MAMA, MAMA.
Did Isabelle hear her sons murmuring for her, or was it the sound of the quail in the night that begged her reply?
“But the children!” Mirik mutely cried.
Isabelle pressed the brass handle of the military knife to her lips, commanding him to stay silent, and without another word, opened the door to her bedroom and strode five long steps to the dinner table where Gregor the OGPU man sat, his legs stretched out, machine gun resting on his lap. He was smoking a cigarette and looking straight at her coming for him in the dark, the swooshing metal in her hands catching the reflection of the dim blue moon.
He didn’t have time to drop his cigarette or lift his weapon or make a sound aside from an aspirating Oh. She sliced his throat with the sword from left to right and with the knife from right to left, one two, and sidestepped to avoid his spurting blood.
Lunging forward, she steadied his gun with her elbow before it could slide off his knee and hit the floor. She lay down her sword and his gun and pushed in his chair, forcing him to the table so he wouldn’t tumble over and make noise. Gregor’s head dangled and faltered and finally tipped forward on his chest, attached to his body by a flap of skin at the back of his neck.
Calmly she wiped off her two blades on the embroidered kitchen towels, replaced the saber in its sheath, slung Gregor’s machine gun over her shoulder and returned to the bedroom, where a white-faced Mirik sat panting. He looked ready to faint.
“Mirik, control your breath,” she whispered, stepping to the window and piping the low-pitched note of the common quail to let her brothers know that the first part of her mission had been accomplished. She didn’t hear a response.
“Mirik, please! Keep quiet.”
“Is Gregor still out there?”
“Yes,” said Isabelle. “But he’s been rendered ineffective. Close your eyes if you don’t want to see. I’ll guide you to the boys’ room.”
She thought Mirik might argue, insist he was fine, but he didn’t. Maybe that was best; Gregor looked a real mess. Grabbing her arm, Mirik closed his eyes, and she led him into Slava and Maxim’s bedroom. The boys were sitting tensely on the bed, dressed and ready.
“Sons, husband, tell me what you do now. Quickly. Mama must hurry.”
“I take the children down to the stables and wait for you,” said Mirik.
“No, Papa,” said Slava. “We don’t move from this room until either Mama or Cici comes to get us.”
Isabelle kissed his head. “I don’t have to worry about you boys, I see.”
“Mama, I didn’t know you had your own sword!” said Maxim, touching the scabbard attached to Isabelle’s belt.
“There’s a lot you don’t know,” Isabelle said. “Now, stay quiet. I’ll see you in a few minutes.”
She nodded to Mirik and noiselessly climbed out of her children’s window. With the machine gun on her shoulder, she crept around the house. Silence was paramount. If any of the remaining four sentries made noise while being dealt with, it would alert the others and give them time to draw their weapons. A single cry in the night would awaken the men in Petka’s house. A sword, no matter how sharp, could not do combat with a machine gun. And one dead guard’s weapon could not do battle against fifteen automatics.
At night on the farm, every sound was amplified and refracted, every sound carried down the hills and over the fields. At all costs, the five sentries had to be killed in silence and fall in silence. Zhuk’s customary nocturnal urinations did not give the Lazars enough time to accomplish their task. They were counting on his distressed stomach to detain him in the long drop.
“It’s better like this,” Roman said when they were talking it through a few days earlier. “I need that man awake to see what’s coming his way.”
The Lazars had taken many precautions, but they hadn’t counted on the incessant racket made by the actual birds around their homes. The real corncrake and the true common quail didn’t shut up, and neither did the bubu-bubu owl, making the human calls nearly impossible to differentiate.
Operation Aeneas was set into motion by Zhuk himself. As soon as he walked to the outhouse, either Cici or Roman, whoever could see him clearly, would sound the warble of the quail to let everyone know to begin.
Isabelle couldn’t figure out where the plan had gone off kilter. It was fairly straightforward. Zhuk would walk to the outhouse. Quail would chirp. Ostap and Nikora would kill the guard near their house and Isabelle would kill Gregor. Corncrake was second, the unmistakable krek-krek of grinding gears, to signal the next move: the three of them flanking the three guards in the center of the cluster, preferably all at once. When they were done, they would hoot the owl signal to Roman to let him know it was his time to move. Everything before the owl call had to be done in the brief minutes Zhuk was using the privy.
