by Alex Powell
"I don't know," Ira said. "I'm sure he's fine. He's a smart cat, and I'm sure he knows how to stay out of trouble. Or at least out of the line of fire."
They quieted after that, waiting for the doctor to do whatever it was he was going to do. There was something else, Ira was certain of that. He wasn't just going to fix her arm, that was for sure. Ira didn't even know if he was going to try and help her at all. They were an enemy to his country, and Ira couldn't trust his motives.
Slowly, the tent emptied. They were the last ones inside the tent, and there were no new patients to contend with. Ira could still hear bombs going off, but far away down the line. It seemed that the bombardment of this section was over.
"Now, let's look at your arm."
The doctor spoke accented but recognizable Russian, probably more fluently than she spoke German. Ira eyed him warily, but complied, trying to struggle out of the German uniform. Dounia helped her, and the doctor waited patiently.
"Nachthexen," he said, eyes widening when her bomber jacket underneath was revealed.
"Yes," Ira replied shortly, releasing the makeshift splint she'd had keeping her arm in place.
"I knew that you were Russian," the doctor continued. "I thought you were just stragglers from the bombing. You're the pilots of the plane that was downed yesterday."
Ira ignored him piecing together their story and focused on getting her bomber jacket off over her injured arm. Dounia helped, and soon it was just her uniform covering her arm up.
"I'm sorry," the doctor said and cut her sleeve away with a pair of scissors.
Ira couldn't watch after that, although she heard Dounia hiss in concern as the injury was finally revealed. As Ira was looking away, there was a movement at the edge of the tent and Meow slipped inside, coming to her side immediately. Ira reached out and stroked his head, trying to distract herself.
"Oh? And where did you come from, small one?" the doctor asked.
"I've been here since the start," Meow said, swishing his tail.
The doctor dropped the scissors and stared at Meow in shock.
"You can talk," he said. "You're a cat."
"Do cats not talk where you come from?" Meow asked, and Ira shot him a quelling look.
"No, they don't talk where he's from, Meow."
"How was I supposed to know it was a secret?" Meow asked and twitched his tail.
"Nachthexen," the doctor muttered under his breath again, and then returned to Ira's arm.
Ira distracted herself from the pain by stroking Meow's fur, and the doctor reset her arm carefully, splinted it and then made a sling for her.
"There, it is set properly now and will heal in the right position," the doctor said, stepping back to survey his work.
"Thank you, doctor...?" Ira said, realizing that they hadn't gotten the doctor's name.
"Engel," he said, washing his hands.
"Why are you helping us?" Dounia asked, eyes narrowed in suspicion.
"Ah, I almost forgot," Doctor Engel said. "But it's not the type of thing that I can tell you, you must see it to believe it yourself. Put your uniform jacket back on, we must cross the camp to the hospital. It is not far from here."
"This is not the hospital?" Ira asked, looking around at the narrow cot and medical tools around the small tent.
"No, it is just a medical bay. The soldiers who have long-term injuries are in a bigger tent. Now come," Doctor Engel beckoned for them to follow him. "The night is not over, and we may be able to get you out of here yet."
"What if it's a trap?" Dounia whispered as Ira clumsily pulled her jacket back over her shoulders.
"If it's a trap, then set him on fire," Ira said. "But for now, it looks as if he is helping us. He set my arm properly. Why would he take the time to do that if he just wanted to kill or capture us?"
"Wasting time?" Dounia suggested sceptically.
"I want to see what he has to show us," Ira said firmly, and they followed the doctor back out into the night where the soldiers on the front line were settling back into their routines.
Ira and Dounia kept their heads down, and Ira hid Meow inside her jacket. A few distant explosions could be heard a long way off, but it appeared the bombardment of this section of the lines was over.
Doctor Engel brought them inside the tent and turned the lights on. There were only two, and they were dim and flickering, barely lighting up the space inside the tent. There were several forms asleep on the cots, and they didn't stir at the intrusion. Doctor Engel passed them by and went directly to the last cot.
