The Huntress

by Kate Quinn

  Face a barrage of antiaircraft guns, Comrade Stalin, Nina had thought when she heard Order No. 227, when it was read out that soldiers caught retreating were to be shot. Then we’ll talk about not one step back.

  Yes, it felt like a great deal longer than three months. Every night you came back, you thought of the ones who hadn’t, like the three who had died last week when their U-2s collided in a muffling mist and two planes had shredded apart and spiraled to earth in pieces. Petals of burning flowers drifting through the air.

  And yet, Nina thought. And yet . . . Every twilight the pilots and navigators gathered bright-eyed, bouncing on their toes as they waited to take to their planes. All of them tugging for the sky.

  By the time the Rusalka returned from its tenth run, pink streaks of dawn showed and Major Bershanskaia called the halt. “Back to base airdrome, ladies.” The U-2s lifted off again in a tired line, wagging wingtips at one another, heading like a row of geese for home.

  Annisovskaia was home for now: a tiny Caucasus village in the Grozny region where the local secondary school had been commandeered and crammed with foldout cots. The local village women looked at them warily at first, but they were used to female pilots now, and a squat babushka lifted her gnarled hand as Nina and the rest trudged past. “Kill many Germans, dousha?” she asked Nina as she did every night, showing near-toothless gums in a merciless grin, and Nina called back, “Almost enough, Grandmother.”

  They trooped into the canteen, groaning at the sight of breakfast. “Stale biscuits and beets,” Yelena said with a sigh, grabbing a plate. “Someday they’ll feed us something different and we’ll all fall over dead from shock before we get a mouthful.”

  “Hot kasha with mushrooms,” Dusia said mournfully. “That’s what I miss most.”

  “Borscht absolutely heaped with sour cream . . .”

  “Raw cabbage,” Nina said, making little nibbling noises like a rabbit, and they all laughed. “Someone wake up Zoya, she’s facedown in her beets again.”

  No one, Nina had observed, was able to fall asleep right away after a night of bombing runs. It didn’t matter if you were so tired that you’d been dozing off over the stick on your last run—as soon as you returned from the canteen to your cot, eyelids that had been stone-heavy flew up like untied window shades, and girls who had trudged off the airfield in yawning silence were chattering like magpies.

  “—fell into a stall, I swear my wing clipped a shrub before I pulled up—”

  “—updraft tossed us halfway to Stalingrad before Irushka got us leveled out—”

  Nina skinned out of her overalls, flinging herself down on her cot. “Boots, rabbit,” she called to Yelena, sticking her feet out. “I can’t bend over.”

  “Certainly.” Yelena curtsied, taking hold of Nina’s right boot. “Does the tsaritsa require anything else?”

  Nina wriggled her toes as first one boot and then the other came off. “A bucket of vodka.”

  “At once, tsaritsa.” Yelena sank down on the bed next to Nina’s and held out her own feet. “Word is we’ll be staying in Annisovskaia a few months. Till the new year, even.”

  “Good. I’m tired of moving around, sleeping in dugouts.” Nina folded her star-embroidered flying scarf over the end of the cot, the same scarf Yelena had been embroidering the night of the first sortie. Nina’s pilot was working on another now, getting out her needles and thread. On the next cot over, a brunette from Stalingrad was mending her stockings; another girl was scraping mud off her boots. At the other end of the schoolhouse, four pilots had lined up for a turn at the only sink. Someone was softly humming. Someone else was crying, almost soundlessly.

  “There they go again.” Yelena contemplated her long slender feet in their wool socks, jittering as though they were being run through by electric current. Her knees jittered too. “I wish I knew why they did that.”

  Nina shrugged. After a night of bombing runs, everyone showed different effects. Yelena jittered for hours. Dusia went totally silent, curling up on her side and staring at the wall. Some of the girls chattered until they suddenly fell asleep midsyllable. Some cried, some paced, some jumped at the slightest noise—night to night, it was always different.

  “You’re made of rock, Ninochka.” Yelena flexed her twitching feet. “You don’t get any effects.”

  “I do.” Tapping her forehead. “Always a headache behind my left eye.”

  “But you never get moody or weepy or snappish.”

  “Because I’m not afraid.”

  A curious glance came from the girl polishing her boots. “Never?”

