Chapter Forty-Eight
Forty-eight
Katerina could not stop her hands from shaking.
The temperature had cooled, though that was not the cause. She could not place the blame solely on the shoulders of Gaia. Mother Earth was not the one who had blocked the seas; she had not seen fit to starve the people of Greece alongside their captors.
A splatter of ink dropped onto the letter. Katerina cursed quietly. There was a pencil in the pocket of her skirt, and she drew it out, tossing the pen into the dirt. A puddle of blue spread like a squashed berry. Two words. That was all she had written.
Dearest Stefanos,
She was the only person who ever wandered this far across the mountains of Folegandros.
Katerina was alone, yet the urge to look around carefully was insistent.
The Italians had made it clear: Anyone found to be writing letters, diaries, or other accounts of the occupation would be marked for death.
“There is no reason to take such a risk,” Leni had warned. “We cannot send these letters, even if we write them.”
It was true. Stefanos could not be reached, but writing to him was something. A line cast out with an empty hook.
The scratch of the pencil was soft, rhythmic.
When at first the invaders came, strong lines were drawn between us and them, though the hardship of these months has blurred them. We are united now, foe and friend, by hunger.
Katerina stared at the words she had written.
It was not only the line between Greek and Italian that was fading. Her own neighbors had become thieves. The bakery windows had been smashed, the wood panels nailed across them ripped apart by those seeking sustenance.
She bent her head to the paper once more.
The brothers tell me it is worse on the mainland. The German army has mounted blockades that prevent the farmers from moving produce into the cities. In Russia, the horses are being eaten. Cats and rats hunted. Glue made into a meal.
Even as she noted them down, Katerina could not quite believe these reports. Whispers that had begun their journey so far away must have become distorted. A tale grew each time it was shared, the storyteller adding a flourish, a salacious detail, something new for their audience.
People would not eat glue. It was an absurdity.
Where are you, I wonder, my traveling warrior, my stubborn patriot, the beat in my heart?
She froze. The pencil immobile.
Had she imagined it?
Katerina held her breath, every muscle pulled tight. Then it came again, gentle, certain, a nudge from somewhere deep within. She pressed a hand to her abdomen.
“Geiá sou, thavmatáki mou.”
Her baby. Their little miracle.
She must tell Leni.
Her skirt flew out behind her as she ran, arms wide like the wings of a bird.
The path was dry, and stones tumbled away to be caught by thickets of coarse grass.
Katerina clambered over a wall. The Aegean winked a greeting.
Shimmers of light no less beautiful below a sky that had borne witness to war.
She no longer asked the sea to return her lost love. She whispered that plea to the wind.
Ano Meria came into view, homes the color of feta, the land around them burned toast. Even in this moment, with hope blooming rose-pink in her heart, Katerina saw food where there were only rocks and earth. Hunger had become the nightmare none could wake from.
She slowed as she neared the base of the hillside, her pulse drum-loud in her ears. A crowd had gathered not far from the road, hunched shoulders and bowed heads, a stray hand, a pair of boots.
“What’s happened?” she asked, hurrying toward them.
A man turned. Gray beard, thin spectacles, cracked lips.
“Go,” he said, pushing at her.
Katerina took a step closer, her chin high.
“Do not touch me,” she said.
A boy swung around, no older than ten. Hollows beneath his eyes, meanness painted by desperation.
“She does not need these things,” he said, gesturing to a figure on the ground.
Katerina crouched, her blood turning to ice in her veins.
The woman who laid there was a friend of her mama’s, the same wretched mother who’d had to bury her son when he fell from the mountain.
A basket was beside her, its contents strewn.
Coins, papers, a comb with only four teeth remaining, a single dark hair snagged between the fragile wooden fibers.
The boy shoved her roughly aside and Katerina half fell, catching herself on the dead woman’s body.
She was not yet cold; her eyes stared up, clouded and unblinking, trapped in a moment that would never move forward.
Below her skin, the bones pressed sharply, as if her body had already begun to vanish.
She did not stir when the man knelt to untie her boots, did not flinch as the boy’s eager fingers tore a silver brooch from her shawl.
Katerina recognized it. The meander symbol had been chosen to represent the eternal love the woman felt for her lost child.
She stood, her legs trembling. The burn of rising bile scoured her throat.
