“You remember,” her mother said, releasing her, “how you once asked me why you are the youngest?”
“Because you finally had a girl, you said.”
“Yes, and because there is bad luck in even numbers. I needed a third child so that nothing bad would ever happen to any of you.”
Except bad things did happen, many bad things, and all before Christmas. The first was the loss of the farm. The second was having to relocate to Lidice, to Magda’s great-aunt’s village, a village—as one neighbor said—was hardly a blip on the Nazi’s radars. Then Grandfather fell ill, and soon after Magda’s brothers were conscripted.
In December, with so many mouths to feed and too few resources, Magda walked all the way to Litoměřice, leaving her loved ones behind.
“Go to town,” her great-aunt had said. “There are no Czechs left. No Slovaks. They’ve all fled eastwards. You’ll find work in service to someone.”
Magda first took the narrow road to the cathedral of St. Stephen, where she lit a candle, went to confession, and prayed for her soul. Afterwards, she stopped at the bench near the fountain in the square and stared at the flags hanging on each side of the town hall. A Christmas tree was lit up in the center. A troop of teenaged boys and girls, with brown or white blouses beneath their coats, came out of a school building, with clipboards and sheets. Magda remembered the youth who had come to their farm, a list of her family’s items on such clipboards. They had come to conduct inventory of the necessities Hitler required for those moving into his Lebensraum.
Magda rose from the bench then, an idea in her mind. There was a woman at a bakery she remembered from the days she and her parents had come to market, a woman many people respected. When Magda found the bakery, she was relieved. The woman remembered her from the market days and gave her instructions to a villa on the town’s outskirts.
“A respectable family,” the baker assured.
Magda thanked her and headed for the door, when a second woman tugged on Magda’s coat sleeve.
“I wouldn’t bother if I were you,” she hissed into Magda’s ear. “The Taubers are—”
“Uršula!” The baker’s voice was sharp and shrill. “They’re Sudeten Germans, just like you. You let the girl go now.” To Magda, the baker nodded. “Go to the villa I told you, and ask for Renata. Tell her I sent you.”
Uncertainty plagued Magda all the way up the steep road to Villa Liška. It lay a half hour outside of town near the top of Radobýl Mountain. If they turned her away, she would have nowhere else to go before it got dark.
She passed the sign for the mines and then came to a crest on the hill. To her right was a granary and a stable, with a wide, snowy plain stretching to the squat mountains on the horizon. The sun was setting before her, and the sky was a cold December pink.
To her left was an iron gate and an elegant Gothic mansion with two and a half stories and a red tile roof with two chimneys. The facade was a cheery yellow limestone with brick red accents. She quickly realized this gate was for the service road inside the compound. It connected to a road directly along the north side of the house. If the third chimney was any indication, the door with the lead-pane windows likely led to the kitchen.
The service road continued along the east side of the house, where Magda spotted a carriage house to the left and then the ridge. That meant the Taubers had a view of the Elbe and Ohre Rivers from there. Some of the bushes or hedges—roses, maybe?—had been covered by burlap.
Lights streamed from the center windows of the house and onto a raised terrace. The windows were high and arched, like church windows, and when Magda looked closer, it looked as if the house had been built onto an old chapel.
She smiled and checked the latch on the gate. It lifted and she was inside. She followed the service road just a little ways toward the back, stopping just before the windows. The left of the road was lined by cedar trees, and she gasped when she peered between them. Four deer blinked back at her from behind a fence. The Taubers had a deer park!
When she clicked her tongue at them, they spun and leapt off into the deeper part of the woods. Backing away, Magda went to the service door and was about to knock but she decided to peek around the corner to see the front of the house. The main gate led to a circular drive with a fountain in the middle of it. Two sturdy oaks stood guard on either end of the house.
Magda balled her right hand and tucked her thumb inside. She really, really hoped the Taubers would take her. She would do anything to stay here. To make sure, she doubled her luck and balled the other fist, then knocked on the servants’ entrance. When the door flew open, she nearly fell backward.
A giant of a woman—broad shouldered, big boned, and with a mop of dark curly hair—held a dust broom like a sabre in her hand. She looked Magda up and down before saying in Slovakian, “Well, well. Look what the cat dragged in. At least you’re not one of them. What do you want?”
Magda automatically tugged at the edge of her scarf to hide her left cheek. She shuffled her muddy shoes, and pulled at the ill-fitting skirt that had bunched up beneath her coat. The warm smell of mutton and vegetables wafted out from behind the Viking woman.
Another woman appeared—shorter,
