Lukas covered me in burial cloth, including my face, which was what the soldiers would expect if they decided to inspect the coffin. I turned my head toward an air hole, though with a cloth over my face, I didn’t get much fresh air. But it made me feel better to know it was there.

  “Don’t die in there,” Lukas said, his idea of a joke.

  I answered, “Don’t die out there.” Not a joke.

  Minutes later, we rode away. I passed the time trying to add to the story I’d been writing, guessing the spelling of words as they drifted through my mind, making plans for my future with Milda after I returned to Tilsit, thinking of Lukas and how he’d become such a dear friend to me. Thinking of myself and how much I’d changed over the last few months.

  Thinking of anything but where I was, and how much was at stake, and hoping Lukas could pull off his role at the border.

  I knew exactly when we reached the border, because even from inside the coffin, I heard the shouted orders of the soldiers to stop.

  Lukas obeyed and in Russian told the soldiers he had papers and was transporting a body for burial.

  “Into Lithuania?”

  “Her family’s cemetery plots are here.”

  “We need to see the body.”

  “Sir, that would be disrespectful.”

  “We need to see the body,” the soldier repeated, and heavy footsteps made their way to me.

  I turned my head forward, closed my eyes, and tried to appear … well, dead. I waited until the last possible second to suck in a breath of air and hoped I wouldn’t have to hold it for long.

  Milda had done my makeup to drain my face of color and to make my eyes and cheeks appear sunken in. But I’d also been sweating a little while in this tight space and I wondered if the makeup had begun to run. If they lifted the thin sheet over my face, they might notice. Even the slightest flutter of my eyelid might give me away, and I wasn’t sure if I could control that.

  Relax. I had to relax.

  The coffin lid shifted and it was hard not to breathe in the rush of cool, fresh air. I felt the weight of eyes studying me, wondering whether to lift the fabric.

  “She seems to be young,” a soldier said to Lukas. “How did she die?”

  “Typhus.”

  The coffin lid slammed closed and instantly both soldiers were yelling at Lukas and I think one might have hit him with the butt of his rifle.

  “Do you want to give us disease?” another man asked.

  “No, sirs, of course not. I just didn’t think to tell you. You’ll forgive me. I haven’t had much education.”

  “Yet you speak excellent Russian. Where did you learn it?”

  Lukas hesitated a few seconds longer than he should have before finding his lie. “I used to work in the home of a Russian family.”

  My ears perked up. Was that a lie or not? Something about it rang truer than when I’d heard him lie before.

  “How long ago did you work there?” a soldier asked. “Because I thought you looked familiar.”

  That worried me. The last thing Lukas needed was to be recognized by anyone, for any reason.

  “Whatever my past, now I work with the sick and diseased,” Lukas continued, obviously hinting that he had been around many typhus patients. Or more specifically, hinting that it was possible he might be a typhus patient himself one day.

  That, I knew, was a lie. And it sounded different to my ears from his claim of having once worked in a Russian home. My curiosity about Lukas’s past was beginning to burn inside me.

  “On your way,” the soldier ordered. “Begone.”

  I smiled and finally began to breathe again. At least that had gone well. Hopefully in a wagon, the rest of the soldiers would assume we had already passed inspection, but that wasn’t certain yet.

  We still had a long way to go.

  Somewhere during the ride, I must have fallen asleep, because my eyes flew open as soon as the wagon jerked to a stop. At first I panicked, realizing I didn’t know why we had stopped, or where we were.

  I listened for any voices but heard none, including Lukas’s. Was he still out there?

  I fought the temptation to push at the coffin lid and free myself, though I desperately wanted to. With so much silence around me, I was feeling trapped and like I couldn’t get a decent breath. I turned my head and sucked in what air I could from the small drill hole. I wished I could tell whether it was still light outside.

  What was happening out there?

  Then the wagon beneath me shook a little, feeling the same way as when the soldiers had climbed in to check on me. If it was them, I had to appear dead, had to make them believe.

