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“Imprisoned?” My head whipped to Atarah.
But Atarah turned her head and drank.
“You should have seen my face when sweet, kind, loveable Atarah let a woman sink into the earth until all you could see was the top of her head and left her there for almost twenty years.”
My mouth dropped open. “You what? Why? She was after Arsiein?”
“No,” Atarah said gently, looking now into her empty cup. “She betrayed my family and me.”
“Atarah, forgive me. I went too far,” Melora said quickly, but Atarah shook her head.
“It’s fine. She already knows about you, so I guess it is my turn to share my story. Though, I must tell you it is a bit long,” she replied as she looked at me.
“I don’t mind. I do enjoy stories.”
“You won’t enjoy this one,” Melora muttered.
“I was born in Warsaw, Poland, on September first, nineteen twenty-three,” Atarah went on even though she had heard Melora. “My father was a shoemaker, and my mother, like most mothers, took care of the home. There were five of us children—four girls and one boy. I was the youngest girl, the fourth before my brother. He was often sick, and as you may know, witches normally do not get sick. They weren’t very strong witches, my parents—so weak that they may as well have not have had any magic. Sadly, my parents’ magic died out with me. And they believed it a waste. What good was a fourth daughter? If anything, it should have been my brother Igor. I felt bad, too, so I would always bring toys and candy with whatever little money I’d earned while working. And we lived as we were…until one day, it seemed as though the air shifted.”
“What does that mean?” I asked, sitting up slowly. Sigbjørn had used almost that same phrase, but I didn’t understand it.
“You have been blessed to live in an era and upon a land where there is no war,” Melora added. “For if you had lived during the times of great wars, you’d understand it means unrest is in the air.”
“Exactly.” Atarah nodded. “One day, we were the shoema
ker’s children. Then we were the troublemakers, then we were the other’s, and then we were no longer people at all. It felt like it was so sudden, but it wasn’t. We just tried to keep our heads down and stay away from anyone we didn’t know. My mother wanted to escape, to leave. But my father was so sure of the propaganda being told about us. So sure that the Polish-French-British alliance would hold and everything would go back to normal.”
I hung my head because I knew that nothing would ever be normal again after that point.
“I was sixteen when the Nazis invaded Poland. They took our shop and forced us to move into what is now called the Warsaw Ghettos. I remember my mother holding my little brother so tightly, and I held on to my eldest sister. Her name was Abigail, and she had the voice of an angel, so she would hum at night to calm the rest of us down whenever we heard the screams or guns. There was so little food, and it was so cold. We gave what food we had to Igor because we knew that while we would starve, we at least wouldn’t die of sickness. But luckily, it wasn’t enough for him, and he caught a fever and went in the night.” She smiled though it wasn’t anything to smile about. “My mother wept over him. My father, in his grief, burned with the desire to fight back. But even then, I was glad Igor didn’t have to suffer anymore. After that, my two older sisters disappeared. They said they were sending them to work. A lot of people were being taken to work.”
“They just took them?”
She nodded. “SS-Sturmbannführer Hermann Höfle, I’ll never forget his name, wanted more and more of us. And when people complained about not knowing where their family or friends were, they began burning down our homes. My father wanted to join the growing uprisings being planned, but my mother begged and begged to use our magic to escape instead. She’d heard of witches using their powers to get as many people out of Poland as possible. She convinced him this was our own uprising. And so, he agreed. No one was to talk about it. They didn’t even tell me. But I was nosey and also wanted to help. I had cast one of the only spells I was good at in order to eavesdrop. No one was to speak of it, and no one did—no one but me, stupid me, who had told my friend, a fellow young witch who was also Jewish, Nadia Kübler. They had already taken her brothers, and it was just her and her blind and deaf grandmother. What I didn’t know was that she had become what was known as a catcher. They gave her a salary of three hundred Reichsmark for every Jew she betrayed.”
“She betrayed you and your family, and you couldn’t fight?”
“And expose that we were witches, too? No.” She tilted her head. “A few managed to make a run for it, while others were gunned down. Running or fighting would have been worse, or so we thought. We thought we’d be thrown in a ghetto—after all, what could have been worse than that. I didn’t know. No one knew hell was just beginning and that the train would be the last time we ever saw each other. For once we got to Treblinka, they sent my father off to his death immediately and my mother and my sister two weeks later. I didn’t know why they didn’t take me. I’d never been alone in all of my life, and now I was alone in hell.”
Her eyes were glazed over with tears, and she gripped the cup so tightly it cracked. Atarah swallowed before she took a deep breath.
“Then one night, I had a feeling my time was coming, I knew I’d die young, but I was ready to go. I was tired, weak, and broken in every way possible. No one really slept at night, at least not well. So when the door opened, we all sat up, but no one was there when we looked toward the door. Instead, I heard a voice command, ‘Atarah Lenkowski, only you, come out.’ It had been so long since I had heard my name. It was odd. They never called us by our names, they didn’t know them, and they didn’t care. I had a number. Nevertheless, I was worried that if I didn’t listen, the other women and girls would get in trouble because of me. So I got up and stepped outside, and the door slammed and closed behind me before I was knocked out.”
“It was Arsiein.” With his gift, he could move without being seen. “He saved you.”
“He did. He knew my face and was trying to track me down, as Theseus did you. But Rhea rarely ever has a name with the face, nor did they have anything more to go off. Arsiein searched for me but could not find where I was. It was only when Sigbjørn saw me in the mind of one of the witches who had managed to escape the night we were betrayed that Arsiein knew where I was, and he came.”
“How did you feel?” I asked. “Witches hate vampires. And you knew you were a witch.”
“I did. And I had heard of the beasts of the night, but I’d never seen or met one,” she replied. “To me, the only beast were the ones in the day. The humans and witches who hurt us. So, I wasn’t scared. In fact, I was angry at him. I yelled at him for saving only me. Why couldn’t he save all of them? They’d be punished once they realized I was gone.”
I hadn’t even thought of that. What would happen to the others when the sun came up and not all of them were accounted for?
“Sigbjørn asked me if I wished to liberate the whole camp. I said yes, and he asked me, ‘What then? End the war? And what then? How many new wars would start because of it? Wars against vampires. Mortals can slaughter their own, so what stops them from doing the same to vampires? Even if we were to win that war? No one would have the freedom they once had. Humans would never be at peace. Witches would be more agitated or join in the fight against us. Fate spared you, Atarah. But that doesn’t mean you have the power to spare the world. Your old family is gone. You may join this one or go back into the world from whence you came.’”
Harsh. It was wise. But it was harsh, especially for someone who had just been whisked out of an extermination camp.
“I collapsed out of stress and guilt and anger,” she said. “I just wanted to go back to how we were before the world went mad, to my father’s shoe shop and the night we were going to escape and not tell a soul. For the next few days or weeks, I slept under the bed in Arsiein’s room. I was still mortal since I hadn’t made my choice. Three times a day, he’d bring me the most lavash meals and leave it at the foot of the bed, not coming any closer. I’d wait for a few minutes before taking only the bread and drinking the bowl of milk. He’d even bring a big bath of water for me to clean up in, with fresh hot water every morning. He never said anything, never asked for anything. It made me feel rude, so one day, I said thank you. It went on and on like that until we began to talk fully. And he told me it was unfair, but maybe I could provide justice or live to see when justice would be done. The thought of it made me so happy. So, I chose to be reborn at nineteen to get a little bit of justice.”