Zhuk was supposed to be in the outhouse—but he wasn’t. The privy was dark. Had Isabelle commenced her part too early—or too late? She edged around the front of her house and caught a glimpse of Orlov across the clearing. So, it wasn’t too late. He was spread out on the bench at the back of her mother’s house, guarding Zhuk, his cigarette a pinpoint orange glow. Past Orlov, she made out the dark shapes of the two sentries outside Roman’s hut.
The quail had called, or so she thought, Isabelle had done her part—finally—but there was no lamp in the outhouse. Zhuk was still in his bed. The three sentries were alive, and her two youngest brothers nowhere to be seen.
The elaborate system of call and response had backfired. Either Isabelle had missed a sign, or Ostap and Nikora had. She took a breath and emitted the grating krek-krek of the corncrake. Come on, Ostap, come on, Nikora.
Before she heard her brothers’ response, the back door to her mother’s house opened and a cursing, grumbling Zhuk stumbled out in his skivvies and unlaced boots past Orlov. “Don’t know what’s wrong with me,” he mumbled. “Stomach is inside out. Third time tonight.”
“Fourth,” said Orlov.
Carrying the kerosene lamp, Zhuk walked briskly to the outhouse. The privy door closed.
Louder this time, Isabelle called out again, “Krek-krek!” like metal being sawed—and heard a quieter but definite “krek-krek” in return, all the way from Ostap and Nikora’s houses. Thank God. It was a go.
Soundlessly, nothing but a rushing shadow, Isabelle dropped the machine gun and the knife and bounded across the clearing. She didn’t draw her sword until she turned the corner and smelled Orlov’s burning cigarette. He had been leaning forward, resting his elbows on his knees. The blade flashed, catching Orlov’s eye. He was quicker than Gregor. Before he turned his head, he reached for the gun that lay next to him on the bench. If he had been truly prepared to fight a war with Ukrainian ranchers who once were Cossacks, he never would have laid his weapon down in the first place. Because in three leaps Isabelle was at his side, a panther, her sword raised with both hands above his head like an executioner’s axe. With all her strength, she brought it down across Orlov’s neck, severing his jugular, carotid, and trachea, slicing his head off his shoulders. It wobbled at the last moment and would have fallen into the dust had she not dived forward and caught it by its hair. She set the dripping head on the bench, half a burning cigarette still clamped between its teeth.
Wiping her blade against Orlov’s tunic, she replaced the sword in the scabbard and grabbed his Degtyaryov. With the weapon in her hands, she called out a deep “hoo-hoo” to Roman to let him know her part was done. Moments later, her brothers signaled their own “hoo-hoo.” The two men guarding Roman and Cici were no longer a threat.
Before Ostap even finished his owl call, Roman had flung open the door and was tearing down the path to the outhouse.
He kicked away a rock and pulled up a double-barreled shotgun that lay buried shallowly underneath. From the hole in the ground, he filled his pockets with buckshot, felt in the dark through the action housing to make sure two of the shells were in position, and, hoisting the weapon to his shoulder, pulled open the privy door. The kerosene lamp swung from a hook, the light casting eerie shadows across Roman’s face. Zhuk sat on the toilet—a hole cut in the center of a slat bench. Next to him lay his pistol.
“Hey!” Zhuk said. “Close the fucking door.”
Roman didn’t reply—and didn’t close the door.
The light of the lamp was in Zhuk’s eyes; he saw only a looming shadow. “Who is it?” Zhuk said. “Who is it?” He tried to pull up his lowered skivvies, then reached across his body for the weapon but fumbled it. The gun fell out of his hand. Kicking the pistol out of Zhuk’s reach, Roman grabbed the lamp off the hook and set it on the ground.
A silent paladin, Roman stood, his feet apart, both barrels of the shotgun pointed at the man on the privy. Now Zhuk could see who it was. He gasped.
“Revolution breeds revolution, Comrade Zhuk,” Roman said. He pulled back the hammer. “You forgot whose country you are in.”
“Have you lost your mind?” Zhuk tried to screech but his voice failed him, his throat dry from shock.
