“Well.” The Lady Premiere frowned. “I, for one, am not going to stand around here all day. I am the Lady Premiere, and the most powerful woman in the city, and I have business to take care of.”
“Lady Premiere?” came a voice from farther up the hill. “Is that what you’re calling yourself nowadays? Pretty fancy title for a fisherman’s daughter.”
A black-haired man had just climbed the stone wall and was striding down the hill toward the pond. Will and Liesl both recognized him immediately as the man they had seen eating soup at Mrs. Snout’s inn. He was staring fixedly at the Lady Premiere, and his smile was huge and villainous.
The Lady Premiere went as white as paper and began to tremble. All at once, she smelled cabbages everywhere. It was all-consuming. She was choking on it. The narrow and cramped rooms of her childhood home rose up around her, a specter of poverty and smallness.
“No!” she gasped. “It—it can’t be. I thought you must be dead.”
“You wished I was, you mean.” Sticky narrowed his eyes.
“What are you doing here?” The Lady Premiere sounded as though a bullfrog had been lodged in her throat. “How did you find me? What do you want?”
Sticky spread his arms, still grinning. “Thought it might be time for a little family reunion with my older sister.”
“Sister!” Mo said, scratching his head.
“Sister!” the old woman sniffed, looking the raggedy black-haired man up and down with disdain.
“Sister!” Will and Liesl cried simultaneously.
Sticky eyed the Lady Premiere’s fur coat, and the diamonds winking in her ears, and the large rings on her fingers. He had already forgotten about the little girl and the wooden box. What a lucky day! He had come for the girl’s jewelry and had instead stumbled on a much, much larger fortune. “I see you’ve done pretty well for yourself, Gretchen.”
“Don’t call me that!” the Lady Premiere screeched.
Will coughed. He had never considered that the Lady Premiere had even had a first name. And Gretchen was so . . . plain.
“Now don’t tell me you’ve forgotten your name,” Sticky said, and then began to singsong, “Gross and rotten, wretched Gretchen!”
“Stop it!” the Lady Premiere shrieked.
“Gretchen the grodiest wretch in the Glen!”
“I—said—stop!”
“Excuse me, sir,” Mo put in. He liked the Lady Premiere less now than ever, but since he was still technically in her employ, he felt it appropriate to speak up on her behalf. “I think you might have your wires crossed somewhere. The Lady Premiere is a Very Important Person. She is a royal, too. A princess from Sweden. No, no. From Norway. No, that’s not right. From Italy, if I recall correctly. . . .” Mo trailed off, feeling even more muddled than usual.
Sticky snorted. “A princess? So that’s the story she’s cooked up for herself, is it? Princess of flounder, maybe. A fisherman’s daughter, no more and no less. Used to help pick the bones out of the sardines.”
“Well!” The old woman shook her head. “Well, I never. A fisherman’s daughter! Very out of the ordinary. Quite unheard of.”
The Lady Premiere was so enraged she could hardly speak. “Shut up!” she screamed. “Shut up or I’ll—”
“Or you’ll what?” Sticky interjected, stepping so close to his sister they were practically nose-to-nose. “I’m not afraid of you anymore. If you want to keep your fishy little past a secret, you’re going to have to pay.”
The Lady Premiere suddenly seized Sticky by his left ear. He let out a yowl of pain.
“Listen, you squirming, squiggling little vermin,” she hissed. “If you think I’ll let you bully or blackmail me—”
“Let go of me!” Sticky twisted out of his sister’s grasp. She darted forward and seized his right elbow. Sticky shouted, “Stop it! Stop pinching me!”
“What? What’s that? You want me to keep pinching you?”
“No! Stop! No!” Sticky was backing up the hill, swatting at his sister’s hands, as she continued to try and pinch and pull and tug at his earlobes, cheeks, and elbows.
“It’s opposite day! No means yes!”
“Then yes! Yes—please keep pinching me!”
“Oh? You want more? More pinching?”
The two siblings were drawing farther and farther up the hill, hopping and twisting and slapping each other. From a distance they looked like two large, overgrown crickets performing a bizarre dance. When they reached the top of the hill, Sticky reached out and tugged sharply on the Lady Premiere’s bun. She screeched, and made a lunge for him as he scrabbled over the stone wall.
Then they disappeared from view. It can be assumed that they spent the rest of their lives bullying and badgering, and teasing and tormenting, and irritating and insulting each other, until the end of their days; and furthermore, that they made each other quite as miserable as they both deserved to be.
For a moment there was silence, as Mo, Will, Liesl, and the old woman considered all they had seen. Then the old woman sniffed loudly.
“Harrumph. That’s that, I suppose.” She nodded once, sharply, then stalked rapidly up the hill, staking her cane in the ground in front of her.
Only Mo, Will, and Liesl were left.
“Well,” Liesl said, feeling shy again.
“Well,” Will said, shifting his weight uncomfortably.
“Well,” Mo said cheerfully, looking from Will to Liesl, and back to Will. “Warm out, isn’t it?” He removed his hat.
Will and Liesl nodded. They were feeling too timid to speak.
“I suppose it’s too warm for hot chocolate,” Mo said thoughtfully. A new idea had worked itself into his brain.
