WHAT'S MORE COMMON IN WAR: LOYALTY OR BETRAYAL?
April 1944. After so-called liberation from both the Nazis and the Soviets, Ukraine remains a battleground between resistance fighters and the ruthless Soviet secret police working to break them at all...
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❦ SCREAM, NIGHTINGALE, SCREAM I. he who promises a lot gives little ——————————————————
Growing up with the Savaryn name meant being aware of three facts from birth.
First, Ukraine would one day be sovereign and free. Second, the Soviets hated everyone, especially you. And third, it wasn't your fault they hated you, and it was appropriate to constantly remind Papa it was only because of his involvement in nationalist politics that they knew your name.
It's not like Taras Savaryn, the family's sole son, would ever forget what the scathe of Soviet contempt felt like. Not when they had shot at his unit enough times to make staying alive a habit and falling asleep near impossible.
When he got close, the warmth of must-tinged breath from his Orlov mare, Lastivka, jolted him awake.
Taras assured himself for the second time that afternoon he wasn't dead, only dreaming. That meant he wouldn't be trampled and the mare's bones wouldn't shatter like a porcelain cup when he jerked out from beneath her.
"Horses don't step on the dead," he repeated to convince himself. "They don't step on the sleeping, either."
For once, his stupid self-assurance worked. It gave him the confidence to roll left and squash more of the meadow's wild rye as he hid from the March sun in Lastivka's shadow.
Slivers of its sunset glare amplified the buzzing in his brain. Tainted-lavender spotlights cascaded from gaps in the curled clouds, melting the dazzle of frost which had survived the day. Tucked inside the meadow's grove of young birch, cool-tan and cream sparrows lounged in wait of twittering solos that would never come.
Because the sparrows, like all birds, had stopped singing three years ago. Fascist bombs had plummeted from the sky in an earth-shattering chorus and silenced them. Soviet boots joined the symphony of war in place of the bass line, only to trample Ukrainian soil as they retreated to their red star shrines in Moscow.
In the aftermath, the Soviet-aligned citizens left behind had armed themselves against their fellow Ukrainians. They praised a Georgian named Stalin and took it upon themselves to shoot at nationalists like Taras in addition to the German fascists.
They had done so for three nights and three days straight. Taras soon realized seventy-two hours without rest drove a man to the type of madness in which he wanted to put a bullet in his mouth just so he could experience true silence—no matter how eternal it ended up being.
But he didn't want to shoot himself. Not there in the meadow and certainly not after making it through another hour wound-free. All Taras wanted was to burn away the haze that veiled his vision so he could confirm whether the men crouched at the tree-line were part of his company or that of the enemy.
Mosin rifles with bayonets attached shot over their blurred silhouettes towards the canopy of pine needles. In unison, they faced one another like twins in a mirror, trying to trick their sibling into believing their reflection didn't belong to them.
