The whistle of bullets and the screech of bombs scrambled Gisela’s thoughts. The sound of shooting, yelling, dying filled her ears and reverberated in her head. She quivered like a poplar tree in the wind.
Renate whimpered underneath her.
“Hush, little one, hush. God will take care of us.” But did she believe that? Had God truly watched out for her that one awful night last fall?
The pilot wheeled around and the gunfire continued. With her face buried in the duvets, breathing was difficult.
She didn’t dare raise her head to look for the other members of their party. Was Annelies safe? And the Holtzmanns? What about Mitch and Xavier?
Time lost all meaning. They may have lain there for five minutes or five hours. The plane flew back and forth along the column of refugees. Would the shooting ever stop? Or did the Russian intend to kill every last one of them?
The plane’s whine grew higher in pitch, coming closer. The incessant firing fractured the ice. It moaned as it split.
Another bullet whizzed next to Gisela’s right ear. Renate screamed. Gisela held her breath. Dear God, dear God, dear God. She couldn’t control her shaking. How much longer until she awoke in glory?
“ ‘When thou passest through the waters, I will be with thee.’ ” Among Opa’s last words to her.
“Are You here, Lord?”
Rat-a-tat-tat.
Shouts and prayers and curses. So much crying. Some of it was Gisela’s. But it surrounded her on every side.
And then the Russian decided he’d had enough fun. He rose above the clouds.
All sat silent, except for the cracking of the ice. No one dared to breathe. Was the tiefflieger gone for good?
Time slipped away. A voice spoke here and there, joined by a few more. The plane had indeed left.
Gisela gathered her courage and lifted her head. Blood soaked the ice, horses lay fallen, wagons split in two. She rose from on top of Renate and lifted her from the pile of blankets. She checked her over and saw no blood, though the toddler screamed at the top of her lungs.
Gisela’s heart banged against her ribs, with a beat like a Duke Ellington song. Her knees were so weak she had a difficult time holding herself up.
And right beside the indentation Renate’s head had made, the hole from a bullet burned through the quilts.
So close. They had come so close. She held on to the cart to avoid slumping to the ice.
Mitch lifted his body off of Annelies. She hurried to Gisela’s side and wiggled her way into Gisela’s embrace.
“Are you okay? Did you get hurt?” With quaking hands, she examined the child. No blood. But the girl didn’t blink.
Gisela kissed her cheek. “You’re fine now. The plane is gone and can’t hurt us anymore.” Annelies began to cry and Gisela cradled both children.
She turned to the Englishman. “Thank you.”
Mitch nodded, his brown eyes darker than she had noticed before. “Are you hurt?”
She shook her head, then turned to see to the welfare of her other charges. The old ladies knelt on the ice beside a prone form. Gisela set Annelies on the ice.
The chill permeated to the depth of her being.
Mitch turned his attention to the place where Gisela’s gaze was directed. The old people huddled together. And Xavier . . .
Where was he?
Mitch’s gut clenched and his world narrowed until he saw nothing but the Holtzmanns.
God, no. Please, not him.
He hurried in their direction, slipping and sliding. “Xavier. Xavier.” God couldn’t do this to him.
“Hush, dearie, he’s sleeping.” One of the elderly women patted his shoulder.
He dropped to his knees by his chum’s side, his face ashen, lips blue, a crimson puddle spreading across the ice. “No. No!”
Mitch’s throat constricted. He couldn’t breathe. His childhood pal. Always able to get him into scrapes. Always able to get him out.
Gisela was there then, beside him. She placed her fingers on Xavier’s neck, searching for a pulse, he presumed.
“One last crazy adventure, chap. I should have talked you out of it. Why didn’t I?” He wiped the moisture from his eyes.
Perhaps it would’ve been better had they stayed with their fellow prisoners, marched westward by the SS guards, instead of slipping away that day, burrowing into a snowbank and hiding there until the Germans cleared the area.
“He’s gone.” Gisela touched his shoulder. Mitch pulled away. What had he done? He shook his fists at the heavens. An ally. An ally took Xavier’s life.
A fire burned in his gut. If he ever got his hands on a Russian . . .
“You saved Annelies’s life.” Gisela’s words were little more than a buzz.
He scanned the scene around them. The family in the wagon ahead of them lay unmoving, their bodies riddled with bullet holes. The women behind them stroked their dead horse’s mane. A wail of grief rose from this frozen grave.
He added his to theirs. He sat shivering on the ice, wet through to the skin with water and blood.
