Page 86 of These Immortal Truths
She faces the bonfire. It’s grown so high, she can feel the warmth of it on her face despite being on the outskirts of the crowd. Flames lick up at the night sky, smoke rising like a storm to blot out the stars. When she turns back, she can see the burning reflection in his eyes. “Let me.”
People start disappearing.
Men and women from Berlin’s once thriving gay community are arrested and sent away to labor camps. Those that dare to speak out against the regime follow. The ‘Law for the Prevention of Hereditarily Diseased Offspring’ has seen asylums and specialized schools, nursing homes and prisons, put under a microscope. They round up anyone with conditions ranging from epilepsy to alcoholism and subject them to forced sterilization. The thousands of black men and women living in the country suffer the same fate, all in the name of racial purity.
By September of 1935, Jews, Roma, and people of color are stripped of their citizenship and banned from flying the German flag. By October, the regime has declared passports invalid for German Jews—forcing them to submit for a new passport marked with the letter “J”.
Her Jewish neighbors begin to dwindle, seeing the same warning signs she does. Most of them stay, convinced that the Nazi party can’t hold power for long. That their lives, and their country, is sure to return to normal. Anna hopes they’re right, but can’t shake the fear of what it will mean if they’re wrong.
So Anna waits. She does what she can to support the neighbors who have lost their businesses, steers those struggling to attain passports and visas to the same counterfeiter who made hers. When they don’t have the money to pay his fees, she suggests they go to Shanghai—one of the few places without a visa requirement to enter.
Then, in November of 1938, the Nazi regime enforces the program of Kristallnacht—The Night of Broken Glass. Families flee, the hopes of a better tomorrow shattered and strewn in the dirty streets with the remains of their livelihoods. Anna flees with them. Watching in horror as the numbers of refugees surge … and the world’s nations do nothing to save them.
They shouldn’t be there.
She doesn’t have Silas’ magic to tell her when and where to go; can’t travel Eira’s paths. In this, she is on her own. That didn’t scare her before. For three years, she has relied on nothing but her own knowledge and instincts as she helped refugees slip over Switzerland’s borders. For three years, those alone have been enough.
Tonight, it isn’t.
Gloved hands throw her to the ground, the snow and ice stinging her eyes. The cold seeps into her bones like a slap. Anna can hear the two other soldiers shouting over the storm—searching for the others. They won’t find them. Not today. Not inthis.
They shouldn’t be here.
They never come this far out on patrol when the weather is this poor. It’s just bad luck, that the hour they crossed would align with the travel of three nazi soldiers foolish enough to drive in a blizzard.
The soldier hovers over her, gun drawn, shouting in German the same words over and over.Where are they?She knows they’re already too far ahead to be found. Anna just about guaranteed their chances when she doubled back. By the time the soldiers think to expand the search farther from where they found her, they’ll be too far gone.
Death may still come for them. They could freeze in the night, could miss her subtle markers and lose themselves in the wilderness. Perhaps they will never make it to the Swiss border, but Anna can be at peace knowing that she did everything she could to give them the best chances.
“Stand!” he orders.
Anna obeys, knees weak with cold.
The soldier’s gaze travels over her appraisingly—lingering on her feet. “The shoes. Take them off. The coat and gloves, too.”
Anna bites her tongue, bending to unlace her leather boots. Hergloved fingers make slow work of it. Slow enough that her captor curses and demands she move more quickly.
With only her clothing underneath, the cold bites. His icy blue eyes scan over her once more, looking for anything else worth taking. She can tell by the curl of his lip he’s disappointed. Everything else is tattered; better for rags than for clothing. Everything except—
He flicks the barrel of the pistol toward her feet. “The socks.”
Anna grits her teeth, peels the double-layered wool socks off her feet and adds them to the pile. The snow crunches beneath her bare feet, so cold it burns. When she straightens, she grits her teeth against the chattering and meets his eyes defiantly. The soldier cocks the trigger back.
Anna knows what comes next.
She doesn’t fear the pain, but she fears what could come after. She has heard the stories. The refugees have shared them over the fire. What ways would they try to tear her apart, when they shoot her and she doesn’t bleed. Doesn’t die.
She sucks in a breath, the air freezing in her lungs, and braces herself.
An arm wraps around her middle, heat at her back and an arm gilded in magic outstretched. Anna watches, time stretching into a breath of a moment, as the gun fires—
And the officer drops, the bullet meant for her between his brow.
The world shifts beneath her feet, a whirl of colors spinning, the universe as she knows it folding in on itself. She closes her eyes, chokes on a silent, terrified scream because there is nothing, nothing, nothing. No air, no breath, no light, no dark.
Then it’s over. The sound of the universe stretching and pulling replaced with crashing waves, the feel of nothing replaced with shifting sand beneath her bare feet. The arm around her waist releases her, and she folds—knees and hands burying themselves in the coarse sand as she heaves. Her stomach contracts painfully, there is nothing but bile for her to lose. She ran out of food days ago.
She wipes her mouth with the back of a shaky hand, sand scratching at her skin, and finds the energy to turn her head to lookat him. He’s sitting, forearms braced on his folded knees and his eyes narrowed on the horizon. “Thank you,” she croaks.
