Allie's War Season Two

by JC Andrijeski

  “That is the final warning. You will wait for me after the class breaks.”

  Fear clenches at his abdomen. Abruptly, he has to go to the bathroom, but he can’t ask her. Nor can he tell her that he can’t stay, that they’ll be waiting for him.

  “Ewald! Did you hear me?”

  With him, I refocus on the woman standing at the old-fashioned-looking blackboard.

  He nods once he has, taking in her frustrated and perplexed stare with a glance that shifts sideways, that won’t hold hers.

  “Yes, Frau. I will wait.”

  Still, his eyes find the tow-headed giant once more, taking in the humorous smile on his thick lips as the pressure on his bladder worsens.

  “...I need to go to the bathroom,” he blurts, speaking before he knows he meant to. “I need the toilet...now, Frau...”

  The other children laugh again at this, but Frau Schlossing only frowns. She seems about to refuse him at first, then something in his face appears to change her mind.

  “Go, Ewald. Be back in a reasonable time.”

  He slides off the seat before she has finished speaking, stepping over tripping feet and pushing his way past arms and fingers that try to poke at his sides and back. He sees them without seeing them, obstacles between him and his goal, the door to outside. He knows he’ll get a beating either way, no matter which way he leaves, but he doesn’t care. In a place of no freedom from hurt, the only choice he has is in what form it comes.

  He reaches the door to the hall, then the hall itself. The wooden schoolhouse is made of four rooms, arranged by age, but the outhouse is shared, and it’s outside. He is in the final segment of corridor, looking at the back doors, nearly able to smell and taste the breeze outside...

  When a voice calls to him from directly behind him.

  “Ewald,” it says.

  He freezes in mid-step.

  “Ewald...come here.”

  He turns before he can think about stopping himself, his nerves strung on edge, his mind bent only on escape. His hope plummets with that soft voice, even before he sees her face. He meets the eyes of the other teacher, his teacher from the previous year, when he was younger. Once he has, he can’t force himself to look away.

  She beckons him into her room.

  Her classroom is empty now. The younger children have gone for the day, those under seven and eight, who finish their schooling early. The boy is small for his age, small even for a seer, smaller than some of those in the younger kids’ classroom, but the humans think of him as eleven now.

  Fighting himself for another few seconds, he follows her beckoning finger into the room. When the door closes behind him, the pain in his abdomen worsens.

  She walks back to the front of the classroom, moving one of the small chairs so that it sits only a few feet from the teacher’s chair, behind the desk.

  Unlike Frau Schlossing, she is young, perhaps only in her late teens or early twenties. Her long, blond hair hangs braided down her back, and she wears a heavy but light-colored dress, practical, but form-fitting enough that her figure is shown in all its curves.

  She is pretty, and her legs are strong. He cannot help but look at her, his eyes taking her in almost guiltily from across the desk.

  “Ewald,” she says, looking up in puzzlement. “Come here.”

  “I am not supposed to be here,” he stammers. “Frau Schlossing...”

  “I will make sure you do not get in trouble with Frau Schlossing,” she says, smiling at him in a friendly way. Sitting in the chair behind her desk, she looks pointedly at the one she has placed so that it is sitting across from her.

  “Come here, Ewald.”

  Unable to think of a reason to refuse, he obeys the summons reluctantly.

  “Sit here,” she says, patting the other chair.

  “I cannot be here,” he says again, looking at the door.

  “I won’t hurt you, Ewald...”

  “I know, Fraulein, I just – ”

  “Ewald.” Her voice becomes her teacher’s voice. “Sit down.”

  Reluctantly, he closes the gap between them, sitting in the wooden chair next to hers.

  “I didn’t do anything...” he says.

  “I know you didn’t. You’re not in trouble, Ewald. Please. Just try to relax.”

  He sits there, feeling his heart hammering in his chest as she looks at him critically. Her eyes take in the length of his body, then pause longer on his face.

