The thing Rozaliya hated most about being Erina's navigator was she could never see the ground beneath them, as Erina flew their wood and canvas biplane perfectly parallel to the ground. It made her job nearly impossible and left her feeling superfluous.

On top of that, Erina didn't appreciate Rozaliya's humming to pass the time.

"Would you cease that infernal claptrap?" Erina sputtered over the wind whistling through the biplane's wings.

"It isn't claptrap. I am serenading you with a wonderful waltz. I thought it apropos, as we are to bomb the composer's countrymen."

Erina's tone grew sharp. "If your wonderful composer was alive today, would he be saluting us or Der Fuhrer?" Erina made the German words sound wretched, like curses upon the earth and all who dwelt there.

Rozaliya frowned. She didn't want to argue with Erina. Erina was one of the best pilots in the 46th, and she'd never failed to return them home without a scratch on them or their plane. Hoping to divert her pilot's attention, she asked, "We should nearly be to our target, should we not?"

A sharp tapping came from the cockpit, followed by Erina clearing her throat. "Er, the clock has stopped. I thought we fixed it."

"Nothing in this hunk of junk stays fixed for long." A glint of light off the starboard wings drew her attention. "Did Olga send more than just us?"

"She said only one plane for this mission."

Rozaliya watched for what could only be another plane, but the cloud cover was increasing. "Fly faster," she murmured, too softly for Erina to hear.

Normally, her magic had no effect on machinery. Nonetheless, she felt a tingle in her fingertips, and their plane sped up.

The burst of speed would have been to their advantage if she hadn't noticed the other plane too late. It emerged from a cloudbank and released a hail of bullets into the side of their rickety plane. No bullets hit Rozaliya, and that Erina did not cry out suggested either the pilot had also not been hit, or the bullets aimed toward her had killed her instantly.

Regardless, the plane was going down.

 

~

 

Rozaliya crawled from the wreckage as soon as the plane had finished digging a long, wide furrow through the German countryside. Her arms and legs collapsed beneath her, and she crumpled to the ground, the earthy loam filling her senses. Beneath her fingers, the soil felt as it did in the Motherland, but they had crossed the border some time before. The earth still comforted her, and she let herself slip toward unconsciousness.

Erina.

Rozaliya jolted from her torpor and looked around. The landscape swam before her eyes, blurring the brown of the earth with the brown of their plane, with the brown of Erina's hair, jacket, and cap. Rozaliya reached toward what she thought was Erina, but her fingers touched nothing.

She awoke to men's voices, speaking German. She lay still on the ground, now cold beneath her body, and peered out from behind slit eyelids.

"This one's still breathing," one of the voices reported from somewhere in the distance. They must be talking about Erina, not her.

"Good, we'll take her in." The second voice had a hard edge to it. "What about the other?"

Rozaliya gulped in a breath, remained curled up and unmoving, her face turned toward the earth. Let the dirt fill her nostrils, if she must. Anything to convince them she no longer lived.

Something jabbed at her side, but she lay as though she were little more than a log on the ground.

"This one's not moving," a third voice said. Young, not skilled enough yet to notice that she breathed through her nose and tried not to shiver.

"Then there is no sense in dragging her corpse back to camp. Let it rot here with this contraption the Russians seem to think is a plane."

Rozaliya allowed her eyelids to open just a fraction more, so she could see these men and which direction they were taking Erina. She wanted to shoot them, but Erina always made her leave her pistol in her bunk.

One of the German soldiers tossed Erina over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes. There was a kübelwagen nearby, still running, that Rozaliya had slept through arriving. The officer, wearing a heavier coat and looking better groomed than the two soldiers, took Erina, placed her in the front seat of the kübelwagen, and smoothed a curl away from her face.

"A pretty one, eh?" He was the sharp-voiced man, and his laughter matched. The others joined in, but it was the officer's laughter that chilled Rozaliya's bones.

He turned toward Rozaliya, and she feared she must have whimpered against her will. He shook his head. "We'll have to come back and burn this thing once we've gotten her back to camp."

Rozaliya committed his face to memory. She'd be long gone before he returned, but that didn't mean she wouldn't find him again.

...Continue Reading