Annelies came and touched his wet cheek. “What’s wrong?”
“Xavier died.”
Katya, her brown hood askance on her head, kneeled on the ice beside Xavier but did not say a word. Perhaps, even in her senility, she understood.
But they couldn’t understand. No one could. God should have taken him instead.
Gisela put her arm around him and helped him stand. “We have to keep moving and get off this ice before more planes come.”
Herr Holtzmann nodded. “She’s right, son. We can’t linger.”
Mitch stared at the other bodies strewn over the white bareness of this place. Just leave Xavier here? To sink to the bottom of the Haff when it thawed?
A physical pain clawed at his chest. Xavier deserved better. “Give me a minute.” Herr Holtzmann and Gisela led the two pairs of sisters away.
This wasn’t right. None of this was right. If only he could undo what he had done five years ago.
Tears blurred his vision as he bent and retrieved Xavier’s dog tags, then slipped them over his neck. His parents would want them.
The stream of refugees swung a wide berth around the little group, but continued unabated.
Mitch covered Xavier with a green blanket Gisela brought him from her cart. She placed the baby beside his lifelong chum.
Then they turned away, leaving the bundles on the frozen Haff.
Like Lot’s wife, Mitch turned back, the sight of Xavier’s body seared into his memory.
Time blurred for Gisela. How many minutes and hours passed as they struggled across the ice, she had no idea. Night came and they slept in the carts, huddled together under the duvets for warmth. The morning sun did nothing to change their circumstances.
All she wanted was to get to the Frische Nehrung, the narrow spit of land separating the lagoon from the Baltic Sea and their road to Danzig. And safety. Out here, they were too vulnerable, too exposed.
Every little bird that flew across the sky caused her shoulders to tense. They fooled her into believing they were tieffliegers.
The Frische Haff was only twenty kilometers or so wide, yet they continued across the endless stretch of white. Unable to see either shore, it felt like they would never reach land.
Mitch pulled the Holtzmanns’ cart with his head down, his back rounded, not saying a word. She wanted to comfort him, but the words stuck in her throat. In this situation, they sounded false and hollow. There was no comfort here. Even the Holtzmann sisters were subdued. They walked on without a word.
The bullet-riddled ice creaked and cracked as the wheels of the cart rolled over it. She had lost feeling in her feet many kilometers ago. Her coat and dress and pants never had a chance to dry. Her ears burned.
Renate whimpered at each little noise and insisted that Gisela carry her. Gisela’s arms ached after five steps, but Renate refused to be happy anywhere else. When Gisela tried to settle her in the Holtzmanns’ cart, she protested that idea in no uncertain terms. Gisela held Renate in one hand and pushed her cart with the other. She had a difficult time putting one foot in front of the other. Even plodding was too much work.
The blisters and calluses on her hands hurt. By tonight, they would be cracked and bleeding. Her shoulders begged for mercy. The load became too much and she had to drop the handles and rest for a bit. She set Renate on the ice.
The entire party took its cue from her and paused. She rummaged through her cart, filing through the items they had taken from her grandparents’ home. Oma’s silver, picture albums, quilts she had stitched by hand, and duvets filled with goose down. And Gisela’s Bible.
What should she keep? The silver could buy them food, lodging, and train tickets. Parting with her Bible, Opa’s daisy pressed between the pages in Isaiah, was out of the question. Some of her clothes? No, she needed those.
In the end, she discarded her coffeepot, the partial set of china, and all but a few pictures from her album. She repacked the cart and settled Annelies inside once again.
Mitch came to her. “What can I take for you?”
“Nothing. You have a heavy enough load.”
“Every now and again we were sent to work on farms while we were prisoners. Manual labor was new to me, but I managed.”
Yes, he looked strong despite his captivity. Still, she didn’t want to burden him. “This will be enough for now. Later, we will have to see.”
Situated for the time being, they continued their slow trek north, each turn of the cart’s wheels taking them that much farther away from the Russians. Even so, Gisela could almost feel them breathing down the back of her neck. Maybe they would be waiting for them on the other side of the Haff.
A loud, sudden snap sounded.
Her heart roared to life.
The ice under their feet cracked.
She flicked her gaze to Mitch. He stared at the frozen Haff.
With another great creak, the chunk of ice under Herr Holtzmann’s cart broke. The handles slithered from Mitch’s grasp.
His eyes widened as the cart sunk into the water.
He slipped and slid.
The ice snapped.