White Rose Black Forest(3)
She raised herself off his body and shimmied out of the snow cave. The icy air bit at her exposed face and felt almost liquid as she pulled it into her lungs. The snow had stopped. The clouds had been cleared aside like a soiled tablecloth and revealed the stars burning against the ink black of the sky. The winds had calmed to a gentle tickle on the tree branches. All else was unmoving. What would happen if she left him? Would he ever emerge from his sleep? Would he even be able to raise himself out of the cave once he came to? The field she’d dragged him across was smoothed over, beautiful now. Anyone could have wandered past them and never known that they were there. But the morning was coming. They were isolated up here. People were rare but far from unheard of. She estimated that she had at least three hours until the low winter sun limped over the horizon to illuminate the forest—only three hours before they might be spotted. A cross-country skier could happen upon them as they were struggling back through the snow, and then any decision-making would be taken out of her hands. This man would succumb to the Gestapo by the consensus of strangers. It was always easier to side with the Gestapo—a citizen would be rewarded for doing so, thrown in jail for not. It required supernatural strength not to do the Gestapo’s bidding. That was the genius of their system—it took fortitude of an almost unimaginable scale to do the right thing. Not reporting your neighbors was as dangerous as the antisocial activities that the Gestapo was so interested in. It meant that they had spies everywhere. It meant that the “German look”—a swift, furtive glance to make sure no one was watching—was a part of everyday life now.
The specter of her previous plans returned. She had expected her body to be found the next day, had wanted it that way. She could have wandered into the middle of the forest, where no one would have found her for months, where her flesh would have faded from her bones, leaving only the white of her skeleton to be uncovered. It seemed she had little choice now but to abandon those plans and help this man instead. If she left him in the hole, he would die. If she turned him over to the authorities, he would die. She would have to live with the knowledge that she had helped further the perverted will of the Gestapo and the regime they represented. If she waited until dawn, she might meet someone else who would force her hand, and he would die, and perhaps she along with him. There didn’t seem to be any choice at all.
The snow had smoothed over the footprints she’d made getting here, but she knew these hills and meadows, snow covered or not. She began hiking back to the cabin. It would take more than an hour to get there, and the same to return to him. Was he a spy, or an escaping prisoner of war? But if he was a POW, why would he have jumped out of a plane into Germany? Perhaps his plane had been shot down or had run into some technical trouble and he’d been forced to bail out. Why else would he be here, in the middle of the mountains? Freiburg was only around ten miles away. Maybe he had been blown off course. Yet she’d heard no plane and seen no flak in the sky on the way out here. The bombing raids were coming more frequently. Even here. Thoughts of the bomb dropping brought with them the memory of her father, and the pain that had driven her out here with his pistol in her pocket soon followed, but the remembrance of the man in the snow cave forced her back into the moment, driving her feet forward.
She made her way down the hill she’d found the man on, back the way she came, and soon she could no longer see the snow cave, nor the tree she’d dug it under.
“Try not to worry about things you can’t control,” she said out loud.
It felt good to hear her own thoughts, felt almost as if there were someone there with her and she wasn’t alone in trying to save this man’s life.
“What are you doing?” she said. “Why are you getting involved with this man you don’t know?” The words had come out as if spoken by someone else.
She was in a state of near exhaustion when the cabin came into view. The door was unlocked, and she pushed it open. She had never expected to come here again, yet she had left it immaculately clean, a gift for the people who would find it. She took off her snowshoes, leaving them at the door as she went inside. She removed her gloves before fumbling with the matches that lay on a nearby table. The room glowed from the candle she lit, and she caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror before jerking her eyes away. She had no desire to confront her own reflection. The embers of last night’s fire were dead in the fireplace. The wood was out back. That would be a job for later. She paced down the hall into the living area and found a bottle of brandy she then stuffed in her coat pocket. She put her hands on her head and searched her mind for anything else that might help her on the way back here with him. Her journey alone had been arduous enough. She began to wonder if it was even possible and contemplated sitting down and closing her eyes, just to rest for a while.
She poured herself a cup of water and finished it in seconds. She put the cup back down and placed a kitchen knife in her pocket. The door to the bedroom she’d slept in last night was ajar, the bed stripped, the covers stacked at the end in a neat pile. The bed represented an impossible luxury, everything she could possibly have wanted in that moment. She knew what her resting would mean for the man in the snow. She closed the bedroom door and walked out the back and into the night once more. The firewood she’d gathered the week before sat untouched, speckled with a light coating of snow blown under the awning that protected it. She eyed the sled she’d used to drag the logs back from the forest. It was sturdy, well able to take his weight. She dragged it around the side of the house before going inside again.