Minds of Men
Page 15
That thought decided it. Evelyn took another drink from her flask, (once she found the men, refilling that would be her next order of business) and started in on the exercises she’d learned as a young girl. They served to clear the mind before strenuous psychic work. She hadn’t needed them in years, but at this point, she figured they couldn’t hurt.
She closed her eyes once again. This time, instead of forcing her rapid breaths to calm, she focused on drawing them out, picturing the rapidly cooling air filling her lungs, gathering up the pain in her body, then pushing it out again. She did this for a count of twenty and then opened her eyes.
The sun had begun to set in earnest, and the light slanted gold and gray through the conifer needles and trunks of the forest that surrounded her. She focused on the light, paying attention to the way it struck her skin, the way it gleamed on the old snow. A breeze rustled through the branches overhead and caressed her cheek. Her arms and torso were comfortably warm, though the bulk of her clothing felt binding. Her legs felt heavy and leaden, and her ankle throbbed with pain. Another deep breath, and just as if she were separating out the sensory streams from two members of a net, Evelyn isolated and compartmentalized the pain. It was still there, pulsing angrily at her, but she had pushed it to the side. She couldn’t ignore it, but at least she could work around it.
With the clean, sharp scent of snow in her nostrils and the sounds of the wind in the branches, Evelyn cleared her mind and reached out.
It was harder than it should have been. The pain in her leg pulled at her attention, like an animal throwing itself against the bars of her compartmentalization cage. But Evelyn persevered, pushing her consciousness outward, reaching, seeking...
You.
A female mind, powerful, foreign. A flash of shocked triumph...and a grasping, fighting to get a grip on the slippery landscape of a psyche too similar...
Evelyn gasped and broke the contact. Her head slammed backward against the tree trunk from the effort and the surprise. Who had that been?
A psychic, clearly, for she had reached out to try and hold onto Evelyn, even as Evelyn fought to wiggle away. A German psychic?
Fear lanced through Evelyn, icy and cold. Psychic girls, though rare, were born all over the world. It stood to reason the Germans would have some of their own. If the US Army could find a use for psychic talents in war, the Nazis probably could as well. Could this girl be out looking for her? And her crewmen?
“Well, if she wasn’t before, she is now,” Evelyn said out loud, self-disgust joining the fear roiling in her belly. How could she have been so stupid? Reaching out as she had done in the middle of enemy territory was akin to lighting a bonfire and hiring a full orchestra to herald her arrival. Plus, that brief contact would have told the other girl that she wasn’t a German since language shaped human thought so much. Psychics didn’t necessarily need words to communicate, per se, but the structure of the psychic’s language always lingered in the way she formed her thoughts. And if the German psychic spoke English, there was a good chance she would have recognized its flavor in Evelyn’s mind. She felt another stab of self-recrimination. What had she been thinking?
“One thing’s certain,” she muttered to herself again as another terrifying thought iced through her. “I don’t want to be here when she arrives.” Evelyn had no idea how strong the other girl was. Most psychics didn’t have the power to track an individual’s location just based on a momentary contact.
But the other girl had reached out to hold the connection, and that spoke of training. And when Evelyn retreated, she’d followed, at least for a little ways. So if nothing else, she had a direction. That decided the issue in Evelyn’s mind. She had to move.
Of course, there was still the small matter of her injured ankle. Splinting it hadn’t made it hurt any less. Though, with the joint stabilized, Evelyn reasoned that she should be able to, at least, move on it, even if it couldn’t bear any weight. Maybe if she had a crutch...
She looked around herself, reaching out for more of the tree limbs that had come crashing down with her arrival. Most were twisted or too small to serve. There was one that looked like it might be promising, but it was out of her reach. Evelyn gritted her teeth.
No help for it. She couldn’t just sit there and wait for the German psychic to show up with who knows how many of her compatriots. Evelyn took a deep breath and closed her eyes for a moment, praying for strength to anyone who might be listening. Then she opened her eyes, and reaching out with her hands, she began to drag herself through the leaves and detritus toward the larger stick she’d seen.
It wasn’t far, all told, but Evelyn had had a bit of a rough day up to that point, and so it was more difficult going than she’d expected. At one point, her hip caught a sharp stone or bit of tree root buried under the snow, and she bit her lip to keep from crying out. This was, of course, in addition to the waves of nauseating pain that pulsed from her ankle with every movement. She tried to tense her leg muscles in order to keep from jouncing the joint too much, but it was no use. Her breathing started to come in ragged gasps as she fought to keep from screaming.
The branch couldn’t have been more than fifty feet away, but it felt like an eternity of agony before she was close enough to touch it. Small whimpers of pain issued forth as tears and mucus streamed down her face. She stretched her hand out and just barely grazed the rough bark with her fingertips. With a sob, she tried again. This time, Evelyn managed to hook her fingers into the bark and inch the limb close enough to get her hand around it.
Finally. She could feel the urgency beating against the inside of her skull. How long? How long until that other psychic traced her direction back and found her?
