Right then, no sensation could have been more downward than falling asleep.

A sopping nightmare spun of cold blood and maggots; tree roots and the sagging halves of the fat shambler; fingers and ears and teeth oozing out of his gaping schism.

Then she was in a dark tunnel, and at the opening a ray of purest white light shone in. A gentle hand stroked her hair.

“Momma? Poppa?” she wondered. “Am I dieing?”

It was Yule's voice which answered, “No child, you will not perish this or any other day soon.”

Dude panted nearby. She was laid out belly-down upon the blanket – back inside the cave. Snug inside a warm linen wrap, her hand throbbed. Yule was kneeling beside her. This were real life. He fed her ice-cold water from his canteen.

Misty whispered, “You found the spring.”

“Yes,” he whispered. “I'm so sorry.”

“I knew you'd find it.”

“Misty,” he repeated. “I am so sorry.”

“I knew you'd find it.”

“I should have come back for you.” He fed her more water. “I never should have left you. I should have waited till morning. I got lost. I'm so sorry!”

“So them fellers weren't a nightmare after all?” she asked. “Who were they?”

Yule replied, “The top-half of the big one was a man I knew as Angus Ubrecht. I put an addition on his barn last summer. He and his daughter have a farm at the very top of the valley. The creek runs through it.”

“Reckon I could have your jacket back?” She asked. “I'm mighty cold.”

“I had to throw it out,” Yule explained. “It was sopping when I found you.”

“There was some papers in the pocket,” she said. “But don't worry, I did not read a thing.”

He told her, “I was not able to salvage the letter either.”

“It smelt like my perfume.” She stopped, realizing she had misspoke. “Like the perfume Madame had me wear,” she went on.

But Yule didn’t respond. He was inspecting her so closely that she could feel his breath.

“Misty,” he finally said. “I need to clean the wound on your thigh. I have whiskey. I have treated your hand already while you slept but now that you are awake I warn you – this may sting more than a little bit.”

“I'm sorry about your letter, Yule.”

The whiskey seared her wound worse than a cattle-brand. She laid there and took it. Once Yule was done pouring he said, “Do not be sorry. It was about time I let it go.”

“What did it say?” Teeth chattering, Misty asked, “Would you tell me? Do you mind? Sure looked like pretty words – even to a girl can't read…”

She heard him turn away. Then she heard the whiskey flask draining.

“Those were the vows I wrote to my wife before our wedding.”

“Yule!” Without lifting her head nor opening her eyes, Misty chastised him. “You never said you was married!”

“She died.”

“Tell me about her,” she said. “Please Yule. Tell me all about her. Tell me about the farthest thing from Red Junction and this cruel mountain. Tell me about love.”

“Emma and I were married on the 24th of August, in the year 1848.” Yule talked while bandaging her backside. “We held the ceremony in Atlanta, as her people all lived in the city and my folks weren’t likely to make it from points north, anyway.”

“And you spoke those vows?”

“Yes,” he answered. “And afterward the paper went in my pocket and there it has been, ever since.”

“How come you never told me? You could have.”

“I know,” he said. He kissed her cheek. “I know I could have, but I reckon I came west to forget.”

“That’s awful,” Misty said. “You ought never forget. Tell me about her, while there’s still time, while I can still listen.”

“There will be time…” But he didn’t sound so sure.

“I think you better tell me now,” Misty said. “What happened to Emma?”

He answered, “I left her alone.”

Mere weeks after their wedding, Yule was contracted by a railroad executive to construct a special set of furniture. The executive stayed under rustic tents and pavilions while surveying potential routes. Still, he was a Victorian relic and thought luxury most sensible. He wanted a desk and chair which could collapse for easy transport while always remaining stylish. Additionally, he wanted a cot and a headboard which could also be deconstructed to fit inside a trunk.

The railroad man adjusted his powdered wig and said, "For my optimal satisfaction, Yule Sherwin, you should craft these items to be of a grand opulance and a meek comport."

“I do seek to satisfy, Mr Farmington,” Yule had said. “In fact I guarantee it.”

