The Darkest Hour

by Roberta Kagan

  “It would appear that way, but He’s not. Man is cruel and debases himself.” Ellie took my hand and held it. “I love you for being angry about Angelos’s murder. He loved you a great deal. He wouldn’t want you to harden your heart against the Lord.”

  “Too late. It’s already as hard as a rock.”

  “You’re scared and angry. It’s all right to be scared. We all are. When you were younger, you used to get very angry when something bad happened to someone.”

  “I did?”

  “Oh, yes. You threw things around, you raged against everything. It wasn’t because you were a tempestuous child; it was because you felt helpless. I understand why you are raging against God over Angelos’s murder.” Ellie kissed me on the cheek. “It’s why I love you so much. You care so deeply that you want to lash out at the unfairness.”

  “It’s just not fair.”

  “Nothing in war is fair. We get up in the morning and hope we make it through the day to see another day and possible liberation.”

  “I’m finding myself angry with everything, including my best pencil.”

  “You find yourself in a position you have no control over. It’s not just you that is feeling this way.”

  “You don’t lose your temper, and you seem so calm.”

  “I’m not calm. I’m a raging inferno inside, but there is nothing I can do about it. I have to lean on the Lord to get me through this.”

  “What if you have no faith in him?” I pointed heavenward. “Who do you lean on then?”

  “Faith in Him has a way of coming back. You just have to have patience, and we know you have an abundance of that!” Ellie chuckled and playfully tapped me on the head with her fingers.

  “Patience wasn’t the problem with that soldier in the grove. If it weren’t for you, he would have killed me.”

  “You can’t run headlong into a soldier and expect him to fall over when you connect with your head.”

  That hadn’t been my best moment, and there was nothing I could say, so I shrugged. Ellie wasn't mean. She was honest with me and she was right. I had no skills in knowing how to fight.

  “I’m not trained, and I have felt useless.”

  “You’re not useless. You’re an excellent huntress; I’ve seen you hunt. You have skills that none of the soldiers has.”

  “How to run fast?”

  Ellie smiled and shook her head. “No. It’s the gift that the Lord gave us, Zoe. Your mother, my father, you, and me. We have it, and we must use it in this fight.”

  “What use is a good memory when I can’t defend myself?”

  “You can defend yourself, but when you are caught by surprise, you freeze. That’s natural. Hardened soldiers freeze in battle. I’ve seen it, and they are older and well trained.”

  “Really?”

  “Oh, yes.” I expected Ellie to laugh after she finished speaking, but she didn’t. She was serious. She wasn't the type to say things just to hear herself talk. “Can you train me?”

  “I have been waiting for you to ask me. I can teach you. Now, I’m going to tell you something that may make you accidentally throw yourself off the mountain.” Ellie put her hand on my shoulder and laughed. “I want you to sit back away from the edge.”

  “Really? What would make me accidentally kill myself?”

  Ellie didn’t say a word. She just pointed for me to move away from the edge of the lookout. I did as she requested because I enjoyed seeing her playfulness.

  “All right. I’m back from the edge. Now tell me.”

  “I belong to a Resistance group started by Lena Karagianni...”

  “I don’t know her.”

  “Lena is from Athens, and before you say all Athenians are lunatics, like your boyfriend Apostolos, hear me out.”

  “He’s not my boyfriend. He shouldn’t pay you to talk about him to me. Go ahead.”

  “Lena has set up a Resistance group that is effective. I was introduced to some of the members, and they recruited me after Angelos was killed.”

  “Are they the group that I met in the cave?”

  “It would have been better if you hadn’t known who they were, but yes, that was my cell.”

  “Who is this Karagianni woman?”

  Ellie smiled. “You didn’t ask me what the group was called.”

  “I already know what it’s called. It’s the Karagianni Resistance group. That’s not so exciting that I would have accidentally fallen off the mountain!”

  Ellie laughed and put her hands over her head. “You make me laugh so much my head hurts. The group is called the Bouboulinas.”

