“Enough for my son, his wife, and daughter? And my friend Esther?”

“Oh, Mrs. Kantor, I couldn’t,” Esther said. “I just dropped by to say hello.”

Mrs. Kantor shot her a look. “You dropped by when a chicken appeared in the middle of the desert, so to speak.”

Esther laughed. “Well, it would be . . . so nice to just have a taste.”

“You’ll have more than that,” Mrs. Kantor said. “I have the appetite of a mouse. How long should it take, Adelka?”

Adeline thought it through, said, “By sundown? Maybe a bit after?”

“Plan on a bit after,” the old woman said to both Adeline and Esther.

Esther grinned and got up. “I have some chores to finish, but I will come back.”

When Esther had gone, Mrs. Kantor cocked her head at Adeline, said, “Well?”

She startled, having been so caught up in the two women’s banter that she flushed, bowed quickly, and said, “Sorry, Mrs. Kantor. Is there anything you need before I start?”

The old woman’s face softened. “I need a nap, dear. Please, put that book on the shelf in the kitchen. And before you boil the bird, would you run to my son’s house to tell his wife the news?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Adeline said, picking up the book.

“You know where they live?”

“I do.”

“Clever child,” she said, rearranging the blanket in her lap. “Go on, then. Do you have enough wood for the oven?”

“I think so,” she said, and ran back to the kitchen.

She put the book on the shelf before lifting the lid on the box where the wood was kept and saw it was lower than she’d remembered from that morning’s fire.

“I’ll need to get more wood while I’m out, ma’am,” she called, dropping the heavy lid.

The vibration caused the book she’d brought into the kitchen to slide off the shelf and fall to the floor behind her.

Mrs. Kantor called, “Be quick about it!”

“Yes, ma’am!” she called back as she stooped to pick up the book, seeing it was a bound collection of illustrations and paintings, and open to one that depicted a beautiful green valley surrounded by snow-peaked mountains with a river winding through it. Growing up in flat Ukraine, Adeline had never seen such a setting and found it so enchanting, she gazed at it for a long moment.

“Are you going, girl?” Mrs. Kantor cried.

“Right now!” she yelled, slamming the book shut and putting it back on the shelf with a different, heavier book on top of it.

She got her coat and boots back on, the image of the painting still lingering as she ran through the streets to Mrs. Kantor’s son’s house and went to the back door. She found the cook, informed her she had the afternoon and evening off, and then asked her to tell the doctor’s wife that they were all invited to eat with Mrs. Kantor after sundown.

Next, she went to a market area to buy eggs for the noodles, then crossed to where men sold firewood, but they had already left for the day. Adeline went to another spot where she could ordinarily find wood, but there was none to be had.

Glancing at the sun angled toward the western horizon, Adeline was suddenly and desperately aware of time slipping away. Five people coming to dinner at sundown and not enough wood to boil the chicken and simmer the soup.

Adeline imagined Mrs. Kantor getting upset and firing her as she hurried back to the house, feeling frightened, feeling like life was about to slap her down again, steal away something she’d fought so long and hard to have. As she entered the kitchen, that fear was all around her. After years of starvation and hardship, she couldn’t find enough wood to make chicken soup, and now she would be let go.

“Adeline!” Mrs. Kantor called.

“Yes, ma’am,” she said, hearing the quiver in her throat.

“Is my son coming?”

“I believe so,” she said. “I told the cook.”

“All of them?”

“Yes.”

“What about the firewood?”

Adeline felt the fear spiral and ignite again. As it burned stronger, she felt weaker.

“Please,” she whispered, shutting her eyes. “Help me.”

“Adeline?”

She opened her eyes, meaning to tell the old woman the truth and ask for her forgiveness and advice, when she happened to glance at motion in the alley outside the kitchen window. She blinked and then smiled. “I’m getting it just now, ma’am!”

Adeline ran outside and after a young, broad-shouldered man bent over as he walked, an impossible load of firewood on his back.

