15 Alone

I WAS STILL HERE. I suddenly felt alone in Miranda’s body. It was as if she’d taken a vacation and left me to housesit. I could feel her in all her memories—the furnishings of her mind—but I could not hear her. It was disorienting. Even at times when I’d taken or been given control of Miranda’s body, she was always there. Sometimes she fought me for control. Sometimes she was just standing by to take it back. Now, it felt like I was in my own body.

My own body. My own dead body.

What if Miranda had been sent to die in my stead? No! I begged old Blackfeather not to sacrifice her for me. Please, no! But there was still silence. I saw no sign of the black bird.

I slept the night beneath the blanket Katie offered to share with me. I awoke with her hugging my back. I tested Miranda’s memories and found this had not been uncommon over the past few months. Miranda often awoke with the younger girl tight against her.

I gently pulled away from Katie and went to the bushes to relieve myself of my morning dew. Oh my! Miranda certainly had creative expressions that suddenly were mine to access. She had giggled with Theresa one morning about having to use a privy for their morning toilet and I realized that Miranda had often awakened in the few short weeks they had been together with Theresa hugging her back. It was not only a comfort to the two younger girls, but to Miranda as well.

I wanted that comfort. I was trapped in a foreign world and feared for the life of my host. My own, I was sure, was gone.

When I returned to camp, I stirred the coals and managed to get the fire restarted. I threw a rasher of bacon into the frying pan and hoped there was something in our packs to serve with it. Katie rose and slipped away. When she returned she poured a ladle of water into a pan and measured some cut oats into it. I was instantly grateful that there would be bacon grease to season the tasteless mash.

“Katie,” I whispered through my painful voice, “I will walk beside the wagon for a while this morning. There is no sense in the horses having to pull us both through this muck.”

“We can take turns, Mi ... Ramie Lewis.”

“We will see,” I said. I tried my best to mimic Miranda’s way of talking. I would have to remind myself often not to use contractions or twenty-first century slang. I didn’t want to leave Miranda with questions to answer when she came back.

She had to come back. She had to.

When I started walking in the morning, I pulled off my shoes and went barefoot. Shoes were precious and we would travel 300 miles before we could reasonably expect to replace them. Miranda’s shoes with their high-top laces were also likely to give away the fact that I was not really a man. I thought about what it would take to make moccasins. Once we were across the river, I would have to hunt and kill a deer. Then we would have to tan the hide and smoke the meat. That meant we would need to be camped for a week or more. It would not be a fast trip.

The next section of the road was the worst we’d encountered. For perhaps a mile, Katie removed her shoes and walked ahead, pulling the horses through the mud as I leant my support in pushing the wagon until we forded a stream and the land began to rise. It was a drier stretch of road, but we were so exhausted that we camped. We used the opportunity to wash the horses’ legs and check their hooves before tethering them for the night.

As I made a fire and gathered wood for the night, Katie took the kitchen knife and disappeared for half an hour. She returned with a basket of bark. I smiled at her.

“What have you there, Katie girl?”

“Slippery elm,” she said. “If you can start a kettle of beans, I will work on making something that will soothe your throat.”

Katie was quite the pioneer woman. I knew she had experience with animals and she watched critically as I checked the horses’ hooves earlier. Miranda had known nothing about animals. But Katie was showing her skill in other ways now. Knowledge of herbs was something I didn’t know about her. Well, I certainly would not complain if she could relieve my throat. And if she poisoned me ... so much the better.

She didn’t. In fact, the tea she made was soothing and relaxing. After we had finished our meal and cleaned our utensils, we crawled into the bedroll together, weary as we could be.

“Will you hold me tonight, husband?” she whispered. I started to protest about not being her husband and realized it was Miranda’s leftover sensibilities that I was expressing. In fact, I looked forward to holding the girl through the night and did just that.

As hard as Katie worked and as domestic as she seemed to be, she did not like rising in the morning. And so, when I awoke with her little breast snuggly in the palm of my hand, I did not rush to release it.

Is this what Aubrey feels when she holds my little tits in the morning when we wake up? They are so small—so different from her bosom. My own—or Miranda’s—breasts were much bigger than Katie’s, though I guessed that Katie was still growing and if I got her settled someplace where she had adequate food, she would fill out.

Those thoughts disturbed me and I crawled out of the bedding and made my way to our toilet. My poor Aubrey. If I ever returned to her I would show her how much I loved her. And I would hug my brother until he couldn’t breathe. I needed them so much. My only hope was that he would find me in this life and at least tell our parents and Aubrey that I loved them. And in this life, if I could find and love that corporal, I would hold him whether my brother were present or not.

That thought startled me until I realized that I was reflecting Miranda’s own memories of her time on the train talking to Corporal Jason Wardlaw. She was already smitten. I wondered why he had not escorted her on that fateful afternoon when she was kidnapped.

And so, my new life in Miranda’s body progressed. Each day I woke either wrapped in Katie’s arms or with her wrapped in mine. We worked well together and broke our fast and then our camp. We walked alongside the horses in companionable silence or with Katie chattering about the various plants and herbs she spotted along the way. She often ran to collect some as I led the horses on.

In another week, we crested a rise and saw the town of Dyersburg a mile away. We decided to camp early and make our way into town the next day. We would try to find passage across the river.

“You have changed, Husband Ramie,” Katie whispered in my ear that night. “Miranda is gone, is she not? You are the Demon Ramie that has taken her body.” Katie shivered against me but did not move away. I wanted to deny and tell her she was foolish, but there was a yearning in my heart to let her know the whole story. I settled for a compromise.

“You must never say things like that, Katie dear. And you must accept that there may come a time when you wake up and realize that it is just Miranda sleeping beside you. You are a good girl. Please protect us the way you have always done.”

“I have told you before, Mistress Demon, if you will have me, I will serve you. However you wish, I am yours.”

“Katie ... Katie, do not take service to me too seriously. But I will take you in my care and treat you well. Do you the same for me.”

It was the first night that Katie and I slept facing each other in our embrace.

I preferred not to pull out twenty-dollar gold pieces to pay for our passage across the river. For one thing, I had not told Katie of our treasure. For another, I feared it would draw suspicion toward us. Katie and I pooled the coins in our purses and after some considerable searching, found a man who poled his barge across the river about once a week to ferry people and goods to the other side. He asked two dollars for each person and horse and another dollar for the wagon. We would leave on Monday.

That left us the weekend and we chose to camp at the edge of town rather than take a room at the hostelry. Late that night, I slipped out of the bedroll and pulled the strongbox from its straps under the seat. I would not offer the ferryman a double eagle, but shopping at the local mercantile was a different matter. We needed some serious supplies before we headed across Missouri.