along

face a nightmare of rehabilitation alone, left her writhing inside, soul-sick and exhausted.
How could she have demanded her own way at a time when her parents needed one another, desperately? All the laughter had gone out of her mother, that day, and it hadn't returned in two long years. Yalena whimpered with the excruciating self-knowledge that she had spent those years twisting the knife deeper with every nasty comment, every belittling prejudice, every petty little demand she'd laid down as an ultimatum.
A song from her childhood floated into her mind, a cheerful little song that danced in razor-sharp shoes. Growing oats and peas, barley and beans . . . farmers who did nothing but dance and sing and suck money away from decent people by charging outrageous prices for plants that grew themselves . . . A pretty, poisonous lie handed wholesale to a wounded, desperate child. Everything POPPA had said was a lie. The whole fabric of her life was a lie, a stained and tattered ruin that nothing would ever put right, again.
Yet her mother had risked her own life, rescuing Yalena out of that deathtrap. Why? When she had spent her life preferring the company of her friends and the gossip at school over everything and everyone else? And now she didn't even have those friends. POPPA had killed them. Coldly and without remorse. In that moment, a hatred of POPPA cyrstallized, so deep and so dangerous, it scared her.
I can't make it up to you, Mom, she whispered as the tears began to come, again. I can't ever undo that damage. But I can stop being stupid and I can stop hurting people. And maybe one day . . . Yalena bit her lip and rolled over to bury her face in the pillow. Maybe one day, I can do something that will make you proud of me, instead. Then the weeping broke loose again and she soaked the pillow under her cheek. She was still crying when the sedative pulled her down into gentle oblivion.
II
I limp back toward my depot under a veil of darkness and apparent secrecy. The most noteworthy observation I make en route is the utter lack of civilian presence anywhere along the path I follow. Farmhouses, villages, and the occasional fuel station are vacant, giving every appearance of having been abandoned in a great rush. I conclude