Page 2 of The Moonlight Healers

2

HELENE

Helene woke before dawn as she always did, when the narrow old house was quiet and deep with sleep. She lay very still on her small wooden bed, and stared out the dormer window, trying to suppress the panic that gripped her.

Normally, she would rush out of bed the moment her eyes opened, dress in clothes that had been patched or hemmed a dozen times, and tiptoe down the long staircase from her room in the attic in the dark of the blackout curtains. It was the only useful thing she could do, trudge out to the bakery or butcher or market each morning before the long line had formed, and so she did it with total devotion, made it a ritual, even throughout the long cold winter days, with snow on the ground and a white sheen of frost coating the handful of fishing ships left in the harbor.

But today, she sat upright in bed and hugged her knees to her chest. She still couldn’t fathom that in only a few short hours, she would leave her home and family to train as a nurse at the H?tel-Dieu, a Catholic convent and hospital in Rouen.

“You will be safer there,” Agnes had explained to her weeks ago. It was midmorning, and her mother had just returned from spending the night at a delivery on the outskirts of town. The baby arrived past midnight, but because of the curfew her mother had to wait until daylight to make the trek home. She was pale and red-eyed as she stood at the sink. “A cousin of mine is there. I haven’t seen her since we were little girls, the handful of times she visited from the south with her mother. But I wrote to her, told her of your work with me, that you would be a valuable nurse at the hospital. And she agreed.”

Helene’s shock almost immediately gave way to fear. She didn’t want to leave her mother, her grandfather, be cast out alone in a strange city in the midst of a war.

“No,” Helene had said, startling herself. She never said no to her mother. Everything was Yes, Maman . Each time she woke Helene up in the middle of the night because a woman was in labor or someone was in the last hours of life. Every time she asked Helene to miss school to gather wild weeds in the countryside that had been overlooked by the farmers but treasured by Agnes for their medicinal properties. Helene always followed her mother, even when the boys at school called Agnes a witch, even when she sometimes longed to be like one of the other girls in town, whose lives were light and easy and unburdened by the intimate knowledge of life and death.

“It’s not a question,” Agnes said.

Helene looked down at her hands, blistered from the previous day of helping clean their family seafood shop downstairs. Once full of the rough voices of fishermen and the briny smell of ocean, the store now stood empty, but cleaning it had become an important part of their day, a tiny act that felt like resistance.

Without a word Agnes reached over and placed her hand on top of Helene’s. Familiar warmth spread over her skin. She knew the sensation well, from her earliest memories, scraped knees or burns from the stove, the way the pain receded the moment her mother touched her.

Agnes removed her hand, and the blister was gone. If Helene weren’t her mother’s daughter, if that same ability didn’t live in her own body, she might have marveled at it. An outsider would be sure it was an illusion. Or witchcraft.

But to Helene it was simply her mother’s very being, a magic that was ingrained in their blood, as real and dependable as the tides.

Agnes took a step back from the table. “You can be useful there,” she said. “They need nurses.”

“But I’m not a nurse, Maman.” Helene studied the spot where the blister had been. “And if they knew about this, what we can do, they would hate me for it.”

She heard the smallness in her voice, the little girl’s plea. She didn’t understand how her cousin could function in a place that would condemn her if they knew the truth of her abilities. The church had persecuted their ancestors for centuries, accusing them of witchcraft and demonism. It was the entire reason they now practiced their gift in secret.

“They will not know,” she said. “I couldn’t ask Cecelia in the letter. It’s not safe these days with the mail searched. But she must have found a way to work as a nurse and a healer. To hide what she needs to hide. It’s not so different from how I work here, Helene. Why I prefer to see patients at night, when the world is asleep.”

“But I can’t even…” Helene’s voice faltered. She felt the familiar shame, that what came so easily to her mother was still such a struggle for her.

“Maybe you’ll find it there, Helene,” Agnes said gently. “What you’ve been missing. Cecelia might be able to help you, more than I can.”

“You’re my mother,” Helene replied. “What could she teach me that you cannot?”