  I’d just turned my face upward again and closed my eyes when the coffin lid shifted, then was pulled open. It was dark outside, which was a relief. Had sunlight glared down on me, even through closed eyes, I likely would have flinched at so much brightness.

  But no one spoke and I couldn’t peek. I had to wait, to be as patient as the dead always were.

  Then a hand touched my shoulder and shook it. “Audra, are you—”

  Recognizing Lukas’s voice, my eyes popped open, and I drew in a breath. He pulled the fabric off my face, and I saw him staring down at me, his concerned expression slowly relaxing.

  “You looked so believable, I was worried. Truly worried.”

  “You were worried? Why did you have to be so quiet? You couldn’t have told me it was you before you opened the lid? Help me out of this box, please!”

  “I didn’t think to warn you it was me,” he said, grabbing my arms to help lift me. “And we do need to be quiet. We’re quite a way past the border security, but we still might see patrols coming through the forests. You ought to wash that makeup off. If a patrol does come through, you won’t have time to get back into the coffin and I don’t think we’ll be able to explain why you look like that without convincing them that the dead have risen.”

  “That’s not funny, Lukas.” But I laughed anyway and so did he.

  He pointed off to his left. “There is a stream where you can wash. I’ll check on the books.”

  I jumped from the wagon and hurried toward the stream, eager to have a clean face again. I dipped my hands into the cold water and brushed it over my face, then dipped my hands in once again and scrubbed harder with my fingers. If our luck continued this way, then the worst was over.

  But in the same instant I completed that thought, I regretted it. Our luck had run out.

  I slowly lowered my hands, sucking in a breath that I could not release. Directly across the stream was a man dressed in peasant clothing with a rifle in his hands, staring at me with a dark expression that sent a chill up my spine.

  “What’s a girl like you doing out here on such a cold night? And what’s all that paint on your face?”

  I didn’t say a word. I didn’t even remember how to speak.

  “Stand up and come with me. We’ve already found your friend.”

  We. Then it wasn’t only him, and they already had Lukas.

  My heart sank. Lukas had been my one hope to get out of this trouble, but sure enough, when I got to the crest of the hill, he was seated in the back of the wagon on top of the coffin, his arms tied behind him and a gag around his mouth. A woman with a second rifle was standing watch over Lukas. She was similarly dressed to the man who had captured me and had matted brown hair sticking out from her head scarf. Her eyes flicked between the man and me, growing colder with each look.

  “We were hired to transport that coffin,” I said. “Nothing more.”

  “Yes, but I’m looking at the paint on your face and I’m thinking maybe you were in that coffin before stopping here. And if you were, then I already know why. One smuggler can always recognize another, isn’t that right?”

  “We’re a brother and sister—”

  He whistled. “Too bad. Your friend there just claimed you were cousins. You two should get your lies straight for next time, if there is a next time. Get into the wagon.”

  Lukas looked at me apologetically while I climbed in and sat on the coffin, reminding myself that at least here, we were protecting the books. The man followed me with a length of rope provided to him by the woman who I guessed was his wife.

  He tied one end to my left wrist and then began wrapping the rope around me. I inhaled to expand my chest and widened my arms as much as I dared, hoping he wouldn’t notice. While he wound the rope, he said, “We were there at the border when your friend spoke with the Cossack officers. They said he looked familiar, and my wife thought he did too. Your friend said he used to work in the home of a Russian landowner, but so did my wife. Except she truly was a servant there.” He turned to Lukas. “She was one of your servants, boy. You are one of them.”

  I looked over at Lukas for confirmation of what she had said, or a denial, but he was looking down, refusing to acknowledge them or me. Which was probably its own confession.

  By then, the man had finished winding the rope around me, and now he knotted it on my right hand. I slowly exhaled but kept my arms widened.

