This Little Chapel

They dressed in the dark, listening to the sound of shouting and running footsteps above. Everyone was in a hurry to get out; nobody would be in a hurry to get here, in this old cleaned out cellar, full of soap boxes and cobwebs. They each had their own pile of clothes, picked out earlier, and they fumbled to find out which end of which piece was which, to pull on the unfamiliar shirts. They'd bound their chests earlier, in the privy, with a sheet torn to strips.

Magda hauled the boxes up against the small window high up, climbed up, put her foot against the wall, gripped the bars and pulled. The carefully weakened stone crumbled under her strength, and fell on the floor in a pile of rubble and metal.

She took Tilda by the waist, intending to lift her up. Tilda's sharp fingers buried into her side, and Magda found herself embraced and embracing, instead. For one last moment, they held each in the darkness under this heavy dark roof.

'We'll make it,' Magda said.

The black shadow that was Tilda nodded. 'And we'll come back,' she said.

'In the summer.'

They kissed for a moment, frightened to death and madly free. Then they climbed out into the cool autumn breeze and ran.

The flames were already dying in the east wing, but summer would come, and before that, the world.