lifeless, helpless. While Katherine walked about like a zombie, it was Nneka who took control of Alexus' estate, liquidating it, arranging the passage back to America, claiming their final war wages and Alexus' pension for Katherine and retaking her old home north of Boston.

Despite the months of respite, with no greater concern than running the farm, Katherine made little, if any, progress at all. For every moment when she felt like she could break the surface of the pain, there were three more when she could curl up at dawn, shaking, unable to breath for the weight on her chest. Time passed. A few months became years, and still Katherine didn't have the strength to function, to break free of whatever was holding her under. Nneka, being the kind of woman that needed to give every phenomenon a scientifically medically correct term, called it 'depression' and 'posttraumatic stress disorder', but to Katherine, it was simply the sensation of drowning on land, with a constant ache in her lungs that reminded her of suffocation.

"I can't do this anymore," she stated one evening over the dinner table to Nneka. Her words had a kind of finality that comes from the hopeless. She said it as casually as if she had asked what food was going to be served, but her voice rang hollow. Nneka had been patient, had been supportive, had given much of her time to caring for Katherine with a mother's dedication, but the melodrama in this simple statement was too much. She looked up at Katherine and saw her for the first time in what was well over a hundred years, not as the soldier that had stood by her side under hails of bullets, not as the intellectual who debated over expensive french coffee in Alexus' study, but as the privileged do-gooder farm girl who had come to her to liberate the slaves of the South from their very chains.

"And what, dearest, is it that you cannot do anymore?" She asked, knowing full well the answer. The tone in her voice implied that she was speaking to a child who has refused to eat their vegetables.

Katherine's eyes finally focused on her and narrowed, her upper lip lifting in a scowl that showed her front teeth. "I have been walking from day to day, struggling, fighting, and I'm still here, it still hurts. It's never going to go away and I don't see why I should get up in the evening when every day is going to be the same. If this is what I have to look forward to, stretching out in front of me, why not end it?"

She said this with a false air of calm, as if she were presenting an academic argument, but Nneka didn't miss the scratch of desperation in that voice.

"Katherine," she said, her voice hardening ever so slightly; "when we were in the trenches, why did you get up every night? You took on the worst of it, slogging in the mud and the blood, facing the brunt of every hopeless march across that wasteland, day in and day out. Every day, the same, another murder here, another suicide there, another lost child cut down before he finished school. It was dark times, my friend, but you would not stop. You took more punishment and threw yourself at more pain than any creature, moral or no, would be able to stand in their lifetimes. Every evening, you got out of your bloody hole in the ground and stood beside those lost boys. And now…? All you have to do is live and breath and you can't stand to do even that anymore? All you have to do is be."

"What? Are you telling me to get over it?" Katherine was on her feet now, hissing like an angry cat, every hair on her body standing on end. "Just put it behind me as if it were nothing?"

"Of course not. What I'm trying to tell you, dear, is that now is the time for healing, not for fighting. If you are fighting every day to stay alive, then you're not doing it right!"

"So I should just hang myself and be done with it." She turned away, all anger simmering down into that empty listlessness.

"Are you not listening to me?"

"You are not listening to me!" Katherine snapped. "How can I start again? I've lost everything that I fought for. Our friends, my… my partner. Across the ocean in Europe, the whole world is falling apart and you expect me to keep it together?"

"That's a ridiculous comparison!" Nneka exclaimed.

"I had a life before that war, a future, a lover, friends, a family, a home. They took that away from me just like the took the lives and futures of every kid who lied about his age so he could impress his friends. I'm fucking done, Nneka. It's over. I should have died in that war and the life that I am living now is an insult to the god who wanted me dead."

"You don't believe in God!"

"You know they say that about us? That we're dead? Walking dead, living dead - I'm not even a living person any more. I might as well be dead. There's nothing to live for anyway and I'm just stuck here, floating around, doing nothing, helping no one - a non-entity that is as good as if it didn't exist. There is no growth here, no progress, and the life I had before may as well be nothing but wasted time!"