  Nina shook her head, matter-of-fact. “Only of drowning. You see any lakes around?”

  “You’re crazy,” Yelena admired. “A little Siberian lunatic.”

  “Probably.” Nina sank back on her pillow. “Markovs are all crazy, it’s in the blood. But it makes me good at this, so I don’t mind being crazy.”

  Whether jitters or pacing or headaches were the postflight reaction of the day, everyone spent their morning working it off. It was always like that, Nina thought, massaging her own forehead until the faint ache receded. Gradually the shakers stopped shaking and the talkers stopped talking, until the room filled with the sound of sleep. For maybe as long as three hours, before sheer exhaustion wore away and everyone began tossing and turning—because the other constant that Nina noticed was that they all slept like shit. Even Nina. Being a little bit crazy and mostly fearless does not help with sleep.

  It was in that sweet spot of dead, pure slumber when the entire room lay still as corpses that Nina swung out of bed and padded for the door, tugging her boots back on. She sauntered off toward a storage shed at the edge of the village and slipped inside, waiting. Brilliant sunlight made fingers of light through cracks in the boards, as though a dozen tiny searchlights were trying to find a dozen tiny planes. Nina watched motes of dust dancing in the light, half hypnotized, half dozing. Dust motes dancing like Yak-1s . . .

  The shed door creaked open, then shut. There was the rattle of a board dropping down, blocking the door, and then Yelena’s arms slipped about her waist from behind, and in a second’s notice Nina was wide awake.

  “Hello, rabbit.” She tipped her head back against Yelena’s shoulder. “Nice flying tonight.”

  “I hate getting caught in those searchlights.” A shiver went through Yelena, and she pressed her cheek against Nina’s hair. “That instant when I don’t know which is sky and which is ground . . .”

  “Just listen to your trusty navigator.” Nina raised Yelena’s oil-smeared knuckles to her lips. “I can always find the sky.”

  “You’re wasted as a navigator, Ninochka. Nerves like yours, you should be flying your own plane.”

  “Then who’s going to keep you out of trouble, Miss Moscow Goody?”

  “I’m not such a goody anymore!”

  “Then say I hate those shit searchlights.” Nina could hear Yelena blush. “Say it, Yelena Vassilovna.”

  “I dislike those searchlights very much,” Yelena said primly, and they both shook with silent laughter. They stood still a moment, Nina’s head tipped back against Yelena’s shoulder, Yelena’s arms about Nina’s waist. Nina felt the weightless floating sensation she felt when the engines cut out and she was gliding free and silent through still, pure air. “You’re still trembling,” she said, running her fingers back and forth over Yelena’s twitching ones.

  “It’ll wear off in another hour. It always does.”

  “I can make it wear off sooner.” Nina turned, tugging Yelena’s head down for a kiss, pushing her back toward the shadowed back wall where she’d already tossed down her coat. Some days they were too exhausted to trade anything but a few drowsy kisses, but this morning their hands were eager, Nina’s fingers helping Yelena’s shaky ones with buttons, stray shafts of sunlight painting Yelena’s ivory skin—skin that flushed pink as the inside of a shell as soon as Nina’s hands slid over it. Yelena’s head tipped back as Nina’s lips tr
aveled the insides of her elbows, the space behind her earlobes, the skin over her hip bones, the inside of her knee up toward her thigh, all the tender places that took her to pieces. Nina felt her pilot shatter, quietly, biting down hard on the side of her own hand to keep silent, and the last tremor went through Yelena, leaving those jittering fingers peaceful and still. “There,” Nina said softly, and Yelena sat up and caught her in fierce arms.

  “Come here—”

  Yelena kissed as fiercely as she flew, but at first she had been shy. Under the Rusalka’s wing that first night she had blushed so hard she nearly glowed in the dark. “I didn’t know girls . . .” She trailed off. “Did you?”

  Nina shrugged. “You hear things.” Mostly it was about men who used each other if there were no women—there had been some like that where Nina grew up. Pretty young women weren’t that common by the Old Man, at least not in a village so tiny; men made other arrangements. Looking at things from a new angle, it seemed reasonable to assume sometimes women did too.

  Not that anyone would talk about it, men or women. For men, Nina knew, getting caught buggering meant prison. For women, well, she wasn’t quite so sure, but it wouldn’t be good. An asylum, maybe. Getting booted out of the 588th, certainly.

