Engines Overhead Prologue: Yesterdays

The tin was American. Blue and red enamel chipped at the corners, the lid dented near the hinge. It fit neatly in the palm, and if you shook it, it made no sound. Inside was a square of folded cloth, with edges blackened with oil and the sweat of a dozen nights. Unwrap that, and you’d find the map. Hand-drawn, creased a hundred ways from just as many quick glances.

One thin red line ran diagonally across it, jagged, but accurate enough. It held no name. It just snaked through forests and clearings and the burden of men who would swear to die for the thread it marked. And others, just as sure, who would torch the world to see it erased. The line on the map wasn’t a road. It was a cargo line, nearly invisible to anyone who didn’t already know it existed. A hidden artery carrying fuel, weapons, and precious steel into the belly of the German occupation. The resistance wanted it severed. He had gone farther than anyone to find it. Maybe too far. Bridges were burned, even as he was in the thicket of the dark forest.

He folded the map once more. Tucked it back inside the cloth. Snapped the tin shut. In finality.

He didn’t look like a soldier—not in the way stories told it. There was something too springy about him. The boyish look in his eyes didn’t fit his stubbled chin. His coat fit poorly. He wore it like someone else’s history, ill-fitting and patched. There was a cigarette behind his ear, and a photograph in his breast pocket, creased from checking, he had consulted it much lately.

The faces in the photo were faded from weather and wind. Still, he knew them by heart. Three figures—one held the warmth of home, one the weight of tomorrow, and one had never truly stood there at all. A blur at the edge. A restless shape, neither shadow nor trick of light. He’d never spoken of it. What would people have thought if he had?

The wind had teeth. It picked at the trees, yanked at the hem of his coat, scattered dry leaves like signals no one was meant to see. He moved silent, but fast. Boots kissed the dirt, lifted. Dirt, lifted.

A branch dipped in the distance, though the wind had not touched it. He stopped and waited for it to settle—nothing there. Not that the eye could see. A sliver of warmth passed behind his ribs, as if something was walking with him. Someone was there to see him home.

Step by careful step, he moved again. The cool mud sucked his boots to the ground, and when he shifted his weight he had to pray he wouldn’t sail into the ground. The brittle, leaf-strewn ground would be too noisy.

He slowed, measured the distance to the opening, and let the forest carry him almost to the edge, almost safe.

At first, it looked like a puddle. A dark depression in the mud. But the shape was man-made. He took a step closer, he caught himself holding his breath in.

A heavy, square-heeled print.

He crouched, brushing two stiff fingers along the rim. The clay was still damp beneath the topsoil. Fresh. Minutes old. Maybe less. He scanned the ground again—another. This one half-hidden by a curl of wet leaves. Then a third. Fanned out. Angled. A shape was forming. Not a line. His stomach knotted. It was not a patrol.

They were waiting for him.

And then he heard them—boots in the slop, men coming to close the door on him.

He held his breath, pressing his tongue to the roof of his mouth.

The tin pressed against his ribs. He could still bury it. What if they found it? His men would walk right to the gallow. Should he destroy it? His death would be for naught. He would save his men, his brethren. He could still—

No.

There was no time. He pocketed the tin. And plucked out the photograph. It expected tears, but he gave it a bright smile. He smiled for the small faces, those that prayed for his welfare. He pocketed it, and squared his shoulders.

He exhaled once.

The wind cut through his ears. He felt the forest in the nerve endings of his fingers. Fear pressed in, then condensed into a single point of clarity, though it wasn’t his.

He straightened in a slow arc. The cold mattered little. The map no longer felt like paper, but fusewire in his chest.

Let them come.

Let them see what it costs to corner a son of Norway in his own woods. Let them pay the cost.

He peeled off his coat and dropped it to the ground, baring the thinner jacket beneath. The tin he shoved deep into his belt, tight against the bone. The photograph, he tucked carefully inside the lining of his trouser pocket, where no fire could touch it unless it torched him first.

Calmness came over him. His mind hurled him into the Arctic sea. His eyes of fire burned through the blue crust and signaled the heavens to fall. Though he didn’t drown. The torments of his mind, sank through his arms, his legs. When he turned his fists to steel, they creaked eagerly—ready to crush tree trunks, and any man who dared threaten the safety of his family, and no less… his beloved country. 

He remembered a voice before the frost.

“If it’s you or the line, I’d rather lose the line.”

But they both knew that one meant the other.

He wondered, just briefly, if he had known. That he wouldn’t come back. That if things came to it… He would stay a hundred times over. 

If the girl grows up free, then nothing was wasted.

“I’m sorry”.

He was ready to live and let die, and in the nick of time.

Because behind him,

a twig snapped.