Her baby. Their little miracle.
She must tell Leni.
Her skirt flew out behind her as she ran, arms wide like the wings of a bird. The path was dry, and stones tumbled away to be caught by thickets of coarse grass. Katerina clambered over a wall. The Aegean winked a greeting. Shimmers of light no less beautiful below a sky that had borne witness to war. She no longer asked the sea to return her lost love. She whispered that plea to the wind.
Ano Meria came into view, homes the color of feta, the land around them burned toast. Even in this moment, with hope blooming rose-pink in her heart, Katerina saw food where there were only rocks and earth. Hunger had become the nightmare none could wake from.
She slowed as she neared the base of the hillside, her pulse drum-loud in her ears. A crowd had gathered not far from the road, hunched shoulders and bowed heads, a stray hand, a pair of boots.
“What’s happened?” she asked, hurrying toward them.
A man turned. Gray beard, thin spectacles, cracked lips.
“Go,” he said, pushing at her.
Katerina took a step closer, her chin high.
“Do not touch me,” she said.
A boy swung around, no older than ten. Hollows beneath his eyes, meanness painted by desperation.
“She does not need these things,” he said, gesturing to a figure on the ground.
Katerina crouched, her blood turning to ice in her veins. The woman who laid there was a friend of her mama’s, the same wretched mother who’d had to bury her son when he fell from the mountain. A basket was beside her, its contents strewn. Coins, papers, a comb with only four teeth remaining, a single dark hair snagged between the fragile wooden fibers.
The boy shoved her roughly aside and Katerina half fell, catching herself on the dead woman’s body. She was not yet cold; her eyes stared up, clouded and unblinking, trapped in a moment that would never move forward. Below her skin, the bones pressed sharply, as if her body had already begun to vanish. She did not stir when the man knelt to untie her boots, did not flinch as the boy’s eager fingers tore a silver brooch from her shawl. Katerina recognized it. The meander symbol had been chosen to represent the eternal love the woman felt for her lost child.
She stood, her legs trembling. The burn of rising bile scoured her throat.
“Aiónia mními,” she murmured.Memory eternal.
Then came the warmth of someone’s touch, hands steadying her, words in a language she did not understand. Katerina turned, jerked away as if scolded.
The wife of the German general lowered her hands and stepped back a few paces, her head down. Katerina had only ever seen her at a distance, skulking around the school’s outbuilding. Prejudice had tainted her opinion of the woman, though even that could not dull the truth of her beauty. Her skin was pale as porcelain, her eyes an open, clear blue, like the sky before sunrise. A single lockof her hair had slipped free from its severe bun, the loose golden curl a trail of sunlight across her cheek.
“Sorry,” she said in Greek.
Katerina curled her lip into a scowl.
“Echthrós,” she muttered.Enemy.
The woman gave her a searching look, then tapped her fingers to her chest.
“Ingrid,” she said.
The foolish woman believed that Katerina’s name was Echthrós. The audacity of these people who came to rule when they could not understand the language, did not respect the people whose lands they sought. It was not her responsibility to help nor point out the error. She owed this Ingrid nothing but contempt.
Women from the village had begun to swarm, shooing the men away from the body, scolding the boy, whispering prayers.
“She will be with her son now,” one said to another.
Katerina moved away, pressed a hand to the swell of her stomach, yearning for a flicker, a flutter, anything. Stillness. Quiet that morphed into dread. Was the baby seeing this, too, through her eyes? Were they trapped in this moment, bearing witness before they’d so much as drawn a breath?
She stumbled in her haste to get away, feet slipping on the path, air caught in lungs that seemed incapable of expanding. She was yards from Leni’s house when Phaedra appeared, Esther close at her heel. The young Jewish runaway wore a cloth cap pulled down, threadbare trousers, and a waistcoat over a boy’s buttoned-up shirt. She kept her gaze fixed on the ground.
“Are you ill?” Phaedra asked. “Éla, you look pale.”
Katerina shook her head, dismissing the woman’s concern.
