How Huge the Night (7 page)

“Sure, Mama.”

He knocked twice on Benjamin’s door before he heard a
muffled
, “Come in.” Benjamin was on his knees on the wood floor with his back to Julien, stacking books in the crate.

“Uh—y’know Grandpa’s making you a bookshelf for those,” Julien offered.

“Maybe you can use it.” Benjamin’s voice was flat. He put another book in the crate and didn’t turn around.

“What do you mean?”

“I’m leaving.”

Julien stared at him.

“I’m not staying here. Not if it’s going to be like this.” His voice cracked wildly on
this
.

“Um,” said Julien.

Benjamin swallowed. After a moment, he got out: “D’you need something?”

“Mama wanted to ask you something. Downstairs.” He hesitated. “Should I tell her you’re—busy?”

Benjamin glanced at the open door, and Julien saw on his face what he had been afraid of: the bright tracks of tears down his cheeks. “Tell her I’ll be down in a minute,” he said tightly.

“Sure.” He turned to go. “Uh—Benjamin?” he said, searching for the right words.

“Mm.”

“They want me to leave too. I don’t think we should give them that satisfaction.”

Benjamin shrugged one shoulder. He picked up another book and put it carefully in the crate. “Good night.”

“Good night.”

Rooks roosted in the trees by the soccer field, a black army of rooks. Every branch laden with them. Julien was running with Benjamin, passing the soccer ball. Benjamin passed it to the rook-tree. “No!” cried Julien. The cloud of rooks rose, the flap of a thousand wings making a huge, alien whisper. They rose, and fell together toward one place on the ground.

A rookery is a society, said a voice. It sounded like Papa. They
punish
their criminals. The whole flock pecks the offender. Sometimes to death.

The birds boiled upward and fell, again and again, a cloud
turning
in on itself in violence, a seething of black wings.

Julien began to run.

He ran toward them, shouting, waving his arms. They flew up, their beaks stone gray, their little black eyes glittering. In the middle lay something flat and brown.

It was the soccer ball, its leather hide pierced by a thousand holes, lying limp on the withered grass. It was bleeding.

Julien screamed. “Benjamin!” Behind him the soccer field was empty to the horizon; the lines and goalposts gone, the school gone. Benjamin was not there. The river ran on in front of the hill. But there was no bridge.

The rooks set up a great cawing behind him. He whirled and went for them, arms flailing, and they flew up away from him in a hiss of wings.

Benjamin lay in the grass, white-faced, bleeding from a thousand small wounds.

Julien shrieked.

“They’ve killed Benjamin. Help!
Help!
”

A shadow of great wings flying low. “You killed Benjamin?” And Grandpa landed and folded his wings about him; they hung to his feet, black and shimmering.

“No! It wasn’t me! I wasn’t there! I didn’t even see—”

Grandpa looked down at him from his great height, the eyes of a dark eagle. “They were pecking you too.”

Julien looked at his hands. There were feathers on them. “Grandpa, no. Don’t make me a rook. Bring the bridge back. Please. I have to carry him across—”

The world jerked and tilted. Darkness. A hand was shaking him by the shoulder.

“Julien? Julien? Are you all right?”

He sat bolt upright. It was dark. In the faint moonlight from the window, he could just barely see Magali by his bed.

“Fine. I’m fine.”

“You sounded awful! I could hear you from my room.”

“Did I say anything? Did you hear me say anything, Magali?”

“You just yelled a couple times. Was it a nightmare?”

“Yeah.” He sank back into his bed. “Yeah. Um. Thanks for
waking
me.”

“You sure you’re okay?”

“Yeah. Good night.”

She left. He lay facedown on his pillow, shaking his head and swallowing. What was wrong with him? He hadn’t had a nightmare since he was ten.

He got up and opened the shutters. The clouds were over Tanieux again, and everything was misty down below; he breathed the cold, moist air deep into his lungs, and his head cleared. He looked up, but there were no stars.

“God,” he whispered. “What
was
that?”

There was silence, and a cold wind.

He shut the window and turned away. He felt dizzy. He crawled back into bed and slept.

