Daughters of the Night Sky

I groaned as I heard Oksana’s footsteps echo through the otherwise empty barracks. Her hair was already cropped fairly short, but she had allowed the barber to shape her bob to a crisp angle that set off the severe lines in her high cheeks and long, shapely nose. Her hair wasn’t the lustrous golden blond that Sofia had been graced with, but a shade or two closer to silver or platinum. A bit more down to earth. I might have found her less intimidating than Sofia if every word from her lips, every movement she made, wasn’t calculated to keep the world at a distance.

“It will grow back,” she said, opening her duffel to recover a book.

“I’m not that worried about it,” I said, realizing it was true. I could have my length back in a few years. It wasn’t as though there would be anyone at the front lines with the time to worry about our haircuts. “I came in here because I just wanted some peace while the others got their cuts.”

The post was always a hive, so silence was a rare commodity. She reclined on her bunk with her novel, happy to oblige my need for quiet.

After perhaps a quarter of an hour, I summoned the courage to take my small hand mirror from my trunk to assess the barber’s handiwork. He was not deft with his scissors, but it wasn’t a ruthless hack job, either. The short cut threw every line and angle of my face into sharp relief, though my face would never have the chiseled quality that Oksana’s did. I did look harsh, though, the softness in my face all but gone.

I wondered if I could ever reclaim it again.

If we lamented our haircuts, the saving grace was that we weren’t given much time to fret. Sofia coordinated all the training, and we were in the classroom or in a plane for almost eighteen hours every day. As thorough as our training in our academies and flight schools had been, the intensity was now doubled. The women who’d been trained in little flight clubs were getting three years of military curriculum in a few months, and the rest of the trained recruits wouldn’t exactly be on holiday. I’d been selected for navigator training, which meant an extra hour of studying Morse code in the morning, before the pilots and crews woke.

Even Taisiya, as stoic and calm as she was, had become more withdrawn and had lost a few kilos.

“Eat,” I chided her at lunch one afternoon. “It may not be appetizing, but it’s worlds better than what we’ll have at the front.”

“I’m not hungry,” she muttered, poring over a text Sofia had specifically recommended to her, chewing the end of her pencil as she read. But to silence me she picked at the mashed potatoes and gray hunk of meat the mess sergeant had slopped onto the metal tray. It was just as well she wouldn’t abandon her text for the meal; the best way to eat military rations was quickly and while looking at the food as little as possible.

Lada, sitting several places down at the long table, shrieked. A tendril of her thick, blonde hair had fallen into her hand.

“For God’s sake, stop twirling it,” I snapped. “Cropped hair is bad enough—do you want to be bald?”

“I’m not doing it on purpose,” she protested.

“Well, you’d better learn to control yourself,” Oksana cut in. “The doctors will ground you if they think you’ve got the mange.”

She chuckled softly, and everyone stared in response, unsure how to take her uncharacteristically flippant remark.

“It was meant to be a joke,” she said, tossing her fork on her empty tray, depositing it in the washing bin, and stalking out to the airfield.

“I’ll never understand that girl,” Lada said, shaking her head.

“We don’t need to understand her; we just need to work with her,” I said, scraping up the last mouthful of tasteless potatoes so as to avoid censure from the cook. “Coming, Taisiya?”

“Mmm-ummm,” she murmured, still not looking up from her book.

“Suit yourself,” I said, following Oksana’s trajectory out of the mess hall.

I fetched my violin from the barracks and found a seat in the little makeshift recreation center that was usually empty save for the hour or two just after dinner and before we dragged our weary bodies to bed. Music seemed a better outlet for nerves than ruining my hair or straining my eyes over books I’d already memorized.

The violin cupped to my chin, familiar as an old friend, as I let the bow glide over the strings. I refused to play the laments Papa had favored. There was not room in my soul for more sadness and worry. Sweet waltzes and simple tunes took me away from the steel and concrete ugliness for a few stolen moments, rendering the endless sea of grays, browns, and dirty greens almost endurable.

“You play well, Soloneva.”