Bright white. Burning cold.
Adi pulled herself up out of a snowdrift only to be dusted in powder by a man on a horse leaping over her head. There was shouting and the crack of gunfire, though most of the sound was swallowed by the snow.
A soldier stopped in his tracks at the sight of the young woman in a nightgown, sitting waist deep in the snow. He stared for half a second, before a bullet left a nick on his forehead and dropped him beside her.
She tried to stand, only to be slammed back into the snowdrift by another horse and rider, oblivious to the girl beneath them. With steam billowing from the horses’ nostrils, the men, spikes on their helmets and great fur collars on their coats, swept the other soldiers before them over the crest of the hill.
Then it was quiet, with just the sound of her teeth chattering and her heart beating, like a mouse shivering in its hollow. She lay buried, too cold to weep, for Madame Bernard or for the old women. She had seen the chateau and the village of Sampigny burning against the white landscape. There would be no more sweeping, no more bedpans. She’d be frozen and gone in the time it would take her to recite her favorite poem all the way through.
I’m afraid of a kiss
Like the kiss of a bee.
I suffer like this
And wake endlessly.
I’m afraid of a—
She heard a sigh. Without thinking about it any more, she woke from her long dream and lifted her head.
In front of her, staring calmly up into the sky, the soldier was lying on his back, his helmet cradled in the snow.
Adi climbed out of her hollow.
He was small, and didn’t look much older than Adi. Hardly old enough to have a proper beard. A piece of the back of his head was gone. He said something about Paulette, then died.
She watched him for a moment, rubbing her arms, the thin cotton gown worthless against the wind. She may as well have been naked. She put her hands on the young man’s chest. He was still warm.
Pushing him up onto his side, she managed to pull the pack from his shoulders. With stiff fingers, she undid the buckles.
There were a few useful items in the pack: biscuits, chocolate, a sewing kit. But with the exception of a handkerchief and a sock, there wasn’t a single article of clothing.
A gust of wind swirled snow into her eyes. She had the boy’s coat halfway off of him. She stopped and touched the buttons on his tunic, the knife on his belt. The sky to the north started drumming with artillery again. Madness, madness.
• • •
There was likely no one else coming up this hill today. The Germans had killed more French soldiers than the French had killed Germans. The hornets’ nest would swarm for a while and then they’d dig in once again.
But if you were coming over the rise a half hour on, you would have seen what appeared to be a young soldier pulling on his greatcoat. If you were observant you might notice that his belt was cinched tighter than usual and his leggings wrapped high up the knee, to disguise trousers that were too large.
If you were quick, you might see what seemed to be long locks of fresh-cut auburn hair blowing away over the hill.
• • •
Adi, in the young soldier’s uniform—a humble second lieutenant, as far as she could decipher the French insignia on her sleeve—ran her hand up the back of her raggedly shorn head and put the knife back in its scabbard on her belt.
She was not quite as cold as she had been. But just as important, she no longer appeared to be a young woman in the middle of a war. At least, so she hoped. In addition to hacking off her beautiful hair, she’d torn strips of her nightgown and wrapped them tightly around her chest, grateful that she was as small-breasted as she was.
She was still in great danger, and not sure where it might be safe to go. Living in Madame’s world, she’d had only the vaguest notion of where she was and what was going on outside the walls. She assumed the Germans were on French territory, but it was just a guess. If she tried to get away, would she be considered a deserter? She knew they would not look kindly upon that.
His name was Jean Joseph Goux, number 3233.
Adi stood beside the grave—nothing more than a pile of rocks covering the young man, the best that could be done with the frozen ground. Silently, she repeated a prayer her father had taught her as a child. She felt terrible about taking the boy’s clothes and leaving him alone in this cold place. But there was nothing else to do.
She hung his little aluminium identification tag on a branch of the tree next to the grave. She had considered holding on to the ID tag, but had decided it would be safer to say she’d lost it than to risk running into someone who knew the young man. It would have been safer still to simply bury the tag; sooner or later someone would find him and that could cause complications. But she couldn’t bear the idea of leaving him here in an unmarked grave.
Didn’t matter. She would be out of this uniform and away long before that could happen. She put on her helmet and pulled the strap tight under her chin.