"Here she is. I've been wondering how I was going to get her out of here, but now that you're here, you can all go together."
"What?" Ira asked.
Doctor Engel gently rocked the sleeping form until she began to stir, drawing back the fabric that kept her face hidden.
"Tanya," Dounia breathed into the quiet of the night air.
FIVE
Her sister was alive.
Dounia couldn't believe her eyes, but there in front of her was Tanya's face in the most impossible of places, lying there on a cot in a German field hospital. Hesitantly, fearing that if she touched the visage in front of her, it wouldn't be real, Dounia reached out.
Her skin was cool, but soft and very, very real against the pads of Dounia's fingers.
"Tanya," she said again, and Tanya's eyes blinked open slowly.
"Who's there? Am I dreaming again?" she asked sleepily. "Because I thought for sure that I heard the voice of my sister, Dounia."
"It's me," Dounia said. "I'm here, it's really me. You're not dreaming."
Tanya smiled and squinted up at Dounia's face. "How can you be here?"
"It's a long story," Dounia said. "But I'm here, and Ira, and Meow, too. Doctor Engel brought us to you. I should have known we would find you. Ira's injured again."
"And you're grumpy," Tanya said.
"You saved my sister?" Dounia asked Doctor Engel.
Doctor Engel blinked in surprise, but nodded.
Dounia threw her arms around him and squeezed as hard as she could. "Thank you," she said. "Thank you. Thank you."
Eventually, she had to let him go, and she moved back to Tanya's side. Tanya slowly got her hands free from the tangle of blankets and grasped at Dounia's. They were covered in thick bandages, and Dounia was careful as she let Tanya take her hands.
"Is she hurt?" Ira asked, looking at the bandages that went up most of Tanya's arm.
"It's not as bad as it looks," Doctor Engel said. "She did sustain some burns and a concussion from hitting her head. The concussion cleared up in a few days. The burns are all second and first degree, but I've told my superiors they're third degree."
"What, why?" Ira asked, and Dounia turned to hear his answer.
"The officers want to interrogate her. If they knew she was in better health than I've told them, they would take her away."
"So you've been lying to them to keep her safe," Dounia said.
"Yes, but even with the deception, they weren't going to be put off for long. It's a miracle that you two have shown up. I've been trying to think of a way to get her out of the camp for days now."
"We might not be all you hoped," Ira said grimly.
"She's right. We haven't figured out how to get out of the camp yet," Dounia said, shaking her head. "We have been trying to make a plan, but everything here is so chaotic."
"Oh, that's easy," Doctor Engel waved his hand. "I already had a plan to get her out, but it required me to have an accomplice. Tanya told me she doesn't know how to drive, not to mention her injuries, so that was out. Until you two showed up."
"Why would she need to know how to drive?" asked Dounia, frowning.
"There is a vehicle bay not far from here where jeeps are stationed in between supply runs," Doctor Engel said. "We need to get you one of those jeeps and you will drive out of here."
"They'll start shooting at us," Dounia pointed out dryly.
"Not immediately," D
octor Engel replied cheerfully. "All of our guns are pointed at the sky. Why would they suspect that their vehicle had just been hijacked by the enemy on the ground?"
"I'm sure they would notice when we start driving toward enemy territory," Meow said, jumping onto Tanya's cot and nudging at her hand.
"I was not going to ask, but... why can your cat talk?" Doctor Engel peered down at Meow curiously.
"I am a familiar," Meow said, throwing his nose into the air. "We are different from normal cats."
"I see. So you really are witches," Doctor Engel turned back to Dounia and Ira. "You don't look like witches to me."
"What do witches look like?" Ira asked with a small smile.
"But where do you come from?" Doctor Engel scrubbed at his messy hair with one hand. "Why does Germany not have witches? Or any other place, for that matter."
"Finland has witches," Dounia said, thinking hard. "And Sweden and Norway, too. I can't say if there are any farther away than that. We are northern creatures, as far as I can tell."