  “As in Laskarina Bouboulina?”

  “Yes, your heroine Laskarina. We help Allied soldiers and Jews to escape.”

  “I know you help Allied soldiers and Jews escape, and it now explains why Mama is involved. She’s in the group as well, isn’t she?”

  “Yes. I recruited her and the rest of the family.”

  “Is that why you are here?”

  “No. I came home because my soul needed to heal and to help others to escape. It was something Aunty Stella said that made me question my traitorous nephew.”

  “Why did he betray his family?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Are you going back to Athens now?”

  “No. We have work to do down here. There are Allied soldiers and Jews who need a way out of Thessaly.”

  “The Italians have them in the camp near the river. Stavros and I went hunting, and we found some who had escaped. I couldn’t save one of the women...”

  “You couldn’t because these people are destined to die. There was nothing you could have done. Stavros told me what you did, and it was heroic.” Ellie put her hand on my knee and tried to reassure me. I let Sterina down, and that was due to my inexperience and stupidity.

  “You are thirteen years old, Zoe. You have never been in battle, and here you were confronted by a situation where you had to defend someone who was scared out of her mind.”

  “I need to be trained.”

  “Didn’t I say that I will train you? With Sterina you had no chance. We attempted to rescue them, but scared people who are looking for any chance to escape don’t follow directions.”

  “You were behind their rescue?”

  “Our group was, and we failed. You didn’t.”

  “What about the little girl in the cave?”

  “That was one of the children we rescued, but she ran off. Again, we failed.”

  “Why would they be put into trucks and moved across the country? The Germans are a strange people.”

  “The Germans want to exterminate the Jews.”

  I knew the Germans hated the Jews, but to eliminate a whole group of people is madness. I just couldn’t believe that it could be done. I said so to Ellie, who just gazed at me.

  “It’s such a shocking truth that it’s barbaric. You have seen what the Germans and Italians have done, what their barbarity has brought us, but you don’t know the true horror of it all.”

  “Tell me the truth.”

  “You are not ready for that.”

  “If I am to fight, I have to know my enemy. How do I hunt these animals if I don’t know how they think?”

  Ellie turned away from the edge of the lookout and sat cross-legged in front of me. “We have heard and seen the evilness of these beasts. On March 4, the Bulgarians and Germans took people off a boat and murdered them because they were Jews. In Thessaloniki, Athens, and other parts, our brothers and sisters are being executed for no other reason other than they are Jews.”

  “Why isn’t someone stopping them?”

  “The world turns a blind eye to these atrocities. The Germans can do whatever they want, and no one will question them.”

  “What about the Resistance?”

  “We are the Resistance, Zoe. We can save people, but we can’t save everyone. There are death camps. The camp near the river is a transit camp. Those people are destined to die once the Germans ta
ke over.”

  “Why will the Germans take over? The Italians are their allies.”

  “You don’t know this, but Mussolini has been killed. The Italians will surrender to the Allies, and it will be soon.”

  “What will happen when they do?”

  “The mass murder of Jews in Greece will begin. That’s what will happen. This has happened in other countries under German occupation. We are getting stories of horrific atrocities and mass exterminations—barbarous crimes that are so cruel, you would think they could not be human. We have demons walking amongst us.”

  I was dumbfounded. Surely, this was just propaganda to frighten the people. It had to be. “Ellie, a whole race of people can’t be exterminated. The world must act. Why isn’t it doing something about it?”

  “Our Allies are winning battles, and the day will come when they liberate Europe. That gives no comfort to the Jews and Greek being slaughtered.”

  “It doesn’t look like they are winning anything if they allow people to be exterminated.”

  “You can’t save everyone, Zoe. We must save as many people as we can, and thwart the enemy so they don’t murder the ones we can’t save.”

  “How do we do that?”

  “We disrupt their murderous plans. We blow up bridges, we blow them up, and we stop the convoys of death. We must do whatever it takes to stop them.”