"Katherine, sit down!"

She had been shouting, Katherine realised, pacing the length of the dinner table and back again, her hands clenched into fists so tight that she had broken the skin on her palm with her nails. Her throat hurt. Her voice had reached such a hysterical pitch that the back of her mouth felt like it had been shredded with a cheese grater. Tears stung her face. Her head pounded. Nneka was breathing hard as if she had just sprinted from one end of the one hundred and fifty acre farm to the other and the sudden boom of her shouted order caused Katherine's tirade to crumble as effectively as if she had been slapped in the face. Immediately shame blossomed from the back of her neck, spreading across her face like a fever.

Nneka retook her own seat. There was a terrible silence between the two for several painful seconds. Finally; "What did you do last night?"

"Excuse me?" Katherine raised her eyes from the floor, bemused.

"Tell me, what did you do last night?"

"I… uh…" she swallowed, her voice sounding so small and timid after the agitated volume it had reached before. "I read, I think, at the start of the evening. And then, I left letters for our daytime overseer, letting him know that we needed to order more fertilizer from the city. Then, I looked at the pamphlets you brought in, the ones about the automated milking machines, and then we ate and talked about money and then I cleaned the kitchen and set traps for the - "

"'I'm just stuck here, floating around, doing nothing, helping no one'," Nneka echoed savagely. Katherine shut her mouth, gritting her teeth, eyes flaring up with anger once more. She didn't speak again however, as Nneka continued. "Katherine, you won't stop. Your existence is action, you're being is doing. I know it feels like you're just treading water, like you're only just ever keeping your head above the quicksand, but every single night you run this farm, you contribute to our living, adapt to new technology, deal with new people. I know you feel like you have lost everything, that your wealth of experience, of learning and growing and fighting were obliterated in the shellfire, but you are running this farm using skills you learned in your childhood. You are living every day with the strength and intelligence you have cultivated over hundreds of years. Are you truly starting again when you have that amount of lessons learned, of battles won, of wealth gathered behind you, a lifelong development that would literally not be possible for any ordinary human?"

Katherine didn't respond, but her eyes and softened, and fresh tears wetted her cheeks again.

"Life is not a game of Snakes and Ladders. As much as you believe that what you've built has been shattered, it hasn't - and every single day you're adding another layer of bricks and mortar. Nothing, not even a war, can break the foundation for your future that is your past. And you will never stop building. You may not believe this, but resting, healing, they are just as constructive and valuable as striving and fighting. Simply by being, you are growing."

Nneka stopped speaking, regarding Katherine with an expression that was half way between exasperation and affection. Once again, silence fell between them, but it was a gentle, thoughtful silence.

Eventually, Katherine croaked; "I'm sorry."

Nneka shook her head. "No. I will not indulge your apology."

A very weak, tremulous smile tugged at the corners of Katherine's lips. "I meant… thank you."

Nneka smiled back. "I know."

XXX

57

"I'm sorry."

"Why do you apologize?" Katherine asked, sitting across the dinner table from Jenny. She was smiling, accepting her third cup of coffee from Edward. She found that she was enjoying the girls company more and more. There was something so refreshing about hearing all these big and old ideas coming from someone who had only just discovered them, as if they were fresh and new all over again. It had been some weeks since their very first session together and Jenny was a fast and passionate worker, having already drafted and redrafted both essays. There were still some polishing to do for the resit exam in mid-September, but both of them were confident that if she wrote the fake essay they had agreed on, it would be an easy pass. Jenny would still grumble occasionally that she had to work on the fake essay at all, but in the end, as Katherine had suspected, the freedom to rant and speak freely in front of Katherine, as well as write the critical essay that she actually cared about was a fair tradeoff in the end.

