When we got back to the house, my friend seemed much better already, hardly gasping at all. The officer paused in the foyer with his flashlight.
“Hurry up now. It’s cold,” he said.
Gabi shook her head. “We can’t see.” Her voice was raw. “And I’m scared.”
The man made a face, rolled his eyes, and handed over the light. Then he went in the kitchen to poke through what was left of our food. I helped Gabi to her bedroom, skirting the mess the soldiers had made. After her door was mostly shut, she let go of me and ran to a pile of clothes on the floor, tossing over pieces, one by one.
“Mittens,” she said. “Double pair. And put these long johns on under your pants. You’ll need a hat, too. This one will fit over your big ears.”
I stared at her, gaping. “What about your medicine?”
She looked over her shoulder like I’d sprouted corn from my nose.
“I don’t take any medicine.”
My eyes widened. “You were pretending.”
“You have to get the manifesto.” She tossed me her hat. “You have to save your uncle and father. The Securitate are going to find the papers. Don’t you get it? That’s why they’ve been tearing apart all the houses.”
I shook my head, astonished. It was one thing to tell stories, to make plans, to play the heroine in your dreams. It was another thing to be brave in real life.
“The resisters will find us,” I said. “They’ll realize and come to our rescue.”
“What resisters? The ones the Securitate are holding hostage? The ones in the city hours and hours away, who’ve never even been to a village? No one’s coming to rescue us, Ileana. That’s you. You’re the rescuer. Didn’t you hear that guy? What he said? He’s not playing around.” And then something sad passed through her eyes. “Your tata might already be dead. Really, he might. But maybe not. I know you’re still mad at him, but you’ll miss him forever if he dies. I promise you will. You’ve got to try. You’ve got to go now.”
I nodded once, then again, then over and over. Then I was putting on clothes, layer on top of layer, like my mamaie had taught me. The officer down the hallway called after us. It must have been late—closer to morning than midnight. When we came out of the bedroom, we went straight for our coats.
“Feeling better?” the officer asked, but not like he cared. He put his hand out. “My flashlight.”
“Can’t I just hold it on the way back?” I asked.
“Give it here.”
“Please,” Gabi begged. “It’s so dark. We really were frightened on the way over.”
The man put a hand to his forehead and rubbed. He closed his eyes and motioned for us to go out the front door. When I stepped into the yard, I glanced at Gabi a last time. She squeezed my hand.
And then I switched off the light.
I dove straight into a tunnel, wiggling like mad. I heard the man shout as Gabi ran in the opposite direction. He hesitated only a moment before choosing to go after her first. She looked like she’d be slow, after all. But Gabi was fast—faster than all the boys and girls in our class, snow on the ground and short leg and everything. At the end of the tunnel I snatched up the best stick and made a break for my grandparents’ hill.
In the Dark Before Dawn
I took the stone steps up the hill two at a time, the beams from the flashlight reflecting off ice. I was worried about someone from the village seeing me, but even with the light on, I kept slipping. I fell more than once, bruising my shin. I pressed on, forcing my legs to go faster, my feet to stick when they slid. By the time I reached flat ground, I was panting, stumbling through the snow in my grandparents’ yard. I opened the gate and got up the stairs, crossed the porch, and let myself into the house. I tried to catch my breath as I stared.
The kitchen had been turned upside down.
My mamaie’s dishes were smashed. Her pots and pans were all over the floor. The benches and chairs were flipped over, in pieces. A glance into my grandparents’ bedroom showed more of the same.
I closed the door behind me, but the bolt had been broken. I got down on my knees, set aside my pointed stick, and dug through the mess. Underneath it all, on the cold wooden boards, was the pallet where I slept. I moved my favorite of Mamaie’s embroidered pillows, the one I’d brought all the way here from home—dark green with a black border and a big, round-faced bird. I scooted the blankets aside and revealed the loose plank beneath. My hands shook as I lifted it, fearing the papers had already been found or that my grandparents had moved them somewhere else. I pointed the flashlight inside.
The manifesto seemed to shine in the dark.
I pulled it out carefully, folding until it was too thick to fold anymore. I stuffed the papers into my coat pocket and reached for the plank to re-cover the hole.
There was a hoarse warning bark overhead on the roof. It came again, echoing.
I switched off the light, froze, and listened, trying my best not to breathe. Instead of the plank, my fingers wrapped around my weapon. I scooted till I was under the window, just in time to see the man who’d chased Gabi peer inside. He spotted the rustled blankets and exposed hole in the floor.
My heart raced. If he was here, something had happened to her. I thought of my friend lying in the snow, still and alone, nobody coming to save her.
When the officer moved away from the glass, I squeezed my eyes shut and dashed across the room, quiet as I could be. I crouched, my pulse racing, as the door swung open slowly. Behind it, I waited—flashlight in one hand, stick tight in the other. The officer stepped into the cottage. No one followed. No one else was out in the yard. I readied my weapon. When he knelt by the hole in the floor, I took a step forward, then another to get around the open door, then backed out of the house.
I was all the way on the porch when he glanced over his shoulder.
