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Vera kisses them both one last time and stands

Across the rooaze It is all there, in their eyes—the good-bye, the proood-bye Vera knows she should hug her mother, but if she does that she’ll cry, and she cannot cry in front of her children, so she instead grabs a heavy winter coat off the hook by the door and slings it over her shoulder In no tiether in the back of a transport truck, surrounded by dozens of other young women; many of them are dressed in flowery summer skirts with sandals on their feet In other ti off to camp, maybe to the Urals or the Black Sea, but no one would make that

When they reach the Luga line, there are people—girls and wo the massive trenches and fortifications that will stop the ene at the dirt with pickaxes and shovels, these women are exhausted; their faces are streaked with sweat and dirt and their dresses are ruined But they are Russians—Soviets—and no one dares to pause or co Vera stands in the sunlight, with the forest only a few miles ahile a comrade tells her what to do

Olga moves in close to her, takes her hand They listen like soldiers and look like children, though they do not know this It is their last hts After that, they take up pickaxes and trudge to the line, where the ground has been chewed up already Dropping into the trench, they becoirls and women and old men who hack at the earth until their hands blister and bleed, until they cough up blood and cry black tears Day after day, they dig

At night, they huddle in a barn with the other girls, who look as dazed and tired and dirty as Vera feels The whole place smells of dust and mud and sweat and smoke

On their seventh night, Vera finds a quiet corner in the barn where they stay at night and builds a s, these fla a cup of water for her sister, handing it to her The watery cabbage soup they had for dinner has long ago given way to hunger, but there is nothing to be done about that

Beside theainst the bales of hay, looking at her dirty fingernails as if she’s never seen her own hands before Her fleshy, dirty face is unfa in her eyes

“Look atdown her cup of water “I’ ”

She says it with a kind of confused wonder, as if the pain is not hers, nor really even the blood

Vera takes her sister’s hand, sees the matted blood and broken blisters on her palm “You have to keep your hands wrapped I told you this ”

“They atching a says quietly “Comrades Slotkov and Pritkin I know they know about Papa I could not stop to adjust the wraps ”

Vera frowns She has heard this fronizes that soa does not irls die around thea spent half the day deafened by a bomb that landed too close

Outside, the alarm blares The sound of aircraft is a faraway drone at first, not unlike the murmur of a distant bee at a summer picnic But the sound builds, and fear in the barn becomes palpable Girls o

Boh the slats in the barn siding Soritty Vera’s eyes sting

Olga flinches but doesn’t insoff the dead, blistered skin Blood bubbles up from her wounds