For weeks he experimented in his workshop. He cobbled articulated joints from pine and teakwood like a marionette surgeon. He fashioned pulleys and cranks and cogs while his new bride would paint portraits and landscapes in their apartment above the workshop. Emma would sketch bowls of fruit and geometric abstractions. Then she'd bring the fruit down to her husband and he'd eat while she admired his work.

“Carpenter savant,” she would say. “That is what you are, Yule Sherwin.”

She would also say, “You smell of genius and perspirative ambition – and in the near future I predict you will absolutely reek of me.”

This was how Yule managed to fill the executive's order and make pregnant his blushing bride – all at the same time. The railroad man approved of Yule's sketches and sent along an advance on the final commission. It was the greatest sum Yule had ever earned and it would pay for the nursery.

“What nursery?” Emma had asked.

To which Yule replied, “The one I am going to build for you and our babe.”

He did just that. He put hammer to nail and erected a nursery off the rear of their apartment. He also completed Farmington's order and men from the railroad came to receive the bizarre, mechanical furnishings.

Yule said to the men as they hoisted the goods onto their cart, “Tell Mr Farmington to do please enjoy the pieces. I am confident he will find them most pragmatic without sacrificing comfort nor style.”

“Tell 'im yerself,” the driver of the cart replied. He passed a document to Yule and said, “Yer on the manifest.”

Sure enough, Yule was slated to travel along with his inventions. The train for Chicago would depart in an hour. Yule stuttered, “There's been a misunderstanding—”

But the driver explained, “Mr Farmington is gonna need you to teach him the workings of these contraptions. He ain't bought 'em just to break 'em.”

“I haven't had time to make any arrangements,” Yule pleaded. “I've a wife made pregnant, due to expel in six weeks.”

“You'll be back in three,” the driver repeated. “You're on that train in an hour.”

Yule shook his head and dug his fists into his hips. There were aspects of his creations he feared the executive might misuse and damage. The articulations were complicated and specific – forcing a segment could damage the whole. Exacerbating things was Yule's pride. He wanted to show off his work and bask in the praise of a rich Yank.

“Wait here,” he told the driver.

Emma was inside the newly-built nursery – and the baby inside her. Yule found her brushing paint onto the wall. She had finished half a mural already, with floor-to-ceiling mountains and wall-length prairies where the sun beat down on the humps of buffaloes. She set down her brush when Yule entered and hugged him. She was so proud of her capitalist beau. He squeezed her gently. Whispering, he told her he had to go.

“Well, that's folly!” Emma pulled away from him and crossed her hands upon the shelf of her swelled belly. “I'm apt to drop this child any moment.”

“I recognize this, dear wife – but it is a fact that the objects are unique and they are also fragile in untrained hands,” Yule hesitated. “If the sir were by accident or ignorance to mishandle the apparatuses, disabling them – then he might justly ask for a return of his payments. Even the advance! And then what am I to do? Give him back this very nursery?”

“It would be a sin to be absent at the arrival of your firstborn.”

“I should have told you sooner.” He took her in his arms again and said, “The trip is for only three weeks. We'll have nearly a month to spare, and this being the first child to come out of you it should hold inside for the duration – or so the doc says.”

Emma looked at him hard, past his eyes and into his mind. She was stoic, and then she smiled. “It should be a one-time thing, then. Yule Sherwin, you plant enough seeds to sow us a big fish!”

Together they packed him a case and he set out on the cart, riding amidst his inventions. Emma stood at the workshop's threshold, cradling the underside of her pregnant swell with one hand and waving with the other. She smiled through the tears. Yule raised a hand and waved goodbye.

It was a week by train from Atlanta to Chicago. The executive reserved a whole block of hotel suites and Yule's inventions were unloaded into a room of their own. Yule got himself settled into the adjacent suite and, before long, there came a knock at his door.

“Mr Farmington has been delayed,” the bellhop gave the bad news. “I've been told to tell you he's not well and it will be another week at least till he arrives. In the meantime, he's asked that you design him a...” He trailed off.

“A what?” Yule asked.

“An outhouse which can fit inside a trunk and yet hold the sum of twenty chamber-pots. He says, 'For his utmost pleasure, it should be elegant and portable – so that the railroad laborers might quit moving their bowels in nature and thus reduce the accidental consumption of their own feces'.” The bellhop wondered, “Does that mean something to you, mister?”

