فصل 49

emilia

He was gone.

I tried to look for him but Joana demanded I stay in the cart.

“Let her go,” said Eva.

Big Eva was scared of me, more concerned with her own survival. But Joana had won. Her importance to the group was evident. She was trusted. She was wanted.

“We’ll approach the checkpoint and register,” instructed Joana. “We can’t cross now, the planes shot through the ice. It will refreeze overnight. We’ll wait here in the village and cross in the morning.”

The German Empire had renamed the cities. They called the village Frauenburg. The old name had been Frombork. Father told me it was once the home of the astronomer Copernicus, who proved that the earth rotated around the sun.

“Per aspera ad astra, Papa,” I whispered. Through hardship to the stars. It was a Latin phrase he used whenever I complained that something was difficult. Where was my father now? Could he ever have imagined things would be this difficult? I looked up at the sky, wondering if the stars would be pretty here.

Joana whispered with Eva. I heard her say something about refugees in the ice. She was trying to be stoic, a medical woman, but I could tell that she was upset because the soldier hadn’t allowed her to help the injured on the road.

Joana climbed up into the cart. “Here,” she whispered. “Take this.” She handed me an identity card. “It’s from a young Latvian woman who died on the road,” she explained. “I was going to give the papers to the Red Cross for their registry. This woman was slightly older, but she had blond hair. Take your braids out and keep your hat pulled down.”

I quickly began to unthread my braids.

“Open your coat so your pregnancy is revealed. They will assume you’re older. I’ll explain that you are Latvian and don’t speak German.”

So that was the plan. Would it really work? What would happen if they realized I wasn’t a dead Latvian woman, but a young Polish girl with no papers?

Birds squawked overhead, issuing a warning.

I knew the legends of the birds. Seagulls were the souls of dead soldiers. Owls were the souls of women. Doves were the recently departed souls of unmarried girls.

Was there a bird for the souls of people like me?