  “. . . Have you?” Yelena’s cheek had burned like a brand against Nina’s shoulder, when she asked that first time. “Before me, I mean. Did you ever . . .”

  “Sure,” Nina said. “A few men at the air club.”

  “I never wanted to. I guess now I know why.” A sigh. “Men wanted me and I never wanted them. Was it like that with you?”

  “No, I like men fine.” She remembered Vladimir Ilyich back in Irkutsk. He was a bonehead, but between the blankets he had made her toes curl. “There were one or two I liked a lot.”

  “Better than me?” Yelena had sounded anxious.

  “No.” Kissing her soundly. “Because no one flies better than you.”

  “Is that all you think about, Ninochka?” Yelena laughed, still blushing. “You don’t bother even looking at someone until you know if they can fly or not?”

  “Until I see they can fly, and that they’re brave.” Nina had paused, considering. Was there anything else, any quality that could possibly be packaged in human flesh, that was worth falling head over heels for? Courage. Flying skill. Those were the things that made her weak in the knees; those were the things she’d been pulled toward every time she made a move at someone else. It had always been men before because most of the pilots in the Irkutsk air club had been men. There hadn’t been another woman in the air with verve and skill and guts to match Nina’s own, so she hadn’t even looked at them.

  So maybe falling for Yelena wasn’t hard to understand, after all. She was fine and fierce, keen and courageous, the best flier in the regiment. With a roll call of qualities like that, Nina would have lost her head over Yelena whether she was woman, man, or plant. To Nina it was exactly that simple and not worthy of any further thought, but Yelena tended to worry even now—the why of what had pulled them toward each other. “It isn’t natural. It can’t be,” she sometimes brooded, quoting some speech or book Nina had never read. “‘Women, as fully fledged citizens of the freest country in the world, have received from Nature the gift of being mothers. Let them take care of this precious gift in order to bring Soviet heroes into the world.’ We’re supposed to marry and be mothers and workers, above all have children. So this can’t be right, what we do. Is it just the war, turning our heads inside out?”

  “Maybe.” Nina had yawned. “Who cares?” It was war: day was night, life was death, sorrow was joy. Who cared about anything but the now?

  When they’d been on the southern front, they’d met at the back of the shop where mechanics stashed spare tools, and it had been warm enough to laze afterward skin against skin. Here in Annisovskaia it was cold enough for their breath to puff in clouds inside the shed, and they dived quickly back into trousers and coats. “We won’t be able to meet outside much longer,” Yelena said. She sighed, wincing as her shirt went over her shoulders. “You scratch worse than any rabbit! I should call you kitten instead.”

  “Something more dangerous than a kitten,” Nina retorted. “And I’ll find someplace warmer to meet.” It was easier to steal time together than either of them had anticipated. Everyone was too tired after a night’s flying to care if a fellow pilot sneaked out. No one raised an eyebrow if Nina and Yelena clasped hands as they walked to the airfield either, or if Yelena embroidered Nina scarves or Nina dozed with her head in Yelena’s lap. The entire regiment traded kisses and hugs whenever off duty; gave each other presents and pet names. Time was too short not to show your sisters-in-arms that you loved them. Nina had seen other pilots sneaking off discreetly, who knew where to—perhaps private rendezvous with fellow pilots, or with the male ground crew from neighboring regiments.

  Still, the two of them were very careful.

  “You slip out first,” Nina told Yelena. “I’ll wait three minutes and come after.”

  “Nag,” Yelena teased. “You’re as bad as a mother.”

  “I’m worse. Because your mother told you to find a nice boy and get married, not go to war and become a pilot, and you didn’t listen. But I’m your navigator, Comrade Lieutenant Vetsina, and unlike your mother, you have to listen to me.”

  Yelena snapped a mock salute. Her short curls were rumpled, and her cheeks as rosy as the little pink orchids that bloomed wild around the Old Man, poking their slippered heads up when the snow melted. Nina could hardly breathe, looking at her. I want to hold you, she thought. I would fight the world off for you, Yelena Vassilovna. It was something new, this tremendous wave of protectiveness. It wasn’t like anything Nina had ever felt in her life. It clutched at her with something almost like fear.

  Maybe she was afraid of two things, now.

