Across Eternity

by O'Roark, Elizabeth

  I would like to shatter her moment of misplaced triumph, but that’s not why I’m here. “Cecelia will need help to get out of Paris. She needs travel papers that don’t identify her as a Jew.”

  She stubs out her cigarette. “You don’t need to worry about my daughter anymore. Hand her to me.”

  I freeze. If I refuse, she’ll call the guards and have them take me away. If I time travel, I’ll probably still land in her apartment, and there will still be guards outside. My best bet is to go along with it, and reverse things once I reach the church. I shudder at the idea of leaving Cece in her care for even a few minutes, but I’m not sure what choice I have.

  Yvette makes the decision for me, yanking her away. Cece begins struggling to get free, and when her flailing hand strikes Yvette’s face, Yvette drops her. For just a heartbeat, we both stare in horror at Cece on the ground, and then she begins crying and scrambles to her feet, running back to me.

  “Guards!” Yvette cries. “Hurry!”

  For a moment I’m frozen. Boots approach quickly from the hall and the door flies open.

  Yvette looks at her daughter the same way she looks at me—with disgust. “The child is a Jew and the woman is a conspirator,” she says. “Take them away.”

  There is no time for finesse or escape. I close my eyes and give in to the urge I’ve felt since today’s journey began. I picture the moment Yvette opened the cigarette case and I jump, and then land...naked, in front of her.

  That earlier version of me looks as shocked as Yvette does, pulling Cece close, as if I might be another enemy. I lunge forward, grabbing the knife from the coat pocket.

  “I’m Sarah,” I tell Yvette, and then my arm swings in a wide arc, slashing through her jugular vein.

  The fully dressed version of me watches all this with Cece’s face pressed to her chest, staring at me in horror. That’s when I realize the biggest problem with what I’ve done: once the guards find Yvette’s body, they’ll be looking for me. If I hope to leave the city at all, I need to get out today.

  45

  SARAH

  Lyon is 300 miles from Paris. The ride there feels much longer than it is, waiting as I am for Germans to board and take me away. I was panicked as I snuck onto the train at Gare du Nord. Now, between the rocking motion of the car and the smell of the people on board, I’m almost too sick to care if I’m caught.

  Could I have handled the situation with Yvette better? Undoubtedly. I didn’t have to kill her, but I can’t bring myself to regret it. She fueled that fire inside me, and she deserved to die. I just wish I hadn’t added so much danger to an already tenuous situation. And I wish I’d had more time with the children before I left. Instead, I shoved what I could into a bag, kissed them each on the head, and ran. If this all goes wrong, that careless, panicked goodbye will be their last memory of me, if they remember me at all.

  I arrive in Lyon late in the afternoon, and take another train from there to Valence, a hundred miles to the south. It’s dark when we finally pull into the station. No place in this country is safe for a female traveling alone, especially at night, but I’m just glad to be off the train. Soldiers patrol the platform, but I keep my head down and walk away as if I don’t notice them, clutching my bag to my chest.

  “Mademoiselle!” a voice calls behind me.

  I stiffen—mentally searching for the weight of the knife in my pocket though I force myself not to grab it. He’s done nothing yet, but that bloodthirst inside me suggests I stab him anyway.

  I turn. He’s holding out a gray wool glove. His smile is almost apologetic.

  “Yours?” he asks.

  I shake my head. “No. But thank you.”

  “You have somewhere to stay in town?” he inquires, flushing. He’s a boy with a crush, and one who probably did not want to fight, yet a part of me wants him to die anyway. It’s as if I’ve let the lid off something that refuses to lay dormant again.

  “My aunt is right around the corner,” I reply.

  He tips his hat. “I hope I will see you again.”

  I scurry away, my breath coming fast, and head out of the city, looking for a place to sleep—with the trip behind me, I’m so exhausted it’s a struggle to even push forward. About a mile outside of town I find a barn and sneak in, burrowing into the hay for warmth. It still feels as if I’m on the rocking train and my stomach revolts. I try to put my mind on other things, better things, and as always, I think of Henri, remembering those early days with him, after he’d caught me trying to steal an apple from his barn. How I loathed his nickname for me back then.