“Excuse me!” she cried. “Can I buy some of your firewood?”

He did not slow. “No.”

“Oh, please, I have money.”

“It’s already paid for,” he said, walking on. “The baker owns it.”

A wave of dread swept over Adeline, and she cried, “Please, sir, can’t you sell me just a few pieces? I’m going to lose my job if I don’t get some wood for our oven. Please?”

For one horrible moment, she thought he’d keep going, but then he stopped and turned to peer back at her. “Lose your job?”

“I need to boil a chicken,” she said, struggling to regain control of herself.

“You have a chicken?”

“The woman I work for does.”

“She must be quite a woman.”

“Her dead husband was a doctor, and her son is a doctor.”

He thought about that. “Okay.”

“Okay?”

He nodded, lowered the bundle off his back. “The baker won’t know how much I cut.”

Adeline clapped with delight. “Oh, thank you! Thank you!”

The young man stood there a moment, watching her. Ever so slowly his weary expression broke, and a smile overtook his face. “How much do you want?”

“Four big pieces, please. Oh, you’re so kind.”

He untied his bundle, got four stout pieces for her.

“You’ve rescued me,” she said, handing him the money. “Thank you forever!”

He took it and said, “If I knew firewood would make a beautiful young lady like you this happy, I would have bought an ax a long time ago.”

He was grimy from work and stank of it, too, but she liked the way he smiled and the way he looked at her, as if he really saw her. She realized she liked his smile and eyes so much, it embarrassed her, made her blush, and she looked down.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I shouldn’t have said that.”

“No,” she said, still looking down, but smiling. “It was nice and funny. Thank you, but I have to boil the chicken and start the egg noodles.”

“What’s your name?”

She hesitated. “Adeline. Adeline Losing.”

He smiled again. “That’s a pretty name. I’m Emil Martel.”

PART TWO:

THE PURE BLOODS

Chapter Eight

When Emil awoke in the dark on the third full day of their exodus, a thick warm fog had rolled in, blanketing the land. He fed and cared for his horses by lantern light, rubbing more salve into their lash wounds. Though he could not see thirty meters in any direction or hear anything like a big engine, he felt anxious, like tanks or planes with machine guns could burst out of the fog at any moment.

His instincts proved correct. He’d no sooner gotten Oden and Thor back in their traces than whistles began to blow in the fog. That German voice came over a bullhorn, warning that Soviet forces were close and moving their way. The caravan would roll in fifteen minutes.

“The boys haven’t eaten,” Adeline called from beneath the bonnet.

“They’ll eat as we ride. We all will.”

She nodded. “I’ll get everything tied down except for dry food and water.”

As Adeline turned away, Emil smiled at her the way he’d smiled the first time he met her, out in the alley behind Mrs. Kantor’s house, desperate for firewood for her chicken soup. From the very beginning, she’d made him feel needed in almost every way.

Maybe that’s all I really need in life, he thought. Adeline’s love. My boys’ love.

When the wagons began to move in the warm fog, there was the predictable chaos made worse by the mud that soon caked the horses’ underbellies and flanks and spotted the lash wounds on their haunches. It coated the spokes, wheel rims, and axles as well.

For the next few hours, it seemed as if the trek were a ghostly, segmented, snakelike creature, appearing and disappearing in the fog, sliding and twisting in the muck. In the slick, near-blind conditions, wagons began to drift, crash, and overturn. It took all of Emil’s skills to keep their wagon and horses moving forward.

Twice that morning they encountered wagons buried up to their axles in the mud.

One of them was Emil’s parents’ wagon, so he’d pulled over and helped get them unstuck and rolling again. His mother, Karoline, was more civil than usual. His father, Johann, seemed unbothered by the foul conditions. Rese had been unable to leave her bed since Dubossary.

“She sleeps and can’t keep anything down for long,” Karoline said.

“I’ll make something for her stomach when we stop tonight,” Adeline said.