My eyes trail over the flower that Luda stenciled on the side of her plane. She touched it up just a few hours ago, as she did each time she knew she was going to fly. This time she used the navigation pencil, though typically she used whatever was on hand so long as it was dark-colored and would stick to the stretched canvas of the plane.
Magic tingles like lightning in my fingertips as I reach out to touch the little symbol. Every time Luda touched up the flower, I touched up the protection. It isn’t much—I can’t afford to use much magic, not where anyone could see. Many of the women would likely accept my skills, but it would only take a few—whether devout Church-goers or devout Communists—to make life difficult.
And we didn’t want to make life difficult. We just wanted to help. Luda wanted to fly, to rain down death from the skies on these people who were trying to take our home, and I… I wanted to make sure our night-birds made it home. I wanted to give just a little bit of extra cover, a little bit of extra speed. Just enough to try to bring Luda back each night, so she could smile at me as I moved to work on the plane that she flew so well.
“When the war’s over…” The words trail off to nothingness, because what do I say? What do I offer?
Nothing. I should offer nothing.
I should let old dreams die, because they were gone long before this night. We knew when the Nazis rose to power a decade ago that we would not take our planned trip to Berlin. We would not walk down streets where our holding hands and kissing would be fine—where the fact that we were Russian would be more dangerous than the fact that we were two women in love. When the Nazis burned Hirschfeld’s library, we knew it was the end of an era that was never truly allowed to begin.
“You were so certain of what we needed to do.” I allow my whole hand to press against the canvas of the plane. “Even when you lost your toe to frostbite…”
I shouldn’t keep speaking. I know it on a fundamental level. I don’t want to keep her trapped here. I don’t want my power to seep out and form a tether that shouldn’t exist.
“I’ll miss you.” That is allowed. Grief is always allowed, because it can’t be stopped. “For the rest of my life, I will miss you. Until we meet again, Luda.”
I reach into the plane, running my finger through the red ice crystals gathered there. They begin to melt on my fingertip, numbing me even as they become something useful.
I dab my finger gently against the flower, adding the tiniest splash of color and pushing with my will.
The basic protection I did is good. It brought the plane back. It brought Mischa home, cold and shaking but alive. It brought Luda’s body home, so at least I will have something to bury—a funeral to stand at, a community to grieve with.
I will make the protection better this time.
Blood magic is always dangerous. It pulls from the transition between life and death, from the fierce desire most living beings have to continue on. To keep fighting, to keep dragging ourselves along, no matter how painful it is, because so long as you’re living there’s a chance.
There’s hope.
Blood given in a willing sacrifice is much less dangerous, and though I didn’t ask her, I think this counts.
The flower on the plane shimmers, stretches, and grows. Thorns reach out, an impenetrable briar stretching away from the original image for a hand’s span on either side. And from that briar… a rose emerges, the petals a deep and drowning red even in the artificial light I am using to inspect the plane.
I feel a hand against mine, there and then gone. It could have been the wind. It could have been the wind, but I know better.
Or perhaps I only wish it to be so.
“Nadya!” My commander calls to me, her voice strong despite the tired undercurrent. “Will she still be able to fly?”
“Of course.” I grab my cane from where it rests against the side of the plane and begin walking towards my commander. “I’ll be able to have her in the air tomorrow night.”
“Good.” Irina’s eyes search my face, and for a moment the commander’s facade gives way to the concern of a friend. “Are you all right?”
“No. But I have no choice but to be, so I will be.” I try to smile at her, though I fear I don’t succeed.
Her hand claps against my shoulder, an attempt at comfort that I appreciate even if it doesn’t work.
The dawn is turning the sky pink and red as I step off the airfield and into the relative warmth of our garage. I will fix Luda’s plane, and I will help my fellow engineers check the rest, and I will improve the protections on all the planes as best I can before we send more women up into the cold.
Somewhere in there I will grieve, because even with a war to win, the heart demands its due. Without paying that debt, we all become nothing more than hungry ghosts.
And hungry ghosts don’t get to bask in the light of dawn—the dawn that is always coming, no matter how far away it seems.
JAMIE PERRAULT 