Milda frowned. “I’m afraid it’s not good, Audra. They’re not likely to be released. If they’re lucky, then they’ll be sentenced to a prison here in Lithuania.”
Prison? That was if they were lucky? A lump formed in my throat. “And if they’re not?”
“Siberia,” Lukas breathed.
I turned to him. “Where is Siberia?”
“You don’t want to know,” Lukas said.
“Hush!” Milda scolded.
But Lukas didn’t seem to notice Milda’s warning expression. He said, “Siberia is on the far eastern side of Russia. It’s cold on a good day and below living temperatures all other days. Even if you escape the prison, you’ll soon realize the place itself is a prison. There’d be nowhere to go.”
I had to force myself to swallow that thought down, and it landed in a deep pit in my stomach. Siberia sounded so awful, and so far away. I’d never be able to find them, nor would they ever escape, if they even could survive such an awful place. “They might send my parents there?”
Milda put a hand on my shoulder. “At least they’ll be together, to take care of each other. And if you want to stay with me, we can take care of each other too.” I must have nodded at that, because after a brief pause, she added, “If you’d like to stay, then I have an errand for you.”
I groaned, already suspecting what it must be.
Milda led us back into her room full of books and plucked one from the shelf. “Your father promised that the next time he passed this way, he would deliver this book for me. It’s a simple delivery, and I wonder if you might be interested in finishing the job he would have done.”
I shook my head. If she knew what I’d gone through to carry the book here, she never would ask such a question. I said, “He can still deliver it, when he returns. Until then, let me stay until my ankle is healed, and then I’ll find somewhere else to stay. Somewhere … with fewer secrets.”
Milda’s face fell. “Very well. I should not have asked.”
She looked so disappointed, and so did Lukas, that I felt I ought to apologize to them. But for what? Wanting to stay alive, to stay out of Siberia? Wanting to go back to the life I’d known with my family, one that was simple and slow and sheltered? It wasn’t much, but at least what I’d had before was familiar.
And I’d hardly get back to it if I agreed to do what Milda wanted. And for that, I would not apologize.
I slept at Milda’s that night, and for another week while my ankle healed. Every day, people came to the small shop attached to her home to buy butter or honey or whatever excuse they might have invented to visit Milda. Who, by the way, never attended her shop unless she wore a disguise of some sort. Today she wore a head scarf and darkened spectacles, and felt her way around the shop like a blind woman, doing a terrible job at it. She found whatever she needed far too easily and addressed people by name as they passed through her door. I was hardly an expert in disguises, but I was sure I could do better than that.
Nor were the people who entered her shop particularly good at hiding their true purposes for coming. The first time I suspected they made excuses was when a woman had slapped some money onto Milda’s counter with an order for “anything you’re selling today.”
Milda had smiled back. “Can you be more specific?”
More meaningfully, the woman had replied, “Something for my children perhaps. They’re growing up so fast.” Then they’d laughed together. I’d rolled my eyes and groaned. Why didn’t the woman just say, “Sell me an illegal book!”
And that woman wasn’t the only one. Nearly everyone who walked into Milda’s shop came with a hushed request for something from Milda’s book collection. She’d tell the customer to wait, then go into her bedroom and close the door, returning minutes later with a wrapped package that she’d help the customer slide into a sack covered with fabric or bread loaves or whatever might keep the package out of sight.
After one particularly busy day, a rainy day when people should have been better occupied at home than coming out onto the muddy road, Milda poked her head into the kitchen where I was cutting potatoes for a pan of kugelis, one of my favorite foods. “Audra, I’ve gone up and down the ladder so often today, my legs are worn out.”
I had no doubt that she was. It was a new day and a new disguise, so naturally she was experimenting with faking illness. She had applied powder to her face and a little grease beneath her eyes to seem pale and hollow. She’d done a fine job at least—much better than the blindness. Up close, the powder appeared to be an attempt to improve her complexion and the shine of the grease looked like sweat. However, I wondered if all of her trips up and down the ladder were adding to her look of exhaustion too.
Milda added, “Do you mind going downstairs for me?”
My eyes darted. “To get a book?” I hadn’t been down into the secret room since Milda had first shown it to me, and that wasn’t an accident. That room was a reminder of all that I’d lost, and all that I still might lose.
Milda shook her head. “Not a book. This time it’s a newspaper, Varpas. The latest edition.”
“I won’t know where to find it.”
“I keep them in a bin right by the door. Make sure it’s Varpas, though, and not one of the others.”
I sighed but set down the potato and walked to the back of the home, opening the stairs and descending the ladder. I’d never minded being in small, dark places before, but this room felt haunted to me, as if hundreds of spirits lingered here, hoping to find an open book so that they might peruse its pages, for whatever good it might do them. The book I’d carried all the way from home was in here now, lying on its side high on a shelf, mixed in with so many others but somehow still alone, as if it didn’t truly belong in here.
As I truly didn’t belong in here. Not among row after row of books, some of them stacked in front of another row of books, and for all I knew, another row behind that, endlessly burrowed inside this secret cavern of words and pictures. I didn’t know how Milda kept track of them all.
I turned to find the bin with the newspaper she had wanted, but the problem was, she had two bins with different writing on each. I didn’t know which to grab, and I figured since this was supposed to be a secret place, the last thing I ought to do was bring up both newspapers and let the customer pick from them.