Tender Mercies
Copyright© 2025 by Megumi Kashuahara
Chapter 1
The anti-aircraft guns had become as ordinary as cowbells.
Clarice Deveroux sat on her three-legged stool, cheek pressed against Celeste’s warm flank, hands working in steady rhythm. The milk hissed into the wooden pail between her feet. Outside, the December twilight was fading fast, turning the Norman countryside the color of old bruises.
Thump-thump-thump. The German guns barked from the fortress. She didn’t even look up.
“Ça va, ma belle,” she murmured to the cow. It’s alright, my beauty.
Celeste’s ear flicked, but she didn’t startle. After four months of siege, even the livestock had learned to ignore the war.
Clarice’s breath misted in the cold barn air. Her fingers ached—she’d been milking since before dawn, and there were still three more cows waiting. But the work was good. It kept her hands busy, her mind occupied, her body too exhausted to lie awake at night thinking about Henri.
Six months. It had been six months since the land mine.
She pushed the thought away, focused on the rhythm. Pull, squeeze, pull, squeeze. The milk foamed white against the pail’s wooden sides.
Then the engine sound changed.
Not the usual drone of Allied planes passing overhead, harassing the German garrison. This was different—a grinding, sputtering whine that made something in her chest tighten.
She kept milking. Not my war. Not my problem.
But the sound grew louder. Closer. And then—
Silence.
The sudden absence of engine noise was worse than the noise itself.
Clarice’s hands stilled. She straightened on the stool, listening.
A distant crack of something breaking. Then another sound—fabric tearing the air.
She stood, leaving the half-full pail, and walked to the barn door. Pushed it open just enough to see out.
There. Against the darkening sky. A parachute, white against the clouds, drifting down like a seed from a dandelion.
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