Chapter Ten

In the summer of 1917, whether one lived in Germany or in any other civilized nation, the height of women’s fashion was decidedly not a coarse black sweater and Wellington boots.

Ellenor examined herself in the looking glass. The sweater’s sleeves were long enough to cover most of her hands, exposing only her fingers, and its rolled neckline cupped her face just below her chin. It was made of sheep’s wool and stained black with plant dyes. She’d bound her hair behind her back; God forbid it got caught up in the propeller.

Sure about this? she asked herself.

“Not at all, thanks.” Certain highbrows claimed that women should not be seen in trousers, but Ellenor had always found them far more practical when working outdoors. You certainly didn’t want bees hunting forage under your skirt. Her calf-high leather boots were years out of style but weatherproof, dependable, and—most importantly—comfortable. Her ensemble was utilitarian, but it fit her well, conforming to the natural curves of her body.

She checked the porcelain-faced clock on the mantel in her room.

Working by the light of a beeswax candle she’d made herself, she packed a small satchel for Alec. She’d washed his clothing—he’d been wearing Josef’s shirt and pants since that first day in the barn—and now folded it neatly at the bottom of the bag. She followed this with his flight goggles, a package of Nil cigarettes, a blanket, a few red phosphorus matches, and his blood-stained blue scarf. She’d wanted to include a flask of whiskey but had been afraid of being seen sneaking into the wine cellar.

That done, she waited and paced.

The entire house was asleep. She’d spent a good hour in light conversation with one of the German flyers, a nineteen-year-old from Cologne named Otto. He clearly wanted to seduce her, and in these pursuits he wasn’t entirely inept but certainly inexperienced. Ellenor didn’t hold it against him. Airmen were spontaneous and eloquent and exquisitely aware of death. They made women feel good for a night or two, and then they went off and died by the hundreds, many of them still smelling of perfume.

“We’ll chat again tomorrow,” Ellenor had told him, and Otto played the part of the gentleman so well that she found it remarkable that he was fighting in the same war as men who ate cold beets in a muddy trench and shaved their heads to rid themselves of lice.

It was time.

She reviewed her assignment one last time in her mind, the lifting of her arms, the bending of her back, the straining of her muscles as she pulled. Alec depended on her to help him save his sister from the bombs, and that dependence was exhilarating; she had value beyond teaching Karl and Truda to speak English. She could rescue someone—at least indirectly. Maybe one day Alec would be able to write to her on clean British stationary and let her know that he and Sarah had made it home.

Arms, back, pull!

She removed her boots and walked in stocking feet to the narrow door in the kitchen. Once there, having safely crossed the house in silence, she put her boots back on, chewed on her bottom lip for a few moments, and then let herself outside.

The world was mostly quiet. Insects chirped and buzzed. The ceramic wind chime on the barn awning tinkled in a breeze so faint it was little more than a whisper. At four-thirty in the morning, the estate grounds felt empty, as no kerosene lamp burned in a window and no oven had yet been stoked to life for morning muffins. The animals slept soundly in their pens.

Ellenor struck off toward the grain fields. If her boots left tracks in the dew, it was too dark to see them.

Arms, back, pull!

She knew her escape route. As soon as the plane’s engine caught, she’d shout a last goodbye to Alec and then move quickly to the far side of the barn, keeping that rambling structure between her and anyone who emerged from the house in response to the sudden noise. From there, she’d be able to return to her room either through the kitchen door or—if that way was blocked by a sleepy-eyed occupant—she’d use the glass door at the garden. She’d left it unlocked just to be sure.

Her eyes made sense of the shadows. The silhouettes of the planes appeared.

She’d memorized their positions so as to move directly to the one that Alec called the Rumpler. She touched them as she passed, these unlikely inventions that allowed man at last to leave the ground after so many failed attempts by inventors of the previous century. She’d witnessed her first airplane at a public demonstration four years ago, and like everyone else in the crowd, she’d had to force herself to exhale. That’s how fantastic it all was, this business of sailing the sky. It had seemed like part of a fairy tale then. The war had seized that fairy tale and turned it into a weapon.

Smelling the castor oil, the axle grease, and the wax on the wings, she reached the largest of the planes just as a voice said, “Fancy meeting you here.”

Alec sat on the Rumpler’s lower wing, between the taut wires that held the two decks in place. Ellenor drew closer so she could see his face. “You were worried I wouldn’t come?”

“I’ve heard it said that modern women have a tendency to change their minds.”

“Women have always changed their minds,” she said. “But only recently have we been permitted to get away with it.”

“And soon you’ll even be voting in political elections, by the looks of it.”

She shrugged, near enough to him that he could see her expression of disinterest in the matter. “I’m no suffragette, but I wouldn’t mind having a say in what fools are elected to govern us.”

He smiled. “If you’re looking for fools, search no further.” He slid off the wing. “Here, I brought you something.”

She accepted the pith helmet. “You’re welcome to keep it, if you think it would help.”

“You’ll need it for the bees. But if you’re willing to part with these gloves…”

“Of course. They’re yours. And here are your clothes and a few other things I packed.” She handed him the satchel, then hung the helmet down her back by its leather chinstrap.

“Thank you,” he said. “Really. For all of this. You’re taking a serious risk for a bloke you barely know.”

“Maybe I’m doing it for the bloke’s sister. I’m sure she’s the more sensible twin.”

“That goes without saying. Well, then. We’ve about thirty minutes until daybreak. Shall we?”

Ellenor gathered a breath, let it out, and nodded.

