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E szter had always been so small.

Too small.

Even then, at thirteen, her frame fit beneath the thin wool blanket, her limbs delicate as reeds and wrists narrow enough to be circled by my thumb. She slept curled like a comma with her spine bowed slightly and knees tucked in tight beneath her. She was little more than a frail knot of warmth in a world that had never been gentle to her.

Doctors hadn’t been able to name it precisely—not in the years before the war, and certainly not now. Something congenital, they’d said. A defect in the bones. Whatever it was, growth came far too slowly, like a hesitant flower in winter. She rarely grew more than an inch in a year. Her hands were still child-small, her shoulders narrow, her back thin as a sparrow’s.

But, God, how fiercely she lived.

Eszter was whip-smart, with a laugh that lit rooms and eyes that saw everything. And though her legs ached in cold weather and her breath came short when she ran, she never let herself fall behind without a fight.

From the edge of a distant memory, I recalled the first time I realized she would eclipse me. She was five—barely that, really, small as a whisper, all knees and elbows and a tangle of hair that never stayed brushed no matter how I tried. I was hunched over my desk, scribbling formulas on the back of a ration slip, trying to work out the limits of a logic gate model I hadn’t quite solved. The room was dim, our coal stove long gone cold. The paper crinkled under my palm as I wrote, scratched out, rewrote again. My fingers were stained with failed formulae.

Eszter had been playing behind me with a row of mismatched wooden buttons she called her “library.” I hadn’t even realized she was watching me, but she was. She always was.

“Papa?” she’d said suddenly, padding over in her threadbare socks. “That one doesn’t belong there.”

I looked up, blinking at her.

She pointed to my formula. Her finger landed, unhesitating, on a notation I’d botched—swapped a negative sign where none belonged. A minor error, but still mine.

“Why do you think that?” I asked, more amused than curious.

She just smiled—that gap-toothed, triumphant, five-year-old smile that made the world feel like it had one unbreakable truth.

“Because it goes down instead of up, and you said things that go up are hopeful.”

I laughed, not because she was wrong, but because she was entirely right in a way I hadn’t taught her. She didn’t know the math. She didn’t need to. She saw the shape of it, the rise and fall of truth across a line.

And in that moment, I knew.

She wouldn’t just follow my footsteps. She’d leap beyond them. My tiny baby bird would soar higher in the heavens than my imagination could even fathom—and not despite her smallness, her fragile frame, her quiet voice, but because of it.

Because she saw from a different angle.

Because she listened harder, looked longer, asked better questions.

Because she had the kind of mind that didn’t simply solve puzzles, but felt them.

And I knew, without a shadow of any doubt, I would give my life a thousand times over to make sure the world never dimmed the brilliance that shone within her.

For her part, she bore her difference with a quiet dignity I had never earned and might never grasp. Perhaps that’s why I loved her the way I did—not just as any father would, but as a man in awe of her very existence. She had survived a world not built for her, and every day she stayed alive inside it felt like defiance, a sort of soft rebellion against life’s cruelty.

I sat on the edge of her narrow bed, just watching.

Her curls—dark and wild and ever unruly—framed her face like ink spills on parchment. I reached out, brushing one back from her temple, my hand trembling as it always did when I touched her in sleep.

There was something sacred in those moments. Was it the stillness? The silence? The illusion of safety? I could never be sure.

She made a soft sound and rolled, her bare shoulder peeking from beneath the blanket, all bird-bone and pale skin.

“ Kicsim ,” I whispered. My little one.

My thoughts drifted again, symbols forming in my mind’s eye, on the walls, across the bed linens. I saw them everywhere sometimes, when inspiration’s muse deigned to caress my cheek. It was in those moments I felt alive.

I hadn’t meant to build a future. Just a machine.

I’d started with equations, with permutations of ciphers and the flaws in the British Enigma machine that every good mathematician could see. I’d wanted to prove it could be done better, cleaner, unbreakable.

And then . . . it was.

The Soviets saw what I had not. They saw a weapon, a guarantee of secrets, a machine to silence all others.

They wanted to own it.

And I wanted to protect her.

That had been our pact.

Now I knew better.

And now it was too late to walk backward.

I leaned down, resting my elbows on my knees, hands clasped, staring at the tiny shelf above her bed. She’d placed a toy horse there—the one with the chipped paint and the ragged tail.

She’d said it looked like America.

She didn’t know what America looked like.

Neither did I, not really.

But sometimes, in the silence, I let myself imagine: a street without soldiers, a sky without bombers, a classroom with clean desks and soft pencils, a bakery where the smell of bread didn’t have to be rationed.

A home with doors that locked only from the inside.

I imagined Eszter’s laughter filling a sunlit kitchen, her feet bare on tile floors, her voice clear as bells as she called out for me to come look at something—anything, everything.

I dreamed of freedom—but not mine.

Hers.

It was all so fragile, that dream, a bubble made of the thinnest glass that I knew would shatter if held too tightly. It rested on so many ifs.

If the Americans were real.

If the man I met tonight wasn’t followed.

If the plan worked.

If the borders held.

If the weather cooperated.

If we lived.

The Soviets didn’t forgive betrayal. They didn’t waste time pretending to be fair.

If they suspected . . . if even a hint reached the wrong ears . . . they wouldn’t question her. They wouldn’t send her to a school. They’d put her in the back of a truck and drive her somewhere I couldn’t reach—and I would never see her again.

My stomach twisted so violently I had to steady myself against the mattress. My fingers gripped the edge until my knuckles turned white.

“Not you, Kicsim ,” I whispered, looking down at her sleeping face. “They can have everything else, but never you.”

She stirred again, her brow creasing.

I let go of the mattress and reached out, smoothing her hair once more. It calmed her. It always had. Since she was a baby, too small to hold her head up, she had quieted at my touch.

I was her anchor.

And she was the only thing left that made me human.

I stood finally, quietly, and pulled the blanket higher up her chest. She exhaled and curled tighter, her bony arms folded beneath her chin like a cat.

I stepped into the hallway and closed the door behind me.

My heart pounded.

My hands shook.

One more night.

Then everything would change.

God , I prayed silently, help us. Let it change for good.