“Perhaps,” she said, though the answer was no, she had learned not to say too much. Her maker had taught her this lesson.

When they were at last alone in the compartment, Ava turned to Lea. “Give me the weapon,” she said.

“There is no weapon.”

Ava held out her hand. “I speak to you as if I were your mother.”

“You’re not, and you won’t ever be.”

Lea had no idea why she was crying. Ava was not like other women; she likely didn’t even have feelings. Why fight with her?

Ava reached into Lea’s pocket and brought forth the scissors. “That’s not how you kill a soldier.”

Lea was interested despite herself. “How would you do it?”

“Quietly. Without blood.”

Lea scowled. She’d seen a murder. “There has to be blood,” she said knowingly.

“Sometimes yes, sometimes no.”

Ava was becoming more fascinating all the time. Lea felt the silver locket, cold against her chest. She didn’t understand Ava, yet she felt comforted by her presence. “What will happen to the girl who ran away?”

To that there was only one answer. “Whatever is meant to happen.”

“And do you know what that is?”

“Can anyone know?”

“I think maybe you can.”

“It’s best to get some sleep,” Ava advised, for this is what Lea’s mother would have said.

“And what will happen to me?” Lea ventured to ask.

The train lurched forward. They were leaving behind scores of people in the tall grass. Some were living, some were dead, some would be arrested, some would do anything in order to survive, and one was in the forest, running toward the blue mountains. Ava looked out to where her maker had disappeared. She saw the souls of the lost in the trees, side by side with the angels. She saw the future, but the future could change at the angels’ commands.

“We must hope for the best,” she told the girl.

She might have said more if she’d had the freedom to speak her mind, but in her formation she hadn’t been given the choice to confide what she felt. If she could do so there would have been much she would have said: how green the verdant countryside was, how bright the light had become, how grateful she was to her maker each and every minute, how the birds in the treetops could be heard even when the train rumbled by, how the first of the season’s bees hit against the windowpanes as if searching for flowers, how absolutely marvelous it was to be in the world.

CHAPTER SIX

IN ANOTHER COUNTRY

PARIS, SPRING 1941