Because other people matter, too…
Every person matters….
“Wait!” I yelled.
Megs, Brid, and Caelyn stopped.
“I have to take care of something,” I said.
“No, you don’t!” Megs said.
“It’s part of my assignment.”
Megs shook her head.
“Go, I’ll catch up. Stay with the group. I’ll call you here”—I pointed to her breastbone—“and catch up. It will be only a few minutes.”
Caelyn moved first; she grabbed Megs’s hand and ran, pulling her along. Megs looked back at me.
Once again, my I love you for her stuck in my throat.
She already knew, though. Didn’t she?
I would be with her in just a few minutes.
I turned to run the other way.
I went into the garden shed, found what I needed there, and hurried back into the house.
Proctors still filled the main room, dragging evidence of our work outside. I carefully peeked down the hallway; all clear. I turned left to a back staircase.
Climbed the stairs.
Ran down another hallway.
And unlocked a door.
RAINER STOOD, PACING.
“What is going on?” he asked. “It is noisy. There is fire.” The orange light glowing through the window was bright enough that we could see each other. “Is the building burning down?”
Would they burn down the building, too?
Maybe.
Would they let him out first?
“We’re leaving.”
He nodded.
“What—what happens to you now?” I asked.
“I should ask you that—what happens to me?”
“I don’t know.”
Rainer looked at my face. “Why have you come to see me?”
“I hope—no matter what happens—when you think of Sofarenders, you think of me.”
“I will, Mathilde. But I do not want you to remember me and the things I said to you. The things I’ve done.”
“I will remember this.” I pointed to the blue painting. “That’s how I’ll remember you.”
He nodded. “Take it with you.”
I folded it, and put it into my coat with the other papers.
“I hope you get back what’s in that painting, one day.”
“Not me,” he said. “But you, you might have your own beautiful blue world. You will build it yourself.”
A lump rose in my throat.
“Thank you, Mathilde.”
“For what?”
“For saying goodbye.”
I was running out of time; I needed to catch up.
If it was treason to talk about Sofarende falling, then what I was considering certainly was.
But what would happen to Rainer? Would they let him starve? Shoot him? Or would it be even worse if he was handed back to his own people? His capture was dishonorable. He didn’t have a home anymore.
Rainer had no weapons, but he could find some. He could hurt us. Or he could collect information and send it home. He could complete his mission in Sofarende.
But how upset he was about the school…that meant something, didn’t it?
I pulled my hand from my coat’s outer pocket, and held up the clippers I’d stolen from the garden shed.
—
Rainer stared at me.
“Promise me…”
He nodded.
“Promise me you won’t hurt anyone. Not me. Not my family. Not my country. Nobody.”
“I promise, Mathilde.”
But this was war. Lying was a big part of it.
I thought again of what Mother had told me about protecting people. She would understand why I had to do this.
I didn’t think Rainer wanted to hurt anyone, ever again.
I would have to trust him.
This was the world I was building. Where people didn’t think only of the people they loved, but of the others, too.
I bent and clipped a big square out of the wires. I pulled the fencing away, and crawled through the gap far enough to hand the clippers over to Rainer.
Our hands touched, for the first time, and I met his eyes.
“Don’t forget. You promised.”
“My word, Mathilde.”
“I have to go,” I said. “Be careful. There are people everywhere.”
I unlocked the door and dropped the key.
I paused, remembering.
I had one more stop to make.
—
The hallway of bedrooms was deserted.
In my room, I took down the handprints painting, folded it, and put it in my inner coat pocket with all the other papers.
My stomach clenched. I was going even farther away from my sisters, and they might soon be in trouble. I couldn’t even tell them.
They’re counting on you to get through this. That’s their hope. That’s what all of this has been for.
I made my way to the northern gate and ran through when no one was looking; I couldn’t ask for help. The proctors would ask what I had been doing, and when they found out about Rainer…
Please, please, please let that have been the right thing to do.
I was a traitor to my country now. I couldn’t pretend I wasn’t.
Catch up. Catch up and look like you’ve never been separated.
—
As I pressed on through the darkness, I strained my ears for the group. They must have been told to keep quiet. The sounds of eighty feet should have given them away, but I didn’t even hear that. I was afraid to call out after them.
So I reached for Megs.
Megs?
…Megs?
I let out a breath.
I paused, closed my eyes. Felt for her instead.
My dearest friend, walking beside me.
Through the streets in Lykkelig, whole as they used to be. Then bombed and broken.
Through the woods we loved.
Through these woods now.
My dearest friend, with long dark braids.
Long dark braids, chopped short.
I caught my breath as my eyes opened.
Megs would know I went to Rainer.
Would she guess what I’d done? Would she see it the way I did?
I stopped calling her.
Or maybe she wasn’t listening for me.
