His son, Kostas, who was not yet sixteen, stood up.
“We must meet them at the shoreline and fight,” he declared, raising a fist. The declaration was met with widespread cheering and jeering.
“Madness,” Giorgos growled, grasping his wife Dafni’s hand as he got to his feet. “They will simply aim their machine guns andshoot us one by one from the water, and then who will be here to tend to the land, look after our families?”
“The land will no longer be ours to tend,” Constantine threw back. “The enemy will take it, and they will rape our women.”
Leni flinched, her grip growing harder. Katerina took a deep breath and got to her feet.
“You talk about us women as if we are not here,” she said, “as if we are incapable of defending ourselves and our homes.”
Many heads swiveled, the men shocked by her outburst. Zephyr clapped his hands together.
“She is right,” he said, shouting to be heard over the melee. “If we choose to resist, the women must be permitted to fight alongside us.”
“Come on now, man, this is nonsense,” Giorgos cried.
“It should be a choice,” implored another voice, this time belonging to Constantine’s wife, Phaedra. “A lot of women will not want to face combat, but who are any of us to stop those who do?”
“It is not right,” Giorgos insisted, shaking his head of gray curls.
“Come, it is not the 1920s,” Katerina said scornfully. “The world is changing, and we are at war now. Any rules that were set in stone are crumbling away.”
Giorgos shook his fist, remonstrating that if her father were there, she would never dare say such things.
“Agápi mou.” Leni tugged on her sleeve. “Sit down, please.”
Katerina wrenched her arm free.
“We will only survive this war if we work together,” she said with such passion that even Giorgos fell silent. “We cannot allow the enemy to make us turn on each other. Greece must come first, before any petty squabbles or grudges. We are all one family in this village, and everyone here has a part to play in what is coming.”
“She is right.”
Katerina swung around, her gasp coinciding with that of Leni, who was already pushing past her, stepping on the feet of those seated around them in her haste to reach the two men who had just stridden in through the open church doors.
“Michalis,” she cried, throwing her arms around her husband’s neck. “You are alive. Praise God.”
Katerina continued to stare. She didn’t move, could not seem to make her limbs obey her. It was not her brother-in-law who had spoken out in her favor but his companion. Stefanos was thinner, his clothes torn and eyes hollow, though the fire inside him had not dimmed. Raising his fingers to his lips, he blew her a kiss.
Atlas and Zephyr ran to greet their compadre, slapping his back in delight.
“I was confident that you would return,” Atlas said. “You are like a cat, my friend.”
Katerina heard a guttural sob, and realizing it had come from her, she slapped a hand over her mouth. She felt as she had at the last Easter Festival of Pascha, when she had spirited a bottle of wine from the shared table, her head spinning and legs unsteady.
He was here; he had come home to her.
Stefanos did not hesitate, his stride bold as he marched forward and took up position before the iconostasis. With his dark beard and air of authority, he could almost have been a saint himself. Katerina’s chest swelled with pride.
“I have seen the enemy,” Stefanos said, his tone solemn. “I know what is coming for us and what they will do if we make any mistakes. My cousin and I”—he gestured toward Michalis—“we barely escaped with our lives. The Italians were battered by our earlier victory, and a soldier whose pride is damaged can be a fierce adversary. Once the German forces were organized, we could not hold them back any longer. It was carnage.” He closed his eyes briefly. “We lost a lot of good men.”
Constantine stood. “How did you get away?” he asked, his suspicion clear. “Why did you two escape with your lives when so many others did not?”
“Because we did not follow orders,” Stefanos said plainly, glowering at the man as if daring him to pass judgment. “We used false papers to join the army, so when it was time to retreat, we did not wait around to be told.”
“Cowards,” Giorgos muttered under his breath, though not so quietly that Stefanos missed it.
“What did you say, old man?”