Agnes smiled sadly. “Sometimes, I fear I make it all worse for you. Maybe being away from here, away from all these memories—” She glanced toward the parlor, and Helene knew immediately what she saw there. It was what Helene saw every time she was in that room, the bed her uncles had set up for her father in his last weeks, the curtains drawn, the air heavy with a sweet, sickly smell she could still conjure even four years later. “Maybe you just need a fresh start.”

There was a sorrow in Agnes’s pale green eyes Helene had never seen, but her mouth was set, her jawline firm. There would be no more argument.

And so, two weeks later in her attic bedroom, the rain now pounding the eaves above her, Helene had no choice but to wait for dawn.

When the edges of the blackout shade were framed in light, Helene got out of bed and put on the dress her mother had brought to her room the night before. It was a simple cotton, its blue color slightly faded, with one mismatched button on the back to replace a lost one. But the dress had been new once, a gift presented in tissue paper. Helene remembered her mother in it, leaving for the train station with her father, off to meet vendors in Paris for their family seafood company, her father skinny as he always was in her memory, but handsome in a suit and tie.

The dress was slightly short on Helene, who had several inches on her mother, but otherwise it fit, and as she tied it at the waist, she inhaled the fabric’s smell—cedar, mostly, from storage—but also the faintest, lingering notes of her mother’s old perfume.

Helene brushed her hair, clipped it back, and splashed cold water on her face from the washbasin. Then she opened the blackout shade and carefully made her bed as she did every morning, tucking the sheets into tidy, sharp corners.

When she finished, she let her fingers run along the blanket, frayed in places but warm enough on cold nights, then her late grandmother’s quilt folded at the end of the bed, and when she couldn’t bear it anymore, she left the room.

One floor below, Helene stopped on the landing outside her grandfather’s bedroom and stared at his closed door. Today, for the first time since the rationing started, he would take her place in line instead. I’ll see him again soon , she told herself as she continued down the back stairs.

When she entered the kitchen, she found it was already bright, the shades lifted to allow the sun rising behind their house to fill the space with light. Her mother stood at the stove, boiling a pot of water, and at the table, to Helene’s surprise, sat her grandfather, already fully dressed in a gray wool suit, the day’s paper open in front of him.

“Ah, there she is. My little duck. Up so late this morning.” He took a sip from his mug and grimaced only a tiny bit at the bitter chicory mixture. Then he motioned to the chair beside him. “Sit, sit. Your mother is making us breakfast.”

Helene took a seat across from him at the table. “You’re up early, Grandpapa.”

He folded his newspaper. “I have been given my instructions, haven’t I? March to the store at sunrise. Any later and there will be only—” he smoothed his scruffy white beard “—I believe the phrase was ‘mealworms and moldy bread.’”

Helene knew what it cost him, to perform this role, wake up early and dress to stand in line for scraps. He was no stranger to the early-dawn hours. For nearly all of Helene’s life, except on Sundays, her grandfather left the house before anyone else was awake, off to the little boat docked in the harbor, where he would spend the morning dredging for scallops or oysters. Before the war he fished with his surviving sons, Helene’s two uncles, Marc and Jean Luc, who were now prisoners of war in Germany, captured during the brief, failed Battle of France. In Helene’s older memories, before he got sick, her father was there too, off at dawn, back for the midday meal, all of them crowded around the table in their work clothes that smelled of the ocean, briny and fishy and wonderful.

The Germans had taken her grandfather’s boat almost immediately after the occupation, “repurposed” it, they had told him. But even if they hadn’t, it would have been far too dangerous to continue. There were already stories of fishing boats from towns nearby that had run into underwater mines or submarine attacks in the channel.

“Grandpapa, I’m sorry.” Helene couldn’t look at her grandfather. “You shouldn’t have to…”

“Little duck,” he said gently.

Reluctantly, Helene met her grandfather’s eyes. Away from his boat, his rough, freckled skin was softer, the bright redness of his nose and forehead fading with each passing week. Every day there was less of the sea in his appearance, less of him entirely, his wide, round stomach dwindling, his once-full cheeks sunken beneath his beard.