  “You have a bruise,” she says after a moment, indicating the place on her own neck. “Where did you get it, Ewald?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “It is a large bruise, Ewald. It looks painful.”

  “I don’t know where I got it, Miss.”

  She continues to look at him, as if waiting for him to go on. When he doesn’t, she nods, as if to herself. He watches her lips purse, a look of concentration come to her blue eyes.

  “You were limping, Ewald...when you walked in here. Did you know that?”

  “No.”

  “Well, you were.”

  “No. I wasn’t limping, Miss.”

  “You were.” Her voice is gentle though, understanding rather than accusatory. “It’s all right. You’re not in trouble, Ewald. You’re not...”

  He doesn’t have an answer for this, so he looks away.

  “Will you show me your back, Ewald? Under your shirt?”

  His eyes shift upwards, even as his ears catch up, as his heart hammers harder in his chest. A kind of dread takes hold of him, mixed with that blackening fear, strong enough that he can’t answer her at first. When she reaches for his shirt, he jerks back.

  “No!”

  He half-stumbles to his feet, nearly toppling the chair, then doesn’t move further. Clutching the edge of the desk, he just stands there, holding his own shirt, not quite able to run away. He has to go to the bathroom again...so badly he can’t think straight. He’s afraid suddenly that he’ll lose control, that he’ll void his bladder right in front of her.

  “Please,” he says. “I’m sorry.”

  “Why are you sorry, Ewald?”

  “I have to go. I really have to go. I told Frau Schlossing I would be back...that I wouldn’t be gone too long. I need to go to the outhouse...”

  She hesitates, but as she looks at him, he doesn’t see any anger. Concern still stands out in her eyes, a concern that is almost pity, perhaps even more than pity. Moving closer, she touches his arm, and it is a reassuring touch, taken away the instant he flinches, as if to persuade him it won’t remain there if he doesn’t want it to.

  “I won’t hurt you...I promise you I won’t, Ewald. I promise. I’m trying to help you...”

  “Please stop...stop doing this...”

  “I know someone is hurting you. I know you are being hurt...”

  “You have to stop,” he says. “Please, Miss. You have to...”

  “Stop what, Ewald?”

  “Stop talking about him,” he blurts. “...Please.”

  She stares at him, and for an instant, he is lost there, in her young, pretty face.

  “Who, Ewald? Who do I have to stop talking about?” She frowns, but it doesn’t feel like it’s aimed at him. Her eyes have a flicker of charge in them now, and he knows, he can feel in her light that she knows exactly who he means.

  “Your uncle? Is that who, Ewald?” She bites her lip in anger, and it only makes her look prettier. “Did he tell you to say that? Did he tell you to threaten me? To stop asking questions about you?”

  “It’s not safe,” is all he can say. “Please. Please...just please stop.”

  “If I help you, then he can’t hurt you anymore, Ewald.”

  “You can’t.” He shakes his head. “You can’t help me...you don’t understand...”

  She frowns at him, and for a moment he sees real grief in her eyes.

  “Ewald,” she says, her voice gentle again. “Don’t you want him to stop hurting you? Don’t you want to live with people who ca
re for you? Who don’t do that to you?”

  Pain slivers through his light. He stares at her, and for a moment, he struggles not to touch her, not to slide his arms around her neck, even just for a moment. But the feeling worsens along with the pain, the knowledge that they might already know, that someone is probably watching their exchange, even now. He hears voices in the hallway as he thinks it, wonders if Gerwix has already noticed the time has been too long, that he’s been gone longer than he said. The giant boy with the white hair would be waiting for him, even if he got out on time.

  “I have to go,” he says.

  “Ewald. Please. Please let me help you.” She is upset, pleading with him. “It’s not right what he’s doing. You must know that...you must know it’s not right...”

  As he looks at her face, he realizes he has to do something.

  It’s too late.

  His uncle will kill her.