  Yelena blew her a kiss, slipping out. Nina waited three minutes and then sauntered after. When she slipped back into the dormitory, she could hear Yelena’s soft breath already slowing toward a deeper rhythm. She’d sleep like a baby now, maybe as much as four hours. Nina wasn’t far behind, dropping off the edge of wakefulness like a stone falling off a cliff.

  “Up, rabbits! The Hitlerites aren’t going to bomb themselves!” Major Bershanskaia’s voice, obscenely cheerful. “Up, up, up!”

  “Fuck your mother,” Nina mumbled. “Fuck your mother through seven gates.” Peeling open eyelids that had apparently been glued together with cement. “Fuck your mother through seven gates whistling.” Bershanskaia was already gone to the next building, waking the next round of pilots. “One of these days I will cut her throat for being so damned cheerful, and then I will be stood up against a wall and shot, and it will have been worth it,” Nina announced, tugging her blankets to her chin.

  “Don’t get shot, Ninochka.” Yelena was already up and halfway into her overalls, as the room filled with yawns and rustles, the rake of combs through sleep-tangled hair. “I don’t want to break in a new navigator, not when you know exactly how I like my tea.”

  “Stone cold and tasting like motor oil?”

  “Exactly.” Yelena yanked back the blankets, making Nina yelp and fly out of bed. “Up, up, up!”

  “I’ll cut your throat too, Yelenushka,” Nina warned, yanking her shirt over her head and tucking her razor’s cord around her wrist. Yelena had a pistol in her cockpit like most pilots, but Nina never went into the sky without her razor.

  Another monotonous meal, the sun tilting toward the ground. As they headed for briefing, Nina saw trucks being loaded with armament and cans of fuel. The trucks would rumble out toward the auxiliary airfield closer to the front lines, the U-2s following by air. The ladies of the 588th crammed together to hear Major Bershanskaia give the daily update. Tonight’s target was a bridge used by the Germans to ferry supplies and wounded. Maps were passed out; Nina’s fingers flew over the sketched terrain.

  “Comrade Major,” one of the pilots called when the briefin
g wrapped. “I stalled last night on the fourth run and practically scraped grass by the time the engine kicked in. It was low enough I heard shouts coming from the Germans as they ran for cover.”

  “What did they shout?” Nothing to Bershanskaia was unimportant; her eyes were the sharpest Nina had ever seen. Their stocky no-nonsense commander might not have Marina Raskova’s heroic glitter, but Nina was fairly sure she’d cut off a leg for Bershanskaia too. Even if she did want to slit her throat every day for being so damned cheery in her wake-up calls. “What did they shout, Comrade Lieutenant?”

  “‘Nachthexen,’” the pilot quoted. “before the engine drowned them out.”

  Bershanskaia pronounced the word silently. So did Nina. Nachthexen. One of the other pilots spoke up, the one who had been a language teacher before the war.

  “‘Night Witches,’” she translated.

  They were all still for a heartbeat. Night Witches. For some reason Nina thought of her father, drunk and furious out on the frozen banks of the Old Man.

  What’s a rusalka, Papa? a little girl had asked him, never dreaming that one day she’d be flying through the sky in a plane called by the same name.

  A lake witch, her father had answered.

  And later on the streets of Irkutsk: I can track wolverines, girl. You think I can’t track my lake witch of a daughter?

  Sky witch now, Nina had retorted.

  Maybe not.

  Not quite a sky witch, or even a water-bound lake witch. Something else. Something new. Nina looked around at the ladies of the 588th, all of them that made up something the world had never seen before, and saw smiles tugging lips, flashes of teeth showing in private, pleased grins. Night Witches.

  “Well,” one of the navigators said at last, “I like it.”

  A burst of laughter, and Major Bershanskaia clapped her hands. “To the field, ladies.”

  A line of U-2s took off into the darkening sky for the new airfield, little better than an old turnip patch. The pilots hopped out, making way for armorers and mechanics. Everyone bounced on their toes, eyes on the sky. Exhaustion forgotten, hunger forgotten, shakes and shivers and bad dreams forgotten. The moon was rising, a plumper crescent than last night. Nina sniffed the night wind, heady and mountain scented, setting her blood on fire like a river of gasoline. Yelena tensed, ready to run, eying the Rusalka across the field.