Doctor Engel stared hard at her. "I can't help but notice that you have..."
Dounia sighed and removed her helmet.
"That's much better," Dounia said, and her ears sprung up and forward.
"Cat ears," Doctor Engel said. "Should I ask?"
"Better not to," Dounia said, and when she smiled, she let the tips of her canines flash for just an instant.
Doctor Engel found warm clothes that would fit Tanya and helped Dounia to dress her. Tanya herself wasn't much help, sleepily shifting this way and that as they got the clothes on her. Although Tanya wasn't as badly hurt as Doctor Engel would have his superiors believe, she was still injured and dosed with as much morphine as her body could handle. Second-degree burns were extremely painful, and they covered a large amount of Tanya's body.
"I am worried about infection," Doctor Engel told them as he wrapped yet another layer around Tanya's body. "She would do much better to be in a proper hospital far from the front lines, but obviously no one cared how well an enemy was treated."
"Except you," Dounia said.
"Except me," Doctor Engel said. "Come, help me get her up. We need to carry her without making anyone else suspicious. I will wrap her in a sheet, and if anyone stops us to ask about it, we can say that she succumbed to her injuries and we're taking her to be buried away from camp."
"Why do we need the jeep then?" Ira asked, trying to look like she was being helpful even though her broken arm prevented her. "Can't we just say we're going to bury her and take her past the lines that way?"
"They would expect us to take her back behind our own lines," Doctor Engel said.
"She's an enemy, why would they want her buried behind your lines?" Ira persisted, and Doctor Engel's mouth thinned, and something in his eyes went flat.
"That has never stopped them before," he said, voice hard. "If you go on foot, you will not get very far. Someone will notice and shoot us. No one will be expecting an attack, but they will figure it out eventually. We have snipers, and it takes too long to get out of their range on foot."
Dounia nodded. Snipers were a major worry of hers now that she was on the ground, and she really didn't want to find out how far away they could still hit her from and be accurate enough to kill her.
"Come on," Meow said, batting at Dounia's arm with his paw. "We have to leave now, when there's still no light for them to see us by."
They carried Tanya together in the blanket, and Dounia hoped that Tanya wouldn't move around too much or it might alert people to the deception. As it was, no one looked twice as they carried Tanya through the camp. A few people called out to Doctor Engel, but no one tried to stop them. Doctor Engel gave those who spoke to them a tired smile and said a few, short words in German.
Dounia supposed that a lot of people must die on the front lines, and the sight of Doctor Engel carrying away patients to be buried was a common one.
Dounia wanted to ask what they were saying, but she dared not let anyone overhear her speaking Russian.
Tanya gave a twitch in the blanket, and Dounia glanced over at Doctor Engel. He was staring straight ahead, as if he hadn't noticed, and Dounia followed suit. Her own actions might give them away if she weren't careful. Tanya twitched again, and Dounia held her breath and hoped that no one would see.
Doctor Engel steered them into the dark spaces between tents and semi-permanent structures where they flitted from shadow to shadow. Meow finally made a reappearance, coming to sit across Dounia's shoulders.
"How far do we have to go?" Dounia risked asking, glancing around and seeing nothing but darkness to one side and the intermittent lighting of the camp from the other.
"Not far," Doctor Engel whispered back.
The doctor was as good as his word, and soon they were standing outside the back of a makeshift vehicle bay where two guards stood watch.
"What do we do about them?" asked Ira, looking at Doctor Engel.
The guards weren't particularly attentive, both of them leaning against a stack of boxes and chatting, laughing every once in a while. And why should they think they had to worry about anything being taken? If a fellow soldier came up to them, they wouldn't think anything of it.
"Can you lure them back over here?" Doctor Engel asked. "If we can knock them unconscious, they won't be able to call for help until it's too late."