“Aiónia mními,” she murmured. Memory eternal.
Then came the warmth of someone’s touch, hands steadying her, words in a language she did not understand. Katerina turned, jerked away as if scolded.
The wife of the German general lowered her hands and stepped back a few paces, her head down.
Katerina had only ever seen her at a distance, skulking around the school’s outbuilding.
Prejudice had tainted her opinion of the woman, though even that could not dull the truth of her beauty.
Her skin was pale as porcelain, her eyes an open, clear blue, like the sky before sunrise.
A single lock of her hair had slipped free from its severe bun, the loose golden curl a trail of sunlight across her cheek.
“Sorry,” she said in Greek.
Katerina curled her lip into a scowl.
“Echthrós,” she muttered. Enemy.
The woman gave her a searching look, then tapped her fingers to her chest.
“Ingrid,” she said.
The foolish woman believed that Katerina’s name was Echthrós.
The audacity of these people who came to rule when they could not understand the language, did not respect the people whose lands they sought.
It was not her responsibility to help nor point out the error.
She owed this Ingrid nothing but contempt.
Women from the village had begun to swarm, shooing the men away from the body, scolding the boy, whispering prayers.
“She will be with her son now,” one said to another.
Katerina moved away, pressed a hand to the swell of her stomach, yearning for a flicker, a flutter, anything. Stillness. Quiet that morphed into dread. Was the baby seeing this, too, through her eyes? Were they trapped in this moment, bearing witness before they’d so much as drawn a breath?
She stumbled in her haste to get away, feet slipping on the path, air caught in lungs that seemed incapable of expanding.
She was yards from Leni’s house when Phaedra appeared, Esther close at her heel.
The young Jewish runaway wore a cloth cap pulled down, threadbare trousers, and a waistcoat over a boy’s buttoned-up shirt. She kept her gaze fixed on the ground.
“Are you ill?” Phaedra asked. “éla, you look pale.”
Katerina shook her head, dismissing the woman’s concern.
A head taller than many and slim as a match, Phaedra had piercing pale gray eyes and the roughly hewn complexion of someone who spent the majority of their time outdoors. She’d always seemed unbreakable to Katerina, as if the core of her neighbor had been whittled from iron.
“You do not need to worry about me,” she said. “Where is Elpida?”
“Ah.” The tight line of Phaedra’s lips softened. “She is sleeping. My daughter will be two before December, but she does not have the strength her brother had at that age. How could she,” she added mutinously, “when there is barely a thing to feed her?”
“The allies will move the blockade soon,” Katerina said dully.
They all said it. None of them believed it.
“Why don’t you come to the house?” Phaedra said. “I have made a pot of nettle tea. It is no match for coffee, but it is better than nothing at all.”
“I need to speak to my sister.” Katerina nodded toward the door.
“Leni? She is at the bakery.”
There was something about the way she said it, almost too quickly, her voice high, different.
“It is a Monday,” Katerina told her. “The bakery does not open today.”
Phaedra put a hand on her arm.
“Come,” she urged. “Won’t you have tea with me?
I was going to give you some baby clothes that I found.
” As she spoke, she took a series of small steps to the side, only stopping when she had blocked the door.
Esther glanced up for the first time. Her dark eyes crinkled as they caught Katerina’s.
It was as if she was trying to communicate something.
Then movement, shadows behind the shutters. A male voice, low and urgent. Another sound, this time a cry.
Phaedra flinched, and Katerina saw it—the fear, raw and sudden—before she shouldered past her without a word.
“Leni!” she cried, advancing into the room at speed.
No. It made no sense.
That could not be her sister splayed out across the table, her arms thrown wide, her eyes devoid of light.
Not her sister with her skirts pulled high, a man between her thighs, his hand roving across her chest. Lio did not cease his grotesque pawing.
He thrust harder, grunting like a ram, trousers pooled at his ankles, a vile smirk slashed like a wound across his face.
Katerina opened her mouth. No sound came. The scream stayed locked inside, a shrill vibration in her skull. When Lio had beaten her, when his boots had found bone and she had tasted blood, it had not hurt like this.
A sob escaped.
She turned.
And ran.
Behind her, the door slammed, sharp and final. Across the hillside, it cracked like a gunshot.