was a Jewish organization begun in Russia and Berlin, whose goal was to rescue the next generation. The organization placed refugee children in châteaus the government allowed to be designated as schools.
Marianne thought over this request as she went to collect some speckled eggs from the hens to send home with the pastor. Her heart jolted against her chest and she noticed how sweet the air was. When she returned she said that yes, she would indeed be a guide.
“I can’t promise her safety,” Pastor Durand said to Monsieur Félix.
Marianne looked at her father, who nodded, but she made certain to answer for herself. “No one has to promise me anything.”
Marianne’s father was a man who was always willing to try to do what was right. If he was not a warrior or an angel, if he rarely spoke and never asked her what she thought or what she felt when she was young, he had always tried to do God’s will and act with faith. Now it seemed his daughter was the same, and he was filled with a raw pride. Guiding people across the border was dangerous. Several people had been detained at a crossing place known as the plaine du loup, the Wolf’s Plain. If Marianne were apprehended, she would be on her own. Monsieur Félix gazed at her and thought about Jeanne d’Arc, the girl warrior. Perhaps his daughter was stronger than he’d thought.
“Are you sure you want to help the pastor?” he asked.
“Oh, yes,” Marianne said. She had always wished to accomplish something, and, as it turned out, this is what she had been waiting for all along.
She went the first time with a man from the village, Albert, with whom she had gone to school and who now had a wife and five children. They shook hands and he told her to take the lead, even though he was a practiced passeur, to see if she still knew her way through the mountains. It took them close to a week, and then they got a ride back from another passeur from Annecy. Marianne felt exhausted and enthralled. She had remembered everything, and was as good a hiker as anyone. She walked from town thinking of the faces of the children who had been rescued. When she got to the house she was surprised to hear voices inside. She went to the barn for a hatchet, fearing another incident with the Germans, but when she returned her father opened the door to tell her they had a visitor, a young man who was a friend of hers.
“I don’t have any friends.” Marianne kept the hatchet in her hand as she walked inside, but dropped it the moment she saw Victor at the table, where he’d been having lunch with Monsieur Félix. Victor looked completely different, thinner and tougher, with his dark hair shaggy and long enough to bother him so that he kept flinging one hand through it, pushing it back. There were fresh burns on his hands and face that showed clearly he had been in an accident.
“Isn’t he your friend?” her father said, confused.
“Yes of course,” Marianne said, her heart lifting. Victor rose so quickly from his chair that it tipped back and fell with a clatter. He came to embrace her, and in his arms she rose off the floor. She was surprised when he stole a kiss, and even more surprised that the kiss burned. That was how it had begun.
He explained he had been living in the forest with a small group of Jewish resisters, and there had been an accident, a bomb had gone wrong. They’d scattered for a while. Victor had been hurt, his face and hands had been scorched. “You need to heal or you’ll be no use to anyone,” his friend Claude had told him.
Victor had seen a doctor known for helping their people. After that, the one place he could think to go was Beehive House.
“I remembered everything you ever told me about your home,” he told Marianne. “That’s how I found you.”
Marianne insisted he put her down. She sat to join them for lunch. She was starving, but it didn’t matter. She couldn’t take her eyes off him. Even before the dishes were done, she melted beeswax in a pan, then added olive oil and lavender as an herbal salve. Victor grinned at her as she saw to his burns. When he leaned forward to whisper he was much too close. “It was always