  He knows it without having to think about the reasons why. She’s already filed complaints with the township authorities. His uncle asked him questions, asked him who she was, what she’d said to him...what he’d said to her. Then the boy changed grades. He managed to convince his uncle that she wouldn’t see him anymore. But they would know if she said something again...they would know that she’d seen something, that she’d said something to him.

  He can push her. He can push her into forgetting about today.

  But it won’t be enough. He’s pushed her already, three or four times, and she keeps coming back, keeps asking him the same things.

  He has to make sure they never believe her.

  He has to make her go away.

  As the thought forms, and an idea behind it, his pain worsens.

  His light whispers out before the plan has fully solidified, taking over hers. He acts before he can second-guess himself, knowing it may be his only chance before she says something again, before something happens to her. He uses his aleimi to push on her mind, until her face slackens, growing still. Keeping his light in hers, he coaxes her to relax, to lean back in her teacher’s chair. He takes over her mind, and he holds her there, waiting as he looks at the clock.

  He needs an audience.

  But the timing is right for that, too.

  Ten more minutes until the bell.

  Then eight.

  Then six.

  When it is five, he looks at her, feeling another whisper of fear. Her face is as smooth and expressionless as one of the cows in the pasture behind the school. Her hands sit folded neatly in her lap. She looks younger to him suddenly, not like a teacher at all...and it occurs to him again that they are roughly the same age, although she would never believe him if he told her.

  She sits in the chair like a posed doll, her blue eyes vacant as they stare off towards the door, a faint smile on her lips.

  “I’m sorry,” he tells her in German, his voice a whisper. “I’m so sorry Miss Pirna...”

  Moving closer to her, he kneels between her legs, pushing the pale blue dress up tentatively past her knees. Pain reaches him before he can think about whether he should really do this, and then he’s got her partway undressed and he’s working on her, closing his eyes as he pulls on her with his light and his mouth. By the time the bell goes off, he lets go of his complete control over her light. He is so far in hers by then, it is easy to coax it where he needs it to go.

  Even so, she is half-fighting him, and he feels horror on her, a near terror.

  “Ewald, no...no...”

  He doesn’t stop though, and her hands aren’t forceful enough to make him.

  In minutes she is clutching his shoulder in one hand, her back half-arched in the chair, her legs further apart. He hears voices in the corridor behind them, even lost in the woman’s light, and he ignores her feeble protests until she is moaning.

  He feels his light respond, coiling more deeply into hers, until he is hard, his eyes closed, nearly at the point of losing control. He wants her then, wants her for real...wants her badly enough that it seethes off his light, a pulse of dense frustration. He sends her that too, sliding his fingers into her, and feels her light open more.

  She cries out weakly, and at that moment, the door to the classroom opens.

  “Pirna,” a familiar voice calls. “I wonder if you would lend me a hand with – ”

  The voice cuts itself off in mid-sentence.

  In the silence, he worries briefly that she hasn’t seen, that she’s left, when...

  A scream makes him jump violently, falling backwards when he loses his balance. He slams his already tender back against the thick leg of the desk, letting out an involuntary cry.

  The woman at the door screams again.

  He turns, feeling shame, despite why he’s told himself he’s done it, and the shame is worse when he sees her face. Then she is shouting at him, and the words penetrate, reaching his mind even as he ducks instinctively, backing away and low down by the tables as if to avoid the missiles of her words.

  “Filthy animal...filthy, disgusting beast...!”

  She throws things at him then, real missiles, in the form of books from a nearby table, an eraser from the blackboard beside it, and he winces as he ducks. But once he reaches the edge of desks by the windows she aims her fury at the woman in the chair. The woman who is fighting her way back into the room, pulling down her dress, trying to understand what just happened, color blooming so bright over her cheeks that she looks like a different person.

  “You whore! You filthy whore!” Frau Schlossing stands in the middle of the room, her face a dark shade of purple. “To a child...a child!”

