Aurie wrapped the sheets and blanket together with whips of her arms. She tossed them to the side with a puff at the strands of hair over her face and wiped at sweat on her brow. With the heat outside, the heaviness in the air that thickened in her lungs, coupled with the lit flame of the oil lamp, her bedroom felt like a forge rather than the cool of the cave she once found it to be. How she ever slept under such thick covers all this time was a wonder she didn’t want to think about anymore. In fact, she really wished she could think of something else.

  She thought about how Maud ran around the house to get ready for Pierre’s arrival as if he were a suitor instead of a tutor. She watched Maud go through her handful of dresses—most of which were stained from years of wear—to get the right one, thrash through bags and shelves to find a brush that was apparently the only one that worked with her thick dark hair, and even get upset she couldn’t get the vegetables to taste just right from pinch after pinch of seasoning after seasoning.

  Aurie smiled. She pulled the pillows from their covers, smelled them, winced, and tossed both into the pile. When she emerged from the bedroom with the basket overfull with the linens, she found that Maud was setting the table with the ink, quills, paper, and books, with all the attention needed for supper and more. She chuckled. Why it made her so happy, she couldn’t say. But then again, she didn’t want to think too much about that, either.

  She thought about the dream in sprints. It all comforted her. Even the attack on Lilith. Actually, that was quite satisfying. If only it wasn’t a dream. Or rather, Draka’s dream. But to see Balor again, one last time, was revitalizing. She felt like she could breathe again.

  Aurie felt like she could move, that her heart had thawed from being frozen in a winter of grief. She knew it wouldn’t last—happiness never truly does—but she was basking in it. All the things that she had let go, things that should have been done so long ago, she now had the energy, the want, to take care of.

  First, because she could feel Balor’s gaze upon her, his want to no longer be disappointed in her lethargy, she was beginning with the sheets and blanket. The pillow covers and pillows. The mattress cover. She left a pile of old straw on the side of the house closest to the village that she would need to replace once the cover dried. Once she had washed away all that smelled like her beloved husband. Her other half.

  She drew in a breath and shook away the slow ache of the grief clawing its way back into her. No, it was time to live on. She will see him again. She was sure of it now.

  Pierre waved to her from the road as she carried the basket toward the river down the path through the forest. She balanced the wide wicker basket on her hip to wave back, nearly dropped it, laughed, and continued on her way. She was still laughing. The path seemed shorter. She kept laughing. She didn’t skip or dance like she imagined Maud does when she feels this way, when she’s filled with this…this…no, The Holy Spirit.

  It wasn’t a mystery, this time. It wasn’t something that someone had to explain. She felt it. Not the way she had before, when they woke up with only scars reporting the fatal injuries they had taken the night before. The injuries Draka had poured the Holy Spirit into them to heal. That was how she knew it was, now. He poured the Holy Spirit into her and Balor, that’s how they were healed. He didn’t heal them, like she had thought. He had permission. And, she knew, that was how Maud had felt when she became mad with excitement that her shakes had been taken from her, when she could see colors for the first time, because Draka had permission to do that, too. And, now, knowing that he wasn’t able to save Balor and Alden the day they died was because he didn’t have that permission, because the Holy Spirit refused, because God denied it, no longer angered her. Because now, she understood, the same way that she understood how to breathe or how to eat. It was, always will be, and always must be.

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  She felt a passenger now, deep inside her. Another, apart from her, yet intertwined enough within her that it was inseparable. As she looked at the world around her, she saw the difference as starkly as Maud must have seen the colors.

  Visually, nothing had changed. The trees, their bark and leaves, were the same colors. The river waters were still the same blend of reflections, shadows, and hues. The sky was still blue and cloudy. The sun, bright as ever. The difference was that she understood why. She understood where. She understood, without thinking, that these trees were young. She knew the river was not where it had been made but had shifted here so that when last night came, she didn’t have to go far to be baptized. Also, that it would be deep enough right at the spot she was now washing her resting husband’s scent away in. She understood that the winters were coldest when Maud was beginning her teenage years so that she would get the shakes for her to be healed at that exact moment, at that exact time. That the storm and flood came crashing through the village in that exact moment to punish the village for what they intended to do, to show them the true power of God, and to bring her to this very moment, where she is sitting on the edge of the Zorn River behind the house, by herself, thinking about all of this.

  All of it was part of a plan that is still and forever unfolding until the end that had been decided since the beginning of all things. She could even say the words though she couldn’t read them. Or write them. Or even know where to find them.

  When she wondered what Balor meant, she saw the face of a long haired, olive skinned, bearded man sitting on the side of a grassy mount, with eyes that reflected the light of the universe off of them. She heard his words, a language she had never heard, but understood, and she was reassured. Balor would see her again. She would be able to hold her darling son again.

  It struck her, then. Draka. He was meant to come here. Many of these things would never have happened if he hadn’t been led here by the Holy Spirit, hadn’t been commanded by God. She wanted to ask why. She wanted to reach deep inside her and ask that passenger what the plan had in store for them. What was next? But that was when something even more new and unfamiliar came to her, changing everything.

  She knew it wasn’t her place to ask. Only to serve and do as commanded. Her part was set. She was created and selected for a purpose. However big or small that purpose was or is, will never be up to her. Or anyone else. Only God and His Will alone. She knew that now. And, that is far more reassuring than anything else she has ever known.

  Aurie finished up the laundry and brought it back to the house. She thought about asking Pierre his thoughts on what had happened. How her soul—her body, as far as she was concerned, but she had her doubts since she woke so suddenly without any remnants of it—had been baptized by her dead husband, or how God had filled her with the Holy Spirit and commanded her in battle against Lilith in Draka’s nightmare that she had been…Lord, that does sound crazy when put together. No, we’ll just keep that to ourselves.

  “Not yet.” The voice thundered within her anyway.

  She went to the laundry lines in the side yard, where the wind cast the pollen and dust of the wheat fields away from it, and set the basket down with a stretch of her back. There was an ache in her. Not a muscle ache. Not fatigue. It was an ache that drew her eyes to the fortress rising into the sky from the lake God created to wash away the hold of the homesteaders over the village. To humble them to Draka’s rule, she knew. But also, to make them stronger. Talkro, she knew, looking at that fortress, was stronger for it. Everything was connected. Everything had meaning. Good and bad were purposeful. Intentional.

  She sighed. The ache wasn’t an ache. It was a command. She would have to get used to that. The question was posed without asking and she felt the answer as if she should have already known it.

  “Finish. Then go.”