saumensch | Entries tagged with unlinked

It's been a few months now, and Liesel feels like she's finally starting to settle into this city. When she'd first arrived on Himmel Street it had taken a while to get used to things, until suddenly it felt like home. It sneaked up on her, surprising her with how suddenly Mama and Papa felt like family, with how quickly Rudy wriggled his way into her graces and refused to let go. She hadn't wanted to like it at first, but in the end she hadn't really had much choice in the matter.

Darrow was a little like that, too. It's even more different than Molching had been, and there are days where she doesn't think she'll ever really understand it, but there are plenty of good things, too. There are people here who are very nice to her though she can't always tell why, and there are lots of books to read and the weather is truly lovely. She doesn't like school too much but she's managed to keep a low enough profile that nobody really bothers her that much, and at the end of the day she gets to come home to Green Gardens and read with Saoirse, or cook with Greta in the kitchen. Then there's the magic, which Liesel thinks has to be her favourite part. She's watched Baz and Simon do magic before, but even that hadn't been as delightful as floating around in the park last month.

The more comfortable she gets, the bolder she gets. There aren't too many rules at Green Gardens besides the obvious, and for the most part Liesel is left to her own devices. She's been in the library reading, and it's a long time before she realises that the sun has long sunk below the horizon and everybody else has gone to their rooms to sleep for the night. She packs away her books, putting the ones she'd borrowed back on the shelf where they belong, and starts to pad back through the halls, grateful that she's wearing socks and no shoes.

It's when she passes the kitchen that her stomach grumbles and Liesel realises that she must have missed dinner. If she were at home, Mama would have scolded her and told her that she would have to go to bed with no supper, but Liesel isn't going to be put off that easily. She's learned her way around the kitchens a little better since her lessons with Greta, so she looks each way quickly to make sure she's not seen before she slips inside and shuts the door behind her. Once she's alone in the kitchen, she's struck by how much choice she has. She's still getting used to how plentiful food is in Darrow, how many things beside pea soup there is to eat. She can hardly choose where to start, turning around slowly in the kitchen as her hands hover over each of the cupboard doors.

There's a noise in the hall outside, and Liesel knows the jig is up a second before the door opens, but she's reasonably confident she won't get in too much trouble. At the most she'll be sent off to bed and told not to wander, but she's already slipped two cookies into her dress pocket in case.

Liesel loves the library at Green Gardens, and she loves Luke's bookstore possibly even more, but sometimes she misses her books from home. Most of the books she's read in Darrow so far are in English, and Liesel can understand why, but she does miss the way German words look on a page, the way it feels so much more natural to her to read. If she asked Magnus he could probably magic her some German books, but she feels a little guilty asking him. In truth she's lucky to have what she does, and she knows there are plenty of children with much less. If Mama were here she'd whack her with a spoon and tell her to be grateful for what she has.

She is grateful, and she's been reading her way through the library at a fast pace, sometimes finishing four of five books a week. Now that she's good at reading it's much easier than it was when she first learned with Papa, and in Darrow she has all the time in the world and all kinds of books at her fingertips. There's school, of course, which she's getting better at and she hasn't skipped so many classes anymore, but then the rest of the day is hers. Sometimes she practices baking with Greta in the afternoons, but more often than not she tucks herself away in a corner of the library to read.

There's also her secret project, which is coming along slowly in one of the blank writing books she bought from the store. Max had written her two books and she'd treasured both of them dearly. Leaving them behind in Molching still makes her sad to think about, but she's comforted by the memory of him and how much the books had meant to her. She wants to do something like that for Saoirse, write her a story that she can treasure too, and maybe cheer her up when she's feeling bad about her family not being here.

It's late afternoon and she's still in her school clothes, not having bothered to change when she got back to Green Gardens. Instead she'd gone straight to the library and tucked herself into her corner, her book on her lap and a pencil in her hand. She's concentrating so hard on the words, carefully marking them into the paper, that she doesn't notice when somebody else walks in.