  “What can I do? You said you had a mission for me. What is that mission?”

  “I want you to use the gift the good Lord has given you to monitor—”

  “No.” I stood up. “No, I don’t want that job.”

  “Zoe...”

  “That is not using my gifts in the right way, Ellie. I’m a hunter, and you have seen me use my crossbow. I can use a rifle and throw knives. I am a soldier, and I don't want to be just watching patrols.” I wasn’t sure if Ellie was going to be upset with me because of my refusal, but it didn’t matter. I wasn’t going to be put off by her disappointment. I had to make her understand. “I have those skills. What I lack is the training to fight. You will train me, and I will become a good soldier.”

  “Listen...”

  “No! This is what I want to do. It's not because of what you said, although that was horrific, but because of what they did to Angelos. I must stop this from happening to others.”

  “Zoe...”

  “Hear me out, please.” I got down onto my knees and met Ellie’s gaze. “I know what I want to do. I didn’t know before, and you said it yourself, when I don’t have a goal, I’m rudderless.”

  “Well, I didn’t actually...”

  “I need a mission that doesn’t just have me watching patrols and reporting them to whoever. I need to get involved. I need to do something that will stop them. I couldn’t do it for Sterina, but I can do it for others.”

  “If you let me speak...”

  “You’re only going to tell me that I’m too young, and I have to watch the patrols, and I need—” Ellie put her hand over my mouth.

  “Stop. If I take my hand away, will you stop talking long enough for me to say something?”

  I nodded. Ellie held my gaze for a moment before she took her hand away. “Theo was right, that’s the only way to stop you talking.” She pulled me back down on the ground and held my hand. “You will be a formidable force once you are trained, Zoe. You’re already unstoppable when you set your mind on something, and I’m not sorry for any German or Italian soldier who crosses your path. I want you to think for a moment. What would happen to Aunty Helena if you were killed?”

  “We are in a war. We have lost so many already. Mama knows what is at stake.”

  “She does, but do you want her to be alone if you die?”

  “What if Mama dies? I will be alone. What will I do then?”

  “You continue to fight. No surrender, Zoe. A Lambros never surrenders.”

  “Mama is a Lambros from Sparta, and she will continue to fight if I’m not around. Spartans never surrender. We either fight, or we die. I’m not going to surrender, and if I die, then someone else will fight on until we win.”

  I expected Ellie to be irritated with me for disobeying her, but after a moment, she smiled, and she cupped my face in her hands. “Your papa would have been so proud of you. You are worthy of being a Bouboulina.”

  “Does that mean my mission has changed?”

  “It will change once you learn how to fight. I have three weeks to train you.”

  “What happens in three weeks?”

  “There is another convoy of trucks heading to Thessaloniki. The train line leading out of Athens was bombed, and the Germans can’t use it. They are trying to rebuild the line, but they are going to use trucks in the meantime.”

  “How do we know it’s in three weeks?”

  “Sometimes it’s best not to let your left hand know what your right hand is doing.”

  “You sound like Father Haralambos.”

  “That’s where I got that saying from!” Ellie chuckled. “Now, why don’t you go wash up? I’ll go and find us some rabbits for breakfast.”

  “Can we have a whole rabbit this time?”

  Ellie laughed and picked up my crossbow. “I’m going to take Artemis to the hunt,” she said, and playfully shadow shot arrows towards the brush. She smiled at me, kissed the top of my head, and headed for the bushes.

  I stood at the outcrop and looked over the valley as a light rain began to fall. “I promise you, Angelos, I will kill those bastards. A promise is a promise.”

  Chapter 14

  Three Weeks Later – Thermopylae, Lamia (Two hours away from Farsala)

  Three weeks can seem like an eternity, or they can go so quickly that you don’t realize where the time went. I needed more than three weeks, but there wasn’t any more time left.

