The Wandering Soul

The Wandering Soul

Where you go, I will go; where you stay, I will stay.

The air in Naomi’s home felt thick with the scent of dried lavender and woodsmoke. Beneath it was another smell, metallic, bitter, that no amount of dried herbs and flowers could hide.

I stood outside the door and drew the cold air deep into my lungs. I held it there. Counted. Then slowly let it go. I knew I had to be calm. For her.

I held onto that stillness. Then stepped from the crisp bite of dawn into the hazy warmth of lamplight.

A dozen women were already there, all brethren, standing like a still pasture, blue dresses and white aprons, sleeves rolled from the chores already completed before sunrise. The garments were all the same — one pattern, one fabric, hand-stitched. Together they formed a single breathing body around the bed.

Naomi lay on linen: homespun, rough, and freshly washed. A damp cloth was pressed against her brow, mopping the broken sweat, leaving faint lines on flushed skin. That skin, usually the tone of sun toasted wheat, was now milk pale. Strands of hair, dark and damp, clung to her temples. Her eyes were wide, staring ahead, fear deep as she quietly gasped and tried to swallow, lips crusted and dry, but no words passed her lips, because fear was doubt, and doubt was sin.

“Oh, Naomi,” the murmur coming from one of the women, unseen, unknown which, but with the love of family, gentle as if soothing the pups in a storm. “Deep in her Labour of Faith already. What a blessing to witness her strength.”

I nodded, though my smile felt as fragile as old shingles left out daily in the sun. I knew the ritual. We all did. This was not pain; it was a Labour of Faith. Not blood; Life Water. The child inside her was a Wandering Soul choosing its sacred path. That was our story, our language. From before I can really remember, looking up, stood on tippy toe watching women sway, and pray and bless the soul of the new life.

The Midwife stood at the foot of the bed, tall and composed in her white uniform. Her apron was stiffer and whiter than the snow outside, striking against the room’s brown boards and beams. She spoke quietly, each word measured. Calm, clipped consonants pressed through tight, pale lips. Then swaying, vibrating, sing-song, rhythm, swelling and rising, prayer to hymn.

“See her brow?” her arm swung around wildly, pointing “The Spirit yearns. The Life Water is stirring. The Warmth of Grace has found her.” The breath of the collective choir abating momentarily, before eyes met in fear. Naomi quietly moaned as the breath left her lips. A shudder passed along the circle.

The woman beside me, whose life was filled with agriculture and husbandry, soil still dark beneath her nails, started to chant, “Peace is found in the plan, not the understanding.” Slowly at first her words shaking a little, but then gaining strength in the momentum.

Others watched her for a few seconds before gradually joining in. Words swelling in unison.

The hours passed. How could this feel so hopeless, so endless? The air thickened, body heat combining with the effort of new life. We gently dabbed at Naomi’s glistening face with cool cloths frequently dipped in the coldest water in the village. The ceremony demanded our best offerings and we gladly gave.

Hair clung tightly as I tried to gently move it away from her eyes as they held mine imploringly. But I had nothing to give her but the words, murmured over and over. Losing myself in the hope of holding her here.

Outside, I could smell the rain as it hit dry earth. Just a few small patches left bare from days of whipping wind. Like the heavens sobbing, knowing the coming sadness. And yet we chanted in time with the distant clattering of a loose gate. Inside, the Midwife watched us, her focus not on Naomi, but on waiting to see who would break first. We all knew our lives rested on one thing, making sure our words pure and unreproachable.

I was so focused on her eyes I missed it at first, silently, as though time had slowed, the linen darkened. The deep crimson spread outward, soaking into the slightly imperfect weave she had learned to master only last winter, before the harvest.

“The Life Water!” someone gasped. Their voice wavering, strength sapping the alarm.

The Midwife stood suddenly and rejoiced “The Life Water! An Offering of Life!”