Liesel has been in Darrow for just under a week. So far, she doesn't know exactly how she feels about it except that it's not home. For the first day she'd wandered the streets looking for Papa, but she knows she's not going to find him. She knew it then, too, but she had to look anyway. She doesn't like to think of the ruins of Himmel Street, of Papa's silver eyes closed forever and his accordion case cracked. Instead, she focuses on how he used to wink at her across the kitchen table, risking the wrath of Mama's wooden spoon. She remembers her first taste of champagne and the feeling of paint drying on her nose and Papa's smile, warm and like a blanket wrapped around her.

When they'd found her walking the streets, they'd put her in the Children's Home. Liesel has been forced into a new home before, but this is different. This time there's no new family, no room of her own, no basement to hide in. She sleeps in a dormitory with two other girls, and nobody reads with her when the nightmares come in the middle of the night. Back on Himmel Street she'd left Werner on the front steps of Grande Strauss, finally leaving her to sleep through the night. In Darrow he's returned to her, dead eyes and snow waking her up in a cold sweat each night.

The worst of it all is that she doesn't have her books. She misses The Whistler, she misses The Dream Carrier, she even misses The Gravedigger's Handbook. Worse yet is the loss of the books Max painstakingly wrote for her. She feels like she's let him down by losing them, though she has each of the pages imprinted on her memory and copied meticulously into her own book. Hers is the only one she has left, the words of her life written down in the little black book which she now keeps tucked under her pillow. She hasn't shown it to any of the other girls and she has no plans to. It's her secret, and one that she keeps well hidden.

Today, Liesel has snuck out of the Home. The afternoon is slipping away into evening when she passes the bookshop, and Liesel stops outside, her feet refusing to move. She can feel the itch in her fingers already, the need to feel the pages, run her hands over the covers, rake her nails along the spines on the shelves. She remembers the sound it used to make in Frau Hermann's library and she wants to hear it again, desperately. But she's too late, the shop is already closed, and even as she watches the light turns out from inside.

She could come back tomorrow. It would be easy enough. But this city stole her and Liesel has a mind to steal something back. It always made her feel better in the past, she thinks, and maybe that's exactly what she needs now. In this city there is more food than there ever was back home and so Rudy would say she has no need to steal anymore, but Liesel knows different. Here, she has no books.

Liesel darts to the side of the building, eyeing a window. It's not open like Frau Hermann's used to be, but she likes the challenge. She picks up a rock instead, weighs it in her hand, feeling the strength of it. Throwing it would be too loud, so she drags over a nearby rubbish can and clambers onto it. From here she can reach the window ledge, and Liesel takes her coat off, wraps the rock up in the fabric and knocks it against the window, quiet as she can. Her heart is in her throat but she revels in the thrill of it, finally feeling like she's taking control again. At first the window doesn't budge, but bolstered, she hits it again, and this time it smashes enough of a hole that she can reach one small hand through to the latch and swing the window open.

Grinning, Liesel kicks off her shoes in one practised move, and then drops down silently onto the floor. There are books everywhere and Liesel hardly knows where to start. Until she does. Biting her lip, she moves quickly to the nearest shelf, and then she lifts a hand and runs it over the spines, just like she remembered. Her fingers catch on one with a simple grey spine and she hovers over it before she tugs it out with careful fingers. Alice in Wonderland. Liesel runs her fingers over the cover, committing the title to memory with all of the others, and just as she's about to open it, a light flicks on and she freezes.

The sky is crying ashen snowflakes that burn a little when they touch skin. It’s fitting that it should be. The world has ended and the sky knows it. It drops the snowflakes to the ground where they mingle with the ash and dirt that is now all that’s left of a street once named after Heaven.

