The Memory Keeper of Kyiv (62)

She glimpsed a patch of brown fur at the next snare, and with a cry of joy, removed a large rabbit. Stewed into a broth with the goosefoot greens she’d found, it would be just the thing to help Alina.

“See!” She held up the rabbit. “Tonight, we’ll have a real meal.”

Kolya’s face creased into a smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes and he clapped her on the shoulder. “You’re a fighter, Katya. I’ve always admired that about you.”

She gave a determined grin. “We can save her. I know it. If we get enough food for her consistently, she’ll be able to heal.”

When they arrived home, Alina sat propped up on her pillows, her eyes lucid. A small smile curved on her lips, and she waved her sister over. Katya shot Kolya a look that said, See, I told you she’ll be fine.

Katya sat on the bed next to her and Alina took her hand. “I need you to promise me you will take care of Halya, no matter what.”

Katya straightened. “What’s this about? I’ll always be here for her. You know that. But there is no need to talk of such things.”

“There is, and it makes me feel better to hear you say it. She’s getting nothing from me anymore; you’re the one keeping her alive. Please promise you will continue to nurse her, as long as you can, and that you’ll love her like your own. I need you to promise me that.”

“I promise.” Katya patted her sister’s leg and quelled her alarm at the conversation. She could feel Kolya’s haunted eyes watching them, so she forced a bright smile. “And you will be here to see it happen.”

Alina shook her head and smiled sadly. “I just need to know she will be loved.”

“Don’t be silly. Of course she’s loved.” Katya leaned over and gave Alina a hug, trying not to flinch at the feel of Alina’s frail body in her arms. “By all of us, and her mother. Now let me fix up this rabbit for your dinner so you can get your strength up.”

Before the food was done, Alina’s fever had returned, and she was wailing to feed Halya again.





As October’s cooler weather set in, Kolya butchered the kid goat. For almost a week, their daily meal felt like a feast, but it was gone now—every bit of marrow sucked dry, every organ cleaned and eaten, and the broth from the bones and scraps cooked down and diluted so many times it eventually became water.

Since then, they’d made do with ground oak bark and grass pancakes and cooked dandelions greens. Katya and Kolya were able to eat a watery soup and a piece of black bread every day they worked at the collective during harvest, but they always brought the bread home to share with Alina and Mama.

Aside from that, they had nothing. Because the collective hadn’t reached Stalin’s ridiculously high grain quota, activists raided every village home, emptying it of food, goods, and tools as repayment. They’d even lost control of their kitchen garden, the very vegetables growing outside their door now considered state property. They’d still “stolen” what they could from it earlier in the season, before the vegetables were even ripe, eating green tomatoes and small, bitter cucumbers before anyone else could take them.

Katya sat up as Kolya came in the house, hoping he’d had luck foraging. He gave a slight shake of his head, and she sagged back into her chair, her stomach aching for sustenance.

“I’ll go check our hidden stores,” Katya said. She couldn’t bear to sit there and do nothing while Alina faded away.

“Maybe it’s time to butcher the nanny goat, too,” Mama said.

“Not yet.” Katya pulled on her coat. “We’re still getting some milk from her. I’ll find something else.”

“Then hurry, Katya. Your sister needs to eat.” Mama leaned over and wiped Alina’s fevered head with a damp cloth.

“I will.” Katya met Kolya’s worried eyes and forced a smile that she hoped looked more encouraging than she felt.

Katya climbed into the barn loft and dug through the loft, but only one note remained.

Rye, buried in hollow half-dead tree north of house five hundred paces.





The leaves crunched under her feet as she crept through the woods behind the house, their noise echoing like gunshots. Her nerves sparked with awareness and her eyes never stopped scanning the far corners of the land. With activist guards patrolling the countryside and neighbors desperate to take any food they could find, she couldn’t afford to relax for one second.

Tall and thick, the pale, barkless tree stood in sharp relief against the inky sky. Before the last raid on their house, she’d hidden a jar filled with rye flour in the hollow of the crack and covered it with rocks. Disappointment made her shoulders slump as she sank to the ground and saw the rocks were gone. The knobby roots of the ancient oak stabbed into her knees as she pawed through the dead leaves and pebbles until her fingers bled, but it was useless. Someone or something had taken the flour. She wiped her hands on her skirt and stared down at the trails of mud and blood her hands left behind. Think, Katya. She had to fix this. She had to bring food home tonight.

The moon peeked through the clouds, barely visible in the black, starless night and an idea flitted into her head, unbidden. Maybe I could sneak onto a collective field and take a bit of food.

She knew it was a terrible idea as soon as it occurred to her. Stalin had issued a decree in August, stating that anyone caught taking any produce from a collective field could be shot on sight or imprisoned for stealing socialist property. There were only a few fields still left to be harvested, and armed guards patrolled them on foot and horseback or from watchtowers. But what other choice did she have? She couldn’t let her family starve. She couldn’t let her sister die. Katya brushed herself off and stiffened her backbone. Her feet dragged as she took those first steps, but she’d made her decision.