“Too much power makes out of small men even smaller men,” said Roman. “I can hardly make you out, you are so tiny on your throne.”
“Orlov,” Zhuk croaked feebly, trying to yell. “Orlov!”
“Orlov is not available, he’s lost his head,” said Roman, his weapon trained on Zhuk’s heaving chest. “And you are nothing. If I turned you inside out and split you with my axe, I would find nothing. I can’t even bury you, or burn you, or scatter your dust to the wind, because you cannot bury or burn or scatter nothing.”
“Think about what you’re doing!”
“I’ve been thinking about little else, comrade,” said Roman, placing bitter emphasis on the corrupted word. His finger hooked around the front trigger. “And I’m about to show you as harshly as I can how many things in this world you don’t understand.”
“Roman! You are making a very big—”
Roman fired, emptying the right barrel into Zhuk’s disbelieving face. The sound of the shotgun in the silent night was like thunder overhead. It fluttered the bats from their perches and the quails from their marshes and the owls from their nests. It shocked the horses into high-pitched whinnying. It echoed for kilometers downwind. Before another half-second passed, Roman fired the second barrel into the slumped, unrecognizable mass that was Kondraty Zhuk.
As soon as the first blast came, Isabelle, Nikora, Ostap, and Cici kicked open the doors of Petka’s house. Barely awake Soviet men, scattered throughout the common room, scrambled for their revolvers.
“Comrades, think!” Nikora said, a machine gun pointed at the men in the open space. “In our hands are your automatic weapons. You know what they do. Each of us has 47 rounds before the drum is spent. Don’t be foolish. Put your weapons down.”
But in the bedrooms, some of the men fought against two women. One threw a knife, aimed for Isabelle’s face. It missed, lodging in the wall behind her. Isabelle raised her weapon, but Roman was already in the room. Moving Isabelle out of the way, he shot the knife thrower with the pump-action shotgun, then pointed the barrels at the second man. “Where is my mother?” said Roman in a loud terrifying voice.
“How the fuck should I know—”
Roman didn’t let him finish before he shot him.
Passing Isabelle the gun, Roman took the machine gun from her and strode into the adjoining room where Cici and Ostap held two more men at gunpoint.
“Wife, move out of the way,” Roman said, raising the Degtyaryov. “Where is my mother?” he said to one of them.
“I don’t know who she—!”
Roman didn’t listen further. He shot him. The second man, his hands in front of his face, said, “No, no, no, no, no.”
“I’m only going to ask you once,” Roman said.
“I don’t know where your mother is!” the man screamed.
Roman shot him.
Out in the living room, Nikora held four men pinned against the wall. Trying to prevent the inevitable, these Soviets tried a different tack.
“I know where your mother is,” one of them said. “Zhuk told me.”
“Where is she?”
“I want my life in exchange for—”
Roman shot him before he was finished speaking.
“Where is my mother?” he repeated to the three men left.
“In Kastropol,” said one enterprising Soviet. “I make one phone call—”
It was Isabelle who pushed Roman aside and fired the reloaded shotgun. She aimed and fired again. The dispersing buckshot from the second barrel killed the two who hadn’t spoken yet.
“I had a good feeling about that last one,” Roman said. “I think he knew something.”
“We need to leave, Roman,” Isabelle said. “The gunfire probably carried all the way to the Dniester. They’ll be coming for us soon. Ostap, Nikora, give me your weapons and run, go help Cici with the kerosene. Meet us at the stables. And send Mirik and the boys down. Hurry!”
Their arms full of weapons and ammo drums, Isabelle and Roman ran downhill to their spooked horses.
While Isabelle headed to the stables, Roman entered the barn and shot Mirik’s last two cows.
In the back of Boyko’s stall, Isabelle swept away the thick hay and yanked open a metal trapdoor that led to a shallow brick bunker filled top to bottom with weapons and ammunition. If they remained on their farm, they had enough to fight off a small army, but it was too much to carry away on horses.
Isabelle and Roman worked silently. With speed and proficiency, they saddled and bridled their horses. They strapped loaded rifles, revolvers, and Soviet automatics onto the mounts. They stuffed extra cartridges into their pockets and saddlebags and grabbed the few remaining Russian stick grenades they had saved from the Civil War. “Three grenades is all we have left?” Isabelle asked.