Alec went over it one final time as he tightened the goatskin gloves over each individual finger and buttoned up his coat. Ellenor never looked away from his eyes as he spoke. Should she hug him goodbye? She hardly knew him. When he was finished, she resisted the urge and offered her hand instead.

He took her hand gently, leaned toward her, and kissed her on the forehead. “It’s been a pleasure being shot in the hand by you, Miss Jantz.”

She swatted him lightly on the arm. “Tell your sister I said hello.”

He held his smile in place, nodded firmly, and then turned and pulled the wedge-shaped chocks from the wheels. Nothing but hundreds of yards of open ground lay in front of the Rumpler’s nose. Once the engine caught, the plane would begin rolling forward. He dropped the satchel into the observer’s seat, moving differently than he had a few minutes before; a new energy infused him and gave him grace. He’d probably already spent time checking the integrity of the plane’s many components, so with the chocks gone, he climbed onto the wing and then lowered himself into the man-sized hole that was the cockpit, a British pilot at the controls of a German plane.

Ellenor went to the propeller.

Alec had already turned it several times—something about settling the oil or positioning the cylinders—and now one long wooden blade waited almost parallel with the ground. He’d placed an overturned Red Cross crate to give her the height she needed, and now she stepped up on it and placed both hands along the blade’s top edge. The wood was smooth and thick.

Arms, back, pull!

She waited for him to say it, counting her breaths, and then he did, his voice carrying clearly to her in the dark: “Contact.”

She heaved down on the propeller.

Nothing happened.

She did it again, repeating the motion. The engine ticked as things moved inside of it, but that was all. She heard Alec adjusting levers or handles or—

“Contact,” he said again.

Wishing she would have hugged him, Ellenor heaved.

The engine barked hard three times. Ellenor leaped back, hands going instinctively to cover her ears…

The plane sputtered. The propeller turned twice more and stopped.

She looked in the direction of the house. No one was there.

“Contact.”

“I’m trying, damn it.” She got back on the Red Cross crate, grabbed the stupid propeller, and yanked downward with all the strength she could muster.

The engine snarled, stuttered…and then banged out a long, unsteady rhythm so loud that it made Ellenor wince. She hurried backward, and a moment later, lamplight appeared in one of the house’s upper windows.

The plane barely moved, its cadence not yet established. The engine sped up, the propeller churning the air madly. With agonizing slowness, the aircraft crept forward.

Ellenor looked back and forth from plane to house. Another light winked on. The din was unbelievable. All of that noise, and yet the plane was barely moving. Ellenor thought about jumping close and trying to push the thing along—

And then another sound, somehow even louder than the howling motor, cracked the starry night a few feet away. A full second passed before Ellenor realized what was happening.

She was being shot at.

She stared at the house and saw a man framed there against the glare of kerosene maps. He was nothing but a figure cut from black crepe, a man-shape with one arm extended. A muzzle-flash appeared in his hand.

A bullet struck the ground in front of her.

All sense of place and time abandoned her. The fear was so delicate, so weightless, that it crystallized her, so that she felt as if she might break into frail pieces and float away. Someone was trying to kill her.

She turned and ran beside the plane.

Two hundred yards separated the makeshift airfield from the shooter at the house, no easy shot at night for even a trained marksman. The bullets flew by her, aiming for the engine racket. By now, some of the German airmen were running toward her, barefoot but armed. This was not how it was supposed to happen. They’d reacted too quickly. The plane had taken too long to move. Hell, it was barely moving now.

A bullet whined a few inches overhead.

Ellenor ran with everything she had. Terror squeezed a tiny sound from her throat, but she couldn’t hear it. Her heart tried to punch through her ribs…

“Get in!”

She heard him but didn’t know what to do. She pumped her arms up and down as she ran, her boots biting into the soft soil, the pith helmet banging against her back. Tears glazed her eyes and streaked into her hair from the wind.

“Get in, goddammit!”

The plane was starting to pull away. Alec leaned halfway from his hole, waving his arm at her.

More bullets lanced the darkness.

“Get in or die!”

Ellenor latched onto his voice like a drowning woman reaching for a rope. She veered toward the rolling plane, almost cut in half by the wing. Grunting for air, she lunged upward, grabbing the rim of the observer’s seat and hauling herself up with undiscovered strength. Alec leaned on the throttle, almost causing her to lose her grip. Frantically, with panic nearly blinding her, she dropped onto the hard, round seat behind him.

The Rumpler jumped and jolted over the field, building speed by the second.

Ellenor choked down each new breath. Eyes mashed shut, she leaned forward as best she could, arms locked around herself. The engine roared in one long, protracted sound, the air whistling through the wires. She bit down forcefully to keep her teeth from banging.

And then, abruptly, the world dissolved.

Ellenor’s stomach performed a weird little wobble inside her, and a sensation she’d never known coursed through her body. The knocking and jostling of the wheels vanished at once, and a strange force pushed her back against her seat. She opened her eyes to see herself pointed straight at the stars.

I’m flying.

She looked over the side. It was too dark to see anything. Was the field of barley down there somewhere? The vibrating terror of moments before was wiped away by the tranquility of disconnection. The earth had let go of Ellenor Jantz. For the first time in her life, she escaped gravity, and now she rushed through the unfettered wind.

“Are you all right?”

Some distant part of her knew that Alec had shouted these words over his shoulder, but she was too awestruck to respond. To go from almost dying to sweeping skyward left her unable to reply. Speaking actual human words felt like a violation.

“Ellenor, are you hurt?”

She had nothing to say. She felt like weeping in relief and laughing in girlish delight. She reached forward, found his shoulder, and squeezed.

He patted her hand, then flew them high and far toward the east and whatever the coming dawn might bring.