Chapter Fifty-One
Fifty-one
Leni was at the stove when she fell.
She had been wilting horta to serve with the snails that Dafni had collected that morning.
The older woman had returned with a small pail and dirt beneath her nails.
Katerina, who was no longer able to stand up without first bracing herself on an item of furniture, reached her sister too late to catch her.
“The food,” Leni croaked. “Do not let it burn.”
Katerina tutted.
“You are more important,” she said. With some difficulty, she crouched down, slipping her arms beneath Leni’s. They were as thin as twigs and coated with soft downy hair. Katerina settled her into a chair before lifting the pan from the heat.
“This,” Leni said, her skeletal hand coming to rest on Katerina’s bump. “This is the most important thing.”
They were the same words her sister had used on that awful day. Katerina had returned home under duress, forced back by curfew, driven to her bed by fatigue, and had found Leni waiting.
“How could you let him do that to you?” Katerina had hissed. “He beats me half to death and you let him touch you, let him defile you? It is sick. You are sick.”
“He brings me food,” Leni said simply. “If I did not let him do these things to me, we would starve.” Her eyes had strayed down. “There are things more important than my body. It is not my soul. He will not have that.”
Katerina could only weep.
“Do not worry, agápi mou.” Leni pulled her close, stroked her hair. “In those moments of violence, I close my eyes. I go elsewhere, to when the war is over and our husbands have returned. I picture your child. I see their smile. I believe in that future.”
“But why does it have to be you?” Katerina cried.
“It has to be somebody,” Leni said, her voice becoming harder, firmer. “Would you want that I let him rape Phaedra? She has children, and I…There is less risk for me.”
Katerina had not raised the issue again. She’d written about it, though, putting into words what she could not say aloud, talking to Stefanos on the page as if he were there beside her.
Leni leaned back in her chair, eyelids fluttering.
It had been raining almost every moment for the past four days.
Katerina slipped as she hurried outside in search of Dafni.
The older woman was standing at the boundary wall, staring into the middle distance.
Her once gray-blond hair was almost white, and tendrils blew around her face as she turned.
“Come quickly,” Katerina said. “I need your help.”
It took some convincing, but eventually Leni agreed to let them carry her into the bedroom. She barely seemed there at all, ribs and collarbones rising like peaks beneath the weight of her shawl.
“When was the last time she ate?” Dafni asked as they returned to the kitchen. Katerina filled a cup with water and cast around for a lemon, finding nothing but a few dry rinds.
“I do not know,” she replied. “Perhaps a few raisins last night, the heel of the acorn loaf she baked for the children.”
Dafni’s hands twisted together.
“It is not enough,” she said, “not when your sister works so hard.”
Katerina winced as a painful spasm rippled across her lower back. The baby had continued to grow, safely cocooned inside her, though they had yet to turn. It was a quiet worry, one she kept to herself.
“None of us has enough,” she said, scraping the snails and greens from the pan onto a dish. “I will try to make her eat this.”
Leni could not hold her cup. Katerina held the rim to her lips, heard the tap of her teeth chattering against it.
“You are cold,” she said, removing her own shawl and laying it over her sister. Leni accepted the spoonful of horta, though she could not seem to chew it.
“You must try,” Dafni urged, but Leni’s eyes were closing, sleep stealing her away.
“She needs milk,” Katerina said.
The Italians had long ago stolen their nanny goat, though there were a few surviving animals up in the mountains. It had been weeks since Katerina had attempted the climb. If she could make it to the cave, the brothers would help her. They would give what they had to save her sister.
“Stay with her,” she told Dafni, pulling on an old overcoat of Baba’s. “Do not leave her alone, not for one minute.”
“Where are you going to go?” the older woman called, but Katerina was already closing the door behind her.
It was nearing dusk—a foolish time to be seen on the roads or hillsides, where she would become a target for restless soldiers looking for sport.
A cross-country route would be much more difficult, though this was the direction she took.
Drizzle fell as she scaled the first slope, dampness seeping through her coat, its weight pulling at her shoulders.
Katerina’s breath misted the air, each step tugging pain through her joints.
The months of famine had sapped her strength and shriveled her muscles.
She had lost so much, yet what remained felt forged, not broken.
The allies must move the blockade soon. If they did not, all they would find when they eventually reconquered these islands would be bones.
Two days ago, Katerina had sat and watched as a man no older than her father had walked out into the sea.
There were many who wandered the shallows, searching the rocks for mollusks and urchins. She’d assumed he was another.
“Kaliméra,” she’d said as he walked past her on the beach.
The man had glanced at her, smiled, said nothing.
By the time his intention had become clear to her, he had ventured too far out for her to reach.
Katerina checked her bearings. She was halfway, equal distance from her home and the cave. It was safe enough to talk to her child.
She did this often, speaking of the land, of the birds that soared above, the summer winds and the tremors that shook her awake.
“You will never know hunger, agápi mou,” she whispered. “That is my promise to you.”
The night crept up on her as if it were a thief, stealing the last of the light, throwing her at the mercy of her recollections.
She had made the journey often enough to find her way in the dark, though it felt as if the mountain had tripled in size.
When she finally saw the familiar outline of the cave ahead, it was all she could do not to fall to her knees in the wet earth.
“Atlas,” she called, careful to keep her voice low. “Zephyr. Are you there? It’s me, Kat.”
No reply came. The hum of silence was deafening. She could detect no fire nor the ashy scent of one that may have been hastily extinguished. She called the brothers’ names again but received not so much as a murmur.
Katerina struck one of her last precious matches as she stepped into the cave, its flicker casting uncertain shadows into the emptiness beyond.
No brothers. No food. No goats. They had all gone.
The tears that fell were few, though her body rocked as if buffeted by waves. She had come so far, and it had been in vain. She would have to return home with nothing for her sister.
Katerina cursed the heavens, scorned the god she no longer believed in. Her boots struck the stone as she stormed down the mountain, muttering under her breath, swearing vengeance on the invaders who had taken everything, on the island itself for betraying her.
Rage surged through her, so hot and blinding that she didn’t see the ember glowing in the dark.
Did not see the figure, motionless.
Not until he stepped from the shadows, silent as smoke.
Katerina screamed.