“Three is all we have left,” Roman replied. Carefully they replaced the trapdoor and covered it with hay. Outside the stable, it wasn’t dark anymore. A warm amber glow was blowing upwind and into the trees, carrying with it a strong odor of kerosene.
They loaded the saddlebags with a few provisions they had hidden around the stalls: bandages, bread, mink oil paste for their boots and their tack. For a few moments before the rest of the family joined them in the stable, Isabelle and Roman faced each other. “Please come with us,” Isabelle said, her voice breaking. “I beg you. Please don’t stay behind. I know you’re planning something stupid. No good will come of it.”
“Oh, that is most definitely true, sister,” Roman said. “No good will come of it. I promise you, if I can come with you, I will. But I won’t leave unfinished business here.”
Isabelle couldn’t say anything more because Mirik entered the stable, clutching Slava and Max. Roman and Isabelle moved apart. Roman kneeled down to embrace his nephews. “You two are good riders, my little beloved men,” he said. “Don’t forget the things I told you. Now, mount your horses and head out. You have a very important job. And listen to your father. He will tell you where to go.”
“We know where to go,” Slava said.
“Yes,” said Maxim. “To the river.”
“Yes. And do you remember what to do if you get there before us?”
“We wait,” Mirik said.
“No,” said Roman in his firmest voice. “You do not wait. You cross the river to Romania where you will be safe. Then you wait. The horses will take you on their backs. What do you do, boys?”
“We cross the river,” said Slava.
“Then we wait,” said Maxim.
“Be good and be brave. You have what you need?”
“We have what we need,” said Slava.
“You know the way,” Isabelle said to Mirik, laying her hand on his arm. “Lead the horses south and west. Stay in the woods, off the main road. Don’t worry about anyone but yourself and the boys.”
“Ride as fast as you can, Mirik,” said Roman. “We’re right behind you. Whatever happens, we’ll catch up.”
Mirik cast an agonized glance at Isabelle.
“Slava, Max, keep your horses close to your father.” She kissed their heads. “And keep riding.”
“We know, Mama.”
“They need to leave, Isabelle,” Roman said.
Something in Roman’s tone must have set Mirik off, for the fear on his face grew stark.
“Go, Mirik,” Isabelle said.
“I don’t know where to go,” Mirik blurted, in a panicked voice. “I thought I knew, but it’s too dark out, and the moon is covered by clouds. I can’t remember which way to turn when I reach the pine forest.”
“Go east, Mirik! Take a slight left at the pines, head into the woods, and ride all the way south. It’s not even thirty kilometers. There’s a narrow path by the edge of the forest that runs to the steep hill by the river. Keep to the path. If there’s any trouble, duck into the woods. Use your compass if you’re not sure. Remember, you need to get to the river crossing between Okopy and Zhvanets. If you can see the castle, you’ve gone too far east.”
Mirik looked like a man who had never heard Ukrainian before, let alone the things Isabelle was repeating for him, even though they had talked it through a dozen times and Mirik knew the directions by heart.
Cici stepped into the stable, rifle in one hand, can of kerosene in the other. “Mirik,” she said, “get yourself and the boys to the tree line on the other side of the woods. Wait for me there. The three of you can follow me.”
“Cici, no,” said Roman.
“Roman, I know it’s not the plan,” said Cici, “but we can’t follow them if they don’t know where they’re going. And if they get lost, we won’t be able to cross into Romania without them. It’s fine. We’ll be at the Dniester before dawn, but we must hurry. You four Lazars can hold up the rear without me. Let’s go.”
Nodding her approval, Isabelle pressed her husband and sons to herself one last time. “Don’t shake, Mirik,” she whispered. “Be steady for our boys. Follow Cici. And remember Orpheus.” She patted his chest and stepped away. “No matter what you hear, just keep riding. Do not look back.”
“We’ll meet you across the river, Mama,” said the intrepid Slava, already on his horse, the reins in his hands.