I kept walking, but my legs ached.
The familiar rumble started up in the sky, and quickly became a roar.
I jumped against a thick tree trunk, peering through the leaves for the lights, the colors on the wings.
Tiger stripes.
But then, zooming from the other direction, came our own aerials, shooting at Tyssia’s, lighting the sky with streaks of white, bursts of red. Explosions. My hands covered my ears.
Aerials fell out of the sky.
Would anyone survive those crashes? Would we have more Tyssian prisoners like Rainer? Or would we be the prisoners?
I kept going.
In the dark, flames and smoke rose ahead of me. My group wouldn’t set such a fire. I waited as the flames lessened and the smoke grew, though minutes were passing. Maybe it was the enemy out there. But maybe it was Sofarenders who needed my help. Or who could help me.
When all was still, I crept forward.
It was a downed aerial.
The smell was atrocious. Like things that never should have been burnt. I covered my nose with my coat sleeve.
“Hello?” I called.
Nothing stirred.
I crept closer.
The great aerial, at once bigger and smaller than I had expected, was a mangled shell. Even its markings were burnt off.
This was Rainer’s nightmare. My nightmare.
It didn’t matter if it was us or them.
We were all the same.
We were all the enemy; we were all the victims.
We were all dead.
I stumbled away.
You have t
o get to Eilean. Get to the train by morning. Or you may be a prisoner yourself.
A prisoner, or on trial for treason.
It doesn’t matter if Sofarende wins; you’re dead either way.
You have to get to Eilean.
I repeated the directions, kept moving, but my brain was slipping, my feet unsteady.
I found a patch of soft moss beneath a tree, and curled up.
SUNLIGHT WOKE ME.
How could the sun be shining? Hadn’t the world entered endless night?
When I’d fallen asleep, I’d still been in Sofarende. What had happened while I slept? Was this land still ours? Still Sofarende?
Perhaps it wasn’t the sunlight that had woken me after all. Something was tickling my stomach. I raised my head to see a little squirrel trying to get into my pockets.
He reminded me of the woods back home.
I shooed him off.
I reached into my pocket and found two biscuits. We must have gotten them for snack during playtime one day. Had I really been so well fed at Faetre that I had forgotten two biscuits?
“Thanks for finding these, little one.” I broke off a little piece and tossed it to him.
“Shouldn’t you be afraid of people?” I asked.
Things couldn’t be too bad if the squirrels hadn’t run away.
“Have you seen any other children? A big group?”
“Tich-tich-tich,” said the squirrel as he ate the biscuit piece, spinning it round in his hands like a tiny wheel.
That probably meant no.
I sighed and got up.
I had to pee, and I was really thirsty. Amazing, really, how those problems seemed a lot more important than the fact that my country was being invaded and I was lost in the woods.
I did what I needed to behind a tree, half expecting this moment to be when the others finally appeared. It would have been worth the embarrassment.
I checked the sun’s position, and started walking north. I didn’t pass a stream. But there were some younger trees, tall and bendy; I shook them and opened my mouth to collect the dew. Not much, but better than nothing.
I took out a biscuit and munched as I walked along.
Had someone brought food and water for the children?
Would the Examiner notice I was gone?
Probably.
Ask my friends if they’d seen me?
Probably.
What would they tell her?
I swallowed hard.
The Examiner had wanted me to talk to Rainer. She gave me room to make choices. Would she have thought this was the right choice, or the wrong one?
The biscuits settled uneasily in my stomach.
Even if she had wanted me to go talk to him, she probably wouldn’t have authorized me to let him out.
She would surely find out about it; she’d told Tommy the adults from Faetre were going to be in touch.
She had said she trusted me.
I needed to catch up, but what would happen when I did?
—
Soon the mountains sloped down to a field, and I ran across. Up ahead…train tracks!
I looked up and down the tracks. No station in sight. No people. No vibrations. Nothing coming.
The day had warmed. I took off my heavy coat and hung it over my arm, careful not to let any of the papers fall out. The sky was pure blue, the grass bright green.
No hints of war.
Except for me.
—
After an hour or so of following the tracks, I spotted the station, though it was a few more minutes before I reached it.
A country station, with its sign painted over.
Not that I cared one lick what its name was.
The paint looked shiny—still wet?
I pressed my fingertips to it; they came away black.
Panting, so thirsty, I climbed the steps to the platform and went to the ticket window.
“Excuse me?”
An old man peered through the glass.
“What a day.”
“Excuse me?”
“You didn’t care to get dressed?”
I looked down at my nightgown.
“Did a group of children come through here?”
“Did they? Did they ever. At five this morning. All in their nightclothes, too. Asked me if I had a radio. And a telephone. Then they told me to paint over all my signs. All my signs? I asked. And then some woman with them shows me her military ID, high up, ordered me to do as the children asked. Some of them slept on the platform, and then an unscheduled train arrived, with more people on it with those fancy IDs, so I didn’t get any answers. All the children climbed on board, and that was the last I saw of them.”
