The sky was like a painting, portraying the end of the world. Dark red at the horizon, lightening to pink and orange, before it finally spread into a thick yellow that covered the rest of the sky. Smoke billowed through the air, sometimes pervasive enough that simply breathing would make a person gag and choke. It seemed that not a single blade of grass could still be standing. The ground was thick with mud, small rivers flowing through it, the same color as that horizon. The stench of death and dying hung in curtains, wafting around on the breeze, churning stomachs, causing nostrils to flare. Standing here, one no longer needed to imagine what hell must be like.Cordia was picking her way through an endless sea of dead men’s bodies, piled to her knees and higher. She looked into the eyes of every single one of them. Sometimes, she had to turn them over to get a good look at their faces. Occasionally, parts of their corpses would stain her hands with blood, body tissue,

Cordia had considered stopping by the Adams Farm to see if Julia wanted to go with them. But she remembered how pale and fragile her friend had looked yesterday, and she didn’t think this trip would be good for her tuberculosis. And, though Cordia had never been on a battlefield before, if it was anything like the one she had walked in her dream, she knew the air would quickly get to delicate Julia. So, here she was, driving the horses before her with a purpose, Frieda beside her, rambling on about stubbornness and the likelihood of them both getting killed. Cordia ignored her, deep in her own thoughts.Frieda mentioned that she was glad they had taken the whole cart. She said she was only doing this one time, so if there was something (and by that, Cordia knew all too well that she meant someone) to haul back, she was doing it now. She also mentioned she was glad that this way they would have to stick to the roads, which Cordia would be much more likely to do

No amount of preparation could possibly have equipped Cordia Pike for what she saw as she neared the hospital outside of Wilson’s Creek. Though she had been warned by telegraph, and by Cal Markson, that this was not a pleasant place, until her eyes actually took in the sights, until her nose actually whiffed the stench, she could not have comprehended the horrors that were war and the catastrophic wake it left behind.She had been surprised at the few number of Confederate troops there were patrolling the area. She assumed that was because most of them had fallen back to Springfield, which was still about ten miles ahead of them. One of the young men had come close enough to the wagon that she had asked him for directions to the hospital. He had simply pointed in a general direction. She thought it was possible that some of the wounded had been moved to other locations on the battlefield, so as she pulled up to an area lined with a few tents and a few scattered building

It really wasn’t that far for Cordia to run from the shed where she’d seen Jaris across the field to the church, but she was running as fast as she could, tears still streaming down her face, pulling the bottom of her gown up she wouldn’t trip. By the time she reached the little white building, she was gasping for air. Under normal conditions it would have been difficult, but it was even more challenging for her to regain her breath when all that she sucked in stunk of death. Her side was throbbing, she now realized. She bent over, trying to get enough air so that she could ask someone for help. Finally, she caught her breath enough to get some words out.A young woman was approaching the church from the general direction that Cordia had come from, though at a much more practical pace. “Excuse me,” Cordia said, still panting. “I’m looking for someone.”The young girl’s eyes widened. She looked at Cordia as if she th

Cordia looked at the letters as if she had never seen paper before. “What’s this?” she asked.“One of them, I have to apologize, I should have mailed a long time ago. The other one, I wrote just the night before the battle.”“Oh.” Cordia turned the papers over again and again in her hands. Though he had held her hand and played with her hair, she had questioned whether or not he was doing these things out of kindness, and familiarity of seeing a face he recognized. She had been sure that, if he truly reciprocated the emotions she had articulated in her letters, not only would he have written her back—and sent the letters—but upon seeing her, he would have expressed his undying love for her, or something of that nature. His refusal to return to Lamar only served to further convince her that he did not feel the same way about her as she did about him and she was just beginning to wonder how she was possibly going to g