“Yes, my darling child,” said Isabelle. “Godspeed.” She couldn’t bear to look at Maxim, her baby boy, the gentlest, most loving of children. She didn’t want the divine angel to see the terror in his mortal mother’s eyes. With her shaking hand, she blew them a kiss, she made the sign of the cross on them, she watched them go, two tiny figures and their lanky, quaking father. She thought she might break.
Nikora and Ostap ran into the stable, reeking of kerosene. “They left?” Ostap said. “Good.” He swore. “If I’m not careful I’m going to self-immolate. But everything’s drenched and lit—the houses, the sheds, the barn.”
Outside, the air was flickering orange and gold, the smell of burning wood strong. Up on the hill their homes were on fire. “I opened the valves on the tanks,” Ostap told Roman. “What’s left of the kerosene is running down the hill into the fields. Light it when you’re ready. We have three jugs left. Let’s get the horses out before we douse the stable.” But Isabelle and Cici were already splashing kerosene into the stalls. They were out of time.
The brothers tied the horses they weren’t riding in a single file hitch, and draped themselves with rifles, machine guns, and extra ammunition drums. Nikora jumped on the lead horse; Ostap on the tail. Roman turned away. He couldn’t bear to abandon his horses and so had agreed to let his brothers take them. They would let them loose, away from the property. Other farmers might identify the wandering animals and keep them; that was Roman’s hope. His name was branded into their shoes.
Pressing his Cossack saber to his heart, Nikora saluted his brother and sister and led the seven horses out of the stable. Roman, his head bent, touched every one of them as they passed. As Ostap rode by, Roman squeezed his brother’s boot. “Be careful out there,” he said. “Watch out for your little brother.”
“I will,” said Ostap, reins in one hand, rifle in the other. “You too, Isa, watch out for your little brother.” He pointed to Roman and was off.
“What horse for me, Roman?” said Cici, “Lytsar?” Lytsar meant knight in Ukrainian.
“Take Boyko,” he said. “Isabelle will take Lytsar.”
“No,” Cici said. “Boyko is your horse.”
“Take him,” Roman said. “If I’m not there, he will protect you.”
Cici swung into the saddle. Roman touched her hand with his sword. “I will never leave you or forsake you,” said Cici. “You are my life. I’ll see you on the other side.” She bent down, nearly sliding off, kissed him deeply, and raced away to find Mirik.
“I’m hoping she’s being melodramatic and will do both, leave me and forsake me,” said Roman. “Ready, Isa?”
“Ready.”
Fiercely they embraced, like a brother and sister who had shared a good but hard life, like soldiers at war, and mounted their horses, kerosene jugs in hand. With swords at their sides and rifles on their backs, Isabelle and Roman rode out of the stable and into the fields, where they soaked the emerging wheat with kerosene. Lighting their matches, they threw them into the rows of greening earth, igniting the stalks in pathways of flame. The rivulet of fire traveled up the hill to where the giant drums were still emptying. The tanks exploded like giant bombs.
They took one last look at their engulfed homes on the gentle sloping hill, at their stable, their barn, all scorched earth.
“The flames will have it,” said Roman.
“But they won’t have it,” said Isabelle.
They galloped away.
It was less than fifteen minutes from Isabelle’s takedown of Gregor to the last match she threw. From the deafening shotgun blast that ended Zhuk’s life to the gallop off their land was no more than ten. Ten minutes to blow up one life and begin another. They needed those minutes to get a head start because Isabelle knew that the barrage of gunfire, followed by the tank explosions and the sight and smell of a blaze in the blue night would not and could not go unnoticed by the Bolsheviks that quartered in Ispas. She knew they would be followed. From the farm to the river was about an hour’s ride on horses, but less by truck. Haste was imperative.
She and Roman met up with Ostap and Nikora and raced to catch Cici, Mirik, and the boys. The barely visible forest path too often ended in open fields and sometimes in wild steppe. The grass, the grain, the pebbles, the rough terrain lodged in the horses’ hooves and slowed them down. Only Cici on the indomitable Boyko rode on unhindered, with her young charges behind her. The four of them were in a foggy grassland far ahead of Isabelle and her brothers.
It was just after four in the morning. The pre-dawn sky was turning a shade of gravestone granite. Dense haze fell into the fields. As Isabelle rode in near darkness, her head lowered against Lytsar’s mane, she hoped her children and Mirik kept pace with Cici. Horses were herd animals. When the lead horse galloped, the rest galloped, too.