Those kids look like they could use some taking care of. Yes. Two lost children, about the same age as Bella was when she disappeared. A nice hot meal; a change of clothes; a place to lie down. Out loud he said, “But maybe some chocolate milk. Yes, I think chocolate milk would be nice. Don’t you?”
Will and Liesl looked at each other and smiled. They bobbed their heads vigorously.
“Good. Very good.” Just like that, Mo’s already enormous heart expanded even more, enough to enclose the two children and hold them safely there forever.
(And this, really, is the story-within-the-story, because if you do not believe that hearts can bloom suddenly bigger, and that love can open like a flower out of even the hardest places, then I am afraid that for you the road will be long and brown and barren, and you will have trouble finding the light.
But if you do believe, then you already know all about magic.)
“Come on, then,” Mo said, and called for Lefty, who shot a last, regretful look at the very clever butterfly and came trotting back to Mo, to be settled in her sling.
Will and Liesl walked very close together, with their fingers barely touching. Mo placed a hand on Will’s shoulder, kindly.
“Why do you call her Lefty?” Will asked as they walked up the hill: Mo, Lefty, Will, and Liesl.
“That’s a good question,” Mo said, “and it’s a funny story. I never was any good at leaving people to their own business, you know. Mrs. Elkins—that’s my landlady, you’ll meet her soon enough—is always telling me to mind my beeswax. . . .”
And so Mo spoke, and Will and Liesl listened, and Lefty purred, and the sun shone.
They passed the place where Liesl’s house had once been. Out of the ash, she knew, flowers would grow.
She spelled the word ineffable in her head, just once.
Author’s Note
I wrote Liesl & Po during a concentrated two-month period. It was different from anything else I had ever written; I didn’t know what it would be, or whether it would be anything. I certainly didn’t think it would be publishable.
I knew only that I needed to write it. At the time, I was dealing with the sudden death of my best friend. The lasting impact of this loss reverberated through the months, and it made my world gray and murky, much like the world Lies
l inhabits at the start of the story. The idea for the book came from a fantasy I entertained during those months: I dreamed about unearthing my friend’s ashes from the decorative wall in which they’d been interred and scattering them over the water, the only place he’d ever felt truly at peace.
And so my fantasies were transformed into the figure of a little girl who embarks on a journey not just to restore the ashes of a loved one to a peaceful place but to restore color and life to a world that has turned dim and gray.
Only in retrospect did I realize that I was writing about myself—that Liesl’s journey was my own. Liesl & Po is the most personal book I’ve ever written, and even though it takes place at an unspecified time in an unspecified place and features magic and alchemists and ghosts, it is a confessional.
Additionally, Liesl & Po is the embodiment of what writing has always been for me at its purest and most basic—not a paycheck, certainly; not an idea, even; and not an escape. Actually, it is the opposite of an escape; it is a way back in, a way to enter and make sense of a world that occasionally seems harsh and terrible and mystifying.
And, of course, it is a way of finding a happy ending—even, or especially, when the happy ending is denied me in real life. Let it be an escape for its readers. For me, it is a way of not letting go.
This book means a tremendous amount to me. And I hope it has meant something to you, too.
About the Author and Artist
Lauren Oliver’s first novel was the New York Times bestseller Before I Fall, a Publishers Weekly Best Book of the Year. She followed that up with her thrilling Delirium, which debuted on the New York Times bestseller list and is the first book in a trilogy. Liesl & Po is Lauren’s first novel for younger readers. A graduate of the University of Chicago and New York University’s MFA program, she lives in Brooklyn, New York. Lauren is also the co-owner of Paper Lantern Lit, a book development company. You can visit her online at www.laurenoliverbooks.com and on Twitter, Facebook, and MySpace.
Kei Acedera is the art director and co-owner of Imaginism Studios. She is known for her imaginative character designs for Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland and for her illustrations for bestselling children’s books, including Alec Greven’s How to Talk to Girls. Kei’s designs will be featured in upcoming films with Sony, Warner Bros., and Universal Studios. You can visit her online at www.imaginismstudios.com.
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Credits
Jacket art © 2011 by Kei Acedera
Copyright
Text copyright © 2011 by Laura Schechter
Illustrations copyright © 2011 by Kei Acedera
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Oliver, Lauren.
Liesl & Po / by Lauren Oliver ; illustrated by Kei Acedera. — 1st ed.
p. cm.
Summary: A mix-up involving the greatest magic in the world has tremendous consequences for Liesl, an orphan who has been locked in an attic, Will, an alchemist’s runaway apprentice, and Po, a ghost, as they are pursued by friend and foe while making an important journey.
ISBN 978-0-06-201451-1 (trade bdg.)
ISBN 978-0-06-210739-8 (international edition)
[1. Magic—Fiction. 2. Ghosts—Fiction. 3. Orphans—Fiction. 4. Future life—Fiction. 5. Voyages and travels—Fiction.] I. Acedera, Kei, ill.
II. Title. III. Title: Liesl and Po.
PZ7.O475Lie 2011
[Fic]—dc23
2011019372
CIP
AC
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11 12 13 14 15 LP/RRDH 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
First Edition
EPub Edition © 2011 ISBN: 9780062093356
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