Lily
Lily awoke in complete darkness, unsure if she was alive or dead and buried. Knives seemed to shoot through her, reminding her that she was very much still here. She rolled over, stifling a cry as pain shot through her ankle. Had she broken it? She spat out dirt which had somehow gotten into her mouth when she had hit the ground. Her head throbbed.
Lily adjusted her eyes, trying to get her bearings. She could not remember the actual moment she had jumped, just a blinding light before she lost consciousness. Georgi. The image of her son flying from the train into the darkness seared itself into her memory. She had to find him.
She reached down and examined her ankle, deciding with relief that it wasn’t broken. She had to keep moving. She had no idea where she was or how long she had been unconscious, whether the Germans might still be near. And she did not know where the others were. The place where she had jumped was nowhere near the location where Hannah and the others had ambushed the train, but far east of there, away from anyone. She worried that she had waited so long that she might be in Germany.
Lily tried to stand, her leg nearly buckling from the pain. One of her shoes was missing. She felt around the ground, but did not find it. With one foot clad only in a sock and the other severely injured, she began to limp. She looked desperately for woods or other shelter. She had to stay out of sight. In her prison uniform, she would stand out, be apprehended immediately. But the strip of track where she had landed was in the middle of an open field with no shelter as far as the eye could see.
Lily started west, her progress on her injured leg painstakingly slow. She had to find some sort of shelter. But she followed the tracks, in spite of the risk, retracing the route the train had taken in hopes of finding the place where Georgi had fallen. She did not dare to imagine that she might find him but perhaps a clue as to what had happened to him and which way he had gone or been taken. But she found nothing, and when she reached the location, marked by the distinctive arc of pine trees, where the initial train break had taken place before Matteo boarded and they had kept moving east, she was forced to admit there was no sign of him.
There did not seem to be any point in following the tracks farther. She needed to find a place to hide so that she could decide what to do next. To the north of the tracks beyond the trees, she spied a plume of smoke and sniffed an acrid odor suggesting someone was burning brush. She started in that direction, cutting through the woods.
Forty-five minutes later, Lily reached the edge of the woods where it ended near a road. She saw two farmers talking between their predawn chores by a fence, and she leaped back into hiding behind a tree. They looked like simple peasants in brown and gray work clothes, unlikely to cause her harm. She leaned in closer, realizing with unease that they were speaking German. Still crouching, she tried to listen. She could make out the words train and escape. Word had gotten out. People would be on the alert for Jews who had fled.
Lily tried to slink away, but she caught her bad ankle and tripped, falling forward into the ditch along the road. She stifled a yelp. The farmers stopped talking, and although Lily could not see them, she imagined their heads snapping in the direction of the ditch. “Wer ist?” one of the farmers called. Lily lay motionless in the ditch, bracing for him to discover her. She had no hope of escaping quickly. But a moment later, she heard a door slam as one farmer went back inside and a lone set of footsteps grew fainter as the second walked away.
Lily peered out of the ditch, and when she was certain the road was deserted, she climbed out once more. But it was daylight now and unsafe to continue along the open roadway, especially in her striped uniform. She could not go much farther on her wounded ankle anyway.
She paused, leaning against a tree, and looked around desperately. There was a barn a bit farther down the road, several hundred meters from the farmhouse. She hobbled toward it, certain that at any moment someone would emerge from the farmhouse or come down the road and ask what she was doing there.
Finally, she reached the barn. Inside it was empty except for a cow and some chickens. A ladder led to a loft, and Lily thought she might be able to hide there if she could manage the climb.
She started for the ladder. Just then, a girl of about fifteen with white-blond hair walked into the barn. Seeing Lily among the livestock, she froze.
“Wait!” Lily cried, too loudly. The girl opened her mouth to scream, but no sound came out. Then she turned and bolted for the door.
Lily gathered herself and prepared to flee. But before she could get out of the barn, the girl returned with an older woman carrying a tin cup. She eyed Lily for several seconds without speaking.
“Guten Morgen,” Lily offered, trying to think of something to say to explain her presence in their barn. But before she could speak further, the woman held the cup out to her. Lily drank the still-warm milk greedily, savoring the richness. It was the most nourishment she had since her arrest, and she could soon feel the strength returning to her limbs.
“Wait here,” the woman said gruffly. Then she left the barn with her daughter in tow. Lily debated whether she should flee now, while she had the chance. What if the woman had gone to tell someone she was there? But Lily knew she would not make it far on her ankle.
A few minutes later, the woman returned alone, carrying a dress and worn boots. “Here, put these on,” she said. She knew Lily was one of the escapees and was helping her anyway. Lily stepped behind the stall for privacy and put it on, then buried her stained uniform in the hay. The dress was a bit too large, gaping at the neck with an extra fold of material. But it was better than the prison uniform, and Lily welcomed the feel of the soft fabric. The boots were too big as well, so she laced them as tightly as she could without further hurting her ankle.
“You haven’t seen anyone else like me?” she asked, hoping against hope for some word about Georgi. “Perhaps a child?”
The woman shook her head. “I’m sorry, no.”
No, of course not. Though she had not expected her to have news of her son, Lily felt a crush of disappointment.
The woman motioned Lily from the barn. Was she kicking her out? “It isn’t safe to stay around here. Some of the people in this village help the Germans—including my husband.”
“But where am I to go?”
She pressed some coins into Lily’s hand and pointed in the other direction. “There’s a small train depot just over two kilometers west of here. Stay off the road.” Lily was dumbfounded. Surely she could not get on the train with other passengers. And even if she did, where could she possibly go? The woman was right, though. She needed to get as far from here as possible.
