Tender Mercies
Copyright© 2025 by Megumi Kashuahara
Chapter 2
For three heartbeats, Clarice didn’t move.
Then training—years of farmwork, of dealing with injured animals, of simply doing what needed doing—took over.
She set the milk pail carefully aside, out of Celeste’s range, and crossed to the fallen pilot.
He was breathing. Shallow, rapid breaths that suggested shock or pain or both. The blood matting his hair came from a gash above his left temple. But it was his shoulder that made her wince—dislocated, clearly, the joint sitting wrong under the leather jacket.
She knelt beside him, pressed her fingers to his neck. His pulse was fast but strong.
“Monsieur?” She shook his good shoulder gently. “Monsieur, can you hear me?”
His eyes fluttered open. Unfocused at first, then locking on her face.
“Thank you,” he whispered. “Thank you, ma’am, I—”
“Shh.” She glanced toward the barn door, then back at him. “Can you walk?”
He tried to nod, then gasped as the movement jarred his shoulder. “I ... I think so. If you help me.”
No time to think. No time to consider consequences or calculate risks or pray for guidance.
The Germans would be looking for him. Now. Already.
“We must move you,” she said in halting English. “Not safe here.”
She got her shoulder under his good arm, braced herself, and pulled. He groaned but managed to get his feet under him. Together, they staggered upright.
He was taller than Henri. Heavier. American pilots ate better than French farmers, even in wartime.
“Where—” he started.
“Quiet,” she hissed. “No talking. Walk.”
She half-dragged him toward the back of the barn, past the stalls where the other cows watched with mild curiosity. Every step seemed to take an hour. His breathing was ragged in her ear, and once he stumbled so badly she thought they’d both go down.
But they made it. Out the back door, into the December darkness.
The cheese cellar was two hundred yards across the back pasture. It felt like two hundred miles.
The cold hit like a slap. No snow yet, but the ground was iron-hard beneath her boots. The pilot was shaking now—shock, cold, pain, all of it together.
“Not far,” she said, though she didn’t know if he understood. “Hold on. Not far.”
The cellar entrance was a low wooden door set into a small rise, nearly invisible in the gathering dark. She’d been grateful for that before—it kept the cheese at the perfect temperature. Now she was grateful for different reasons.
She fumbled the latch open one-handed, her other arm locked around his waist. The door swung open, revealing darkness and the earthy smell of aging cheese.
“Down,” she said. “Ladder. Can you—”
“I can manage.” His voice was thread-thin but determined.
She went first, backward, trying to guide his feet to the rungs. His good arm gripped the ladder. The bad one hung useless.
Halfway down, his foot slipped. She caught his weight, braced against the ladder, felt her shoulders scream with the strain.
“Sorry,” he gasped. “Sorry, I—”
“Keep going.”
They reached the bottom. The cellar was perhaps eight feet square, maybe seven feet high. Wooden shelves lined the walls, holding rounds of cheese in various stages of aging. A few burlap sacks in the corner. No light except what spilled from the open door above.
The pilot collapsed immediately, sliding down the wall to sit on the packed earth floor. His head lolled back.
“Stay here,” Clarice said. “I come back. You understand? I come back.”
He nodded weakly. “Yes, ma’am. Thank you. Thank—”
She was already climbing back up the ladder.
At the top, she paused, listening. No sounds except the wind and the distant lowing of cattle. No shouts. No boots. No engines.
Not yet.
She closed the cellar door, latched it, and ran back across the pasture toward the barn.
Celeste was still waiting to be finished.
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