Elise’s tormentors had added a crown of thorns—barbed wire left over from building the camp’s high walls. They’d twisted it into a circlet and placed it on the young woman’s head, shaved after lice inspection. Her light hair, once so thick and lustrous, had grown in only an inch or so, and was dull and straw-like. Where once she had been all sparkling eyes—blue as Novalis’s mysterious Blaue Blume—with plump cheeks, a narrow waist, and womanly curves, there was nothing left.
The barbed wire dug into the bare skin of her scalp. Blood trickled down her forehead, stinging her eyes. She felt frozen to the marrow of her bones. She struggled to focus on the faint outline of the sun behind the sullen clouds. But the winter weather in Fürstenberg was unpredictable. It was already the coldest on record. Elise watched, her consciousness receding, as fat, lacy flakes began to fall.
Snow was loathed by the prisoners of Ravensbrück, for the guards had devised an exhausting way for them to dispense with it. The inmates were given boards for scraping, shovels, and wheelbarrows. The work had to be done at a quick pace, so the warmth of the sun couldn’t melt the snow prematurely and spoil the guards’ fun. The prisoners wore their winter clothing—dresses of the same blue and gray striped material as the summer uniforms, but slightly heavier, and “coats” of the same material. Although there were always rumors of gloves and socks to be distributed, none ever came.
Emaciated and mostly bald, all the prisoners looked identical. But an insider could recognize subtle variations on the uniforms. An inmate’s number was sewn onto the left breast, and above the number was a colored triangle. Like Elise, the women below wore mostly red triangles—they were political prisoners, brought to Ravensbrück because of work with their country’s resistance movements.
Up on the cross, Elise looked for anything to distract her from the pain. But the sheer ugliness of the camp was inescapable, even draped in freshly fallen snow. Rows upon rows of wooden barrack huts disappeared into the distance. Smokestacks choked out black funeral wreaths.
Even with her eyes closed, Elise couldn’t escape the horror. She couldn’t tune out the thuds of the prisoners’ wooden clogs on the frozen ground, the harsh shouts of the guards, the snarling of the dogs.
But despite the pain, she had no regret for what she had done. There had been a young Polish girl named Karolina in the camp’s infirmary, where Elise had been working as a nurse, a girl not yet ten, with sea-blue eyes. When Karolina died, the victim of one too many medical experiments, Elise had gone to find her body. It lay naked on a gurney in a narrow corridor.
Elise had used two fingers to close the girl’s eyes and fold her hands over her chest. She straightened the legs, too, disfigured as they were by vertical scars and cut muscle tissue taken during the Nazi doctors’ experiments. Elise prayed over the girl, who she knew was Catholic but had not received the last rites, then prayed for her soul. Surely, after all Karolina had been through, God would welcome this little one to heaven? A guard had found Elise making the sign of the cross over the body, and had shouted and dragged her away for punishment.
Elise was beginning to hallucinate. In her mind’s eye, she could see angels with soaring, feathery wings; she could see saints with sorrowful faces. St. Teresa bent and whispered in her ear: “With words, it is true, a soul can be instructed. But it can only be saved through suffering.” And only in hell can one prove oneself, Elise thought.
She swore she could hear heavenly voices in polyphony, singing Palestrina’s hymn “Sicut cervus.” In the camp, I’ve thirsted for God just as the deer thirsts for water—and finally I found Him, she realized, as God stands out so much clearer in misfortune. Perhaps the Almighty sent me here so I could learn the essence of things and teach it to others. I do not see torture, I see a proving ground for my soul. In this godless world, I see Christ. In my faith, I can help others see Christ. My being here in the camp, even my death, is a victory for God….
Father, into Your hands I commit my spirit.
She was suffused with a feeling of peace, and swore she could smell the faint scent of spicy evergreen. From a great distance she heard shouting, taunting.
Do you really believe there’s a God?
Then where is He now?
God is dead, you Jew-lover—the übermensch has killed him!
Satan rules here!
And then, without warning, the pain stopped. She opened her eyes and looked around at the camp’s high walls covered with charged barbed wire, the guard towers with rifles and searchlights, the rows and rows of barracks, the thin, broken women bent over their work, the guards screaming and kicking them, dogs on leather leashes lunging and growling, their fangs bared.
I’m dying, she thought as she began to lose consciousness. Thy will be done….
“Get her down! Schnell!” the guard ordered. “Warden says she must be kept alive!”
“Will she make it?” she heard, as though from miles away.
“Doubtful.”
—
That night, her first back in her old house, Maggie dreamed about numbers.
She sorely missed math—its order, logic, and elegance. In her dream, she was in the library, a dusty chalkboard full of equations in front of her. Ah yes, she thought as she wrote down the formulae in a notebook, how beautiful, how graceful, how inevitable.
Her former flatmate Paige was there, just like in the old days, when they’d all roomed together in the house. In the logic of dreams, it wasn’t strange at all she’d be there, looking exactly as she had during the summer the Blitz began—cornflower eyes sparkling, blond waves impeccably coiffed. “Welcome home, Maggie,” she said.
She put a dainty hand with polished red nails to the chalkboard, and the lines of equations Maggie revered were suddenly the walls of her house, black against shadows. Then the numbers began to tip over and quiver, growing and morphing into huge insects, black flies with iridescent wings flashing green and purple. They came together in the form of a huge beast, with the head of a goat—with sharp, pointed horns—the legs of a bull, and the body of a man.
It bellowed and snorted, pawing the ground with cloven hooves. “Here,” Paige said, holding out an ancient-looking spear, carved with runes and strange symbols. “You’ll need this.”
Maggie accepted the spear; it was heavy in her hand. The beast circled, snorting and pawing the ground. As it charged her, roaring, she feinted to one side and stuck the point of the spear into its flank as it raced by. The beast bellowed in pain.
And then flies were everywhere, surging over dead bodies and shattered glass in a street that looked like London after a brutal night of bombing. The flies gathered in a swarm and lit on the body of a woman, her throat slashed and her abdomen mutilated, wet blood pooling on the pavement.
Kneeling on the rough bricks, Maggie saw the woman’s face. It was Brynn, with her brown curls and freckles, the gap between her front teeth.
In panic, Maggie looked up at Paige. “Help me!” she pleaded.
The blonde smiled sweetly. “You’re on your own now.”
Something moved in the shadows. As Maggie watched, helpless, the Minotaur turned and lowered its head, snorting. The massive beast saw her watching, and its face became animated with sadistic joy. As it ran toward her, the ground shaking, she tried to scream—but nothing came out. The beast charged at her, hooves thundering.
Maggie picked up her spear and stood, braced and ready. As the beast ran, in the long moment of the charge, she asked Paige: “Am I the hunter or the prey?”
The other woman’s smile was cryptic. “You must decide.”
Maggie woke with a gasp and jumped bolt upright, the bedclothes coiled around her like adders. She sat, panting, chilled by the horrific images of her dream.
She had once stared into the abyss—and the abyss, through the blue eyes of the young man she’d killed in Berlin, had stared back at her. To defend what they love, people allow themselves to become what they hate, like a hall of mirrors, folding in on itself….But to look into the eyes of a beast?