They were less than four kilometers from the hill before the river, riding the narrow way between the fields and the forest, when Isabelle heard engines behind her. Her heart fell. They were so close! In the distance, trucks barreled through a gap in the trees, one after the other. The Lazars spurred on their horses, but the animals were already at full gallop. The trucks were narrowing the gap.
Roman surged up to Isabelle. Slowing down, brother and sister stared at each other darkly across their mounts. Nikora and Ostap caught up. They all circled up.
“We can’t outrun them,” Roman said, panting. “Form a frontline. We’ll blast what we can. Then me and the boys will lure the rest away.” He waved over yonder, away from Dniester and Romania, away from Isabelle and Cici. “We’ll take care of them. But you ride on, Isa. Ride on like the wind.”
When she wavered, Roman yelled at her. “There’s no other way! You want them to catch your sons? Never. The fucking bastards will never have them.” He blew her a kiss and motioned to Nikora and Ostap, who without a word lined up with their brother and sister, four horsemen separating life from death.
“Ready? On one!” shouted Roman.
Pulling up on the reins, all four Lazars dropped the bridles, took their feet out of the stirrups and spun around in their saddles, facing the approaching vehicles. “Urrah!” they yelled as they threw the weapons off their shoulders, pointed and fired. Isabelle and Roman used rifles, Ostap and Nikora machine guns. The trucks weaved and sputtered, the men inside scrambling to aim their own rifles. Scattered shots rang out in the field. The Lazars aimed and fired again. And again.
“Go, Isa!” yelled Roman. The brothers continued to fire.
“Davai!” Isabelle yelled to Lytsar, the spurs on her boots hurling him forward into a run while she continued to face the rear and fire at the trucks. She shot out the wheels of one of the vehicles and shot the driver. The truck crashed to a stop. But the other was still zigzagging, the men shooting wildly, their pistols aimed low—at the horses, not the riders.
Roman yelled a war cry to his brothers, pointing away into the distance.
The men whirled around in their saddles and faced forward. Isabelle watched them gallop away into the field of fog.
The Soviets decided that three Cossacks were better than one, just as Roman had hoped, and set off in pursuit, firing erratically through the dark and dewy air. The truck dropped out of sight. Rat-a-tat shots rang out, piercing the mist. There was a fusillade of fire.
Astride her knight, Isabelle, with the rifle in her hands, faced forward herself and charged to the edge of the dawn field. But before she could reach her family, she heard a man’s voice shouting from the truck behind her, “Over there, to the right! Stop, woman! Stop, we order you!”
A single blast rang out. Isabelle had no chance to turn around or aim her rifle. They shot her horse.
Lytsar stumbled over his front legs, the force of his thousand-pound body propelling him headlong another twenty meters. Isabelle threw herself off before the massive animal crushed her with his falling frame. Lytsar crashed to his side, his body pulsing and heaving. Isabelle had no time to think. Yanking the machine gun off her shoulder, she opened fire at the approaching truck. The additional drum was still on Lytsar and unreachable, so she fired selectively, a burst of shots, followed instantly by another—and then she ran. Every few meters, she turned, fired off another burst, and ran again. They returned fire, but their truck had stopped moving. Three men got out and chased her on foot, their pistols out in front, firing every which way. She knew they couldn’t see her well in the fog because she couldn’t see them.
But they were closing the gap, gaining on her. A steppe-raised Lazar thoroughbred like Isabelle couldn’t outrun three fat Soviet drunks? Impossible! But they were barely ten meters behind her. Still running, she pitched away the machine gun, pulled the rifle off her shoulder, turned, aimed, and fired. One of the men dropped to the ground. The other two stayed in frantic pursuit.
Isabelle heard the clopping of hooves and for a moment thought, hoped, it was Roman. Instead, out of the fog, on Roman’s mighty horse, appeared Cici, the reins at her sides, a rifle in her hands. She shot one of the chekists, but the last man leaped toward Isabelle, who yanked out her sword, spun around, and slashed through the air. Isabelle just missed the man’s abdomen but nearly severed his hand. Screaming, his wrist dangling, he toppled her. Cici vaulted off Boyko, lunged, and stabbed the crazed man in the back of the neck with her bayonet. Isabelle cried out. Cici had thrust the blade so far through the man’s throat, it pierced Isabelle’s own neck above her clavicle.
