3.

The inn was billowing flames.

He raced down the street in a desperate panic. Magda was leaning out the window, holding Anya in her arms. He could see the fire flickering behind her. "ERIK!" she screamed.

"Magda! I'm coming in for you!"

Heedless of personal safety he pushed past the innkeeper, who was standing near the door shouting, "Sir, sir, it's too dangerous! Don't go in there!" but what else could he do? His wife, his daughter, would die. He had to get them out of there.

The heat was blinding, overwhelming. Sweat leapt out of his pores, and his eyes burned with smoke. He had almost reached the stairs when he heard a cracking sound above his head, and looked up.

A support beam, on fire, was falling on him.

There wasn't even time for real fear, nothing more than adrenaline shock before he flung something out to protect himself. Something, like hands, except his hands could not have held off the beam. Something, like hands, except hands could not have picked up a crowbar across the room and flung it at a man standing next to him.

There was something in him. He had power. He could save Magda and Anya. But he couldn't figure out how to get up the stairs. Part of the roof had fallen on top of the whatever it was he had flung up to protect himself, and it had slid off and was now blocking the stairs. There had to be another way. Maybe, if he could throw a crowbar across a room, he could pick up his family from the upper floor and carry them down safely? Or make a whatever this was for them to land on?

As he ran back outside, mind racing, trying to figure out how he could use this strange new power to save his family, he heard a shout. "There he is!" Hands grabbed him, wooden sticks struck him. He tried to fling the power out again, but his head throbbed with pain and it wouldn't respond.

"Erik! For the love of God, let him go, let him help us, please! We'll burn!"

"Papa!"

No one except him was paying attention to Magda and Anya's screams. They were too busy beating him, calling him a capitalist dog and an enemy of the state. He saw the man who had tried to cheat him out of his money, grinning, and knew how this had happened, why he was being attacked. "Let me go, please! My wife-- my daughter--"

"Sorry, comrade, but you should have thought of that before you attacked me," the man sneered.

He heard Magda scream again, a shrill, agonized sound. He had heard screams like that. They haunted his dreams. Her entire people had been flung into the flames on the night the gypsy camp had been slaughtered, and he'd been able to do nothing to save them, had only been able to save Magda by bribing a kapo into smuggling her into the Jewish women's camp the night before. And now the death by fire came to claim her, and his daughter, and he still couldn't save them.

"Magda!" he screamed.

And saw her jump.

She and Anya tumbled through the air and landed, Anya on top of Magda, in a broken heap in front of the inn, on the cobblestone not five feet away from him, because these men had not let him save them.

"No," he whispered, strangled. "No! NO!"

The power built within him, hot and riotous as if he were the one burning. He saw nothing but white in his rage. All around him was the sound of swiftly silenced screams, and the smell of charring flesh, and ozone.

He opened his eyes. All around him were nothing but smoking corpses. His rage had killed them all. And he was glad. They had killed-- they had killed--

Suddenly horribly weak, he staggered over to the bodies of his loved ones. Magda's beautiful face, shattered, blood leaking from her head and trickling down the dry pavement. Anya lying on top of her, held in her arms, so still and unmoving. He collapsed to his knees next to them, lay his head on them, and began to sob.

"Papa?"

The sobs stilled. He lifted his head. Had he heard that? How had he heard that?

Anya's eyes were open. "Papa? Don't cry."

"Anyushka? You're alive? Dear God..." He grabbed his daughter and hugged her. She cried out.

"Owww! It hurts, Papa!"

Of course it hurt. What was he thinking? She might have broken ribs, arms, legs, anything, but she was alive. Magda had cushioned her daughter's fall with her own body so that Anya could survive. More hot tears welled, grief and love for his wife combined with relief and fear for his daughter. She needed a hospital.

He was dizzy when he stood, shockingly weak, his head pounding so badly he thought it would explode, but he did not drop his daughter. Please, God. I know You and I have not spoken much in the past. I'll believe in You again, I'll raise her to love and worship You, if only You let me save her. Let me get her to a hospital, please God, please. I'll even forgive You for Magda if You only let Anya live and be all right.

Cars were not common in Vinnitsa, but at least one of the dead men in the street had come in one. Erik turned, feeling the car, seeing it in his mind. As he approached, the door opened. He knew now that he was doing that, could see the tendrils of energy he was reaching out as if they were hands to shape and manipulate the metal around him. Electromagnetism. Had to be. What else could form a force field, and fire electricity, and draw metal to it, and yet could not push away human bodies with wooden saps? Magda's body still lay in the street. Desperately he wanted to recover it, to bury her properly, but Anya was alive, Anya was the priority. She was who he needed to concentrate on, and he had only the strength for one. Magda would approve. She had died for her daughter; she would understand Erik leaving her body behind to ensure Anya's life.

The nature of the emergency was so blindingly obvious that no one even asked for his papers, just took him in and started treating his daughter. He did show papers when they finally asked. That was probably a mistake.

Anya was in a cast, her leg broken, her ribs taped where the impact had fractured them. The doctors had told him that due to her age Anya had escaped with far fewer injuries than she should have had; her bones were still soft and springy, able to take more force without breaking. She was in reasonably good spirits, considering. She hadn't asked where her mother was. Erik rather thought Anya already knew, and was saying nothing about it either to avoid upsetting her Papa or because if she said anything it would make it real.

Erik's own headache had passed, finally, and after he'd eaten he felt much stronger. He didn't dare practice the power in an open ward, but he could feel it within him. So when the police came to arrest him for the murder of 18 men and women, he had a better idea of his capabilities. He took his daughter, in her cast, and he went out the window. Anya screamed, obviously remembering what had happened the last time she went out a window, but Erik had learned the trick to making these force fields, and was able to bring them both to ground lightly, gently. He grabbed the first car he found, put Anya in the back seat, jumped into the front, and instead of turning the engine on he lifted the car into the air.

He'd heard the news, been told about England ceding Palestine back to the Jews and the new nation of Israel forming. He hadn't thought he needed to go. Now he knew better. A Jewish stranger would not be safe anywhere in the Soviet Union, anywhere in the world except among his own kind. And perhaps he could help to protect the Jewish homeland with these new powers. Certainly it would be safer for Anya to live among her own kind. It didn't occur to him that he had never thought of Anya as a Jew before today; her mother was Romany and he himself had been trying to forget what he was. But God had given him this power, God had let Anya live. His grief for Magda knew no bounds but at least Anya lived. He would keep his promise to God, since God had finally kept a bargain with him.

Below him ordinary people pointed and shouted. He lifted the car up, up into the air, heading east. Anya looked out the window and laughed. "Everybody is so small, Papa!"

He closed his eyes. He didn't need them to "see" where he was going. "They are, Anyushka. Yes."