Maria had taken to walking Krasa to the pasture with me in the evenings. This was partly because Mama was now worried about me being alone at dusk, as the Nazis were showing their true faces. But also because Maria wanted to. This was a big decision for her, and I was so proud of my little sister. It was also nice to have the company.
I would hold on to Krasa’s tether and Maria would walk in front, spying out anything useful on the road or in the ditch. She would occasionally find a stray hen’s egg, but also some items that had fallen off the trucks and carts of the people coming into town. A baby’s rattle or someone’s cane didn’t interest her, but once Maria found a coil of dried sausage; another time she found a dented tin of sardines.
Along the way she’d tell me things she didn’t want to say in front of Mama, like how she hated working at the Commandant’s.
“I hate it too,” I told her. “But working there probably saves us from worse jobs. Besides, we can sometimes hear useful things.”
Once we’d get to the pasture and Krasa was grazing, we’d look for mushrooms, berries, nettles — anything that could be eaten. And it was nice to have two sets of eyes for this. We’d also play games, like seeing who could jump the farthest and who could run from one end of the pasture to the other without tripping.
One evening as Krasa munched on parched grass in our pasture, and Maria and I searched for edible shoots and roots, a shadowy figure appeared in the bushes. My heart nearly stopped beating.
“It’s okay, Krystia. It’s just me.”
“Borys?”
I ran to hug my cousin. He picked me up and twirled me around, just like he used to when we were younger. I breathed in his scent of smoke and tree sap and realized how much I missed having him around.
“It’s good to see my favourite oldest cousin,” he said, putting me back on the ground.
“What about me?” said Maria with mock indignation.
“You’re my favourite youngest cousin,” he said, pinching her cheek.
He bent his knees until we were all eye level. “Let’s have a staring contest. I know I’ll win, because girls blink more than boys do.”
This was a game we had played as children, and it was Borys who usually blinked first. The trick to winning was to squint a little bit so your eyes didn’t get dry. I put my hands on my hips, squinted just enough and stared him down. Maria had a different method — kind of cheating, but Borys always let her do it. She’d hold her eyelids up with her fingers. For a full minute, Maria and I stared into Borys’s eyes. I counted to sixty without blinking.
Then, instead of blinking, Borys closed his eyes slowly, then opened them again.
“Why did you do that?” I asked.
“A gift to my favourite cousins,” he said, tugging on one of my braids. “I maintain my perfect losing streak from childhood.”
“You are silly,” I said, punching him lightly in the stomach. “I would have won anyway.” Maria grabbed one of his arms and tickled him in the ribs.
“Stop,” he said in mock protest. “I’m going to tell Mama that Krystia and Maria are beating me up.”
We stopped tickling him. “Is she in good health?”
“Mama is fine,” he said. “And I’m glad for her company. You’d be amazed at how quickly she’s settling in. And speaking of Mama,” he said, reaching down for a sack that we hadn’t noticed on the ground, “she asked me to bring you these.”
Maria took the sack from him and opened it up. Pidpenky — honey mushrooms. “Are you sure you can spare these?” she asked. “No one has extra food these days.”
“Things are going to get worse before they get better,” said Borys.
“Can they get much worse?” I asked.
Borys didn’t answer, but looked lost in his own thoughts. Then he said, “I need you girls to do something.”
“Anything.”
“The Segals have photographs for us.” He led us a few steps into the bushes, then crouched down beside a big rock, brushing away loose leaves and dirt to reveal a buried metal pot, lid and all.
“Someone will try to come by here about once a day,” said Borys. “Sometimes there will be a package in here for you to take back to the Segals.”
“We can do that,” said Maria. “And this is all secret, right?”
Borys nodded. “You can’t talk to anyone about this.”
He wrapped one arm loosely around my shoulder and another around Maria. “Stay safe, dear cousins. I worry about you.”
As he turned to disappear back into the brush, Maria caught his hand. “I have a favour to ask of you.”
He looked at her. “Anything,” he said.
“Take us to your encampment in the forest.”
His eyes widened slightly at the suggestion. “That’s a good idea,” he said. “There may come a time when you need to get there.”
“Why don’t we go with you now?” I asked.