Not long. Not long enough, anyway. So, with much cursing and crying, Evelyn managed to get herself rolled back onto her hands and knees. Her hands shook, worse than before, but she was out of time, so she maneuvered the heavy tree limb up and jammed the end of it into the snow in front of her. It didn’t go in very deep, but it was enough for her to hold onto and get her healthy foot underneath herself. Then, with a mighty heave, she pushed herself up.
And nearly fell down again. The concept of balance seemed to have completely fled, along with any calmness. In order to keep from toppling over, Evelyn instinctively put her injured foot down, and the pain lanced up her leg with renewed fire. Bright, sparking spots danced before her eyes, and she was forced to cling to her walking-stick and pant for a few moments before her vision cleared.
But she was up. And that meant she could move.
After a moment’s surprise that she’d managed that much, Evelyn squinted at the sky and wished she’d looked at Abram’s charts before they’d flown. In any case, west seemed a better option than east, and so she decided to set off in the direction of the afternoon sun that slanted through the leaves.
She reached out with her walking-stick and then followed that up with an experimental hop-step. She didn’t fall. It was slow and awkward, but it was progress. Hills would be a challenge, but perhaps she could stay in the low ground.
With one tentative, halting step after another, Evelyn began to move.
* * *
They hadn’t been hiking for long when Lina felt her.
It wasn’t a pull, per se. It was more of a reaching out, a searching. At first, Lina was so shocked by the suddenness of it that she could barely respond. It was her! The American psychic! And she was reaching out? For what? For her crew? For help?
Lina reached back, pushing her own awareness out, back along the tenuous line that the American girl had extended. A jolt of recognition, a sudden realization of otherness, and the American’s thought retreated as quickly as it had come.
Lina gasped out loud and reached out her hands as if she would physically hold the connection intact. Her view of the Fallschirmjager in front of her faded as she focused all of her attention and senses on holding on to that fleeting, slippery touch...
Gone.
Like that,
the American girl was gone, and Lina cried out in frustration. Strong, warm fingers gently interlaced with her own, and the psychic opened the eyes she hadn’t remembered closing.
“Was that her?” Josef asked softly. We felt your shock, and then you seemed to go elsewhere very quickly, my darling. Are you all right?
Lina nodded. For no reason that made sense, she felt breathless.
“I couldn’t hold the connection,” she said, sounding winded. “I am sorry.”
“No! Do not be sorry, my dear!” Josef said as he squeezed her hands. “You have proven my theory correct! She is here, and now we know that! This is more than I had hoped for. How magnificent you are!”
Heat crept up Lina’s face at Wolffs’ effulgent praise. But she couldn’t help the smile that softly curved her lips, so she squeezed his fingers back in thanks. Kristof, too, gave her a smile and a nod, and the other Fallschirmjager gave her approving looks.
He is right, Kristof said, using the net. Already, you give us a better lead. Can you tell her direction from here?
Lina started to say no, but stopped. The American psychic had fled, surely enough, and Lina hadn’t been able to hold on to her mind-touch. But she had been able to reach after her, and she’d reached in...
Lina closed her eyes and pointed. When she opened them, her finger indicated the same general direction they’d been following.
“This is not precise,” she warned them. “But her position lies in that general direction.”
“So, we keep moving west, toward the wreckage,” Josef said. “We will either find it first, or we will find her. Both cases offer a victory of sorts. Let us continue. Oberhelfer, continue to try and find her.”
“I cannot do much,” Lina said. “But I will do my best, Herr Stabsfeldwebel.” My abilities do not work like those of a tracking hound, she added along their private channel. As much as I want to do what you ask, it may not be possible.
I understand, Josef replied the same way. But I have the utmost faith in you, my...Lina.
As they started off again, Lina couldn’t help but wonder what Josef had started to call her. He’d addressed her as “my dear” in his initial enthusiasm, but Lina didn’t think that any of the men had thought much about it. Such a mode of address was apparently consistent with Josef’s personality, particularly when speaking to a woman who had performed a service for him. None of them had felt the surge of...what was it? Desire, certainly, but also a feeling of pride and belonging that had rocketed down the private link the two of them held. Lina felt her own emotions tangling in response. Something was clearly happening here, between them. The question was, what?
* * *
The sun set far more quickly than Evelyn had anticipated.
She was moving slowly. That much she had expected. What she hadn’t expected was the terrible, searing pain of her injured ankle. With every halting, hopping step, agony stabbed up through her leg, until her eyes were blind with tears and it was all she could do to keep moving forward.
Evelyn found herself dropping into a kind of focused trance state. She couldn’t move far or fast, so she had to move steadily. Nothing mattered but the progress. Her awareness narrowed down to a pinpoint as she moved through a sequence of endless actions.
First, the stick. Push it into the snowy ground. Then, wrap her hands around it, feeling the roughness of the bark through her gloves. Then inhale, hold it. Close eyes, grit teeth, and hop forward on the good leg. Gasp at the pain. Repeat. And repeat again.
Her concentration wavered when her body began to tremble with the evening’s chill, preventing her from stabilizing the butt end of her walking stick forward where she wanted to step. She drove it into the icy ground beside her instead and blinked, then looked around.