  When he looks back, not only Frau Schlossing stands there, but children’s faces peer through the doorway, seeing Miss Pirna clutching the folds of her dress, her face flushed bright as her eyes follow the boy. Frau Schlosssing tries to keep them out, but the children point and laugh as Ewald runs away, marking his progress past the row of windows, as one by one he tries the iron handles. He looks for one that might be unlocked, where he thinks he might escape.

  In the back of his mind the faint hope remains, that he still might be able to make it first to the lawn outside, pelt his way into the forest and disappear before Gerwix and Stami get ahead of him. He knows they will be outside soon, if they aren’t already.

  But Frau Schlossing seems to realize what he is doing.

  She moves with surprising speed, cutting him off, grabbing him by the collar of his shirt and his hair and half-lifting him off the floor. The shirt cuts into his arms and back where the whip cuts still lay open. His hair hurts as she tightens her fingers and he screams and can’t stop screaming even as she shouts in his face.

  “You little disgusting vermin...where do you think you’re going?”

  I broke out, without preamble.

  Unlike the drifting in and out state that accompanied a lot of these jumps, I found myself out, truly out. I lay there, aware long enough to find myself physically sick, holding my stomach, half curled on my side on the sweat-soaked blanket.

  It took me a few beats longer to recognize the feeling as separation sickness, bad enough that I could hardly breathe...bad enough that I couldn’t control the nausea that spiraled up in waves from my belly to my chest and then my throat.

  It wasn’t the first time it had come up in these sessions.

  At times it was bad enough that I wanted to die, that I could barely hold on to rationality. Something about the complete lack of affection at that age twisted any normal desire to be touched into a despair-blackened need, a kind of pit that could never be sated. I lay there, unable to move, even to look at him.

  But eventually I had to. I had to look at him.

  When I did, he lay in a similar position as I did, only with his back pressed against the organic wall, his face pressed to the floor...as if seeking sensation anywhere he could, in any form. He didn’t move, or meet my gaze.

  I wanted to talk to him.

  I had no idea why, or even what I wanted to say...
but I wanted to so badly I had to bite my lip to keep from saying his name.

  I honestly couldn’t even tell if he was aware of me. His eyes were closed, his face slack, almost as if he were somewhere else again, somewhere that the collar and my light couldn’t reach. I might have thought he’d passed out, but I could see his lips moving again, reciting words with a uniformity that made them seem closer to a chant.

  Remembering the boy doing the same, I closed my eyes, feeling the nausea worsen.

  I had just started to look away, when his eyes opened. He stared at me from where he lay with his cheek against the floor, and I felt the pain in his light, worse than I felt it in mine. I saw him looking at me through it, maybe because he couldn’t refuse contact with anyone at that point, even me. I still didn’t expect him to talk to me, so when he did, I jumped.

  “They got me Gisele after that,” he said.

  I couldn’t look away, but his words made no sense to me at first.

  Then the name clicked, and I found I understood.

  “The prostitute,” I said.

  He nodded, closing his eyes again. I saw pain on his face, and it didn’t disappear in the intervening seconds. I spoke before I knew I intended to.

  “Did she get fired? Miss Pirna?”

  There was a silence. Then he let out a choked laugh.

  “Of course she got fired.”

  “No more inquiries?”

  He shook his head again, his eyes still closed. “No more.”

  “Gods, Revik...”

  He looked at me, and for a moment, I saw a glimmer of that shame.

  “I don’t mean that.” I shook my head, feeling my chest hurt. “That you would even think of that, of doing that to get her fired, to discredit her, at eleven...”

  “I was closer to twenty, Allie.”

  “I know. I know, I just...” I shook my head, closing my own eyes. I lay a hand on my forehead. “You were just so...”

  “Small. I know. Gisele thought so, too.”

  “I was going to say young,” I said, turning again.

  He didn’t respond right away, but I saw him settle against the floor again, holding himself tighter with the one arm. The pain remained etched in his features, but he seemed to be breathing easier, maybe just from stabilizing somewhere within it. I couldn’t help but wonder if it was different for him, feeling it now, compared to how it must have been back then.