“It means,” Yule said, “that I'm going to require paper and ink.”

He wrote to tell Emma of the hold up. Then he spent the days till Farmington's arrival drawing up plans for the portable-john. Finally, Farmington arrived a week late and Yule was able to demonstrate his inventions.

Farmington was impressed.

“The magnitude of your creative genius is such that I should weep in its presence!” he gushed. “I'm going to make you very rich, Yule Sherwin.” He immediately ordered a whole cadre of collapsible chairs, desks and beds, authorizing Yule to construct a prototype come-along piss-pot. He paid him stacks of cash. The Navy might also be interested in Yule's wares, he said. Mr Farmington would speak to the Admiral on Yule's behalf.

By the time he left Chicago, Yule was so swollen with pride that he could have floated back to Atlanta like a hot-air balloon. Instead, he took the train home. After a week's ride he pulled into the Atlanta stop and hired a carriage. He was a week later than planned – but this was to be his triumphant return. He and Emma would never again want for anything. The carriage could not bring him home quick enough. They rounded the last corner and, up ahead, Yule could see his shop.

Outside, three carriages were parked: the midwife, the doctor and the in-laws. Yule became dizzy. The baby was coming out early. By his calculations it should have stayed in the womb three more weeks – but it was all kismet for Yule Sherwin. This was the glorious intersection of his best strivings.

“Bring my things to the woodworks,” he said to the boy driving his carriage. Yule passed the boy ten dollars and leaped off. He ran on foot toward his future. He weaved through traffic and finally arrived at the door to his shop.

Inside, the midwife wrung rags in a basin. Yule sprinted past with his chest puffed out.

She looked over her shoulder but did not answer when he asked, “Does the labor ensue? Are they upstairs in the nursery?”

Upstairs, in their apartment, Emma's parents were talking to the doctor. The door to the nursery was agape. Yule rushed his in-laws, grappling them both in a joyful embrace.

“I should have brought cigars had I known!” Yule pointed toward the nursery's door. “Are they in there? Has the child arrived already? Amen! Is it a boy or a girl? Wait! Do not tell! I shall see for myself!”

“Mr Sherwin—” The doctor tried to say something, but Yule was already soaring out of earshot.

“Emma my love!” he exclaimed as he ran inside the nursery. “What riches I bring cannot compare to those you—”

Emma laid prone on the bed, cotton nightgown pulled down to her ankles. Her eyes were closed, and her hands crossed on her flat abdomen. A triangle of blood seeped through the gown, wide across her pelvis and narrowing to an apex between her knees.

“Emma,” he had wanted to shout but was too hollow.

“I tried to stop you,” the doctor said behind him. “Do please forgive me. We lost her last hour in labor.”

The walls were covered by Emma's mural. She'd finished while he was gone. The mountains turning to the meadow, dotted with speckled cows; a bustling metropolis with a banner indicating it as Chicago. Trains crisscrossed the American continent. There was the workshop, and she had born herself in paint, too. And Yule. And their child.

“Doctor.” Yule found himself sitting on the floor. He asked, “What of my child?”

“Outside the womb he did draw breath for ten minutes,” the doctor replied. “But he too did pass into the afterlife.”

That was where the story ended.

Yule gave Misty’s bandage one last tug to tighten it. Then he was silent a spell, but for the sound of the whiskey flask plinking.

“Get some shut-eye if you can muster it,” he said. “I’ve done what I could, but we ought to get you back to town so Doc can dress that wound proper. I’ll get the horse ready.”

Despite shock and exhaustion, Misty couldn’t fall asleep. She kept listening to Yule packing the saddlebag. She kept thinking about his story. The whole time he were telling it, she heard the devotion in his voice. She'd never heard anything like it. She reckoned for sure that were why Yule had never wanted to fuck her. His love for his dead wife kept on going, even if she did not. That was the strength of his word, his vows. Misty hadn't ever known any man like Yule Sherwin.

Girl, she thought, are you jealous of that dead woman?

Misty shivered. She ached. A sad laugh puffed out, fluttering desperately from the cave the way a moth struggles to take flight when it’s lost its magic dust.