We both went still. The officer blinked in surprise. And then I took off down the stairs, missing the last step and falling face-first in the yard. I climbed to my knees, feeling around for my stick in the snow, but all my hands found was the flashlight. By then the officer was standing at the top of the porch, a pistol pointed right at me.
“The game is over. Give me the papers or I’ll shoot you.”
My lip was bleeding. I couldn’t seem to catch my breath. The flashlight—still off—shook as I pointed it toward him.
Ileana gives up the manifesto. She is shot in the head anyway. She cannot save the people she loves.
“Wuhu huwu-huwuwu!”
A male Ural owl’s call. I looked up at the female on the cottage’s roof. Gritting my teeth, I flicked on the flashlight and shone it straight into the officer’s eyes. In the same moment, he was clipped in the side of the throat with a stone. He cried out and fired haphazardly, shielding his face. But by then I was already stumbling through the yard toward the path.
“Stop!” he shouted, but I didn’t. He aimed his gun.
The next rock missed, but the third struck him square in the head.
I saw Gabi retreat into the woods. The officer was having trouble keeping his feet. He looked woozy, though that didn’t stop him from stretching out his long arm. He fired in my direction. The bullet hit a nearby tree trunk, spraying bark. I screamed, but I didn’t look back.
Up the worn path into the forest. Higher and higher and higher. The cottage vanished from sight. The sounds of the Securitate officer pursuing me vanished with it. Still I hurried, too frightened to pause. Soon I was farther than I’d ever been. I kept losing sight of the trail, buried in white as it was. I kept shining my flashlight this way and that till I found it again.
The world was quiet, the soft snow here untouched. No one used this path anymore. Not for years. Branches had collapsed right across it. Bushes were smack in the middle of where you should walk. I climbed and I climbed and I climbed, always waiting for the moment when the man would catch up. But he didn’t.
Finally, I slowed. Finally, I came to a stop. To the right the lan
d sloped down and away. The lights of the village were distant, tiny stars in a sky full of pines, ashes, and firs. I looked up the path into the dark. And for the first time, I realized that I was deep in the woods all alone.
The story came back to me.
For an hour my mother had traveled this way, but after that hour she’d turned, journeying through the heart of the forest itself.
My flashlight dropped to my side, my heavy breathing the only sound in the stillness.
I had no idea where to go.
For a long time, I stood there on the path. I turned in a circle, shining my light, looking for something, anything I might have missed. I glanced back down the mountain, energy seeping right out of my limbs. I was so tired and cold.
Ileana sits down to think. She freezes to death. She cannot save the people she loves.
Something shifted in the darkness straight ahead—just up the mountain, hunched over by the side of the trail. I rubbed my eyes, squinting.
“Old Constanta?” I called out, bewildered.
The figure turned and looked right at me. Then she stepped off the path into the trees.
Adrenaline came back in a rush. I ran ahead, my feet eating the earth, and pushed my way through the dense undergrowth. Off the path there was no one, and for a moment I thought I’d imagined the whole thing. I swept my light across the forest floor, and it bounced off the snow into the boughs up above. Nothing. Nothing. And then, almost right in front of me, she was there, caught in the glare of the beam. She glanced over her shoulder and gestured.
I smiled, feeling righteous. I’d known all along that she’d been fooling the people in town. She’d been pretending to act sicker than she actually was. Hurrying forward, I pushed branches out of the way. The snow hadn’t fallen as thick here as it had in the village, but without any path—forgotten or not—it was harder now to keep my feet.
“Wait for me, Old Constanta,” I called. “You’re going too fast!”
But the woman did not change her pace. Her bent, lumpy frame shuffled incessantly on, never bothered by bramble or rocky terrain. When I lagged too far behind, she only paused briefly, leaving me gasping as I strained to catch up. I climbed a great boulder she’d somehow avoided and slid down the other side, scraping my knees. At one particular ridge, I paced back and forth, calling her name. She’d already gotten to the top, out of sight, but I couldn’t figure out how. The drop was straight up and down, taller than I could touch. I tossed my light first, then jumped till I caught hold of some roots and could pull myself over the ledge. I kicked wildly to gain traction, limbs trembling by the time I made it to level ground.
Again the old woman was ahead, waiting, always just out of reach.
Farther and farther we traveled away from the path and the stone stairs and my grandparents’ cottage. Darker and darker the woods grew. The air felt light in my chest. I felt dizzy. I kept having to pause so I could breathe.
“Please, Constanta, slow down,” I begged.
But whenever I’d start moving again, she’d be back at her original pace. I couldn’t understand how she managed. For the first time since I’d made my choice to go after her, something knotted deep in my gut.
What if it wasn’t Old Constanta?
I hadn’t gotten a close look at her face. The light had never lingered on her long enough for me to be sure.
A howl came in the distance. It echoed, repeating in every direction till I realized it wasn’t an echo at all. It was many voices, not one.
Ileana follows a witch deep into the forest. She is eaten alive by the wolves. She cannot save the people she loves.
It was only then, as I peered through the dark, searching for the glint of yellow eyes with my light, that I realized something was wrong with the trees. Their trunks were all bent and twisted. Some spiraled round and round like a screw. Some had branches protruding out of their thick, exposed roots.