  “Come morning, we’ll take you both back to those same Cossacks, offer you in trade for our son, who they arrested a week ago. They’ll get back one of their own, and we’ll get our own back.”

  “They won’t honor the trade,” I said. “They’ll take us, then arrest the two of you as well.”

  “Look who knows so much about the Cossacks,” his wife said with a wicked grin. “Maybe we should ask what it is she smuggles.”

  He held up a lantern and stared directly into my eyes. “Medicines? Drinks? Food? Books?” My eyes must have widened because he smiled and turned back to his wife. “They’re book smugglers.”

  “Books. Absolutely worthless,” his wife said.

  “That’s what they must be hiding in the coffin.” The man rubbed his hand over his beard. “We’ll take this before we turn them in tomorrow. We could use this too.”

  “Please let us go,” I said. “I promise that you will receive no reward for our capture—we’re not that valuable. And you risk being caught yourselves.”

  The man rapped Lukas on the back of his head. “You might not be valuable, but this is their boy and they’ll want him back. All the blame for the books in the coffin will rest with you. Rest in peace with you, I should say.” He laughed at his joke, but his wife didn’t seem to understand it and Lukas and I weren’t playing along. So he added, “You’ll fit in nicely with the Cossack plans. We overheard them talking about a demonstration in a couple of days, as punishment for that town’s love of books.”

  “What town?” I asked.

  “Kražiai.”

  My heart sank. That was the last place we had been, where the priest had warned us of rumors of trouble. But they weren’t rumors. It was going to happen two days from now, and there was nothing we could do to help them, or to stop it from happening.

  At this point, I wasn’t even sure we could save ourselves.

  After double-checking the knots on my hands and Lukas’s, the man jumped from the wagon and began a muttered conversation with his wife. I kept my head down but listened carefully, trying to pick out any useful words.

  There wasn’t much. She was tired and wanted to sleep, but he insisted they had to keep watch over us. I took that as a signal that we should look as nonthreatening as possible, so I nodded off, closing my eyes. I hoped Lukas did the same.

  He must have, for in a louder voice, the man said, “They’ll sleep through the night. You and I can trade off checking on them.”

  “You can check on them,” she said. “I’ll be useless tomorrow if I don’t sleep too.” I heard her footsteps pad away from the wagon and shuffling sounds as she prepared a bed for herself in the back of their own wagon.

  The man seemed to be walking around our wagon, a slow constant circle that was beginning to irritate me. I was cold and uncomfortable in this position in which I was faking sleep, and I had to keep my arms out so the rope looked tight. Meanwhile, I thought it was possible that Lukas actually was sleeping. I heard his light snoring.

  After what might’ve been a hundred rounds, the man sat on the back of our wagon. With one eye, I peeked at him, saw him facing away from us but resting his arm on the far side of the coffin where we sat. Twenty minutes later, he was resting his head there. After another twenty minutes, he was snoring too.

  I slowly raised my head and was pleased to see Lukas do the same. He shook his head at me and shrugged as if to say there was nothing he could do to escape. But I sat up straight to make my body as lean as possible, pulled my arms in tight to myself, and the rope went slack. Both of my wrists were still tied, but if I was quiet enough and patient in my movements, I could escape this rope.

  This was another trick of my father’s, borrowed from a young magician who was quickly garnering fame for his escape acts. My father used to tell my mother that if he could perfect the same escape tricks, perhaps he’d become famous too.

  I didn’t know any of the special tricks he had for untying knots, but I did know enough to keep my arms close to my body as I wiggled to loosen the rope. When it had gathered at my waist, I quietly stood and let the rope fall.

  The wagon creaked when I did and the man stopped snoring. I froze in place and waited breathlessly until he started again, then I stepped out of the first loop of rope to fall at my feet, making the rest of the rope even more slack, and in less than a minute, all that remained was my tied hands. With so much rope now available, I had no trouble bringing them around front where I could untie them with my fingers and teeth.

