by April White
The mechanic nodded, but didn’t take her eyes off me. Right before I stepped back out to the town square she gave me a quick smile and lifted her hand slightly in what could have been a wave.
Fascinating.
I blinked in the bright sunlight after the cool darkness of the garage, and it took a moment to spot Marianne and her basket a few meters away from where Mother Goose had corralled some other victim. The gossipy woman looked up at me and her eyes narrowed slightly as she tried to place me. The companion said something to her, and I slipped behind a post and back into the shadows of the building to avoid further scrutiny. I caught up to Marianne as she finished her trade of delicate, leafy lettuce for a small basket of eggs, and I realized there’d been no chickens at Marianne’s farm. It was an odd fact in a time when resources were scarce and self-reliance in food production could be the difference between starving and surviving this war.
Marianne traded my full basket for hers, and we continued walking around the square. She greeted people she knew and made another trade for a wax paper-wrapped block of what looked like butter. Marianne was done after that, and as we walked past the garage on our way out, I tapped her arm and gestured inside. “Une fille?” I asked quietly.
Marianne nodded. “Rachel.”
It wasn’t until we’d gone past the church again that I used my quiet mix of French and pantomime to get more of Rachel’s story from Marianne. It seemed that Rachel’s father owned the garage and was the main mechanic in town. He had been taken to the camps with the first wave of internments. Rachel had cut her hair then and became Raoul. Even the worst of the village informants knew that if they turned her in as a Jew, the village would be left without its last mechanic.
We turned left off the road back to Marianne’s farm, and she indicated the vegetables she still had in her basket. She had another trade to make, I guessed, and I followed her down the dirt lane and over the rise of a small hill. It hadn’t looked like anything from the main road, and I was surprised to see a vineyard tucked away in an area that wasn’t really known for its wine production.
The leaves were just showing green on the twisted vines that managed to look neglected even as they teased their spring colors. The lane ended at a stand of trees where an old stone farmhouse stood sheltered from the sun. There were two windowless outbuildings, which I assumed were for wine production, but everything had an air of shabbiness, as if the vines grew out of stubbornness and the buildings stood only because they were too well-built to fall down.
And then I heard the singing.
It sounded like children, more than just a couple, with voices that blended together in beautiful harmony. The sound came from one of the outbuildings of the otherwise deserted farm.
Marianne smiled at my surprise as she led me to the farmhouse. She didn’t knock or enter, she just took whatever vegetables she hadn’t traded out of her basket and arranged them carefully in a box next to the front door. My eyes kept stealing to the outbuilding where the voices danced and wove a tune I didn’t recognize, with words sung in a language that didn’t sound like French to my ear.
“The Jewish school,” Marianne whispered in French.
Oh wow. No wonder she wished Marcel could come here every day. I supposed that people would notice if she took him out of the village school, and they’d both be in danger if it was known he came here.
The song ended and Marianne sighed, then picked up her empty basket and we turned to go back up the lane. When we were out of earshot of any farm, I asked about the school and she tried to explain it to me.
I gathered that the winemaker had died before the war began and left the place to the church in the village, but most of the villagers had forgotten it even existed. When the Germans began to round up the village Jews, they began with the adults. By the time they came for the children, most of them had disappeared. It was presumed they had gone to live with relatives in some other region, and to be fair to the French villagers, Marianne said no one really looked too hard for them.
“So the children live there? Who cares for them?” I asked Marianne.
“The priest hides them until it’s safe to move them, and he stays with them several nights a week. Many of us from the village secretly help to feed them.”
I knew there would be meat in the box on the front doorstep of the vineyard house tomorrow morning after I told Archer and Ringo about this place. Somehow, I didn’t think Nancy’s resistance fighters were doing too much feeding and caring for the people they were trying to “save.”
When we got back to Marianne’s farm, she waved me away from helping her in the house. Ringo was still passed out in the barn, and I stubbornly resisted the urge to look for Archer in the barn cellar – mostly because I didn’t want to know if he wasn’t there.
My brain was still spinning on the Jewish kids, hidden away in a forgotten winery, and the knowledge that the Werwolves were out there plotting something destructive in this region. It made me antsy, like my thoughts were making my skin feel too tight, and I needed to run to loosen everything up. It was risky to run during daylight hours, but I hoped the forest would hide me from curious eyes.
I didn’t wake Ringo, and I didn’t leave a note. But I did tell Marianne I was going into the woods. She admonished me to be careful, like any mother would, and I nodded solemnly and promised to be back in an hour. It was more than I would have promised just about anyone else, but I thought Marianne had enough to worry about without me adding to her list.
I tucked my wide pant legs inside my long socks, which looked entirely ridiculous, but I didn’t have a mirror and wasn’t planning to run into the forest fashion police. The woods behind Marianne’s farmhouse seemed to stretch for several kilometers providing the border for most of the town, so I headed in the opposite direction of Nancy’s Maquis headquarters and moved as deeply into the trees as I could.
My sense of direction had always been good, but because there were no street signs or billboards to mark my way, I did take the time to stack a small cairn at every change of trajectory. Within about ten minutes of log-hurdles and tree-climbs with back-flip dismounts, I was breathing hard. And twenty minutes into the forest, I came to a rocky waterfall in a tiny spring where the pool at the bottom was perfectly clear and just deep enough to plunge my hands into and splash my face with the cold water.