  I’m not a thief, I once said.

  Not a good one, anyway, he’d replied with one of his arrogant grins.

  My smile at the memory fades quickly. What would he make of the things I’ve done this past week? As forgiving as he is, I can’t picture him accepting that I’ve killed two people he knew well.

  * * *

  I’m up before sunrise, crouched in the woods just off the main road, shivering despite my wool coat and the tights I wear beneath my trousers. There is little traffic these days aside from military vehicles, and Henri is not with them, but none are safe from me. That rage, that urge to destroy, leaves me both fearless and bloodthirsty. I fight against the desire all day long, and retreat to the barn after nightfall, dissatisfied, hungry for it.

  I wake with my stomach in knots, too tense to eat, and spend another long day shivering by the side of the road. Snow begins to fall. It will make us easier to trace when we escape, and increasingly this feels like a fool’s errand.

  That day passes, and then another. The snow melts, and finally something happens. A distant sound shatters the silence of the woods—a vibration at first. Boots, hitting the ground. Many of them.

  The rumble of it grows, and the ground seems to tremble as they approach, until they are walking right by me—ten German soldiers and around fifty prisoners, tied together in groups of three or four. They are a ragged bunch, many limping and wounded. One of them is Henri if I’m lucky, and if he’s as bad off as some, he might not survive the escape. Am I saving him or dooming him? If he died during the war, I can’t change that. But if he survives…I could ruin it.

  I creep through the brush alongside them, unable to distinguish one from the other through the haze of trees. A few minutes down the road, a soldier stumbles, and the men on each side—already struggling themselves—try to hold him up. It only takes a moment before a German soldier sees what’s going on and shouts at them to stop. The prisoner is cut loose and my breath holds, hoping for a miracle, until he is tossed on the ground. Casually, as if lighting a cigarette or waving to a friend, the German pulls a revolver from its holster and shoots the man in the head.

  My hand reaches for the gun in my pocket. He deserves to die, I think.

  Except there are only five bullets in the chamber of my gun and there won’t be time to reload before I’m caught. I should at least go to the man after the prisoners disappear. I could hold his hand, look for the name of a loved one to inform. But instead I leave him there, wondering if that makes me as empty as the soldier who shot him in the first place.

  * * *

  I remain behind the prisoners for the rest of the day. They take only one break, during which the German soldiers mostly laze about, smoking and laughing, while the prisoners sit, dazed and thirsty, saying nothing. When the break ends, they begin again. My legs are in agony, and I have blisters I didn’t notice until we stopped. How long have they gone like this? How long have they marched with their shoes falling apart, deprived of water and food? I feel like I’ll barely survive a single day of it.

  It’s dark when they stop for the night. The prisoners are huddled together in a ditch, in groups of three or four, while the Germans cook something over a fire. The smell of it turns my stomach—tension has made it difficult to keep food down this week—but it must be torture for Henri and the others.

  Eventually, half the soldiers retire, while the other five p
atrol the road, pointing their shotguns toward the ditch. I wait until it’s late, until I’m certain all but the patrols are sound asleep, and then I creep forward, trying to get close enough that I can see the prisoners’ faces in each small group. My coat catches on a bush and a soldier’s head swivels, looks right toward where I stand before he resumes his watch.

  How the hell am I going to save Henri when I can’t move a foot without being overheard? I wait for the wind to gust before I move on to the next group, and soon a light rain begins, making it easier.

  I spot someone with Henri’s dark hair, his size. Hope rises in me as I creep closer, and closer. And then the hope vanishes. The man has Henri’s build but not the full lips I love, not the cheekbones that rise so sharply from that square jaw, the aristocratic nose.

  I begin again, angry at myself for not planning better. I have no idea what I’ll do when I find him, if I find him. Pulling him out of the trough will wake everyone for miles.