“Is that his blood or yours?” Cici said as she heaved his body away and helped Isabelle to her feet.
“Were you trying to kill me too? Forget it, let’s go.” Isabelle pressed her tunic into the wound to stop the bleeding. “Hurry, Cici!”
“Why? They’re all dead.”
“You don’t hear that?” said Isabelle. The faint but unmistakable sound of a sputtering, gear-shifting engine came from within the fog, where a battle had raged minutes earlier between the men in the truck and her brothers. “Quick,” she said, grabbing her sword and her rifle. She abandoned everything else, all their carefully curated supplies. “You ride, I’ll hop on behind you.”
They mounted Boyko, back to back.
“You’re facing the tail?” Cici said.
“How else am I going to shoot them?”
“There’s no one there. Where’s Roman?”
Isabelle waved to the fields of Ukraine. “Where’s Mirik?”
“I told him to hide in the forest up ahead and wait for us,” Cici said. “Over that hill is the river. We are so close.”
The hill didn’t look that close. It was still a field away.
“Cici! We told them to cross! Why did you change the plan?”
“Isa, you were about to be slaughtered! They shot your horse!”
“Answer me! Why did you change the plan?”
“I just answered you! I came back for you.”
“Why!” yelled Isabelle.
“Why?”
“Cici, you shouldn’t have done that,” Isabelle said with dark desperation. “To get the boys across the river was your only imperative. You and I can run, we can fight, swim if need be. Let’s go. Davai!” Boyko broke into a trot.
“Did Roman say he would follow you?” asked Cici.
“He said if he could, he would.” Isabelle raised her rifle. “Do you see my children?”
“They’re over there. Don’t worry. Across the field, in the trees, they’re waiting for you.”
Mirik, Slava, and Maxim may have been waiting, just over there, across the field, in the trees. But Isabelle lost the rest of her story. She lost it at the precise moment she and Cici, galloping on the indefatigable, indestructible magic Boyko, the king of horses, reached the place where her children were supposed to be waiting. The very center of God’s majestic earth, full of stones and wet grass, was empty of the divine weight of three bodies, two of them fragile and borne by her.
Where is your flock, Isabelle? Where is your tortured husband? Where is your blameless brood? Wake me, wake me, bloodied and battered, so the eyes of my soul can see. No, don’t wake me, please—so they can never see.
“This is where I left them,” said Cici, pulling up on Boyko’s reins.
Isabelle called for them. “Mirik! Slava! Maxim!”
“They must have crossed,” said Cici.
“But you told them to wait.”
“We also told them to cross.”
“But then you told them to wait.”
“Yes, but they’re not here!” Cici said. “So they must have continued on.” Intently the two women listened for any man-made sound. They heard nothing. Cici spurred Boyko forward.
“Wait,” said Isabelle. “Is there a chance they could have heard the gunfire and gone back for us?”
“Why would they do a crazy thing like that?” said Cici.
“You did!”
“Mirik’s instructions were clear,” said Cici.
“He is not here,” Isabelle repeated in a trembling voice. “So clearly his instructions were not clear.”
“We have to go. We can’t stay here, Isa.”
“Let’s go back a little bit. Please.” Isabelle was going numb with fear.
“They’re not behind us,” Cici said. “We would have seen them. And if by chance they are behind us, then Roman will find them and bring them. You did tell me Roman is right behind you. Face front.”
Gripping the rifle, Isabelle slowly turned forward in the saddle. But she found it difficult to stay upright on the horse. Her rifle grew heavy. Her body turned to stone. She grabbed the saddle, listing, losing her strength and her footing, the weight of a concealed wrong too heavy to bear. “Go slower, Cici.”
“Do we want to live or do we want to die?” said Cici.
Isabelle didn’t know if she wanted to live. Dawn hadn’t broken. Isabelle kept calling out for her family. Mirik. Slava. Maxim.
The fog was heavy upon the earth.