Brussels, she thought. She knew, or hoped anyway, that Matteo and Hannah would be there as well and could help in her search for Georgi. Of course, she could not return to her home there or even to the city. The Germans might be looking for people who had escaped from the train, including her. But she could not hide in the countryside alone forever.
She remembered then the chateau Hannah had mentioned outside the city where they were supposed to meet if they got separated. There was no reason to think that Hannah would go looking for her there, since she didn’t even know that Lily had jumped from the train. But the chateau was closer to the city, and perhaps if she made it there, she could get word to Hannah that she was alive and hiding and in need of help.
“Thank you,” she said, starting slowly away.
An hour later, Lily reached the station, a low-roofed building on the edge of the nearest town. She stood alone on the platform, wishing there were more travelers in the early morning to help her blend in. A train came, and she boarded with a few laborers clad in blue overalls. She marveled at the second-class car, such a contrast to the boxcar she and her family had traveled in just days earlier. She thought again of Georgi, seeing him once more in her mind’s eye. Her heart cried out for her son as she relived the last moment she had seen him. She had not meant to drop him from the train alone into the darkness. But letting him go was the only way to give him a chance at survival. Only, what chance did he have now? Surely he could not have survived such a fall. And if he had, he was out there somewhere, lost and alone. Lily thought, too, of Nik, alone on the train near the end of his terrible journey, sick if not already gone. She pressed her head against the glass, hoping no one would see her holding back tears.
Lily got off the train in Haacht, a market town just east of the city. Outside the station, she paused to get her bearings. Follow the antitank canal out of town, Hannah had said. Lily found the canal, which had been built before the war in futile hope of staving off the Germans. She followed it east out of town as Hannah had instructed and across a patchwork of rolling fields in the direction of the chateau.
The canal ended, and Lily climbed a hill to get a better view. It was a warm August day, and though she was cautious not to be seen, Lily marveled at walking freely, as she had not done in months. But for her despair over her family, she might have found the stroll pleasant. She spied the chateau on the far side of a sloping valley and started toward it.
Lily approached the stately home, sprawling and elegant like a castle. It was hard to believe that such a place was deserted when so many undoubtedly needed shelter. But when she got closer she saw why: it had clearly been hit in an air raid, one of the high walls half caved-in, part of the roof gone.
There was an undetonated bomb lodged in the front walkway, and she gingerly made her way around it. Near the front entrance she paused, peering through a shattered window to make sure no one was inside. She pushed on the front door, which was unlocked and opened with a creak. She listened to make sure no one was there. Then she stepped into the massive foyer. The marble floor was cracked, great chunks of stone protruding jaggedly. A chandelier lay in the middle of the floor, its glass shattered to bits that crunched under her boots as she walked. Through the crumbled ceiling, she could see a patch of cloudy sky.
Lily doubted it was safe to be in there, but she had no other choice. She stepped carefully through the foyer into a grand living room with elegant oak furniture. Everything was covered in a thin coat of plaster dust. There were hooks on the walls where paintings had once hung and a smashed china cabinet that someone had looted. Lily looked uneasily through the gaping hole where the front window had once been. This part of the chateau was visible from the road, and anyone who passed by might see her.
Given the state of the house, Lily worried that the upper floor might not be stable. She decided to go down to the basement to hide. She found a doorway with stone steps leading down. It was nearly dark in the windowless cellar. She felt for a light switch on the wall, but when she flicked it, nothing happened. She hurried back upstairs, ignoring her ankle, which ached painfully, with each step. She found the kitchen, then located a stub of a candle and some matches in a cupboard.
Lily lit the candle, then used it to illuminate her way back down into the cellar. The faint light licked at the walls. There had once been a wine cellar, she could see, but it had been ransacked. She could only hope that whoever had looted it knew they had already gotten everything and would see no reason to return. The ancient stone gave off a damp smell.
She sat in a corner of the cellar and tucked her legs under the dress, her ankle aching worse now. She was suddenly aware of how very alone she was. Georgi was gone. Nik was on the train or at the camp, if he was even still alive. She had seen Matteo shot right before her eyes, and she had no idea what had become of Hannah. She did not know where a single soul she loved was at this very moment. The tears, which she had held back since she’d awakened by the railway tracks, burst forth now. She shook with grief, her sobs echoing in the cavernous space until she could cry no more. Exhaustion overtook her then, and she tilted her head back and slept.
Lily dreamed fitfully of Georgi, chasing and finding him, only to lose him over and over again. She awakened sometime later. She reached for the child in her sleep, an instinct honed from years of motherhood and the nights sleeping with him in her bed at Breendonk. Her arms closed around emptiness. The full realization of where she was and all that had happened slammed into her.
Lily sat up, uncertain if it was day or night or how long she had been asleep. The candle stub had gone out, leaving her in darkness. She couldn’t stay here without food or water. She would have to keep moving. She stood, her ankle throbbing anew.
Just then, she heard a noise. She tensed, hoping it was mice rustling in the walls. But the sound was overhead and heavy. Footsteps.
Lily jumped back, away from the stairs. Hannah had said the chateau was abandoned and safe, but now someone was here. Were they looking for her? Or perhaps they were hiding too and didn’t know she was there at all.
Lily looked desperately around the cellar for an alternate exit, but the stairs were the only way out. Resigned to face whoever was coming in, she started for the stairs.
As the door swung open, she stopped with surprise.
There, in the abandoned chateau, was Hannah.