Hen Fever

by Olivia Waite

“It’s more like a dance—one person moves back as the other moves forward. Sometimes you both know how to waltz, but other times you have to make up the motions as you go. Can we find a rhythm together? Or are we hopelessly out of step?”

Lydia eventually decided to move Walter to Thornycroft as well, as a sort of poultry ambassador.

Mrs. Crangle snuck him tidbits and called him delicious—which had slightly alarmed Lydia, until she learned it was simply Mrs. Crangle’s highest form of praise—and

Your brother took that weapon and made it into a shield. He protected a widow and her child until his last breath left his lungs, for the love of a man he’d already lost. He stole food for them, he found them clothing and shelter when everything was rags and mud. He used his last strength to write a letter for us to take to Lady Eccleston, to get us away from the war at last. Because a man he loved would have wanted him to.”

“You cannot tell me a love like that is anything short of holy, or anything less than a miracle, when it felt like a blessing just to have seen it. The kind of vision that would give a sinner the unshakeable faith of a saint. A love like a bonfire—or a sun. I don’t care what the laws say, or what the church claims God decrees. I have learned there is something better than all that, and I hope—” She let out a laugh like a sob. “I hope someday to have a chance to throw my own cold heart headlong into the flames.”

“You don’t have to love the war. But you can—you must—love the part of you that carries it.”