The Woman with the Blue Star, Pam Jenoff [highly recommended books txt] 📗

“There’s no choice,” I said firmly. “Not if you want to reach Saul again. I’ll help you.” I took the rope and tied one end to me and then affixed the other end to her waist so that we were about a meter apart. It was then that I noticed the bloodstain on her dress, which was now torn. “Are you hurt?” My apprehension grew.

“Just a cut from when the mine went off and we fell. Going through the tunnel made it worse. I’m fine.” There was a tightness to her voice that made me wonder if she was telling the truth.

But there was no time for further questions. I lowered myself into the icy water, then coaxed her in after me. Sadie put one foot into the water, then recoiled. “You can do this,” I urged. At last, she entered the water reluctantly. Panic crossed her face and she began to flail, arms floundering. “Just relax.” I held my arms out and pulled her to me. I was a strong swimmer. I had spent childhood summers in happier times at our cabin by Lake Morskie Oko in the Tatra Mountains and quickly learned to swim when my siblings threw me in the water mercilessly.

I started across the basin, pulling Sadie. She tried to swim, but her movements were flailing and ineffective. I tried to tow her. She should have been lighter in the water, but her weight was like a boulder. The rope that bound us pulled at my waist. I kicked harder, pushing onward. I had no idea how we would get up the ledge when we reached the other side. First, though, we had to get across. She grew heavier and for a moment I thought she was fighting me. When I looked behind me, Sadie had stopped moving. She was motionless in the water, as if she was exhausted or had simply given up. My frustration rose. “You have to keep trying,” I said. Then I noticed that there was something red in the water. Blood, I realized.

I drew her close and lifted her to the surface to examine the wound on her stomach. “It’s nothing,” she said, but her face was pale as a sheet. I pulled back her dress where it had torn and was horrified to see that the injury she had described as nothing was in fact a gash, several centimeters deep, with a piece of rock buried in it. Blood oozed from it now, coloring the water around us red. The debris was wedged deep and tight in the wound; pulling it out would only make things worse. The cut was bathed in filthy water, ensuring that it would go septic.

“Hold on,” I said, wrapping my arm around her waist to keep her close. I started swimming again with my other arm. Just a few feet more. I neared the far side of the basin. As I did, Sadie slipped from my grasp. She started to sink to the bottom, her weight on the rope pulling me down with her. I took a deep breath, then went under, searching. The filthy water was too dark to see through, so I tried to feel for her. My hands closed around the nothingness. I reached again and finally grasped a bit of her dress, then used all my might to pull her to the surface.

“You have to stop carrying me,” she gasped.

“Never. I’m getting you out of here.”

“Go now, while you can.”

“I told you, I’m not leaving you.” The water was rising rapidly, and once it went over the ledge and filled the tunnel on the far side, our escape would be closed. Every second that we lingered here in the chamber raised the chance that we would not make it out. But as long as Sadie was still alive, there was hope for both of us. I could not leave her.

We reached the far wall of the basin. I looked up uncertainly. Even with the rising waters lifting us, the ledge was still at least a meter above us. I could climb out, but Sadie would never manage it. I would have to lift her out. I paused, gathering my strength, while Sadie lay weakly in my arms.

Her eyes were closing now, though, her breath drawing short. “Saul,” she said, longingly. She looked off into the distance, as if actually seeing him. Was she hallucinating? “He really did love me after all,” she added.

“He does. He still does. He’s waiting for you. We just need to get up that wall.”

“Tell him...”

She was dying, I realized then. Her wound was too serious; she had lost too much blood. My heart screamed. “Sadie, no. We’re going to get out of here and you are going to find Saul and tell him yourself,” I insisted. She did not answer and I could see the last bit of her strength flowing from her body like her blood, as it mixed with the water. “I told you we are getting out of here.”

“You have to go on for both of us.”

“No.” That would never be enough. “You will marry Saul. Or you can come to Paris with me. I will draw and you will study medicine and we will have a fabulous life.” I was speaking quickly now, the words tumbling out in a breathless, almost nonsensical mumble, anything to keep her talking to me. “You can’t leave me. You need to be strong. You owe that much to me.”

But she shook her head, all of the fight in her gone. “I can’t.”

Sadie was not going to make it. This was the end for us. My heart broke.

“You have to let me go,” she said, her voice barely a whisper. She reached down and, with her remaining strength, untied the rope that had bound us tightly together. Then she tried to pull away from me, but I held fast to her. I looked up at the ledge. The rising water had brought us a