  I trained with Ellie, and she taught me how I could defend myself if I were in hand to hand combat. I wasn’t all that good until she taught me to use my brain and outthink the enemy, like taking advantage of my lack of height and my agility to outmaneuver bigger opponents. I wanted to try it with Ellie, who was taller than me, but she brought in Uncle Petros. He is a giant of a man, and I discovered that if I improvised to get around him, I could beat him if I ran as fast as I could. I’m really good at running. Ellie reminded me never to run at them, but around them, or run the other way.

  After Uncle Petros, I trained with Stavros, and he was more difficult because he watched me and figured out what I was going to do. I doubt the Italians are as smart as my cousin. The Italians are dumb as rocks. It’s the Germans that worry me. Those monsters are not foolish.

  Two days ago, Mama and I had a long talk before I joined the rest of the soldiers. She tried not to show how worried she was, but it wasn’t possible.

  “I’m proud of you, my baby girl. Papa is also proud of you.”

  “Let’s hope I don’t get to hear him say that in a few days,” I joked, and I regretted it the moment I saw the tears glistening in my mama’s green eyes. I can be so stupid sometimes.

  “I will pray for God to keep you safe and for you to come back to me.”

  She hugged me fiercely, and I needed to feel her love. She kissed me on the cheek and told me she had put clean underwear in my pack. I laughed so much I had tears running down my cheeks. They were tears of happiness, sadness, and sheer terror.

  Her last words to me were, ‘You are a Spartan soldier fighting at Thermopylae, my daughter. God is on our side.’ I wonder if the Spartans felt so much fear, and did Mama remember what happened to them at Thermopylae?

  I boarded the same wagon Papa had taken that fateful night in April 1941, and I hoped the same outcome wouldn’t befall me. As we reached the top of the crossroads, I looked back and saw Mama still standing at the gate.

  I wasn’t ready, and I thought I was going to let the Resistance down. I knew it and felt it all the way into the marrow of my bones. That thought kept running through my mind, and I mentally went over what I learned. Nothing prepares you
for real combat. That’s what Ellie said, and she would know.

  Here I was in the old battleground that my ancestors fought in—the mountains of Thermopylae. If I hadn’t been so scared and terrified of letting everyone down, I would have loved the idea of being where King Leonidas stared down the Persians. Three hundred men against the might of the Persian army... I wondered what those men thought about when they knew it was a suicide mission.

  It took us three hours to travel from Farsala to Lamia. That’s where we were going to meet. I had been to Thermopylae with my brothers after I had badgered them about visiting the site of King Leonidas’ heroic deeds. They could usually ignore my pleas, but I wore them down, and they took me. I stood at what was thought to be the pass that King Leonidas defended and eventually lost, and I was the happiest ten-year-old in all of Greece.

  I was thinking of useless things like a centuries-old dead king who lost at Thermopylae. I was making myself sick with worry. I took Artemis out of my bag and cleaned it. I felt a sickening churning sensation and wanted to throw up. I held it back because the others were fast asleep and the last thing they needed was to worry about a child being sick.

  I moved away from the sleeping team and sat at the mouth of the cave. Dionysius was keeping guard. He smiled and went back to staring into the darkness, his rifle at the ready. At least he had something to occupy his time.

  I tried looking into the darkness with him, but it was pointless. I needed to sleep and be ready. Just as I was about to move back, Ellie came and sat beside me.

  “This happens to me all the time.”

  “Do you think about King Leonidas as well?” I half-joked and smiled when Ellie put her arms around me and kissed me on the head.

  “It’s all right to be scared. Even Dionysius is scared, isn’t that right, Dion?”

  Hairy mountain man Dionysius looked back at us and nodded. He resembled a giant bear, and I doubted he feared anything. I wasn’t convinced.

  “You are prepared, Zoe. We are all ready.”

  “I’m not ready,” I whispered and finally admitted out loud what I had been feeling.

  “It’s all right. I never think I’m ready either, but I have the Lord on my side. We are fighting against flesh and blood, and we have a myriad of angels guiding us.”