The Vaster Wilds

by Lauren Groff

She remembered fullest the times of plague, even such tiny arms as hers enlisted to hold the babies who were dying. Poor mites, she could feel them in her arms even now, with their gasping struggling breaths, each drowning to death in their own tiny lungs. Three little babies she held like this, herself only four years old or thereabouts; she held them for hours in her terrible pity even while the other children grew bored of their babies’ dying and passed them around like dirty poppets or put them down and wandered off and only came back to hold their hands over the babies’ mouths to see if they had died yet. But the three babies she herself held she clung to, though her arms did feel as though made of lead, until she felt the change in them when their breath ceased and whatever souls their small bodies contained escaped and drifted off toward god. She held them even when an awful stillness took their fled souls’ place.