Dounia wondered if Doctor Engel had ever deliberately killed anyone. Would he still be helping them if he knew how Dounia had set that patrol of Germans on fire? Or how many bombs she and Ira had dropped on top of their heads in the night? Tanya had been the one to call down the bombing run on her own position. Tanya probably hadn't told him that, either.
Dounia looked at Ira, and Ira nodded. They would try not to kill the guards if at all possible, for the doctor's sake.
"I'm sorry, I can't be the one to lure them over. If they recognize me later, they'll turn me in, and I'll be executed."
Dounia knew he was leaving out the part where he would be lucky if they just executed him. In Russia, they were not kind to traitors either.
"I can speak German. I should be the one to do it," Ira said. "You two be ready to hit them on the back of the head with something."
Dounia had her pistol, and as she and the doctor lowered Tanya gently to the ground, she looked over at him questioningly. He pulled a heavy flashlight out of his jacket pocket.
"Where do I aim to do the least amount of damage?" Dounia asked.
Doctor Engel shook his head and looked at the ground. "There isn't one. I am a doctor, and I know the human body. A blow that will knock someone unconscious is also likely to kill them. The brain is easily damaged, and even if I had the right training, putting them in a choke hold could still cause damage, simply from lack of oxygen."
"I'm too short to put someone in a chokehold," Dounia pointed out.
"There would be a chance they could escape or warn others before we could put them out. We have to knock them out in one hit. The temple, aim for the temple, and hit hard," Doctor Engel said, and he tightened his hold on the flashlight.
Ira stepped out and said something quickly in German. The two guards stopped talking, standing straighter as they listened. Ira pointed out of the camp emphatically, and the two guards looked at each other once, before standing up straight, throwing their shoulders back and pushing past Ira.
One got out a flashlight and started shining it out into the darkness. Both guards were busy peering out at the landscape beyond, and Dounia raised her pistol above her head. Aim for the temple, hit hard, don't give them a chance to cry out, she repeated to herself.
Her hand was sweaty on the barrel, but she didn't dare take the time to wipe it off.
Doctor Engel started to swing, and Dounia hurriedly brought the butt end of her pistol down on the guard's temple. The man crumpled straight to the ground, knees folding underneath him and the rest of him following. Dounia didn't even have time to catch him, it happened so fast.
"I'll see to them in a moment. You have to be off, right away," Doctor Engel said, leaning down to pick up Tanya.
Dounia and Ira searched both the guards and found keys. Doctor Engel opened the back door of the jeep and started arranging Tanya inside.
"This isn't a jeep, it's a bucket," Dounia said.
"Yes, it is a Kübelwagen," said Doctor Engel with a small smile. "Or, a direct translation––bucket car."
"Will it drive over this kind of terrain?" Ira asked, her brow pinching up.
"Yes, it is a very good terrain vehicle," Doctor Engel assured them. "Your main concern should be getting past the lines without being shot."
"Good," Dounia said, testing the various keys they'd found until she found the right one to start the jeep up. "Good luck, doctor. And thank you."
"It's been an honour," Doctor Engel said, and waved them off.
The way forth was clear, with no tents or other obstructions in their way. The Germans had set up their camp so that their vehicle bay had a clear exit. It was a very efficient set-up, and one that worked in their advantage.
Dounia drove forward without the headlights turned on and made for the front lines, hands gripping the steering wheel in a death grip. This was it. They either got out, or they wouldn't.
"Halten Sie!"
There were more guards, and they were stepping out onto the road in front of the jeep, hands held in front of them to signal the jeep to stop.
"What do I do?" Dounia hissed.
"Just run them over," Meow suggested.
"I can't just run them over!" Dounia protested, wavering between pressing her foot on the gas pedal and slowing down.
The guards already looked suspicious, marching forward imperiously. However, they didn't draw their guns, so they still weren't alarmed by Ira and Dounia's actions. Dounia was trying to figure out how to get them to move, so she didn't have to run them over. They started coming around to the driver's side of the jeep, no doubt to check her identification.
"They're out of the way now," Meow pointed out.