“No apologies. We will get on,” he said as he laid his palm on hers. The skin was comfortingly the same as it always was, callused by decades of ropes and the work of hauling heavy pots of pink clams and gray oysters.

She nodded, even though there was so much she needed to hear him say. She needed to know he would stand in line every day, even in winter when the edges of the harbor froze and there was snow on the ground. She wanted him to promise that he would be deferential to the soldiers, answer their questions but avoid their eyes.

But mostly, she needed him to promise her there would be something left of him when she returned, that he wouldn’t fade away completely.

“Breakfast,” Agnes said as she set a plate down in front of Helene.

Helene swallowed, her mouth dry and her appetite gone. Her mother had spread a precious bit of butter on a small rectangle of dense, stale bread, as well as all that remained of the apple preserves stored in the basement from last autumn. She also placed a boiled egg on the plate, along with tinned herring.

“Maman, this is too much.”

“You will eat your breakfast, Helene,” Agnes said, her back already turned.

“Be a good girl,” Helene’s grandfather said as he winced through another sip of chicory. “And do as your mother says.”

Agnes returned to the table with her own smaller plate and the three of them ate in silence. Every so often Helene stole a glance at her mother, who absently thumbed the pages of her journal, a now-worn book started by Helene’s grandmother, filled with remedies and notes from her work as a healer in Cordon, the mountain town where Agnes grew up. Helene’s grandmother died before she was born, but Helene sometimes felt like she knew her through the journal, by the small flourishes of her handwriting, the delicate drawings of native plants and wildflowers from her home in the Alps.

Agnes looked up from the journal. She hadn’t worked the night before, a brief respite from the births and illnesses that constantly demanded her presence, but she still appeared as though she hadn’t slept, the blue shadows under her eyes as deep as bruises. Agnes too was less substantial lately, her muscles carved away by the effects of rationing, her once-indomitable strength from growing up in the mountains receding little by little like the tide.

“If we wait any longer, we will miss your train,” she said, her voice light, as though she was simply hurrying Helene off to school. She addressed her father-in-law. “And for you, the lines will be down the block already.”

Her grandfather cleared his throat. “Of course,” he said. He patted Helene’s arm, and rose to his feet. “I must be off.” He tapped his coat pocket. “Just need…”

Helene got up and walked to the small chest by the door. From the top drawer she pulled out a blue piece of paper with the word Viande printed on top, half of its small squares for the month already stamped. “The butcher today,” she said as she handed it to her grandfather. “Ask for the ham hock. No one ever wants it, but there’s enough meat on it for a stock.”

He nodded.

“And tomorrow, I usually bring a can of tinned sardines to Monsieur Paul. He expects it now. He puts aside the rutabagas that haven’t been bruised.” Helene looked around the kitchen. There was too much, a thousand intricacies of the system she had created for them. He would never be able to do it on his own, lower himself to barter and negotiate for extra skimmed milk or carrots, find salt or sugar the rare times they were available.

“We will get on, my dear.” He stepped toward her, and before she could say anything else, how much she was needed there, he wrapped her in his arms. “I will take care of her. And you will be good and useful, until we are together again.”

Helene buried her face in his coat, and even though the smells were all wrong, wool and soap instead of salt and fish, even though his arms around her were thinner, his back slightly stooped, she felt solid ground return beneath her.

He kissed her on the cheek, once, and without another word he left the room, the blue ration card clutched in his hand.

Helene listened to the sound of his steps on the handful of loose treads, the slight rustle of fabric as he reached for his hat.

“We must be going too,” Agnes said quietly from the table.

Helene knew the time for argument or protest had come and gone. There was nothing to do now but follow her mother.

Agnes and Helene walked down the alley toward the street that ran to and from the waterfront. They turned inland, away from the harbor, its normally lively banks gray and empty, the colorful old wooden fishing boats replaced by the hulking white metal of several German E-boats.

“You have all your documents?”

“Yes, Maman.”

“And your ticket.”

“Yes, Maman.”