The flashlight turned off, just like that.
No dimming. No blinking. No fade to black. Instant darkness. And in that moment, I swore I heard the trees shuffling toward me.
Ileana gets lost. She is torn limb from limb by the monstrous forest. She cannot save the people she loves.
“Old Constanta!” I shouted, terrified. “Don’t leave me!”
For a long time, there was nothing but night. The wolves howled again, closer. But then my eyes adjusted, and the old woman was there. She reached out her hand, gesturing, and I could see now that she was smiling, toothless and wide.
“I thought you were brave,” she croaked, sounding a thousand years old. “Come along. It always gets worse right at the end.”
I dropped the dead flashlight in the snow and went after her. And, just as she said, it was not very much longer till moonlight appeared through the clouds, spearing the boughs in great shafts. The trees thinned, looking normal once more. We passed a white-faced rock jutting out of the earth.
When the ground flattened, opening up to reveal a huge clearing, it was a moment before I understood what lay before me. The stones of the high walls were covered in moss. They were split in haggard lines at the seams. The towers had crumbled decades before.
In the dark before dawn, the ancient monastery glistened.
I looked around, surprised that I’d finally gotten ahead of my companion. Somehow I’d walked right past her. I turned to ask what I should do next.
I was alone in the white moonlit clearing.
The Story That Cannot Be Told
Creeping forward through the snow, I searched the dark, empty windows and high walkways of the monastery. No one sniped me dead. No one shone down a spotlight and called out. I made it to the nearest wall and snuck up to the edge of an opening—the ruins of a splintered wooden door. My heart was racing, so I reached into my coat pocket and touched the folded manifesto. I pictured its torn edges, its smeared black ink, its unfamiliar handwriting. I remembered my uncle’s left fingers, fat and dark and twisted in all the wrong ways.
Making fists in my mittens, I ducked inside.
The hallway echoed. Melting ice dripped into a puddle somewhere out of sight. A rat squeaked and scurried away. I tiptoed as slowly as I could. I turned one corner, then the next, and went down a short flight of stairs. The place was a labyrinth of abandonment. Broken bed frames were crumpled in corners. Tattered lengths of cloth sat in moldy, wet piles. I passed rooms with no ceiling, dead vines curtaining every wall. I passed a chapel with toppled lecterns and icon cases. Its benches were split down the middle. Its altar was scorched and charred.
When I heard voices, I paused, peeking down the next corridor. Light came from a great arched, open doorway. I crept forward till I could make out the shadows flickering on the opposite wall. A man paced back and forth, gun strapped to his back. I could hear his boots on the stone. I could hear radio static, a broadcast drifting in and away. Inch by inch, I scooted right up to the entrance.
“Some water. That’s all I’m asking for. He isn’t well.”
My heart stopped—my father’s voice. I put my back to the wall, digging my shoulder into a crack. Tiny rocks clattered out, bouncing along the floor and echoing like an avalanche. I squeezed my eyes shut, pressed my mittens to my mouth till I couldn’t breathe.
Ileana reaches the ancient monastery at the top of the world. She cannot stay quiet for just once in her life and, after being discovered, dies a slow, gruesome death. She does not save the people she loves.
“He’s not supposed to be well,” the pacing man said to my father. “Neither are you. When the sun comes up, you’re all dead anyway.”
“Please. Please. If I knew where the papers were, I’d tell you. My brother could tell you if he weren’t in this shape.”
“Your brother had his chance to talk. Didn’t seem interested.”
There was coughing. Bodies shifted. A voice I didn’t recognize said something incoherent. I realized my uncle and father were not the only ones being held hostage.
I took a breath and
peeked around the edge of the arched entrance.
The vaulted room was lined with massive oak tables. Some were broken. Some were covered in maps and piles of books. Some were pushed out of the way to make room for mismatched cargo crates filled with provisions and weapons. Cots were stacked with blankets and winter clothes. In the center of the room was a fire. The soldier there was facing away from me. His fingers worked a handheld radio, scanning for broadcasts. On a nearby table was a plate with some bloody, half-eaten meat. A bottle of alcohol. A fork. A knife.
I tried to plot the upcoming scene. Across the vaulted room, the far left wall was partially collapsed. I could see into the moonlit, snow-covered clearing beyond. I could see into the dark forest. To my right, sitting on the stone floor, seven resisters were tied up—my uncle and father among them. If I caused a distraction and got the soldier to leave, I could free everyone, and we could escape through the hole in the wall.
I leaned back into the corridor, careful not to make any sound—though it wouldn’t have mattered. Standing right in front of me was a second soldier, bigger than the first. He put both his hands on my shoulders, so heavy I felt myself sink into my boots.
“Did you know you were being spied on?” he called to his partner. It didn’t take much of his strength to pull me away from the wall and walk me into the room.
The smaller man looked up, eyes wide. He set down the radio. “How long has he been here?”
“It’s a she, I think.”
“Ileana?” my father gasped.
Both men turned, and I shrugged out of the bigger one’s grip, darting away toward the fire, the hostages at my back.
“I’ve come to make a trade,” I said, my voice as loud as I could make it.
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