Borys shook his head. “If we left now, you’d end up bringing the cow home in the dark, and that could raise suspicions. Come to the pasture early tomorrow. I’ll be waiting for you.”
* * *
We got to the pasture about an hour earlier than usual. I tied Krasa with a loose tether so she could still graze but wouldn’t wander out onto the road.
Borys stepped out of the shadows and motioned to us to follow him. He led us on a meandering route through a patchwork of pasture and farmland, hiding in the shadows of trees and large rocks. Pasture changed to woods and forest, and Borys would pause every once in a while to point out a landmark. Sometimes it would be an oddly shaped tree or a curve in a stream — always so subtle you’d miss it if you didn’t know what you were looking for.
Then Borys stopped altogether. He held up his hand to make sure that we kept still as well. He took a deep breath and made the call of the falcon: kak, kak, kak.
He stood perfectly still and waited. I grabbed Maria’s hand and we waited too. Five minutes passed.
A girl who looked to be just a few years older than me appeared from the shadows. She wore a peasant skirt and a Soviet army jacket, and had a rifle slung across her back. She nodded to Borys, then asked him, “Who are you?”
“I’m Borys Fediuk.”
“Why are you here?”
“These are my cousins, Maria and Krystia Fediuk. They’re working with us and they need to know how to get to our encampment.”
“What is the answer to the question?”
“Ukraine is not yet dead.”
The girl nodded again. “Follow me in.” She signalled to people I couldn’t see, likely to tell them to hold their fire. I thought it was smart that she’d asked Borys those questions, even though it was obvious she knew who he was. If we were enemies and he was our prisoner, he could have intentionally answered wrong and she would know, but the enemies wouldn’t catch on.
The encampment looked like uninhabited forest, and neither Maria nor I could detect any people. We followed Borys through a narrow opening in the brush. He moved aside a patch of sod to reveal an opening in the ground.
“There’s a rope ladder,” he said. “Follow me down.”
“Oh my,” said Maria, once her eyes had adjusted to the dimness. “Is this where people sleep?”
We were in a long underground room. Some natural light filtered in through overhead grates covered with branches. Along both sides of the room were narrow cots, three deep. A rough wooden table with benches on either side took up the middle. Rifles in various stages of repair were on the table.
“We’ve been stealing those weapons and stockpiling them,” said Borys.
“Is Auntie Iryna here?” I asked.
“She’s on a scouting mission, as is your uncle Ivan.”
Borys took us back out into the daylight. “All through this area we have hidden rooms like that one,” he said. “There are similar encampments all over Ukraine. We’re in some disarray now, with our leaders imprisoned, but we will never give up until we drive the invaders out.”
He made Maria and I find the way back to our pasture, but he kept us in sight to make sure we didn’t get lost. It encouraged me to know that we were doing what we could to fight back against the Nazis. But would it make a difference?
* * *
That night as I tried to get to sleep, I thought about the encampment and the secret codes that the insurgents had used. The national symbol of Ukraine was the Tryzub, which to some people resembled a trident, but to me it always looked like a falcon in flight. I guess it did to Borys and his friends, too, and that’s why they used the kak kak kak of the falcon as their code. And the phrase about Ukraine not yet being dead? That was a line of a popular song from before the war. If we had our own country, that song could be its anthem. I hoped and prayed that the sentiment of the song was true.
And I would do my part to fight back, even though right now all that meant was delivering packages and photographs between the insurgents and the Segals.
* * *
A few days went by with no photographs from the Segals, but then Mrs. Segal slipped an envelope into my skirt pocket as I handed her a bottle of milk.
When I got home, I took out the photos. I thought the Segals might have taken secret pictures of the mass execution, or of all the food being confiscated — proof of Nazi crimes against civilians to send to foreign newspapers. But instead these were boring portraits of people from around town. There was one of their son, Nathan, and another of Leah Steinburg, the dogcatcher’s widow. Most seemed to be of young men who were nearly old enough to be in the army, but none were of the Nazis. What was so special about these photos?
I put them back into the envelope and pushed them into my skirt pocket so I wouldn’t forget to take them to the drop-off spot in the pasture.