  I spy another dark head and crawl on hands and knees to get a better view.

  Henri.

  My heart swells at the sight of him until it feels as if my chest can hardly contain it. He’s sound asleep, almost boyish at rest, despite the beard that’s come in after these weeks in captivity. I can picture, looking at him, the child he was. The son we might have had.

  He’s in a group of three, with about four feet between them and the next group of prisoners. Three German soldiers patrol this end of the road and they’ll notice someone climbing free of the ditch. I could risk it, but the days of doing things the proper way are long over. I’d rather kill them anyhow.

  I throw my knife into a tree on the other side of the road. The nearest soldier’s head gives a half turn toward the sound but ignores it. Thank God for the rain.

  I close my eyes and time travel, aiming for the tree, so certain it will go poorly that I’m a little surprised when my bare feet strike the mud at its base. I grab the knife and spring toward the closest soldier. He gives only the smallest gasp as the blade slides into the back of his neck, and then he falls forward.

  I’ve retrieved my knife and am grabbing his gun when another soldier calls out to him. I freeze for a moment, and then begin crawling toward the sound. I’m ten feet away when his flashlight sweeps over me.

  There’s no time for finesse or even forethought. There isn’t even time for panic. I throw the knife the way I was trained, so fast it’s more instinct than strategy. It lodges between his eyes, but as he falls backward into the ditch with the prisoners, he makes far more noise than I’d like.

  I leap in after him, retrieving my knife and scrambling toward Henri, who is awake now and wide-eyed.

  I cut through the ropes that bind him to the others and am about to speak when he pushes me down and lunges over me, tackling a third soldier I hadn’t even heard coming and snapping his neck. I climb from the ditch with him on my heels, snatching up my bag and clothes as we run into the woods.

  “My God, little thief,” Henri says behind me. “What have you done?”

  I don’t answer, focused on moving as fast as possible without leaving a trail. It’s only when the woods grow dense, blocking the moon and making it hard to see, that I stop to search for the flashlight.

  I reach for the bag but instead he pulls me against him and his lips find mine.

  He isn’t gentle. He holds onto me like I might vanish at any moment, and his kiss is hard and urgent, telling me more about his anxiety and what the last weeks have been like for him than any words ever could. It’s the way he kisses when he’s inside me and his restraint is at its breaking point, senseless and desperate. I should stop him but I don’t. I’ve missed this. I’ve missed him. Even now, in the panic and chaos, he fills that emptiness inside me in a way no one else ever could.

  A twig snaps and we both swivel. The two prisoners he was with are coming our way, making far too much noise and breaking too many branches. They’ve made it easy for the Germans to follow us. And I don’t want them along anyway. They mean more mouths to feed, more noise, more potential for failure. I could give them a bit of bread and tell them to go elsewhere, but they might ignore me. Or I could kill them…that would be the easiest.

  Henri steps in front of me. “Put on some clothes, Sarah.”

  “It’s pitch black. I hardly think my nudity is our biggest issue.”

  He looks at me over his shoulder. “It’s an issue for me. Please.”

  I ignore the undergarments and scramble into my pants, sweater and shoes while weighing our options. I don’t have enough food for the interlopers, and they’ll only cause problems. The coldness that hardened me as I killed the Germans comes upon me once more. I step out from behind Henri, reaching for my knife, but there is shouting in the distance and no time for what must be done.

  “Come,” I command in English, turning north though I have no idea where I’m going. “And stop breaking every fucking branch.”

  For fifteen minutes we run, but Henri’s breathing is labored and he’s moving more slowly than he should. We reach a stream and I stop him.

  “Are you hurt?” I ask.

  I get a small, tense nod. “Just go,” Henri says, in a hoarse whisper. “Please. Jump out of here.”

  “Tell me what’s wrong,” I demand.

  His mouth pinches hard and he opens up his shirt. A slash along the side of his rib cage bleeds freely. “I was stabbed a few days ago. It’s broken open again, but it was already infected.” I stare in horror while the crashing of the underbrush grows louder.

