Salt to the Sea

ALSO BY RUTA SEPETYS

Between Shades of Gray

Out of the Easy

PHILOMEL BOOKS

an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC

375 Hudson Street, New York, NY 10014

Text copyright © 2016 by Ruta Sepetys.

Map illustrations copyright © 2016 by Katrina Damkoehler.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Sepetys, Ruta. Salt to the sea : a novel / Ruta Sepetys. pages cm Summary: “As World War II draws to a close, refugees try to escape the war's final dangers, only to find themselves aboard a ship with a target on its hull”—Provided by publisher. 1. World War, 1939–1945—Juvenile fiction. [1. World War, 1939–1945—Fiction. 2. Refugees—Fiction.] I. Title. PZ7.S47957Sal 2016 [Fic]—dc23 2015009057

ISBN 978-0-698-17262-3

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

JACKET IMAGES: IMAGE DEPOT PRO, DOUG ARMAND

PHOTO ILLUSTRATION: TRAVIS COMMEAU

DESIGN BY THERESA EVANGELISTA

We the survivors are not the true witnesses. The true witnesses, those in possession of the unspeakable truth, are the drowned, the dead, the disappeared.

—Primo Levi

Guilt is a hunter.

My conscience mocked me, picking fights like a petulant child.

It's all your fault,
the voice whispered.

I quickened my pace and caught up with our small group. The Germans would march us off the field road if they found us. Roads were reserved for the military. Evacuation orders hadn't been issued and anyone fleeing East Prussia was branded a deserter. But what did that matter? I became a deserter four years ago, when I fled from Lithuania.

Lithuania.

I had left in 1941. What was happening at home? Were the dreadful things whispered in the streets true?

We approached a mound on the side of the road. The small boy in front of me whimpered and pointed. He had joined us two days prior, just wandered out of the forest alone and quietly began following us.

“Hello, little one. How old are you?” I had asked.

“Six,” he replied.

“Who are you traveling with?”

He paused and dropped his head. “My Omi.”

I turned toward the woods to see if his grandmother had emerged. “Where is your Omi now?” I asked.

The wandering boy looked up at me, his pale eyes wide. “She didn't wake up.”

So the little boy traveled with us, often drifting just slightly ahead or behind. And now he stood, pointing to a flap of dark wool beneath a meringue of snow.

I waved the group onward and when everyone advanced I ran to the snow-covered heap. The wind lifted a layer of icy flakes revealing the dead blue face of a woman, probably in her twenties. Her mouth and eyes were hinged open, fixed in fear. I dug through her iced pockets, but they had already been picked. In the lining of her jacket I found her identification papers. I stuffed them in my coat to pass on to the Red Cross and dragged her body off the road and into the field. She was dead, frozen solid, but the thought of tanks rolling over her was more than I could bear.

I ran back to the road and our group. The wandering boy stood in the center of the path, snow falling all around him.

“She didn't wake up either?” he asked quietly.

I shook my head and took his mittened hand in mine.

And then we both heard it in the distance.

Bang.

Fate is a hunter.

Engines buzzed in a swarm above.
Der Schwarze Tod
, “the Black Death,” they called them. I hid beneath the trees. The planes weren't visible, but I felt them. Close. Trapped by darkness both ahead and behind, I weighed my options. An explosion detonated and death crept closer, curling around me in fingers of smoke.

I ran.

My legs churned, sluggish, disconnected from my racing mind. I willed them to move, but my conscience noosed around my ankles and pulled down hard.

“You are a talented young man, Florian.” That's what Mother had said.

“You are Prussian. Make your own decisions, son,” said my father.

Would he have approved of my decisions, of the secrets I now carried across my back? Amidst this war between Hitler and Stalin, would Mother still consider me talented, or criminal?

The Soviets would kill me. But how would they torture me first? The Nazis would kill me, but only if they uncovered the plan. How long would it remain a secret? The questions
propelled me forward, whipping through the cold forest, dodging branches. I clutched my side with one hand, my pistol with the other. The pain surged with each breath and step, releasing warm blood out of the angry wound.

The sound of the engines faded. I had been on the run for days and my mind felt as weak as my legs. The hunter preyed on the fatigued and weary. I had to rest. The pain slowed me to a jog and finally a walk. Through the dense trees in the forest I spied branches hiding an old potato cellar. I jumped in.

Bang.