Three Hundred Years
by Gavin Salisbury

On the morning of the third day of silence between them he went to the market and never came back. Her worry grew steadily on the first day he was gone, became panic on the second. By the evening of the third day she was crying with hurt and rage.

On the third anniversary of his disappearance he turned up out of the afternoon sun, his eyes sunk deep in his head. Three fingers were missing on his left hand. She studied his face carefully as he pleaded with her to take him back.

"Leave me in peace," she said, and went inside, and cried until he was three days gone again.

The first of their children married a farmer, and was worked until she dropped. The second was identical in all respects except physical strength; she died in childbirth while still a child herself. The third of the triplets ran away aged fifteen - to follow the father he couldn't remember. When he returned home, in the same state of penury as his father before him, his mother was already dead. He couldn't find her gravestone, but prayed at those of his sisters. He steeled himself for one last crack at the world, as he imagined his father had, and left the area forever.

***

In the first of her following lives she was a lady of leisure: bored, but unyielding to love. In the second she was a suffragette; and in the third a famous writer, with problems of sexual identity. Who she is now is anybody's guess; but by this time her impact will surely be enormous.

***

Every three years he returns home, but she is never there. He can't remember the words for how he lost his fingers: he hasn't spoken for three hundred years.