image

When I finally fall asleep, curled on the floor splattered with my mother’s blood, I dream of flying. I dream of the sky over the Sea of Azov, the shallowest sea in the world, and one of the most beautiful. We would go there for holidays, and as my father knew the director of the local flying club, we would fly half the day. Papa said it was the best place to train, for there was a peculiar magnetic anomaly that threw off the compass ever so slightly. Flying with a proper compass was easy, Papa said. But flying with one that has gone mentally cross-eyed is another thing entirely. In my dream I am no Night Witch. I am flying in the bright sunshine of summer. The glittering water of the sea is beneath me. There are the long stretches of beach that edge the water like a golden necklace. I skim low in the little biplane. In my dream I do the mathematics without even realizing it. The computations magically transmit to my hands on the control column and my feet on the rudder pedals.

I fly over the Kerch Strait. The Black Sea unfolds beneath me. The water is like liquid sapphires, and the reflections of clouds drift lazily across the surface. I fly low and so very slow. That is the beauty of the U-2 trainer. It can fly slower than the stall speed of any plane in the world. It is like walking through air.

I bank steeply and turn east. Dusk is settling across the land and over the steppes. A wonderful wild scent suffuses the air, for the steppes are in bloom. Tiny specks of color dot the long grasses. There is a sliver of moon that is magically growing fatter by seconds. By the time I am over the Sea of Azov it is full, and a pillar of moonlight stretches across the water. I see the shadow of my own wings printed against the moon. My wings are the smile in the moon’s face. Then the sky flinches. There is a hideous flare of white. Once more the night is bleeding light, and I wake up, my heart racing.

There is no one to stop me now. No one to say I am too young—or at least not Mama. Not Papa. Not Babushka. I have lost everything, but I could join Tatyana in the sky. I could become a Night Witch. But how would I do it? Where would I go? Stalingrad is an island in this sea of war. We’re surrounded by Nazis, backed up against the river—trapped. The 588th Regiment of Tatyana’s has temporary airfields, but they are far outside the city. Hidden. There are no lights, nothing to reveal their location. I realize my idea is impractical, but it will not die. It begins as a little flicker but it quickly becomes a flame. I feel it burning within me. There must be a way.

I look around at the ruined walls of the apartment. There is nothing here for me. Just rubble. I am not sure how long I sit there thinking, but it has grown dark. My heart flies into my throat as I realize I’m not alone. There’s a figure huddled by the calendar with a rifle aimed, not at me, but at what was once a window on Shkolnaya Street.

“Stay down,” the figure hisses. There is the sharp crack of gunfire. I flinch and fall back. Then there’s a second shot. I see the flash from the rifle. “Keep down.”

The air rings with more shots. The acrid smell of gunfire hangs in the dimness. Then there is a long silence followed by a shout. It’s a single word that I do not recognize, but it sounds slightly Turkic, the language of the people from the Ural Mountains. I can tell it was not German. For this I am thankful. The figure is now crawling toward me. Scraps of rifle smoke hang in the air.

“You all right?” he says in perfect Russian. I blink. It’s Yuri, the boy often bullied in school. He was an easy target. Not only was he short, but his eyes tilted and he spoke with an accent. I must look completely stunned, because he doesn’t look like a bully’s target now. He has grown taller and his shoulders have broadened. His black hair slashes across his forehead. He looks dangerous.

“Yeah, it’s me. Slit Eye. That’s what they called me during sniper training. ‘Hey, Slit Eye, you should be able to shoot.’ Damn right, I say.”

A dreadful feeling floods through me. “You didn’t kill my mother, did you?”

It’s as if his mouth tries to shape the words but they won’t come out, so he shakes his head. I relax ever so slightly. “No, not me,” he says finally. “When I got here I saw the Komsomol picking up a body from just outside your window there. That was your mother?”

“Yes.”

Yuri sighs. “Alex and I had just arrived when they were taking her and some others away. We thought Otto might be holed up in that building across the way.”

“Who’s Otto?”

“Nazi sniper.”

“You know his first name?” I ask incredulously.

“Of course. He’s famous.” Yuri gives me a small smile. “But not as famous as I’m going to be.”

I remember hearing that Yuri’s father had been a hunter in the Urals. He came from a long line of hunters, and Yuri claimed to hunt with a bow and arrow. He was always talking about the woods being filled with live animals. In winter he wore a fur hood from a wolverine he had shot. We were all city kids. He was not. He looked so different and his accent was so odd. I felt sorry for him, but of course I was scared to say the slightest thing to him, for befriending the target of bullies could make me vulnerable. I feel ashamed now.

Yuri shakes out a cigarette and lights it, cupping his hand to shield the flame from a breeze. The orange glow illuminates his face. I am looking at a sniper, I remind myself. And all snipers are part of the secret police, the NKVD. The very abbreviation seems dark, lethal. It was the NKVD that organized the various militias in Stalingrad. They are always alert for deserters, counterspies, and the civilians who aid the Germans. In short, collaborators.

My friend Lara’s father was hauled off in the middle of the night by the NKVD and never seen again. Suspicion is the NKVD’s lifeblood. It pumps through their arteries from their darkest hearts. Two months ago the local NKVD came to our apartment building to organize the tenants for trench digging. No one refused. To refuse was to come under suspicion of being a collaborator. Not even Ekaterina Skolvich, who was close to ninety years old, refused.

But in addition to being alert for spies and collaborators, they have a keen eye for young people from the Komsomol who might make promising snipers. Just before school finished for the summer, we were all given eye tests. There was a rumor that students with exceptionally keen eyesight were being considered for a special marksmanship division in the NKVD, and Yuri, it was said, was one of those.

“Want one?” Yuri asks as he takes his first drag. It is a generous offer, as cigarettes have become very precious.

“No. I don’t smoke. But thanks.” The thanks sounds puny, as if I am trying to make up for what happened in secondary school. Does it count that I did not join in the bullying but merely stood by and watched?

“This has been going on for two days,” he says.

I’m confused. “What, the war? The bombing?”

“No, the duel.”

“What duel?”

“Alex and me and the Nazi sniper, Otto.”

“You’ve been chasing one another for two days?”

“This would have been our third night. But the Nazi fell for the oldest trick in the book. Alex raised his helmet on a stick just a bit above that pile of rubble across the way. Otto shot at it and the bullet ripped the helmet apart.” It seems strange to me that Yuri was on a first-name basis with the man he was trying to kill. “Then Otto reached up to retrieve his cartridge cases. The Nazis always do that after what they consider a successful shot. As Otto did. So I saw just a tiny wedge of his scalp. That was all I needed, a few centimeters. That did it.”

“A few centimeters?” I reply, both impressed and horrified.

“I told you I am a good shot. Old Slit Eye!” He winks at me.

“Did Otto know your name? Are you that famous?”

Yuri actually blushes, levels his hand, and waves it back and forth. “Maybe just a little bit. I’m getting there.”

It is quiet outside now. No sniper fire, no Stukas screaming across the night, but through the silence I hear the distinctive purr of a U-2.

“It’s a Night Witch,” Yuri says, and cocks his head toward the sky.

“I need to be there.”

“Where? Where do you need to be?”

“Up there.” I tip my head. “In the sky, with them. With the witches and my sister.”