However, Jenny still had this peculiar habit. She would start to speak about one aspect or another of the real essay, interest lighting up in her eyes. The conversation would flow and turn naturally in tangents which Katherine encouraged. Jenny would openly and happily share her thoughts and opinions, becoming more and more animated until she reached some sort of peak, some point that really mattered, only to close up like a turtle retreating into its shell and mumble an embarrassed apology, assuming the same expression that Katherine had seen on her when her mother was dropping her off for her biweekly sessions. She had never pressed the issue, but rather had let Jenny trail off. Katherine had also noticed that when Mrs. Bates had come to pick her daughter up from their sessions, Jenny would abruptly stop speaking as soon as there was a knock on the door, even if she were halfway through a sentence.

"I don't know," Jenny said. "I guess… well, I know people don't normally like to hear me talk about this sort of stuff. I shouldn't get so excited…" She wasn't looking at Katherine.

"And who tells you that?"

"I don't know… just people. My mum. My teachers…"

"You know you can talk in front of me," Katherine said, making a subtle motion as if she were going to reach across the table and touch her hand, but thinking better of it. "Come on, what was it you were about to say?"

Jenny gave a timid sheepish smile and opened her mouth to speak. There was a knock on the door. As quickly as if she had been burned, she shut her mouth again, flushing. "Never mind…" she muttered. Katherine frowned, a little irritated. Standing, she went to get the door, and sure enough, it was Mrs. Bates come to fetch her daughter. As soon as she saw the woman, a million intrusive thoughts buzzed in her mind like tiny bees. What kind of relationship did these two have that Jenny could not bear to speak freely in front of her? What had happened between mother and daughter that the argumentative opinionated person that Katherine knew become meek and timid.

It was never her place to stick her nose in where she wasn't welcome. Nneka had taught her that all those years ago. She couldn't fix every single problem she saw, mend every tense relationship, render every home happy and safe, no matter how she felt. Even so, there were little things that she could do from her corner.

"Mrs. Bates, I must apologise, but I'm afraid that we're not quite finshed yet."

"Excuse me?" Mrs. Bates stood in the doorway, looking every bit like she was going to tell Katherine just how inconvenient it was to drive all the way here and back when really she had far more important things that she could be doing.

"I know, I really am sorry. I know we normally finish up around nine, but what with the resits so close, Jenny really is anxious to continue working on her introductory paragraph. I don't mind staying up a little later, especially as I think that extended sessions might be something she would benefit from. Oh, but - " she interjected, seeing that Mrs. Bates was about to burst with protest. " - please don't worry about the cost. I would be happy to cover the extra hours myself. It really is a pleasure to tutor your daughter. She's working so hard and I do think that staying an extra hour or two per week would not only help your daughter pass, but pass well." She treated Mrs. Bates to a winning smile. There was a pause. "And of course, I'll drive her home every night so you don't have to come out so late."

With every possible avenue of argument covered, Mrs. Bates face worked as she mentally picked over everything that was said. Katherine could see each excuse rise up and fade in turn as Mrs. Bates searched for a way to take control of the situation.

"Well, it would have been better if you had let me know she would be staying a little later in advance, that way I wouldn't have to drive out here."

"I understand," Katherine was the face of pained contrition. "We only just discussed it tonight. How does 10pm sound? Too late?"

"No," Mrs. Bates conceded. "It's ok. So long as it's not any later than that."

Katherine sensed Jenny behind her, her coat half on, watching from the entrance to the hallway. "Of course, Mrs. Bates. Thanks for coming by. We'll just finish up here and I'll get Jenny back home at ten."

"Right," Mrs Bates seemed to be accepting the situation with the grace of someone convincing themselves that it was their idea from the beginning. "Ok. See to is that Jennifer makes the most out of this extra time."

"Don't worry, I will. Goodnight." she waited until Mrs Bates had walked down the driveway to her car before closing the door and turning back to Jenny.

"So - what was it that you were saying?"

Jenny beamed, shrugging off her coat. "Well, I've been thinking a lot about…"