Daisies Are Forever Read Online Free PDF Page B

They’re brutal. That’s the rumor in camp. Not the allies we want to meet up with. So we’ll be moving on.”
    Gisela rubbed her hands together. This posed a problem. “You need to stay with me then, since we’re supposed to be together and all. I’m traveling with three old people and my cousin’s two young daughters. I have to tend to them, but be ready to leave as soon as possible.”
    One positive to the situation was that Mitch and Xavier could pull carts. Though they were skinny, they had to be stronger than Herr Holtzmann. They could prove useful.
    She spun to return to the house to awaken the rest of her group.
    Whether Herr Holtzmann liked it or not, their party had grown by two.

    “Gisela, what took you so long?” Herr Holtzmann stood in the middle of the clan waiting for her in the front hall, the sisters carrying beat-up suitcases. The girls grinned and ran to hug her legs. She could manage nothing more than a slight smile.
    “You look like the world is going to end.” His words, as soothing as her opa’s, almost did her in.
    She studied the cracked leather of her brown shoes. So much had happened in the little while she had been gone. “That sounds very good right now.”
    “It is better if you spit out poison.”
    He had a point. “A thief stole our bicycles last night.”
    Herr Holtzmann sucked in his breath and let it out little by little. “Then we have to pull the carts by hand.” He said it in such a matter-of-fact way.
    “It will slow us. And we have two other members of our party.”
    Bettina shoved her bony elbow into her sister’s equally bony ribs. “A party. What a splendid idea. Do you think my pink dress will do? Perhaps it needs to be altered.”
    Herr Holtzmann ignored his sisters as they planned the shindig of the century. “Anyone is welcome.”
    She dropped her voice to a whisper. “They are escaped English POWs masquerading as German SS officers. My concern is for the girls. Is it too dangerous?”
    “Danger is what life is about these days. We never know when our time will come. Do you want to help these men?”
    Crazy as it was, she did. The Lord had pricked her heart. She nodded. “They would be assets, helping pull the carts or carry the girls.”
    “That’s fine with me. Bigger problems are in front of us. Frau Becker told me, and I overheard it from some of the other men, that the road to Elbing has been cut off.”
    “Cut off?”
    “Ja. The Russians are to the south of us and to the east and west.”
    The Frische Haff, a large lagoon on the Baltic Sea, lay to the north. “We’re trapped.”
    “I would say so.”
    Much as she tried to control herself, her voice rose in pitch. “Then what do we do? Where do we go? Back to Heiligenbeil to face the inevitable?” Screams echoed in her head. Pleas for help. She took a deep breath. They couldn’t go back. They couldn’t. The girls stared at her, their mouths open.
    The Holtzmann sisters took a break from their party planning. “Swimming in the Frische Haff in this weather?” Bettina tapped her forehead. “Brother, you have become addle brained in your old age. Wouldn’t you agree, Sister?”
    Katya nodded, her speckled gray hair peeking out from underneath her brown hood. “I don’t much care for swimming myself.”
    Annelies tugged on Gisela’s arm. “Are we going swimming?”
    “Nein.” Though if the Soviets continued their three-way assault, they may have no other choice. Her stomach clenched. She leaned closer to Herr Holtzmann. “How will we escape? Is there a way?”
    “Don’t worry. We will go over the Frische Haff.”
    “Your sister is right. You have lost your mind.”
    He chuckled. “My mind is right here. The lagoon is frozen. We will walk over it.”
    “Just like that?”
    “Just like that.”

    An hour later, the vast whiteness of the Frische Haff stretched in front of the little band. Gisela stood unbelieving as a sea of humanity flowed forward, plodding across the ice of the