Page 11 of The Moonlight Healers

“Yes, sir.”

A large scar ran down the side of his face, covered in places by the strap of his helmet. It was still red, the flesh not fully healed. There were dark circles underneath his eyes, but his skin was smooth, unlined. He couldn’t have been much older than twenty-five.

The soldier leaned so close that Helene could smell his breath. “Open it,” he said, gesturing toward Helene’s suitcase.

Helene’s mind immediately went to her mother’s journal. Would he be able to read the French? What would he think of the pages of notes, the detailed family tree of healers that went back generations, or the description of their magic itself, her mother’s words, written on the very first page: “We don’t heal the body. We heal the soul.”

“They fear what they don’t understand,” her mother always whispered to her, whenever she held open the journal under candlelight as she mixed up broths or cups of tea for her sleeping patients, or when she placed her hands on sweaty brows to ease fevers. “What they can’t control. Men. Doctors. Churches. Governments. They’re all the same.”

Helene gripped her suitcase tighter. She knew she couldn’t trust anyone besides Cecelia with this information, much less a German soldier. Even if the days of witch trials were over, their legacy reverberated. It was the reason Helene’s great-great-grandmother had fled from her ancestral home in Normandy to the mountains, a lesson passed to each generation with the same care as the magic itself.

“Bonjour,”floated a gentle voice from the other side of the courtyard. A nun in a flowy white habit approached. She was one of the most beautiful women Helene had ever seen. She seemed more like a movie star dressed as a sister than an actual nun.

Her eyes moved between Helene and the soldier, who didn’t seem to show her any deference in relation to her status as a sister. “Is there a problem with our new probate, Lieutenant Vogel? Something I can offer my assistance with?” She gestured at Elisabeth. “Did she forget her papers?”

“No, Mother Superior.”

The nun addressed the soldier again. “Sir?”

The soldier watched Helene closely, then finally shook his head. “There is no problem.”

He stepped aside and allowed them to enter.

“Good day, sir,” the sister said, politely, although Helene noticed her shoulders stiffen as she turned away.

They walked in silence for a few moments until the nun fell into stride beside Helene. “Welcome, Helene,” she said quietly. “I apologize for the delay.”

“Are you Cecelia?” Helene asked, hopeful that this beatific, efficient woman was her cousin.

The nun smiled. “I am nowhere near as talented as your cousin. Hopeless truly when it comes to an operating theater. Some call me Mother Superior. But we don’t stand much on ceremony in these times. You can also call me Sister Beatrice.”

They reached an edge of the courtyard, near a large, tiered fountain, and Beatrice stopped. “Elisabeth will take you the rest of the way.” She squeezed Helene’s arm. “We are so happy you are here. Cecelia said you would be a quick learner, a natural.”

Helene didn’t know how to respond. She had never studied a real anatomy textbook, or learned sterile technique, or how to administer antibiotics for an infection. Despite her mother’s brief experience as a combat nurse, the medicine Agnes practiced in Honfleur, the medicine Helene had been taught was the old way, a system entirely anachronistic to the modern world.

Aside from some rudimentary skills, Helene had no training as a hospital nurse.

“I’ll do my best, Mother Superior,” Helene said, trying to match her expression to her words.

Beatrice smiled again. “Of course, you will.”

She nodded to Elisabeth and headed back through the courtyard.

Elisabeth led Helene down a narrow path along one wing of the building until it opened onto a square garden, where several women in white habits picked small red and green peppers and tomatoes from the billowing plants. Helene couldn’t remember the last time she’d had a fresh tomato.

They turned away from the garden and walked through a large arch and up a set of covered stairs. Finally, they entered the hospital through an imposing wooden door. As they trod down a long interior hallway, Helene could feel the cool stone beneath the thin soles of her shoes.

“The living quarters are inside here,” Elisabeth said as they approached the first door on the left side of the hall. She shoved it open with a groan of metal hinges.

They stepped into a cavernous room lined with metal cots on three sides. On the fourth side were a washbasin and several small tables with lamps.

Elisabeth pointed to a cot near where they stood by the door. A thin white sheet was tucked in tightly, a gray wool blanket folded at one end. “This is yours then.” She hesitated before nodding to a cot a few spaces down. “I’m in here too. Not that it matters much. You’ll mostly be in here to sleep.”

Helene surveyed the cot, the enormous room, the tall arched ceiling above them. It was too big, too formal, too clean. She was embarrassed to feel burning at the edge of her eyes as she tried not to think of home, of her little attic bedroom, the dust on the bookshelf and old socks crumpled in a pile on the floor.

“You’ll get used to it,” Elisabeth’s voice echoed as she walked toward the door and left.

Helene sat on the cot and lay back onto the scratchy sheets, her feet and back aching from the journey. She didn’t want to be here, in this massive, vaulted room. She didn’t want to be a nurse, to panic and flounder without the steady hands of her mother nearby. Her mother wasn’t scared of anything. She would stand in place, never flinch. She was the moon for her patients, lighting up even the darkest of their nights.

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