She lifted her chin, face alight with piety and reverence, eyes blank as though she could see through the veil. “See how freely she gives,” she said. “The Offering is generous. The Soul prepares for its Spiritual Return.”

But I had seen so many of these ceremonies. I had helped birth the calves in spring. Watched the sow labour long and hard. I knew this. I knew what it was meant to be.
This was—
This was—

And then still.

I knew it. The smell of her life fading. What stained the sheets was not Life Water. It was life, her life, unstoppable.

“Is it… is it meant to be so much?” I asked before I could stop myself.

The Midwife’s eyes glinted like the edge of a knife. “Do you doubt the Offering, Ruth? Or the beauty of her Return?”

“No,” I said not wanting to pull my eyes away from her even for a moment. “I only...I only meant—she gives so much grace.”

Naomi’s hand lay in mine, the warmth slowly cooling, its strength ebbing. Her gaze forever fixed on mine and I cursed the tears that betrayed me as they flowed silently down my cheeks onto her skin. I couldn't let go.

Arms caught me, pulling me backward, her fingers slipping like water, and my head was pulled back until my gaze rested on the ceiling beams our fathers had carved in the year of the Flood.

'Tears of joy at this blessing!'

It was at that moment I realised it was the Midwife holding my cheeks, raising my eyes to the heavens in rejoice. The rhythm of the voices growing faint

“The circle!” the Midwife commanded. “Join hands: help guide the Wandering Soul along its path!”

We closed in, our sleeves brushing, our palms cold. Led in verse , our voices rose, trembling but obedient: “To the Side, to the Side.”

In that thick heat of incense and fear, Naomi’s body lay still. The weight of her changed, my friend, my love, gone.

The Midwife bent close, face registering the death, then she straightened, radiating triumph. “Both souls have chosen to Return Home,” she proclaimed.

A sob went through the women, it was supposed to be joy, but no one could miss, underneath it all, the sound of mourning and as one began a hymn, quavering, another wiped her eyes on the hem of her apron, leaving a smear of suppressed pain.

Later, when the others were busy cleansing vessels and folding the pure linens laid out for the new life, I stepped outside. The evening air was cold. It smelled of wet earth. Beyond the fence, the cows lowed impatiently for milking as though nothing had changed at all.

I looked closely at my hand, it would never feel the same again, this hand that had held hers as she breathed for the last time. The memory of its stillness cleaved, slicing through, a place so hidden no one would ever see. I whispered the words I was meant to believe. A Wandering Soul. A Spiritual Return. But my tongue felt heavy, and the sentences rang hollow against the rawness of the air.

I thought of the other women’s faces, creased from sun and wind, women who butchered chickens and birthed lambs, who knew the colour of real blood and the warmth of real death. They knew.

Though none of us would ever say it aloud.

I felt something rise in me: a wild, like the first stirring that precedes a storm.

She didn’t Return. She died.

The door creaked behind me.

“Ruth?” a voice called softly. “Come help us cleanse the linens. You were her world. She needs you now. Her Offering was abundant today.”

Silence rushed back over me. I wanted so many things. I wanted to walk, to run, beyond the fields, the mill, the line where the sky met land. I wanted so much, for her, for me, for us. My eyes burned hard against the cold.

But her hands reached for mine. “We are family” she spoke to my pain, softly.

My hand brushed the doorframe worn smooth by generations. This was too much to carry alone.

If I left, none of it had to be real. But if I stayed, Naomi could still live in me.

Naomi had Returned.

I wiped my eyes and stepped inside. The women looked up and smiled through their tears.

“The Offering was abundant,” I said. The words coming easier now.

"Naomi, I love you so much" I whispered to her soul. "Wait for me."

The impossible thought folded itself small and quiet, slipping back into the dark where language could not touch it.

I knelt beside the Midwife and lifted the sheet, the crimson blooming in the wash-water. Together we scrubbed until the cloth became pale, as if nothing had happened at all.