Months went by, and Magnus wasn’t sleeping any more. He didn’t toss about, like I did, always pulling the blankets out from the mattress and trying to punch life into the pillow, but there was no sleep in his breathing, none of the steady rhythm that speaks of dreams. Just an occasional deep, wakeful sigh.

He was awake, I was awake, but our limbs curled outwards instead of towards each other, away from touch. Each day it grew, the pile of things we could not say to each other because too much time had passed now. It got so I could hardly remember what it looked like, the shape of us as we once were, the way we breathed together and moved as one thing, not two. It was my fault, I knew that.

But even though there was much that lay beyond my grasp, I looked at him, my husband, and I could hear what he was thinking, and I knew—just knew—it would not be long before he tried to enlist again.

~

One evening at the end of 1915, he came home from Castlemaine light as air.

Clementina was blunt, at her most scathing. Ye’re a fool, Magnus Tulloch, a gaak! Goin’ away to war an’ gettin’ yourself killed is not goin’ to bring him back. An’ how is it ye’re in now when they turned ye down last year? How did ye pass the medical?

He waved the questions away as though they were a nothing. He would do anything now to go, anything it took, not because of what others thought but because of Stivvy. And not to bring him back but to take his place, carry on for him. They all felt it, the ones left behind. Each time they read a new report of casualties it maddened their need to defend and protect, no mind the cost.

And I didn’t have to ask how he passed the medical. He’d learned, from before, what to say and how to bluff. He no longer had any of the symptoms that kept him from leaving with Stivvy, oh no. No headaches, no noises in the head, no dizziness, nothing. And the need for enlistments meant they were not so inclined to be vigilant now. The military and Magnus Tulloch had both got what they wanted, aye.

It isn’t war, he told me, when we were alone, away from Clementina’s anger. Not for the sake of it, I mean. Tell me you understand that, Meggie. I am no lad, blind ta what it means. I’m not looking at war and seeing some lark an’ adventure. I don’t have a choice.

Ye shouldn’t say that. We all have to choose. Choosing is all we have.

And he twisted a wild ribbon of my hair around his finger and rested his forehead against mine.

I know.