He could move through the woods without sound. He was the only one who could help them.

They had to trust him because they had no choice. They had a hundred schillings but he said fifty would be enough.

He wanted to help them.

He was from Gailitz, three kilometers north of the border, and he had done this many times. He was tall, with a short brown beard like Father’s. When he’d seen them on the road, he said, he’d known they were in need. They should hide the bedroll in one of their packs. Anyone could tell at a glance what they were trying to do. They were lucky it had been him.

He knew where the gaps were.

He moved quietly through the woods, and they followed, Niko’s crutches rustling in the leaves. “Maybe I’ll have to carry you, kid,” said Herr. They called him Herr: Mister. Names weren’t safe in this business, he said.

“I’m not tired, Herr,” said Niko in her gruff boy’s voice.

He gave her a little smile. “You’re doing great,
herzerl
.”

The sky above the mountains flamed scarlet and rose with the evening; the peaks were black against it, the mountains huge and dark on either side as they walked west. Herr stopped, and they turned south off the path. Their way was up the mountain.

They walked. The pines were tall and dark. High above, the fiery sky was fading. Herr moved in front of them without sound, then Niko setting her crutches carefully among the pine needles, and Gustav behind her. Her good leg and her arms ached. They had walked for hours. “Wait for me here,” Herr whispered, and was gone in the trees ahead. They must be near the gap. Only one on this side, he said; on the Italian side there were three. The sun had set, and the shadows around them were full of tiny sounds:
chirrings
and rustlings, small things hiding, hoping to live till morning. She shivered.

“Clear,” said a quiet voice by her ear. She gasped. “Shhh,” said Herr. “We’ll need to be very quiet now. That’s hard with crutches. I’m going to have to carry you.”

He lifted her onto his back, her hands gripping his shoulders, his hands under her knees. Gustav took her crutches. They moved between tall, black shadows. It was full dark. She huddled against Herr’s back, trying not to shake. The dull, barely visible gleam of a chain-link fence came at her out of the dark; a swath of blackness running up and down it, a rip. Herr crouched, not letting go of her; cold edges of broken chain-link scraped her arm, and she bit her lip. Then nothing, open air. They were through.

They walked on through the woods, up the mountain, in the night.

No one spoke; no one stopped moving. The night sounds of the forest were around them, a vast world full of tiny, frightened life. The call of an owl overhead. Herr walked, his footsteps firm and quiet, his hands under her knees.

It came on her slowly as they walked through the dark.

It was just a feeling. Just a strange, strange feeling. The way his hands held her under her knees, moving a little. Just a feeling. That something was wrong.

But he didn’t know she was a girl. So how—that couldn’t be what she was feeling … He was helping them. He was—and he didn’t know—

He’d called her
herzerl
. She hadn’t even noticed. Why hadn’t she noticed? Because she was a girl. You didn’t call boys that. Not boys her age. And she hadn’t said anything, she hadn’t—

So did he know? Had that been a test? But if she was wrong—to think such a thing, when he was helping them—he’d be so angry; she’d be so ashamed … But her gut twisted inside of her, shouted down her mind.
Something is wrong. Something is wrong.

Something was wrong.

Her bound chest was against his back. Could he feel it? Feel the difference? She leaned back from him, just a little, in the dark. It strained her back, but she stayed that way. She didn’t know how long they’d been walking, how long they would go on. Hours, in the night. Her back hurt. But if she rested herself against him—no. No, he was helping them. Wasn’t he? His hands, the way they felt. Strange. Wrong. As if they weren’t there just to hold her up. As if they were there to
feel
.

And they were alone with him. In the woods. In no-man’s-land.

She felt sick.

They walked through the dark, and she began to cry, soundlessly, knowing. Every step; every minute; a year of fear and sickness, at him, at her own stupidity, her helplessness, the dark.
Yes we can
, she’d said.
Oh Father, no
.
No
. They were going downward. How long had they been going down? What was going to happen?
Father
.

Herr stopped. The hands lowered her to the ground. She stood, shaking. They were in an open place. There was faint moonlight. Gustav handed her the crutches.