Agnes quickened her pace as they turned down another street. At the sharp staccato of boots on cobblestone, they both looked up.

A young officer strode toward them, his dark green uniform crisp and pressed, the gold buttons gleaming. They were always so clean, their clothes spotless, not a single hair out of place, their cheeks round, and it only put into sharper relief how dull and threadbare the townspeople had become.

Agnes and Helene waited as the officer approached. Though they were accustomed to the sight after nearly two years, Helene could sense her mother tense up.

“Madame, mademoiselle,” he said as he stopped beside them, his French accent earnest but stilted.

“Bonjour, monsieur,” Agnes said, her tone courteous. They had no choice but to be small, to take up as little space as possible.

He addressed Helene. “And you, mademoiselle , you are going to school?”

The soldiers often went out of their way to talk to her, and when they were kind and well-mannered, when they fumbled, as this soldier did, for the correct French words, she often wanted to talk back, exist for a moment as simply a seventeen-year-old girl talking to a boy.

She shook her head, ashamed as always for allowing room in her mind for them to be anything other than the sum of their parts.

“To catch a train,” her mother said, a steadying arm around Helene’s waist. “To Rouen to see family. We have our papers and documents, if you would like to see them?”

“No,” he said, his posture straighter. “That won’t be necessary. Off you are then. Good day.”

They moved away up the street. “Come now,” Agnes said when they were out of earshot. “We’ll be there soon.”

A few minutes later, they stood across from the small train station. It had been years since Helene was there, and the modest timbered building was now draped, like so many places in town, with an enormous banner featuring the Nazi flag, its white-and-black center offset by a red so bright and garish her grandfather described it as “la parodie.” There were several vehicles parked outside, black sedans and military trucks, as well as a carriage with two handsome black horses tied up beside it, their shiny tails swishing away flies.

Helene’s hands were clammy. She searched her mother for any sign that she might bend, change her mind. “Maman,” she said.

Agnes reached into her own bag and withdrew her red journal. She placed it in Helene’s hands. “It’s yours now. For when you need to be reminded of who you are.”

Helene couldn’t believe her mother would part from her most precious possession, the closest physical tie to her own mother.

“Keep it somewhere safe.”

Before Helene could argue, Agnes took Helene’s face in her hands. She was only inches away, so close Helene could see the pores on her nose, the lines at the creases of her eyes. “Do as I taught you,” Agnes said. “Nothing more. Nothing else. Do you understand?”

A memory hung between them at her mother’s words, a lifeless cat bounding back to its feet, Helene’s squeal of delight, her mother’s horrified expression.

Agnes held Helene’s gaze. “Promise me.”

Helene forced the memory away and nodded as her mother released her. “Yes, Maman.”

Agnes looked toward the enormous round clock on the station facade. “Go on then.” She handed Helene her valise. “You’ll need to find your train. A seat by the window.”

“Yes, Maman,” Helene repeated, but her legs wouldn’t move.

“Go on,” Agnes said again, with a light push on the small of her back. “We will see each other again soon, very soon.”

Helene gripped the journal as she studied her mother’s face. She knew its landscape better than any other, could trace its peaks and valleys in her mind. Her mother wasn’t soft, or delicate. Her jawline was sharp, her nose angular, her cheekbones prominent and almost masculine. But when Agnes was in her element, doing the work she believed in, or simply drying herbs with Helene in the kitchen, her hardness became its own kind of beauty, as formidable as the cliffs that ran along the coast, gleaming with the moonlight that reflected off the sea. Helene had never felt that kind of purpose, never seen in her reflection the grace and determination her mother exuded. All she ever saw was her own uncertainty.

“Of course, Maman,” she said.

And then, before Helene could say anything else, before she could even say goodbye, Agnes pivoted and walked away, her steps leaving pale imprints on the dirt road.

Helene watched her mother’s form fade into the old streets, the sidewalks growing busier. She stood with her valise in one hand and her ticket in the other until Agnes was gone, until there was nothing left but the town and its hazy sky, the glint of sea beyond it, still and deep and waiting.