  I grab the tights I didn’t put on earlier and wrap them around his rib cage as snugly as I can. It’s not perfect, but it’s the best I can do.

  “We should walk through the stream so they lose our trail,” Henri says to the other two prisoners. He turns to me. “And you need to leave. Please. If something happened to you...just please.”

  He looks so desperate and panicked as he asks that it would be nearly impossible to deny him. And I nod, though I have no intention of letting him do this on his own.

  “Head to your left and walk as far as you can stand it,” I tell him. “I’ll cross into the woods on the other side and leave a trail for them to follow.”

  “No,” he says. “You need to go.”

  “I will,” I reply. “I’ll time travel once I’ve gone into the woods.”

  I hand him the bag and with one last hard kiss, he wades into the water, the prisoners following. I step into the stream and stand in the icy water, watching him go before I climb up the muddy bank on the other side and begin crashing through the brush, swinging a flashlight so the Germans will follow.

  As I run, a plan begins to form. I will lead them as far from Henri as I can and then attempt to time travel back to the stream and find him. The problem is that I’ve never jumped particularly far. I’m just as likely to land in the middle of the woods, naked and lost, as I am to land at the place where we separated.

  When I’ve gone as far as I dare, I stop and wait for the Germans to close in.

  Their shouts grow louder, and when the distant glow of a flashlight hits my face, I take a deep breath and picture the stream. The branches around me shake as they close in and begin to fire, but at last I fade, landing on my ass in the freezing water only a moment later. Naked and shivering, I push myself up and begin to run. The rocks are ice beneath my feet, moss covered and slick. I fall again and again, but my shins and feet are soon so numb I barely feel it.

  By the time I find muddy boot prints on the bank, I’m so cold I can barely stand it. I do my best to erase the trail they’ve left as I follow it, branches whipping against my skin the whole way.

  Fortunately, it doesn’t take long to find them. They’re so exhausted, and trampling so loudly, they don’t even hear me approach.

  “Henri,” I whisper. In the moonlight I see three astonished faces turn. None more astonished and distressed than Henri’s. “Can you give me the clothes and boots inside the bag?”

  He
marches toward me. “You promised to go,” he snaps. “You promised.”

  “I lied.”

  His hands land on my shoulders. “Please, Sarah,” he begs. “Go. I don’t want you here for this. You’ve done all you can.”

  I know he’s trying to save me. I know my presence here scares him more than the threat of death. But he needs me and if he was being honest, he’d admit it. “You know I have skills that can help you.”

  He exhales sharply and tugs at his hair. “You won’t listen no matter what I say, will you?”

  His companions shuffle impatiently and I ignore them. “You can’t claim you didn’t know what you were in for.”

  His mouth twitches. “I suppose I did.”

  “Can you two banter later on?” asks the Brit, his words clipped. “We need to get going.”

  My blood heats and I smile, hoping he wants a fight. Hoping he plans to keep annoying me. Give me an excuse to kill you. “You saw how easily I took care of that soldier guarding you? Don’t imagine for a moment I can’t dispose of you just as easily.”

  His mouth closes and he turns north.

  I’m disappointed that he gave in.

  46

  SARAH

  Soon, the sky begins to lighten, but we continue to move. I haven’t seen anywhere for us to stop, and I’m not sure how long the Germans will search for us before they give up. But I’m troubled by Henri’s labored breathing. He barely reacted to the news that Marie is living with Edouard and pretending to be a nun, a testament to his exhaustion if I’ve ever seen one. My makeshift bandage isn’t doing much for him, and his wound may be the part of this that is out of my hands.

  At midday we stop. I pull out the bread and cheese and divide it in sixths, handing one portion to each of them and saving the remainder for tomorrow. I’m feeling too sick to eat right now and they need the food more than I do, but eventually it’s going to be an issue, trying to feed four people on what I brought for two.