MARIANNE CAME FROM THE BORDER with brambles threaded through her hair. It was hot, with the white sun beating down on the hillsides. She was exhausted and looking forward to sleeping in her own bed after weeks in the woods. More children than ever were being taken over the border. Everyone knew the war would soon be ending, still there would be chaos for some time. Economies had been ruined; neighbors had turned against neighbors. The Royal Air Force had already dropped tons of bombs on Berlin. In June, Allied forces heavily bombed targets in France, invading Normandy on June sixth. Most of the Nazi efforts were now on the Russian front, and German soldiers in France were taking the opportunity to run away, doing their best to escape before their defeat. Local people often saw them in the woods, lost and panicked, willing to shoot anyone who came near. There were still German soldiers who did their best to find the last of the hidden Jews or members of the Resistance as they fled. They left bodies on doorsteps in the villages they passed through and mass graves in the woods. Every now and then a crow would soar past with a gold ring or coat button in its beak, a shiny souvenir of murder.

Marianne was thinking of Victor, as she so often did. She had to stop herself, or she would think of nothing else. She’d taken three young children across a few nights earlier, along with a woman of twenty, who was without any family or friends and still wept for her mother and father at night. Crossings were a bit easier in some sections, for the Italian guards at the border often looked the other way throughout the war; they were far from home, and many had no idea what they were fighting for. When they shot at fleeing figures, they had often shot into the air. The Nazis had recently withdrawn from Sicily, and Italy would surrender to the Allies in September.

She remembered every child she had brought across, not their names, which were often false anyway, but their faces. They would cross the Wolf’s Plain in the dark, holding hands, shivering no matter the weather. She always told them they were not to stop for any reason. Even if their hands stung and bled when they climbed over the barbed wire, even if a shot was fired. Think of a cup of hot chocolate waiting for you, she would tell them. And a very warm soft bed. Think of dinner on the table, and new shoes. Think forward, not back.