Yelena’s flying dark hair, her soft mouth.
Nina rose abruptly. “Forage?”
They always avoided busy roads and towns, waiting hidden in trees or crouched behind brush until there were solitary refugees or peasant women with baskets who could be approached. Seb had a story about how they’d fled Warsaw and were now living rough; there were all too many such stories. Every crossroads was strewn with the discarded detritus of refugees seeking safety: upended traveling cases, an empty handcart, ransacked bundles abandoned by travelers following signs to towns Nina had no desire to seek out. Few looked suspiciously at Seb and Nina when they came to barter essentials; Seb did the talking, and Nina kept her eyes open for trouble.
Seb held up the day’s prize, a few mealy potatoes in a sack. “Tonight we feast. Better than trying to sneak past Berlin, eh?”
I don’t know, Nina thought, trying to shake her superstition that this wrecked country was cursed. There was no rhyme or reason to be found in this bleak, wasted moonscape of a land where the passing hand of war had swept through, raked its sharp claws, and moved on. She raised her nose to the wind as they trudged back toward their camp, sniffing. “Winter’s coming.”
BY NOVEMBER, the cold had begun to wear Sebastian down. The trees stood stark branched, films of ice gleamed here and there in the darkest hollows, the earth was hardening, yet winter had only started to close its jaws. “This is nothing,” Nina said, trying to bolster him. “You should see the winds come howling across the Old Man.”
Seb was sitting huddled in every piece of clothing he had. He was thinner, his eyes shadowed. “Can we light a fire?”
“It’s not even freezing. Save it for tonight when the temperature drops.” He didn’t complain—he never did; Nina liked that about him—but his mouth pressed into a straight line of frustration. “Weren’t you used to being cold in that camp?” Nina said, her own frustration rising.
“Forty men sleeping in one hut warm the room with their breath. It’s enclosed.” Seb gestured at their shelter. They’d left their old camp, looking for something more shielded for the winter. Seb had argued they should make their way into Poznań itself, the wide forested swath that cut through the city to add a touch of the wild—calm lakes and thick woods—in the midst of civilization. Closer to the Germans, Nina argued back. Close to the city means easier foraging, he countered, and Nina reluctantly agreed, finding a good-size rock hollow in a tumble of boulders northeast of one of the artificial lakes, sheltered among pines and protected by an overhang on three sides. With a fire pit dug and all their laundry-line-pilfered blankets, it was as dry and snug a shelter as they were going to find. But it didn’t keep out the cold. “I won’t go so far as to say I miss my kriegie bunk,” Seb said, trying to joke. “But at least it had a roof!”
Nina fought a wave of exasperation, thinking of Marina Raskova surviving ten days in the taiga without an emergency kit; Moscow-bred Yelena shrugging off the temperatures at Engels with jokes about the frost making her eyelashes look longer. But it wasn’t Sebastian Graham’s fault he was too civilized to know what real cold was. He was here, he was all she had, and Nina realized, looking at his hollowed face, how fond she’d grown of him.
“Malysh,” she said quietly, taking his cloth-wrapped hand. “It’s going to get worse. There will be snow. Our teeth will feel loose because I won’t find enough greens or berries. We’ll spend most of our time foraging for firewood, and even then it won’t keep us warm. There will be times you want to die, but you won’t, because I know how to survive a winter in the wild—and we aren’t in the wild, Seb. We’re in a tamed wood in Poznań, civilization just a few kilometers beyond the trees. We’ll survive, we just won’t enjoy it. You understand me?”
“Yes.” He made an effort to smile. “I’m the one who persuaded you to camp through the winter, rather than push west. Stiff upper lip, I promise.”
But from the way his smile fell away into silent brooding afterward, Nina still felt a pang of disquiet.
FORAGING THE FOLLOWING AFTERNOON, along the edge of the artificial lake. A long narrow body of water, edible reeds to be pulled, places to be marked for fishing if she could fashion hooks and lines . . . “What’s that?” Seb pointed at an inlet a good distance down the shore. They’d never foraged this far before. “Something yellow.”
Nina squinted, making out a peaked roof, glass windows. A house, and not a farmer’s cottage either. “Some Fritz’s lakeside retreat.” Anything gracious or expansive in Poznań these days was owned by a German. At least for now; there were more and more rumors (whenever Nina and Seb found refugees with whom they dared trade news) about the possibility of a German retreat toward Berlin.
“A big house like that, they’ll have a larder or cellar to raid.”
“Too risky,” Nina began.
“If there are too many people, we’ll retreat,” Seb cajoled. “Word of honor.”
Nina fingered the razor in her overall pocket, the revolver at her waist. No more ammunition; that had long run out. But Seb was right; they didn’t have to try. Only look.
Her stomach was growling as they set off along the lake’s shore. Beaches scattered along the far shore; perhaps swimmers came here in the summer, but now all was quiet, nothing but the chatter of birds overhead. Seb knew them all and imitated their calls, color flushing his cheeks. Nina was glad to see it. By the time they reached the ocher-walled house, it was late afternoon. Long, low, mellow in the sunshine, the residence overlooked a sweeping view of water and trees, a dock stretching out before it into the blue expanse of lake. Nina looked away. Even a lake so blue and placid—as unlike the wind-whipped, ice-lashed Old Man as possible—gave her the shivers.
No one seemed to be moving around the house; the shutters were drawn, but smoke drifted from a tall chimney. Seb and Nina crept toward the rear, where the trees had been cleared and landscaped to frame the house like dark encircling arms. No livestock or chicken pens, no laundry lines, nothing easily foraged. They exchanged wordless glances; Nina shook her head. Seb rose from his squat to follow her back into the trees, and then a woman cleared her throat behind them.
How did she get so close without me hearing? The thought went through Nina like a bullet, even as she whirled around. There had been no sound on the leaf-strewn ground, yet there the woman stood: slim, dark haired, blue eyed, about Nina’s age, warmly wrapped in a blue coat and checked scarf, placating hands held out. She smiled, but Nina’s fingers stretched for her razor. How did you get so close?
She was speaking Polish in a low pleasant voice. Seb replied warily, his own Polish stumbling. The woman frowned, switched languages. English? Nina could cobble simple broken phrases together by now, but she was far from fluent. Seb started in surprise, switched languages too, talking too fast for Nina to follow. She kept her eyes fixed on the woman in blue, her quiet feet in their fine leather shoes, her calm eyes.
“She says this is Lake Rusalka,” Seb broke off at last, switching back into Russian.
Rusalka. The word ran over Nina’s skin like a rat. She took a step back. The woman smiled, took a step back too, empty hands raised. She said something else. Seb translated, face showing a cautious hope.