"Fine," I said, because he'd been penned up all week, and boys are not plants; they don't grow without sky. "But you stop at the street, and you look both ways. Twice."
He nodded solemnly and sprinted.
I turned to Axel.
"If you get cold tonight, come on by." A little bit of warmth was all I could offer the kid.
His face flickered, went from longing to suspicion, then back to the blank he wore like a coat. I didn't ask to touch him; some children here were all nerve ends and no skin. Instead, I stepped close enough that he could lean if he wanted. After a moment, he did, the smallest lean, a bird testing whether a branch would hold. I put an arm around his sharp shoulders. For one heartbeat, he softened into me like wax, then remembered himself and sprang away. He half-ran, half-limped after the others, chin high, pretending he'd planned the retreat.
"Yes," I said to the space he left. "Like me."
I hadn't run from Gideon last night, but it had been close. None of us were trained for gentle. Kindness herecould be a trap door. You learned not to step where the floor seemed strong.
Klaus whooped. The plane sank lower; its wing lights blinked. Somewhere, a woman crossed herself. Someone else spat and said the Americans wouldn't keep it up; someone swore the Russians would starve us yet. I stood with my hands in my Kittelschürze pockets and watched my brother holler at the sky like he could call it closer by force of will. I loved him so fiercely it made my chest hurt. I would carry the whole city on my back if it meant he slept warm. But love was heavy, and some days my shoulders ached from its weight.
The plane's engines changed pitch, a warm-down growl I now knew meant wheels to concrete, Tempelhof's big mouth swallowing another bird. Klaus turned back to me, his face lit with the kind of joy that made everything else look like a trick of bad light.
"Did you see?" he shouted, as if I could have missed it.
"I saw," I called. "Of course I saw."
He ran back and grabbed my hand, his fingers small but sure. Behind him, Axel paused at the top of a broken step and looked at us, hollow, lonely, the city's echo made into a boy. I lifted my free arm, a question that could be refused. He shook his head once and then limped away, shoulders hunched against the wind.
I watched him go and thought of a stranger's jacket around my ribs and the way my body had rememberedhow to lean. Then I pushed the thought down where I kept other dangerous things and steered Klaus home, counting our steps by twos to make the road seem shorter.
Berlin — July 3, 1948, Saturday
For two days,I tried to scrub her out of my head. I flew double shifts. I ate standing. I slept in pieces. I walked the flight line until my boots hurt. I stayed away from Die Ecke, though every night my eyes flicked toward that direction, like some part of me expected her to step out of the rubble and look at me with those tired, fierce eyes.
None of it helped.
Every time I blinked, I saw her pinned in that alley, breath shaking, eyes wide with terror. Every time I inhaled, I smelled her hair under my jacket. Every time I steadied my pulse, I heard her whisper:You came just in time.
And every time I thought about those Russians, the dragon inside me bared its teeth. Let me out, it murmured. Let me burn them.
I slammed the door on that thought. Couldn't afford it.Not in this city. Not in this uniform. But I couldn't shake her.
I told myself it was because she was vulnerable. Because she was living in a ruin held together by despair and rust. Because this city would swallow her whole if someone didn't look out for her.
But that wasn't the truth.
The truth was that Inga had gotten under my skin, deeper than shrapnel, deeper than guilt. And now I was carrying her with me into the sky.
Which made me dangerous.
The weather wasn't helping. The northern corridor was choked with clouds thick as wool, and the sun had already sunk behind the gray horizon by the time Reynolds and I taxied out for our last run of the day.
"Feels like a cursed night," he grumbled beside me.
Berlin felt like that every night.
We climbed into the soup, instruments glowing faintly in the gloom. The engines were steady; the old girl was humming with the regular heartbeat of a machine that refused to die.
The city unfolded beneath us in smudges of shadow and broken geometry, a wounded thing curled on itself. The Tiergarten was black and skeletal. The Reichstag was a toothless skull. And the Soviet sector was a darkness evendeeper than night. I breathed in through my nose. The dragon stirred, restless.
I tried to distract myself, but that didn't work. Inga rose up again, soft as a bruise.
"Easy Two-Four, maintain heading," the tower crackled.
