When Aleš and Eva arrived, Magda followed everyone inside. It was a simple woodsman’s hut, a single room with few furnishings: one bed, a table with two long benches on either side, a small stove to cook and heat with. They sat. Renata pushed a plate of bread and a glass of water to Magda.
“How did you pick up Samuel?” Magda dipped a piece of bread and held it to the child’s mouth. He tasted it and sucked it in, his beautiful eyes straining to focus on her so up close.
Renata crossed her arms. “Davide drove. Gabriel did the talking. The Nazis were right behind us. I don’t think it was more than a minute before we saw the first headlights pulling into the convent. We left through the service road, lights out.”
She made it sound so easy, but Magda knew better. Their nerves were beyond frayed, all of them. She kissed the top of Samuel’s head, fed him another piece of bread. “Then I met you just in time.”
“You said the opium, Magda. You wanted the opium, and I thought it was for getting yourself and Jana out. If you had told me what you were planning—” Renata shook her head.
Magda shriveled beneath her glare.
“You’re incredible, you know that?”
“Yes,” Aleš interjected. “And now we need to decide what we’re going to do with Magda’s newfound courage.”
Renata and he took turns reprimanding her and Eva. The three of them—Magda, Eva, and Samuel—were in grave danger. Samuel because of Koenig’s orders to eradicate every evidence of hiding Jews or collaborators, and Eva and Magda for their rash crime. But getting them out of the district altogether—especially Magda with her recognizable features—was not without great risks. They needed travel permits, and with the crackdown, it would be extra challenging.
Magda listened with half an ear, distancing herself by keeping Samuel busy. Outside, birds sang in the surrounding woods, and the trickle of a nearby creek came through the door. Everything seemed lighter. The danger felt far away, and with Samuel in her arms, even more so.
“Can’t we simply stay here?” Magda interrupted.
“From now on,” Aleš said measuredly, “you will always be on the run, always terrified.”
Magda pulled Samuel back into her lap. “I understand.”
“Do you? Do you really?” Renata challenged. She glared at Eva next. “And you! You were our best connection aboveground. Your family’s bakery will be destroyed.”
“Enough, Renata.” Aleš nodded at her. “Eva knew what she was doing.”
Eva smiled wanly. “I never liked the bakery anyway. I can still help. I can still do something underground.”
Magda laughed abruptly. I never liked the bakery anyway. Even when everyone looked at her with dismay, she could not stop laughing. Samuel’s face screwed up uncertainly at the sound of it.
Renata pointed to Eva and Magda in turn. “The SS will put out an alert to all divisions of security—from the Wehrmacht to the SS. They will—”
Magda giggled. “It’s a good thing Walter is on the Eastern Front then.” She laughed at her own joke.
Staring at her, Renata growled, “They will hunt for you until they have killed you both. Is that what you want, Magda? Do you have a death wish?”
On the contrary, Magda wanted to say, she had never felt more alive, but she was trying to control the bubble of laughter.
Aleš slowly shook his head. “She’s in shock, Renata.” He tapped the table with his palms. “My brother will have to find a new place for Samuel—”
Now Magda stopped laughing. “No! He goes where I go.” She pressed Samuel to her. The baby began screaming. He turned his head, crying as he searched for one familiar person in the room, his little fists pushing against her chest.
Aleš pointed at the baby. “That is not something I can control. We have nowhere to take him now, not with Koenig leading raids. Samuel has to be moved out of the country.”
“Where?” Magda demanded. “We’re surrounded on every side.”
“I know where,” Eva said softly.
Magda leapt off the bench. She held Samuel high above her, smiled at him, tried to soothe him. He wailed louder, real tears now rolling down his cheeks. “He’s staying with me,” she said, and leaned him against her shoulder, patted his back. “I’m not letting go of him again.”
“I’ll take him,” Eva said, twisting in her seat to look at Magda. “I’ll bring him to safety. I promise.”
“Where?” Magda demanded. “You tell me where, and I’ll think about it.”
Renata slapped the top of the table, stood, and strode to Magda. “Sit down. Just sit down. You will be given information only when it is absolutely necessary. But you have no idea what you are talking about, no idea what it’s going to be like for you, to be one of us. You’ve gone from delivering coupons and bread rolls to becoming a high-profile fugitive. You get no information. None. Or”—she waved a hand around the whole group—“we’re all dead.”
If Magda was ever caught. If they tortured her. That was what Renata was saying. They did not trust her to keep her mouth shut, to withstand the pain, the terror, the threat of death. And they were right about that.
Renata reached for the child. Magda whimpered, felt Aleš’s hands on her shoulders. He pulled her into him and wrapped his arms around her as Renata took Samuel.
“There are quite a few of us now, Magda,” Aleš said. “We’re well organized. You know about the food, the stashes we have left. It’s not much—we can’t risk much. Once, a fight broke out
