Free Children of the Dusk by Janet Berliner, George Guthridge

influence in the Party to keep Sol alive.
    New fury filled her. She retrieved the scissors and chopped at her hair again. If this would relieve the heat and Erich's ardor, she would crop herself bald.
    She stopped and shut her eyes. Block out the world, she thought. Let me faint----
    ----She is lying on stone, her ankles fastened by straps, Shallow depressions in the stone fit her form perfectly. As though made for her. She turns her head, and beyond the open door she sees tiny gyrating men, dancing jerkily as marionettes. Sweat streams off her forehead as contractions roll through her with a pain she swears aloud she cannot endure. Not one more----
    The baby kicked hard, drawing Miriam out of her dream. If indeed it had been a dream. In a state of semi-awareness, she tuned in to several conversations that seemed to be taking place around her. She had heard a few of the voices before, at other such moments, though where she could not at once recall. Emotionally, she had a sensation of déjà vu , that sinking sense of eavesdropping on the past, and yet it did not seem truly to be her past. She was bathed in sweat and filled with a new fear. Judith, Emanuel, Lise--the names were linked by only one thing: Solomon's dybbuk-inspired visions.
    As a lover and a friend, as a wife and a Jew , Miriam knew she should, must , consider Sol's visions real--both the ones inspired by the dybbuk, which appeared to be happenstances in some kind of universe that paralleled their own, and the psychic flashes, the glimpses into their own futures, to which he had become so much more prone since the dybbuk had left him.
    Had not Beadle Cohen called him a visionary? Had not Rabbi Nathan, internationally recognized for his writings about the Kabbalah, confirmed this?
    Had they not both said that he had been possessed by a dybbuk--a wandering soul seeking atonement for sins it had unintentionally committed while alive? But when Nathan tried to exorcise it, the dybbuk was already gone. Only the visions remained. Haunting Sol.
    And now me, Miriam told herself in terror. And now me.
    She shook her head.   She could not fall apart, not with the baby to consider. Besides, her trials were nothing compared to what Solomon and the other prisoners had endured.
    One way or another, she would figure this out. "Right, Taurus?" She scratched the dog's head again.
    Taurus looked at her with dark, velvety, pain-dulled eyes and responded with a whimper. She tried, and failed, to wiggle from the box. Miriam stood up and, clinging to a tent pole for balance, looked out through the green netting at the encampment. A light rain had begun, more mist than drizzle and completely unlike the previous quick tropical downpours that had struck with the swiftness of a passing cloud and ended as quickly. She stepped outside and lifted her face to the mist, as if she were welcoming a lover. The slightly cooler air enfolded her like a huge sweaty hand. The grass will like this, too, she thought, noticing that a considerable amount of grass was gone already, tramped down to spongy, red laterite soil as the men worked. During the time she had been in the tent, an hour or so, she guessed, looking toward the dusky, sunset sky, its clouds the color of dirty gauze, the prisoners had finished putting up the northern fence. Taut barbed wire twisted between rolls of concertina wire. It was beginning to look like Sachsenhausen.
    Then she heard the quiet cadence of Hebrew coming from near the spring, and she felt her spirits lift.
    "Dog food would taste better than what they've been feeding us!" A voice called from the direction of the mess canopy.
    "Couldn't taste worse! I can hardly wait for that zebu to be ready."
    She jumped as a guard pounded his mess kit against the garbage bucket for emphasis and metal clanged against metal.
    "Dog food? Those goddamn shepherds eat better than us," one of the men said, loudly enough for everyone to hear.
    Several others with Mausers over their shoulders