Daughters of the Night Sky(78)

“In here,” I whispered needlessly as Oksana leaned on me. We stooped to enter the little opening, and I hoped none of the more vicious creatures were sheltering in our sanctuary. What an embarrassment it would be to escape the hands of the Germans only to be maimed or killed by a starving wolf.

“Thank you,” Oksana whispered through a grimace as I helped her to sit.

“Where are you hurt?” I asked, wishing I’d had more training as a medic. I’d bring it up the next time the brass was in earshot. I fumbled in my breast pocket for the flashlight that I hadn’t dared use before now. Oksana gestured to her side, and my fingers flew to remove her flight suit to assess the damage. Her entire left side was a bloody mess.

“You’ve been shot,” I said, unzipping the top of my suit and unbuttoning my blouse. It wasn’t pristine, but it would do for bandages until I could get her back to the base for proper medical attention.

“I already deduced as much,” she said in a flat voice.

I began tearing my blouse into strips. “I need to get you patched up and back to base. You need a medic. A surgeon,” I corrected as I assessed the damage to her side.

She sat still as I tried to stem the flow of blood. Her breathing was strong, though raspy, as I applied the strips of cloth to the angry red flesh in a makeshift bandage and held my hands over the covered wound, hoping to stem the flow of blood. I didn’t seem to be making much progress, so I zipped her suit back up, hoping her blouse and suit would do their part to help the wound clot before it claimed too much of her blood, and I maintained pressure on the injured area. Oksana was a pale woman by nature, but she had gone from alabaster to crystalline in color from the loss of blood.

“Do you think you can walk?” I asked, barely audible, the image of German soldiers looming in the back of my brain. I could accept a death from being shot down. A good, clean death. What we would suffer at their hands would be worse than any fate I could conjure from the deepest crevasses of my brain.

“I’m not sure. I just need to catch my breath,” Oksana whispered. She took in a deep, raspy breath. “I’m cold. It’s always so damned cold.”

I lay beside her and pulled her into my arms, tucking her head under my chin, doing all I could not to upset her injury. I willed every ounce of my warmth into her broken body. I expected her to rebuff my embrace, as self-reliant as she always was, but she turned her face into my chest and took in a deep, ragged breath.

“You always smell like vanilla sugar somehow,” she said. “Sweet and wholesome. Like Yana’s cookies.”

“I’m sure she’ll have platters of them waiting when you get home,” I said, wondering how soon that day would come for Oksana. Sooner than for me, I wagered. I was certain she’d need time to heal from this injury and hoped the advances westward would have the war tied up before she was fit for service again.

“No, Katya,” Oksana said, her whisper even lower. “She’s gone.”

I gingerly tightened my embrace for a moment. “When did you receive word?”

“She died before the war started. When Stalin had his head up his ass and refused to stop the German army until they practically set up offices at the Kremlin.”

“What reason could they have for killing a young girl?” From the few times Oksana had mentioned Yana, I couldn’t imagine she was like us. She wasn’t the kind to take up arms.

“She was Jewish.” Oksana sighed. “They killed her, her parents, her baby brother. Gunned them down like stray dogs.”

“My God, Oksana. I had no idea. You always spoke of her as though she lived and breathed still.”

“I couldn’t bring myself to say otherwise,” Oksana said. “You keep alive for your Vanya. Taisiya had her Matvei. I had to have something to cling to.”

The meaning of her words seeped into me like the cold, dank air of the cave. She could never have spoken this way before. One word about exactly how dear Yana had been to her could well have resulted in her losing her wings and her place in the regiment.

What words of solace could I offer? This sullen girl now made perfect sense as I held her bleeding in my arms. She wasn’t simply angry. She’d been grieving. She used her churlish mask to protect her from the reality of life without Yana. She needed that mask to fight—to exact some revenge from the people who had cut short a life that had been so precious to her.

“Oksana, I wish I’d known. I would have tried to understand . . . tried to help you cope with it all. I would have been a better friend.”

“You were always a good friend to me, Katya. Even when I didn’t deserve it.”

“Nonsense,” I said, wishing I could think of more instances when I’d reached out to her when we’d first met. Tried to get to know her when she was still reeling from her loss.

“I need you to do something for me,” she said.

“Anything,” I said, stroking the back of her head, my fingers brushing over her silver-blond tresses.

“Can you take word to my family in Aix? My parents are gone, but my aunt and uncle, my cousin—I want them to remember me. And I don’t want them to hear about it in a letter. Take Yana’s drawing to them. You can take whatever you want from my effects and give them the rest.”

“Don’t talk like that, Oksana. We’re getting up. We’re going now if you’re going to try to give in like this.” I moved to release her from my arms and stand, but she summoned the strength to clutch my suit and keep me seated.