“Wait, Cici! Do you hear that?”
“Hear what?”
Isabelle didn’t know what. This was where her memory stopped. It fell through a black hole and a metal trapdoor shut over it.
The next thing she remembered, she was wet and draped over a horse. Cici walked next to her, holding the reins, maybe crying. I didn’t want to cross without Roman, said Cici. Then, riding, riding, her body hitched to the horse by rope. Being at the bottom of a pontoon boat, leaning against Cici, lying in her lap, smelling fresh water, burning wood, fish, hay, oak, mud, swamp. There were no thoughts, just images, the visual remains of a shattered world.
Later, Cici offered some pieces of the broken whole. Isabelle had fallen off Boyko, Cici said.
But why?
Isabelle had never fallen off a horse in her life.
Was it her neck wound? She did lose a lot of blood.
Though the memory of the last darkness was gone, this much was true: single-handedly, Cici got the two of them across the Dniester. In Romania, they continued on Boyko a long way south. When the Danube delta got too muddy and marshy, and traveling by horse became impossible, they parted with the hero stallion, selling him to a pike farmer. “Wait for me,” Cici told the man. Why did she say this?
Cici secured them passage on a trawler down to the mouth of the great Danube. From there, they caught a ride to Constanta in a two-horse wagon full of onions. Isabelle, who never cried, cried all forty kilometers to the seaport. Cici said it was the onions.
The story wasn’t hers because Isabelle couldn’t fill the gaps to make it hers. She kept hearing her own voice calling for her husband and sons, she kept hearing Cici cry in return, Roman will find them.
Alone and together, she and Cici made it to Constanta and found Nate. Isabelle had never in her life seen anyone as happy as Nate was when he saw Cici. They cried in each other’s arms while Isabelle sat hollowed out on a nearby bench. Papa will weep from joy, she heard Nate whisper to Cici.
As they were filling out the paperwork before boarding Pride of the Sea, it was Nate who advised the two women to write down the same last name—Lazar—because two visas were more likely to be granted to sisters than to friends.
And then Cici went and abandoned her sister in despair and against her will. “If I leave him behind, run to a better life without him, what does love even mean? I love you, my closest friend, my family, but I love Roman more. We are held together by an unconditional bond even if there be blood at our feet. If he stayed behind for Judgment Day, then he is not going to face it without me.”
A mute and mutilated phantom that once was Isabelle sailed alone to Brindisi and then to Lavelle. Everything she brought with her sank to the bottom of Boston Harbor, except for her. She walked through immigration barefoot holding nothing but the damp leather boots in her hands.
Isabelle’s story lingered, unconcluded and incomplete. She was on Boyko, and then she wasn’t. She had a family, and then she didn’t.
Do you hear that?
Hear what?
In the core of the concrete weight inside her, she had a sense that something made her fall off the horse. In the rupture, she was ground to dust and driven underground. There was a fracture in her lifeline, a break in her timeline. Like Orpheus, her story stopped the moment she looked back. She fell off the kingly stallion and lost her children forever. One moment she was Isabelle Kovalenko and the next she hung passed out and upside down on her horse, a fragile solitary ghost.
But Isabelle refused to accept this fate, refused to accept a long life of nothing but a weeping heart. She was determined to find the missing threads to the tapestry of the story that was hers and hers alone. She continued to live as most exiles do—feeding on empty dreams of hope that she would see her family again. She chose to believe that down the length of days, Mirik! Slava! Maxim! would return to her, the way she chose to believe that in the other, vanished life, Cici was reunited with Roman, and together with Ostap and Nikora, the four of them searched for her husband and sons.
And the only thing complicating Isabelle’s crystal dreams of reclaiming her old life was the small but vital truth that when she wasn’t looking and wasn’t careful, by night and in broad daylight, she had allowed another love to enter her wretched grieving heart. She had neglected to construct an elaborate barricade around that part of herself. A new magic surged within her life, lighting her up like all the stars of night, like power. Isabelle thought she had used up all the good she ever felt or would feel, but there, in the hard dry bitterness, a vigorous seed had planted itself, unnoticed and unwatered, and by God’s unfaltering grace grew into divine love that to her shame could neither be ignored nor denied.