They’d said the basement was too shallow. It hadn’t passed the inspection but this time it does enough. While the rest of Himmel Street sleeps and dies, a fourteen year old girl is in the basement, fallen asleep sprawled against dust sheets, paint tins and words. The pages are neatly printed and completed, her whole life painstakingly written out in pencil. Liesel has fallen asleep on the book. The bombs fall and the earth is shattered apart, and in seconds 33 Himmel Street is a pile of rubble instead of a home.

She wakes and she thinks, for a moment, that she’ll suffocate and die down here, amongst the words and the broken section of wall with a painted sun on it. Max drew that, she thinks. Max drew it without having seen the real sun in years and now it’s broken. Slowly, she realises what has happened, why the basement is suddenly collapsed in around her. The radio was sleeping just like everyone else when the warnings should have come, too little too late.

Papa.

She feels like the world is slipping away but she remembers silver eyes and an accordion, and she cries. Liesel cries until she hears voices, until the rubble shifts and strong hands pull her up and out. Hot air and a red sky greet her and Liesel screams in earnest seeing the wreckage around her. Papa. She beats at the LSE worker trying to calm her, small fists flying. She needs to see him. He’ll be sitting at the kitchen table, rolling a cigarette, and he’ll look up at her and wink and her nightmares will be chased away.

Only there is no kitchen table anymore.

“Is this still Himmel Street?” she asks the man once she catches her breath. He nods and says sorry, but she’s already stopped listening to him.

“We have to get my papa,” she says, the words insistent. “And mama. We have to get Max out of the basement. If he’s not there he’s in the hallway, looking out the window. He does that sometimes when there’s a raid - he doesn’t get to look much at the sky, you see. I have to tell him how the weather looks now. He’ll never believe me…”

The LSE man reaches for her at the same time as her knees buckle and she slides to the ground, like all of her energy has been taken on those words. She feels the numbness sliding over her as her brain refuses to acknowledge what’s happened, even with the word bomb ringing in her ears.

Her hands sting and she looks down, sees the book still clutched tightly in her fingers. The words. She still has the words that saved her.

Liesel closes her eyes, lets the LSE man drift away. The ground is moving beneath her, a gentle rocking motion, like it’s trying to soothe her. But when she opens her eyes it’s not the ground that rocks her but a train.

She turns to her side and she can see Werner, one eye closed, the other open and staring. He’s sprawled across the seat next to her, just like she remembers. It’s a dream, she thinks. A nightmare. This particular nightmare hasn’t plagued her since she forgave Frau Hermann on the steps of the mayor’s house but it’s here now, vivid as it was when it happened for real.

Liesel tears her eyes away from the vision of her brother long enough to look out the window. The train is slowing, pulling into the station. Into Molching, where Mama and Papa will be waiting. Papa will play the accordion and Liesel will roll him a cigarette and the rubble of Himmel Street will just be a new nightmare. The train stops, and Liesel reaches under the seat to grab hold of her small suitcase, her few precious belongings. She pulls it out and it’s not her suitcase, but Papa’s accordion case. It’s broken, blown apart with the instrument peeking through from the inside.

Taking it tightly in hand, Liesel looks one more time for Werner but he’s gone again, buried in snow. She whispers a quick goodbye, more than she ever got to say last time, and moves to get off the train.

The cold when the doors open is familiar, but that’s where the similarities stop. This isn’t Molching, it can’t be. The streets are much too busy and the buildings too unusual. No one pays her any attention as she steps off the train, eyes wide, face still covered in streaks of ash. Liesel steps onto the platform, the broken accordion case glued to the fingers of one hand, her book in the other.

“Papa?” she calls, looking around for his tall frame, his silver eyes. She looks for Rudy, for lemon-coloured hair and an impertinent grin, or Max, with a head of feathers. She doesn’t see any of them, nor does she recognise anybody who walks past.

“Wie bitte?” she asks, tucking her still-warm book under her arm and tugging on the coat of a person standing nearby. “Can you help me?”