A soft, purple gloom had risen from the east and wrapped itself around the forest and what she could see of the sky. She was shaking and out of breath. As she stood there, a cutting wind knifed through the branches overhead, rattling them like bones. Evelyn’s shivers intensified, and she realized with a sudden horror that she had been sweating inside her heavy flying gear. The sheer effort of pushing herself along, coupled with having to fight through the pain of her injury had made her sweat right through her inner layer.
And now, for the life of her, Evelyn couldn’t get warm. Moreover, she didn’t have anything with which to start a fire, and if she did, she was afraid that it would only bring the German psychic running. Her breath came faster, steaming in the rapidly cooling air, as panic started to wrap its claws around her throat.
No, she told herself. Stop, think. You’re still alive. Breathe slowly. What do you need? Warmth, rest.
She looked around again, noticing the configuration of the trees and terrain. Not far away, a deadfall had created a surface for snow to drift upon. A story from her childhood came back to her, and with it, an idea.
South Dakota winters could be brutal. Every year, some unwary soul got lost in a blizzard and died, their bodies missing until the spring thaw. Evelyn’s father had told her that once, when he was a boy, he and his uncle had been out feeding livestock when a deadly spring storm kicked up. The day had gone from beautiful and sunny to a complete, zero-visibility whiteout within thirty minutes.
The two men had been forced to shelter beneath a feeding lean-to for a day and a half, until the snow abated. Evelyn’s father had told her how they’d used the snow itself as insulation and how by scraping down to the surface of the dirt, they’d been able to keep themselves alive.
Though he had lost the little toes on both feet.
Evelyn pushed that thought away and hobbled toward the deadfall. The detritus itself had built up around a sheltered area, and then the snow had drifted on top of that. With a silent prayer that she would be able to get back up again, she lowered herself to her seat and began scraping the snow out of the sheltered spot.
When she had cleared out the area under the deadfall (and assured herself that there weren’t any wildlife occupants present!), Evelyn thought that she could just fit under there. She spent the rest of the light packing snow up along the sides of her shelter, leaving only a hole large enough to crawl into. She disguised her walking stick as part of the deadfall itself and then gathered up a few arms-length sticks to disguise her entrance.
Her shivering had intensified. She had to get her wet underclothes off. She couldn’t do anything about her trousers, of course, thanks to her splint. But she could and did strip off her outer jacket and sweatshirt. Her teeth chattered together as the cold air wrapped around her wet torso. She tried to clamp them together but just succeeded in giving herself a headache. Or more of one, anyway. With hands that shook so badly that she could barely accomplish the task, Evelyn stripped off her sodden undershirt and brassiere. Then she nearly dove back into her heavy outer flying clothing. The cold bit at her exposed skin, and she couldn’t seem to get covered up fast enough, but eventually she was wrapped up in warmth again. The shakes continued while she crawled (weeping, gasping at the pain of her ankle) into the makeshift shelter and then placed the sticks over her doorway to disguise its shape. The cold air still flowed in, but Evelyn didn’t see any way around that. She curled herself into as small a ball as she could manage and put her exhausted head down on her arms. Despite the cold and the pain of her injury, she was fast asleep within seconds.
* * *
Water dripped all around her. Icy fire pierced her neck just below the ear and ran in a line of agony down the curve of her neck. She radiated heat, and pain wrapped itself all around her. A tiny corner of her mind told her that she needed to get up, needed to move, but it wasn’t loud enough to drown out the screaming anguish of her abused nerve endings. Her skin felt aflame and wrapped in ice, and the shaking wouldn’t, couldn’t stop.
“Evie.”
Light seared into her, through her closed eyelids. She tried to scream, but all that came out of her mouth was a whimpering croak.
“Oh, Evie! Okay, come on. Come on now.”
War. The war. England. Pretty Cass. Her crew. The fighters. The fall...
Memory came flooding back, and Evie opened her eyes. The ravaged face of her navigator, Lieutenant Abram Portman, stared down at her. He looked like hell. A long gash ran across his forehead, and blood and dirt mingled all over his unshaven face.
Of course, I can’t look all that fresh, either, she realized with the type of hyper-clarity that told her that she was feverish. Every bit of her ached. Except for the leg she’d broken. “Ached” wasn’t the right word for how much that hurt. There really wasn’t a word for it. She knew, she’d spent most of yesterday trying to find it.
“Evie?” Lieutenant Portman said, his voice ragged and filled with a terrible hope. “Evie, are you all right?”
She tried to shake her head, but the way he had her cradled in his arms prevented this. Plus, she felt an overwhelming lassitude that made moving anything at all incredibly difficult. At least the uncontrollable shaking had stopped. That was something.
“No,” she finally whispered. “But I’m glad you’re here, sir.”
For a second, nothing happened. Evie felt her eyes begin to close again of their own volition. The last thing she remembered seeing was a slow, wide grin splitting the face of Lieutenant Abram Portman. Right before the big, burly navigator from New York City bent his head over her and cried.
* * *