“So I missed them?”
“I’ll say.”
He sounded very grumpy.
“And they didn’t tell you their destination?”
“No.”
I bit my lip.
“I’d like a ticket on the next train that will take me to the Cairdul Sea, please.”
“And why wouldn’t you? Lovely day for a holiday. In a nightgown. Two orins for the ticket.”
“Just a moment.” I patted my pockets, pretending to look for a wallet or little purse. Should I show my military ID and order him to let me board? Start crying and ask him to let me catch up with my friends?
But then, in my inner pocket with all the papers, my fingers touched something smaller…an envelope.
I had totally forgotten.
I held the envelope to my nose, closed my eyes, and breathed in deeply.
Post office.
Thank you, Father, for thinking ahead. How did you know?
I sorted through the fat stack of bills, and easily paid the fare.
The man raised his eyebrows. But it certainly wasn’t his business why I was traveling in my nightgown and carrying so much money.
My next question stuck in my throat; I’d had access to classified information, so I didn’t know what it was safe to ask.
“So…do you have a radio? Have you been listening to it?”
Has Sofarende fallen yet?
“Lots of bombings being reported. Like other mornings.”
“Have you seen any Tyssia aerials?”
“Up here?”
I let out a breath.
“When is that train? And when will it get me there?”
“Assuming there’s no more surprises with the schedule, eleven-fifteen. You should be there by five tonight.”
There was no assuming. Not anymore.
Unless one assumed the worst.
“Could I have some water?”
He raised his eyebrows again, but disappeared from the window and returned with a small glass of water. I drank it in a few grateful gulps.
He took the minute to study me more closely.
“You’re one of those children? Your nightgown is so dirty it looks like you climbed over a mountain. Where are you all from?”
“A school. Up in the mountains. Our school burned down in the night. They were taking us to shelter somewhere else. I was tired and lay down to sleep and got left behind.”
He looked skeptical. I would have told him not to tell anyone else about us, but that would have been more suspicious. Instead, I tried to look pathetic and hungry, which I was. Hungry, anyway. But he didn’t seem sympathetic, so I took my ticket and went to sit on the platform bench.
When the train arrived, I boarded. My ticket was collected, but the conductor eyed my nightgown suspiciously.
“Is everything all right?” he asked.
Is everything all right?
Is anything all right?
“Yes, sir. There was a fire in our house. We lost everything, so this was all I had to wear. I’m being sent to my grandmother’s up north. My parents gave me some money to eat in the dining car; could you tell me where it is?”
He looked mildly surprised, but said, “Toward the front.”
I carried my coat, listening to the crinkl
ing of the papers. I didn’t dare take them out to look at them.
I found a table and looked at the menu, wanting to order everything.
Don’t spend all your money.
Who knew when I would be in the care of the Examiner again?
If ever.
Don’t think about that.
As I watched out the window and considered what to choose for lunch, that particular trainy feeling came over me. That sense of being neither here nor there, of being alone but in a great moving-forward kind of way.
I ordered meat and eggs. The waiter watched as I wolfed down my food.
“Chew a little,” he said. “Don’t choke.”
—
The train pulled in to its final stop that afternoon—a busy port town. I walked along the sea, on a boardwalk; there was no sand. Ships were being loaded up or unloaded. People bought fried fish at stalls. Soldiers patrolled.
My breath caught, but I let it out.
They were our soldiers. Not Tyssia’s.
Could I just show a soldier my yellow card and maybe he would help me?
The Examiner had said anyone would have to take us across.
My group must have left already. Or maybe they’d gone to a different town.
Men yelled at me and laughed about my nightgown. Kinder people asked if I was sick. I knew I was pretty dirty; I’d been able to wash my face and hands in the washroom on the train, but my tangled, loose hair was looking even more unruly in the misty air.
Looking out at the sea, I realized just what a great lot of water it was.
No Eilean in sight.
I put my coat on to keep out the damp and to cover my nightgown as best I could.
I would talk to the soldiers. That would be the best thing to do.
I found two by the piers. I took out my ID, military clearance card, and yellow transport card.
“Do you need help?” one of the soldiers asked. “Are you lost?”
I shook my head and handed him my cards. “I’m supposed to go to Eilean.”
He read through my papers. He looked shocked.
“You haven’t seen the others, then—other kids like me?”
He shook his head.
“I’m—I’m supposed to go to Eilean.”
“And we’re supposed to stay here,” the other soldier said. “You’re a lucky one. You can’t imagine what that yellow card is worth.”
His friend gave him a look as he handed the card back to me. “You hang on to that. Come with me.”