  Lukas had been slowly shifting his body to face away from me so that I wouldn’t have to move much in order to untie his ropes. Once I did, we gestured to each other about the best way to escape.

  I pointed to the coffin, silently asking what we were supposed to do about our books. Lukas shook his head, pointing the direction he wanted us to run.

  But I couldn’t accept any escape that left these books behind. Not when we had worked so hard to get the books this far, and when so many people had given us what little money they had for them.

  So I pointed to the man’s rifle. Lukas shook his head, but I gestured to him to get into the driver’s seat. He had better do it, for I was going to do my part of the plan whether Lukas was ready or not.

  He rolled his eyes and I was fairly sure he whispered a prayer to save himself from me, or our captors … or mostly from me. But he did climb into the driver’s seat and lift the reins.

  I crept toward the man, whose rifle was lying beneath one hand as he slept. I started to pull it free, but he stirred and redoubled his grip. I turned to look at Lukas again to ask what I should do and he mouthed the words “Hold on.”

  I wound the rope that had tied us around a post of the wagon. That would keep me in the wagon bed. With my other hand, I grabbed a handle of the coffin, and I closed my eyes. The instant I did, Lukas shook the reins to rush the horses forward. They bolted as if fire were at their hooves. The man awoke, but I kicked him with one leg and he rolled off the edge of the wagon, landing facedown on the ground. Working against the momentum of our ride, I tried to position myself as much as possible behind the coffin, and it was a good thing I did because the man fired off a shot toward us, and I heard it pierce one side of the coffin.

  “Keep going!” I cried.

  “Obviously!” Lukas’s attention was on keeping our wagon balanced until we got back on the road, but once we did, he only rode us faster.

  We had to expect the man and his wife would follow us, but by the time they hitched their horse to their little cart, we would have a good lead on them.

  I climbed into the seat beside Lukas and said, “We’ve got to get to Kražiai.”

  “Agreed. We’ve got to warn them.”

  We rode as fast as we dared to push the horses, and when they began showing signs of exhaustion, we pulled off the road to wait out the night and to catch our own breaths. Luckily, by then the snow had melted so our tracks weren’t as visible as they might have been a few days ago. Still, the ground was wet, so we couldn’t trust that we were totally safe yet, and even if we could, my heart was pounding far too fast to consider relaxing.

  While Lukas tended to the horses, I crept back as near as I dared to the road, watching for any signs of the man and his wife. But though I waited for almost half an hour, I never did see them. Either they had taken a different route, or they had given up.

  I finally returned to Lukas, who was sitting on the edge of the wagon, just where the man had been before we rolled him out. But Lukas’s shoulders were slumped and when he looked up at me, he merely said, “I never heard them coming toward me, not until it was too late. Maybe for once I should save you instead of it always being the other way around.”

  “The first time we met, you saved me,” I said. “And we escaped together. I couldn’t have done that alone.”

  He gave me a half smile, then slumped again. “It might not have mattered if the soldiers hadn’t recognized me at the border, or thought they did. Just when I thought I’d escaped my past, it comes back to me again.”

  I sat beside him. “Why would they have recognized you? Did you work for that Russian family, Lukas? Or … are you in that Russian family?”

  He shrugged. “My mother is Lithuanian and my father is Russian. I was born here, raised with other Lithuanian boys and girls, but when I turned twelve, my father demanded I end all friendships with anyone who wasn’t entirely Russian. ‘I’m not entirely Russian,’ I told him. ‘Should I not be a friend to myself?’ Despite what he’d said, I didn’t end those friendships. I refused. One night I couldn’t get home because of a snowstorm and my best friend, a boy named Otto, let me stay with him. His parents always read to him before bedtime, though I didn’t know then that it was from an illegal book. I just sat with them and listened to the story. They were only halfway through it when Cossacks burst into the room and took Otto’s father away. They dragged him into the square and were about to whip him. I ran after the soldiers and tried to stop it, then realized the officer in charge was my own father.”