The Last Time We Met

4

Pressing a handkerchief to my face, I coughed twice before returning to my letter. I hadn't received much news from Henrietta over the past year, but I was determined to write her a letter each week. I only hoped my letters were reaching her.

Dearest darling Henry, I began. Then I paused, my pen nib hovering over the page.

Little had changed over the months I had been here. My commanders used me as a photographer more than as a soldier. They wanted documentation of our victories and the triumph of the American spirit. Though I had been trained to carry arms, they shuttled me about in open army vehicles and had me photograph troops of ragged soldiers, ravaged battlefields, the new tanks. They also wanted documentation of the new chemical warfare, mustard gas.

It was during my first trip to the burn unit that I began to have the visions. I'd had them before, brief memories that I thought were dreams, but there, in the desolate landscape clouded by the yellowish-brown gas, wearing a mask that covered my entire face and allowing only a murky view through the goggles, those dreams became clearly defined memories of some other life. The subsequent fainting spells must have confirmed to Commander Wallace my lack of fitness for the life of a soldier.

Today I'd had a rather nasty spell. Thus far I had avoided writing about them to Henry, but after today... I sighed and put pen to paper and began scratching out my tale.

I had a vision today, of a time before this one. Before you think me mad, I must assure you that I've had these visions before. Do you recall the dreams I had of us in the olive groves of ancient Rome? Or the ones where we lived in India? I now wonder if those dreams were not memories of a previous life, for these waking dreams I've had recently imply that I have lived before. We have lived before, you and I.

Before you dismiss this as a madman's ravings, please – read on.

In this vision, I saw through my gas mask a world not unlike the world at war: a thick covering of smoke, and the stench of Death. Whereas in the here and now the verdant hills have been bombed to dirt and dust and are crisscrossed with barbed wire and trenches, there were now fields – barren, though they were, the crops left to rot – and houses with thatched rooves and above all that, a small church with a bell tower.

I was also wearing a mask in the vision, but not a gas mask: the mask had the beak of a bird, and was made of leather and packed with flowers and herbs. The mixture of scents, heady and rotten, made me nauseous. As I walked through the town the doors each were marked with an X, and I knew this meant the home had fallen to the plague. And yet, I walked on and approached a farmhouse a mile from the town, and though this house also had an X on its door, I went inside.

There I found her, the woman I loved in that life. Her name was Anne, and I believe she was you. She was gravely ill. She had a child at her side, a little boy. His eyes opened when I arrived. I fed him, then tried to feed her, though she was so ill she could not eat. As I did this, I realized I was a woman too. Which is certainly a strange feeling to have, as a man. And I had some medical knowledge, though it seemed we were in an age where "medicine" simply meant herbs, or witchcraft.

Then I went through the long process of drawing a bath – boiling the water, over and over again, until the bath was full, adding herbs. The boy, Antoine, he was easy to manage, as he could walk. Though his eyes still had the glint of fever, he looked as if he might recover. But Anne... Her body was covered in sores much like those of the victims of mustard gas. I somehow knew they were called buboes. Here they are called bullae. Buboes are pustules, rather than burns. They were in her armpits, I felt them as I tried to lift her. Then--