Travel light, but take everything with you. They were father's last words to me before he took my mother and sister down the wooded trail opposite mine and my brother's.
The cossacks had burned our village to the ground an hour ago, and he told us we had to flee into the woods, where they would have more trouble finding us.

When I was young, we used to play in the forest, so I knew it well. I would take my young brother Sasha to a lake a few hours' hike from here, that the cossacks don't know about.

I didn't tell father where we would go, he said it was better that way. After one week, we would come out of the forest and meet back at our burned farm house. With winter's first snow only a few weeks away, I'm not sure what we'll do to make it through to spring.