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“Are you… hungry? Need a place to sleep? I can ask my father if–”

“No, I’m fine,” she interrupted. “Thank you. I–” She stopped. “Do you have a husband?”

“Not yet. But soon,” Agnes answered. “I don’t want one.” She shook her head and then realized what she’d just said. “Not now, anyway. I…”

“It’s okay if you don’t. I don’t, either.”

“You don’t?”

“No,” the woman answered quickly. “I’ve been living on my own since I lost my family. Our house went to my uncle, who wanted to find me a husband to get the dowry, but I ran away before he could find me one.”

“Why?”

“Because I don’t want a husband, just like you,” she said with a soft smile that had Agnes smiling back. “I decided tolive on my own in the forest, so that’s what I do. I go from place to place, find food when I’m hungry, shelter when I can, and I live on my own without worrying about my uncle finding me anymore. I’m certain he thinks I’m dead since no woman could survive on her own for this long, in his mind.”

“My father is like that, too,” Agnes said. “I’m sure my husband will be as well.”

“How old are you?”

“Eighteen,” she replied. “I’m to be married before my nineteenth birthday. My father is only working out the details of the dowry before I leave. He was supposed to get a certain amount of money, and the man said that wasn’t what they’d agreed to, so my father went back there to get what he was promised for me. He’ll return, and I’ll go with him the next time he leaves. Then, I’ll be married and with a child soon after.”

“And you don’t want that?”

Agnes shook her head.

“Would you like to see where I live?”

“In the woods?”

“Yes,” the woman said with that same soft smile. “It’s not much. I move around a lot. I’m trying to find somewhere that I can truly make my own one day without a husband, but for that, I would have to travel far from here. I’ve heard there’s untouched land west. It’s a several-week journey by horse, so it will be longer since I’m walking, but I want to build a real home there.”

“Just you?” Agnes asked.

“For now. Do you want to see?” The woman held out her hand.

Agnes swallowed before she glanced back to her house and decided to take a chance.

“Yes,” she said and took the woman’s hand.

“My name is Frances.”

“Hello, Frances,” she said as they walked through the tall grass and into the woods that Agnes had only been in a handful of times before; her mother always telling her tostay away from them because of the animals and the men hunting them.

“How do you do it?” Agnes asked when they were far enough into the thick woods for her mother to no longer see her walking away.

“Dowhat?”

“Live on your own.”

“I hunt and find berries, mushrooms, and other food when I need to eat. I keep warm. I build traps to keep animals away, and I get to live freely.” Her smile widened. “That’s all I need.”

“Does it… get lonely?”

“Yes,” Frances replied. “I miss my family. I’m still used to the noise in our small house. All of us lived there together until my oldest brother built his own, married, and moved out, but the house was still filled with noise. I miss that. But before it happened, my father was close to finding someone for me to marry, and I didn’t want that. He became mean and told me I had no choice. I was his to do with what he wanted, and the kind father I used to know disappeared when I told him that I wouldn’t marry anyone he told me to. It was then that the sickness came, and…”

Agnes looked down and only then noticed that they were still holding hands. When she squeezed Frances’s hand, Frances looked down, too, probably realizing the same thing, and gave her that soft smile again.

“I prayed because I thought it was my fault that they all got sick and I didn’t. I prayed and prayed and prayed, but God didn’t answer.”