Magda brushed off her hands and scrambled back up to the road. It was time to search for food. It was how she spent most of her days. Food and clothing were the priority, but she would not go back into that town. She would have to find somewhere else to raid for provisions.
Stealing from the locals, Aleš had tried to convince her, was a necessity, not a crime. He reminded her that those who collaborated with the Germans were warm inside their homes. With winter coming, Aleš warned Magda that she did not have the luxury of principles.
North of the river, a hamlet was nestled at the bottom of a dale not unlike any of the hundreds of others in Bohemia, not unlike Voštiny or Lidice. The undulating hilly fields, the serene lake, and the enormous stork nests on the roofs and chimneys were all alike. This hamlet even a little creek that ran beneath a willow tree just like on her great-aunt’s property. Magda squeezed her eyes shut. The pain—the not knowing whether her family had survived the massacre of Lidice—had not eased. The loneliness, the isolation, and the constant danger added to her misery.
In the hamlet before her, smoke rose from the chimney of only two of the four houses—the one nearest to her and the last one. What did that mean? That only two families remained? Where were the other two then? Magda edged her way to the house nearest to the forest, her teeth chattering as the mist continued to fall, soaking her headscarf. Droplets rolled from her loose collar down the back of her neck.
It was past milking time, and the families were having breakfast. She would have to wait until they led their cows and goats out to the pastures. She checked the grass. Yes, it was still long enough, still green enough, and maybe a week to go before the animals would be locked up in their stables for the winter. But today they would put the livestock out. Her stomach grumbled, though hunger had become a constant companion. Magda could see that her calves and her thighs were losing their shape. Her waist had diminished as well. The idea of being hurt by Jana’s jokes about growing too plump seemed utterly ridiculous these days.
The clothes she wore were not hers and her dress was too large, but it had been the easiest one to pluck from the clothesline in yet another nameless village. The coat she had taken from the foyer of a school gymnasium during a tournament—snatched it just like that—must have belonged to someone large. She had grabbed it without thinking and draped it over herself as if it belonged to her, only to discover that the sleeves were many inches too long. She’d quickly rolled them up, hitched the middle into her waistband, and marched out of the building. That had been at the end of summer, and now both items were too light for the coming winter.
The wooden door of the first house scraped open, and a woman wearing a dark-green shawl over her head came out with a bucket and a small dish. She placed them both by the door. Two small children followed her, a little girl and an older boy. They went to the barn next to the house.
The smell of woodsmoke reached Magda as she crept nearer. The woman spoke to the children as they entered the barn, but Magda could not make out her words. Hay rustled inside, and a cow bellowed. Then the boy appeared again, picked up the pitchfork that leaned against the barn, and went back inside. The woman led a black-and-white cow out of the barn. It did not look healthy with its protruding ribs and limping gait. Its hindquarters were raw and scabbed beneath the matted hide. The woman pulled on the rope tied to the cow’s horns, and the little girl followed her mother—if it was her mother—out into the field. The boy pitched hay out from the other side of the barn. With just one cow to clean up after, he would not be busy for long.
Making sure that nobody else was about, Magda sprinted out from her hiding place, through the picket fence, and to the open door of the cottage. She looked down at the bucket and the dish the woman had lain in front of the door. Magda snatched a small piece of soap from the dish and put it into her pocket before going inside.
The fire in the oven was down to embers, and it was warm. Flies whirled over the empty breakfast plates on a roughly hewn table. One fly bumped and buzzed angrily against a windowpane above a bed. Magda grabbed a crumb of bread off the table—how dare anyone leave that behind?—and tipped each of the three cups to her lips, getting the last drops of milk. A pot on top of the clay oven contained a layer of buttermilk skin along the sides, but her eyes landed on the shape of a bread loaf beneath a clean cloth. She stuffed the pockets of her overcoat with that, tore off a piece, and cleaned the pot of buttermilk with it. She shoved the whole chunk into her mouth.
No extra clothes were lying about, but Magda would need a warmer cover for her bed. She yanked a blanket off a bed in the front room.
A hollow step.
Magda whirled around. The cover slipped from her hands and onto the floor. The boy stood before the doorway in his dingy gray tunic. They stared at one another. He was no older than seven, but by the look of concession, she knew this had happened to him before.
Magda strode past him. He did not move. She sprinted back into the woods. If he had not been seven,
