I often wonder what it must be like to find other temperatures cold, like for those people who live far away in countries like Africa. I wonder if the men fighting in France and Germany are cold, but not as cold as we are. Of course people who don't live in Russia suffer from the cold too but they don't know our cold. The glass temperature on the outside wall of the schoolhouse had read forty three degrees below and the snow had frozen hard so that your feet had to punch through the ground and then sink up to your knees. The woolly stockings they had given us at Christmas time were wilting like flowers against the snow. They had given us caribou furs instead but they were not warm enough for most.

Usually in the winter time we had to go out, we did camping trips in the snow miles into the forests where the wolves waited for an easy meal. Ivan would say we improved each time we came back one less, he would say that the theories of a man in England were being proven in our grounds. This year Ivan and the matrons, Slovetski and Bolovenia, had decided if we went out into the snow too few of us would come back alive. He needed us good but he needed us to live.

I liked to go out, the snow was lonely and my footsteps in the snow were just as alone as I was. Sometimes my feet would slide so deep that I couldn't find the bottom at all. Sometimes I would find ice, or lost mitts or hats beneath the snow. Once I found a cub, a small frozen body. The wolf pup, the whelp, was hard and flat when I pulled it from the snow. Its fur had frozen to its skinny body. It looked like it was curled up asleep, trying to survive as we all must. If we can't fight we won't ever live. The pup had a nose which had almost turned blue, I wanted to bury him, morn him but Ivan taught us better. I had to leave it there, let it rot as a message to the rest, to show others they must remember not to be weak enough to die.

In the snow it stopped the pain, it made my body numb so I didn't feel what Ivan had done. It had been a day since I was left to bleed, the blood had poured from my body, pumping out onto the silky sheets on Ivan's bed. He had sworn, cursing over and over, 'Yabat! Yabat Natalia!' He had called for Beth, the young nurse who had just been sworn in to work with us. Ivan made her wear a thick leather braclet on her arm which attached to a plastic box. I didn't know why she wore it but I could tell she was scared of the box and of Ivan.

Beth had ran into the room and her face had turned as white as the apron she wore over her Jute dress, her cheeks were red, showing us she had been running hard. She looked almost pretty, like Cinderella in the picture books she had brought from a place called 'Leaves' in England. Beth had called the man a moster or something that sounded like that. Ivan had slapped her across the face, pushing her head so far that her neck snapped back and she was thrown onto the floor before he shuffled his trousers back around his nakedness.

I ran through the snow, dashing down the path as fast as I could with my boots scattering left and right on the icy coating the flattened snow had gained. I ran to forget, to keep forgetting, to stop remembering- whatever it was I needed to do in order to remove Ivan and the pain from my head. I could feel the bruises on my neck where his hand had sat, crushing out the sounds I made when he hurt me. I didn't understand why he had done it, he had been contented to just observe and pet me before this. He had snarled at me between his desperate pants.

"Sweet little Natalia, you shall obey me, you will lay there as a loyal girl should until ever comes the day you are strong enough to overthrow me!"

I ran and ran, moving my legs as fast as I thought I could and then moved them faster still. I felt like I couldn't see my legs moving, felt they were going like a toboggan down a hill, faster and faster and faster, moving without help, without any chance of stopping. I felt like there was not limit to the speed that I could run. I didn't need to limit my speed, I could go on forever like the soldier of America with his magical shield. I didn't need to stop, not ever, Natalia Romanova could be just like the captain, I could be good and amazing and special. I was not born to be Ivan's slave.