“We’re near the second fence,” Herr murmured. “The hole in this one is smaller. I’ll go check if it’s clear, and then I’ll take you through one at a time. The other must stay quiet and not follow. This crossing is very dangerous.” In the faint light, he gave her a little smile that chilled her.

And then quietly, in the dark, he was gone. He was gone, and she knew what he meant to do. They had no time to lose.

“Gustav,” she whispered. “We have to get away from him. Now.”

“What?”

“Gustav. He knows. He’s … he’s going to hurt me.” Gustav was staring at her, the moonlight glinting in his eyes. He didn’t move. “We have to hide.”

“Niko, did he … do anything?”

“Not— Gustav, you have to trust me, Gustav, I
know it!
”

“Nina—” Herr might be here, he might be right behind them, silent in the dark. He might have heard that.
Nina
. Silence and darkness, all around. Tiny rustlings underfoot, and overhead the owl’s quiet wings. She set her crutches down to take a step. The rustle was loud and clear.

She ran.

Swung her crutches out and ran, crashing through the bushes, branches slashing her face, running, running because she wasn’t going to just stand there and let him catch her, she wasn’t, she’d rather die—footsteps behind her,
oh tell me it’s Gustav, Gustav
—something caught her crutch and she went down, her arm hitting a heavy branch, her cheek scraping bark, painfully—and she was on the ground, in the deep dark under a pine, and Gustav threw himself down beside her. They froze.

Silence. Darkness. He was coming for them, so quietly they could not hear him. He was coming for them with a knife. Then they did hear him, quiet footfalls, branches rustling and cracking where he put out his hands. Groping in the dark. He stepped right past them. He couldn’t see them. They didn’t breathe. He moved in the dark, searching, for hours. Years.

Then he stopped. He stopped silent, somewhere down behind them, and spoke.

“You little brat,” he said. “They’ll catch you, you know. Thought you could fool Herr, did you baby? But they’ll catch you. Maybe they’ll have a little fun with you, instead of me. Yeah. Yeah. A little fun.” Gustav gripped her hand so hard it hurt.

Then soft footsteps. Going. Going back the way they’d come. Then silence.

Silence. And silence. And waiting, holding Gustav’s hand,
don’t move Gustav, he’s coming back down, he’s trying to lure us out, don’t move.
It was dark. Fear was everywhere. Herr was everywhere, in the dark. She could still feel his hands. Hours. Years. Gustav stood. Branches rustling around him.

Silence. All around them.

Now for the fence.
Hear, O Israel. Hear—oh hear—

And they were off together, crashing through the trees, down the mountain, to the border—where they would catch them, they would catch them, because how could two teenagers get through a border alone? Guards in front of them and a criminal behind? Three holes, he’d said. Three holes on the Italian side.

The chain-link loomed at them out of the dark. Tight-woven and intact. Niko turned left along it, away from the place Herr had checked; and they went along the fence in the dark as quietly as they could. Whole, and tight, and dully gleaming. Except there—there at the bottom—a scribble of darkness jutting up into the grid. A tree trying to grow up under it, buckling the chain-link slowly upward. A little space of darkness. She went down on her belly and slid. Her jacket caught, she heard a rip, she pushed at the earth with her good leg, and she was through. Gustav slid her crutches under, then the pack, then he was under and through and she had her crutches and they were gone. Gone down the mountain faster than she had ever gone before, breaking branches, pine needles
whipping
at her face, the night air burning in her lungs. Far up ahead through the trees was a light—a house, no border-guard post, but a farmhouse and the sharp scent of wood smoke from the chimney and a lighted window. She stopped. Her knees started to buckle. Gustav took her hand.

They were through. She had done what her father had told her to do. She had gotten herself and her brother out of Austria.

She knelt and vomited into the bushes.

Julien groaned and rolled over. It was Thursday morning—his one day off from school besides Sunday. He wanted to go back to sleep. But …

But at breakfast, Benjamin would tell Mama that he wanted to leave, and everything would blow sky-high, and Benjamin would have already written his parents to come get him, and …