I wanted to argue with him – nobody could keep me safe from Stalin if he wanted me back – but I could also see the sense in his words. Even if I was caught, I could not return to the world I had grown up in. Joachim’s ghost would haunt my memories. And Olga, my Olga, was gone. I allowed my arm to relax a little and felt the slightest bit of pressure of his fingers as he squeezed them and looked back at my hand, as if he was studying it. His breath caressed my palm.
A long moment passed.
‘What are you doing?’ I said, growing uncomfortable and trying without success to pull my hand away.
Jakob smiled again. ‘My grandmother would tell fortunes on New Year’s Eve. Don’t you want to know what yours says?’ Reaching into his pocket, he drew out a handkerchief, which he swiftly knotted over the wound.
‘Are you saying that Estonians are as superstitious as Russians?’
‘So it would seem.’ He released my hand. ‘My grandmother called it “luck pouring”. We’d use an old bucket and a molten tin. Papa would throw a ladleful of the melted tin into cold water and grandmother would read the shape.’
I leaned my head on my knee and watched the flames dance. I was so tired, but so afraid that if I slept, my dreams would be full of blood and death and screams. ‘What did she see for you?’ I asked.
‘Always the same thing,’ Jakob said, staring at the fire. I waited. ‘Well?’ he said. ‘Aren’t you going to guess?’
I shook my head. ‘I don’t know. A gun?’
Jakob smiled. ‘No. A stork.’
Goosebumps spread across my skin. ‘A bird is a bad omen in Russia,’ I said. ‘If it taps three times on your window, death is near.’
‘A stork, though?’ Jakob lifted a handful of dirt and scattered it towards the fire, sending little sparks dancing into the sky.
‘I don’t know about storks. I’ve never seen one.’
‘Here they are symbols of hope and fertility. Children.’ He raised his eyebrows. ‘They are good parents, storks,’ he continued. ‘Both of them. They like to nest on power poles and in rooftops. The women in the knitting circle – my Aunt Juudit and Kati, Grandmother, the others – they had a lace pattern called Stork Stitch, like birds’ feet. The Scandis even think there was a stork present at the crucifixion; that it called out as Christ was dying.’ He cupped his hands around his mouth. ‘Stryket! Stryket! Have strength!’
Some of the Forest Brothers on the other side of the fire looked around, wondering at the sound.
‘Hush!’ I said, not wanting to draw attention, but Jakob just chuckled and they turned away.
‘I hope to have children one day,’ he said after another moment had passed.
I made a sound in my throat, incredulous. ‘After everything you have seen, everything you have been through these past few days? How can you say that?’
Jakob shrugged. ‘It changes nothing.’
‘Are you crazy? It changes everything.’ I thought of my mother, taking her own life as I slept in the room down the hall. I thought of her face in the glossy coffin, the terror of realising she was truly gone and would never return. The memory cut deep into my heart. ‘It’s a foolish statement. To have children… and then abandon them to fate. It is…’ I struggled to find the right words. ‘It is reckless and selfish.’
Jakob did not seem troubled by my reaction. His face remained as calm as ever. ‘I won’t let what has happened alter those parts of my future, Lydia. You should not let it change yours.’
I shook my head at him.
‘We have a saying. Perhaps your mother didn’t teach it to you. Igaüks on oma õnne sepp, Lydia,’ he said. ‘Everyone is the smith of his – or her – own happiness.’
‘Jakob.’ He turned. A Forest Brother stood behind us, holding out a tin mug. His face was familiar; I realised with a jolt he was the bandit I had seen during the raid on the train station, the one they had called Kalev. I recalled how different he had seemed to his companions, the way they had looked to him for leadership. The confident way he had spoken and the compassion he had shown in returning the ring to the woman when he might easily have ignored her troubles. His eyes were cold. It was as if the heat from the fire could not reach them. He made a gesture with his hand, shaking the mug for Jakob to take. Jakob hesitated, then took it.
‘Vodka. For courage,’ the other man said roughly. ‘Jaak retrieved it earlier from a fallen soldier.’
‘Aitäh,’ Jakob said. ‘Thank you.’ Kalev moved away to join his comrades. Jakob tilted the mug, looking into its depths, then raised it to his lips and swallowed. Wiping his mouth with his hand, he held it out to me. There was plenty left. The sharp scent made my stomach contract but I gulped it down anyway.
Heat spread through my body. I settled down onto the ground, not caring how it must look. Pine needles tickled my cheek. The stars spun above me, laced by dark leaves.
‘Why do you need courage?’ I asked. I held out the mug and Jakob reached for it. The tips of our fingers met.
‘We are going out again tonight,’ Jakob said, downing the last bit of the vodka. ‘There are Russian patrols at the forest’s edge. Oskar – that is, Kalev – wants to draw them away from the camps and meeting points. Distract them so the refugees can find their way to us.’
I swallowed, the sour taste of the vodka lingering in my throat. The flames of the bonfire merged and mingled, first arctic blue then red then bright orange like a Catherine wheel. Sleep blurred the edges of my vision.
‘Aren’t you afraid?’ I mumbled.
‘I’m more afraid of doing nothing. I don’t think my parents should have died just so I could give up and surrender. I don’t think Aunt Juudit would be proud of me if I just slunk away like a dog with its tail between its legs. And my grandmother; she would not want us to leave. This was her home. This was where she raised her children and knitted her shawls. These trees, this earth. These forests and lakes. Even if we cannot live in cities, we will live here. Where else would we go?’
I tried to mumble something else – good luck, perhaps – but I was already half-dreaming, my mind weaving images together. I saw a young woman in a lace shawl sitting beside the hearth, holding a nursing infant to her breast, comforting and rocking him before the fire while outside a great stork landed in the yard and shook off its feathers. They floated like snow onto the ground, leaving the stork’s pink flesh exposed. The stork straightened up and he was a man, plucked clean, his face like Jakob’s, shining with hope. Lifting the infant, the woman ran out to greet him. They kissed and then turned to walk inside, his hand cradled around the head of his infant son.
Something soft drifted over my shoulder. Feathers? Snow? But it was summer.
A blanket. I felt the rough edge of it brush my cheek. A voice whispered in my ear, a spell to banish nightmares.
I slept and my dreams were blank.
Ash Pattern
Kati
‘Give me Leelo, Kati.’ Jakob’s voice was impatient.
I stared down at the infant’s tiny face. A whisper of golden hair clung to her scalp. Her eyes were closed. She grunted in her sleep, disturbed by some nameless dream. I stroked my thumb against her soft skin and she yawned, stirred, then settled back into my arms, a look of deep contentment spread across her face.
Only six days old and she was already disproving everything my mother had warned me about babies; that they screamed all day and all night, that you could not get anything done for watching them. Leelo was a perfect baby. She slept regularly, only waking to be fed and changed. She hardly ever grumbled, happy to be carried about in a sling made from a woollen blanket as we went about the camp doing what was required to keep everything running smoothly, her blue eyes fixed on the clouds that raced overhead. Even now, pressed against my chest while I sat with my brother and Lydia and Etti on a grassy tussock near the edge of camp, she was happy to doze, letting our conversation wash over her while she slept. A length of wire was strung between the trees on which clothes snapped in the breeze, the cotton shirts billowing like clouds.