When she looked back up at him, his pale blue eyes were deep wells of despair. “It is not something to be mentioned. I wish I had more to give you.”
She glanced at the remnant of his hunk of bread, lying by the side of the road, half eaten. He followed her eyes and then met her gaze, guilt with an edge of annoyance etched in the creases of his face. “I’m hungry, too, you see.”
He looked perfectly well-fed, and though she appreciated his kindness with the chocolate, she saw it now for what it was: a way for him to sleep at night, to pretend to himself he’d made a difference. “I’m sorry to ask again, sir,” she said, coating her words with honey so he wouldn’t hear the venom or the sadness. “But might I pass? I just need to feed my child.”
He frowned down at her. “You have money this time? For the milk?”
She hesitated. “A bit.”
He licked his lips, catching the crumbs. For a moment, she thought he was going to demand that she produce the cash, which of course she couldn’t do, because there was none. Instead, he merely nodded and stepped aside. “I’ll see you when you come back this way.”
She nodded. “I might be a while. You see, I don’t have much, and I will need to bargain with the farmers.”
He nodded and raised his eyebrows, his mouth twisting into a knowing smirk. He looked her up and down, appraising her, no doubt wondering what else she might have to trade. She hated him for the implication.
“I see,” he said, now openly leering at her.
She forced a blank smile. “I’ll see you in a few hours.”
“I’ll be waiting.” His step was jauntier now as he turned his back on her and returned to his bread.
She walked for a half hour, just to make sure she wasn’t being followed, before finally approaching the white farmhouse with the red shutters, silent on the far edge of town. There was a dog in the yard, skin and bones, which was probably the only reason he hadn’t yet been killed for meat. He lifted his head as Yona approached, his eyes watery and baleful. She pulled her gaze away and knocked lightly on the front door.
There was no answer, so she knocked again, more loudly this time. Perhaps Maja was merely being cautious, but when Yona peered in the window, the room inside looked still, untouched, particles of dust dancing in the stale air. She swallowed the fear rising in her throat and backed away, heading for the barn and the trapdoor in its floor.
Yona was running by the time she reached the rambling structure on the edge of the property, and as she slipped in, she was terrified that she’d see Maja and Anka splayed out on the hay, a mirror of the scene at the church. But as her eyes adjusted to the darkness, she breathed a sigh of relief. There were no bodies, no blood, no tinny smell in the air. There was only silence.
Quickly, she went from stall to stall, pushing aside hay in the deserted spaces until she found a small square in the barn floor. It was the trapdoor. She used the edge of a shovel to pry it open before sweeping over her tracks in the sawdust so if anyone else came looking, they wouldn’t be able to follow her footprints. She lowered herself into the hole and pulled the door closed above her, plunging the space into blackness.
She felt her way along the wall in silence, walking in the pitch dark. She had assumed that the trapdoor led to a hidden room, but instead, it seemed to be a narrow tunnel that went on and on. Her tension rose as she walked farther along without the benefit of sight. Where was this invisible path taking her?
She was just about to turn back when she stumbled against something heavy and warm.
“Oof,” said a high voice in the silence, and Yona began to back away.
“Who’s there?” came a more confident voice, and in the blackness, a match flared, illuminating the shining, defiant face of Maja Yarashuk, who was standing protectively over a crouching Anka. The child was who Yona must have run into. She seemed to recognize Yona at the same moment Yona recognized her, and they both sighed in relief. “What are you doing here?” Maja asked. She reached into her pocket and pulled out a piece of pine bark, which she lit. In a few seconds, it was bright enough to see down the length of the tunnel, which seemed to dead-end several hundred yards away. “You should not have come.”
She glanced down at Anka, who was watching her with bright, frightened eyes. There was no need for the girl to know what had befallen the nuns, so Yona stepped closer to Maja and quickly whispered their fate. “I needed to warn you,” she concluded, and Maja nodded once, then looked down at Anka with concern.