I saw the girl first, legs apart, gun drawn. Then I saw the soldier between us, writhing on the ground, a bullet torn through the shoulder of his coat. His pistol lifted, but I shot first.
The gunshots bounced hollow in my head. I scanned the woods. Were there more? I kicked the pistol away from the soldier and quickly fleeced him of his ammunition, food, papers, and canteen. This was bad. Very bad.
“What’s wrong with you?” I whispered to the Polish girl. “He was German, not Russian.” I looked around quickly. “Hurry. Someone heard those shots.” I piled up the supplies. “We have to run. Put these in your pockets.” I held out the items to the girl.
But the girl didn’t respond. She stood, cemented in shock, pink gloves on the gun, her body trembling.
The Russian pistol fell from her hand and dropped into the snow.
joana
We marched up the hill toward the estate. Tonight we would have thick walls, a warm fire, and a solid roof to shield us from the snow.
“Just as I remember it,” said the shoe poet. “Extraordinary! We shall walk around back. I expect that’s where the kitchen entrance will be.”
I painted a visual for Ingrid. “It’s beige sandstone. Large tall windows across the front and upstairs. The entry door sits in a diamond-shaped alcove.”
Ingrid clutched my arm. “I don’t like it,” she whispered.
“What’s not to like? It’s shelter.”
Ingrid’s nostrils pulled at the surrounding air, but she did not reply.
We made our way around the back of the manor house and entered through a snow-covered garden hedge. Poet’s feet stopped short. Tall glass doors with shattered panes stood open into the garden, torn damask curtains flapping like a loose tongue in the wind. The courtyard was littered with clothing, broken crockery, shoes, books, and various personal items. A baby carriage lay mangled on its side, dusted with snow.
The wandering boy stepped in close. I put my arm around him.
“Sorry, but what did we expect?” Eva laughed. “Servants waiting outside in a receiving line?” She shrugged and walked inside.
Eva was right. Nothing was intact anymore. The entire region was broken, bombed, and looted. How could we have expected anything different? The cold wind blew, banging the crippled doors as we went inside.
The main floor of the house was divided into five large rooms with high ceilings, all connected by tall double doors. Standing in what had been the garden library, we could look through the door and see across to the opposite end of the house. Floor-to-ceiling shelves lined the library walls. The books, raped and rummaged of their dignity, lay in heaps on the floor. We stepped over the books and through the doorway.
“Let’s choose a room to sleep in, close off the doors, and start a fire to warm up the space,” commanded Eva. She stopped midway through the house. “This’ll do.”
“Where is the kitchen?” I asked. “Maybe there is food or drink.”
“Yes,” Eva sighed. “A drink.”
Eva instructed the shoe poet to collect any wood or paper he could find for the fireplace.
“Not the books. Please, Poet,” I whispered.
He nodded and patted my arm. “We won’t disturb their things.”
I set down my bag and walked through the house, admiring the ravaged ghostly splendor of each room in its panicked disarray. I reached the end of the main floor, the dining room, and saw a small silhouette. The wandering boy stood next to the long dining room table, his head bowed by an overturned chair. I approached quietly and looked over his shoulder.
A basket of mossy bread in the center of the table was crawling with brown mice. Flowered china bowls skinned with half-eaten soup sat on a dusty tablecloth, the spoons still in them.
They hadn’t even been able to finish their dinner.
florian
I dragged the dead German into a wooded thicket and covered him with snow. But what if someone found him? I gripped my pistol and searched through the trees for light. Using the scent of fire as a guide, I walked quickly through the forest. I should have known. It had been too quiet today. The Polish girl saw the gun and thought he was going to shoot. She thought she was defending me.
The girl followed. When I looked to the right I heard her breathing stop, trying to swallow the tears. My sister, Anni, did the same thing the day Father sent her away up north. She did not want to cry. She held her breath in one hand and her suitcase in the other.
The memory brought pain to my stitched wound. I still smelled smoke and hoped it signaled a resting spot. If I couldn’t rest, I wouldn’t get far tomorrow.
We emerged from the woods. The Polish girl pointed. In the distance, a large manor house sat on a loaf of frozen earth. The house was dark, but smoke coughed from one of the center chimneys, grayer than the gray sky.
Was it a trap? The frozen meadow leading to the warm house could be a minefield.