The sound of the waterfall made the tightness in my chest open up, and when I’d stopped gasping from the run, I discovered I could actually breathe again without feeling like I needed to climb out of my skin. I wasn’t sure how much forest was left before the land was cleared for farms again, and the tree above me was perfectly built for scaling, so after a long, satisfying drink from the spring, I leapt off a boulder and hit the lowest branch.
I was in a giant ash tree that had just gotten its spring foliage, so I had to go pretty high before I could see enough to get my bearings. I had run a lot farther than I thought – either that or the strip of forest was narrower than it seemed – because a road wound around the leading edge of the trees about a kilometer away from my tree. I shifted in my perch to get a better view and startled a kestrel off an upper branch. It flew off toward the road and passed over something that glinted metallically in the sun. It looked like some sort of vehicle that had pulled off the road and parked among the low brush.
And then I saw motion in the woods, leading away from the vehicle and headed toward my tree.
Crap.
I considered carving a spiral into the upper trunk of the ash and Clocking myself away, but a: that could be catastrophically stupid if I ended up twenty feet in the air at my destination, and b: I hadn’t drawn myself a spiral at Marianne’s farm or anywhere else in France during this time period. A rookie mistake, I realized, because now I had no automatic escape route.
My second thought was to jump down and run for it. But even though that was probably my best option from a safety standpoint, I wasn’t willing to cut bait just yet. I wanted to see who w
as coming.
I could hear men’s voices, but not what they were saying, and as I settled back against the tree for stability and comfort, I was able to make out two people. They weren’t exactly in stealth mode, but they did move carefully, and I got the sense that they’d had some training – which meant they were likely either hunters or killers.
When they were close enough for me to actually understand their speech, I also caught my first glimpse of a military uniform, and I realized I could understand most of what they said because my high school language training was automatically translating the German into English in my head. Killers, then.
According to Nancy, this area was part of the free zone, which meant these guy weren’t supposed to be here.
“It’s as good a place as any to get away from the radio chatter.” It came out in a grunt, as if he was speaking from a toilet. I thought Grunty might have been the big one in the lead.
I shifted again, very slowly and carefully, until I could see Grunty clearly enough to memorize his uniform. He wore basic olive drab combat fatigues with the same round green helmet I’d seen in every war movie. There were a couple of patches sewn on one shoulder though, and I searched for identifying features.
The other guy threw off his pack and dropped to his knees in front of my waterfall to splash his face. I was irrationally annoyed when he spit into my spring.
“Now they’ll think they need the pig-dog to clear the way.” Loogie’s voice was thin and whiny, and fine tendrils of Mongerness wafted up to wrap around my gut. Pig-dog was one of those insults that sounded so much nastier in German, especially since Schweinehund was almost always pronounced with a leer.
It didn’t surprise me that Loogie was a Monger, just like it didn’t surprise me that I’d felt so many Mongers among the French Maquis. But being only a few feet from a German Monger armed with what looked like a sniper rifle sitting under my tree in occupied France wasn’t an ideal scenario in which to find myself. Since I operated under the assumption that they tend not to give sniper rifles to guys who suck at shooting, I made myself relax into my aerie perch and wait them out.
“We can’t kill him. Karl’s like a little weiner-dog, always on the lookout at his back. And the place the Schweinehund sleeps is like a damn fortress.” Grunty said.
“We’ll lure him out. Or stir up the French pigs to do it for us.” Loogie pulled out a huge knife and began whittling a stick as he sat back against my tree. If he looked up, he’d see me high above him. I didn’t like it, but I couldn’t move.
Grunty threw a rock into the spring with a curse. “We trained to make trouble, not to go hunting to feed men too lazy to steal what they need.”
Loogie hawked up a big wad of phlegm and spit into my spring again. Ew. “Maybe I should climb a big tree and start sniping actual Schweine, what do you think?” Loogie tapped the trunk of my tree with the butt of his rifle, and I closed my eyes. The little girl that believed in invisibility cloaks took over for a second, even as fear surged like ice up to the surface of my skin.
“Sounds like good fun, but instead we should go hunting Maquis. The rat said they emerge at nightfall, and with the 2nd Division on the move, they’ll be out for sure. The roads around Limoges have some nice cover for sniping.” Grunty sounded excited at the prospect, and I very badly wanted to know who “the rat” was.
Loogie wiped his face with a rag and got to his feet. “Ja, let’s do it. Maybe we can pick off a few French pigs, and who knows, if the Schweinehund gets lucky and actually infiltrates, we can pick him off too.”
Grunty picked up his rucksack as Loogie shouldered the sniper rifle. Of course he had to spit one last time into my spring, and I just barely held back from throwing a stick at him. As they trudged off through the woods toward their vehicle, I suddenly knew what I had to do.
Slowly and carefully, I pulled off my jacket, then my boots, and I stashed them securely in the crook of the tree. Then, when the two men were out of sight of my tree, I quickly shed the rest of my clothes and stuffed them up against the trunk.
My hand went to the Shifter bone around my neck, I closed my eyes, and allowed her to surge up.
I felt the shimmer of a thousand pinpricks as my body became the Cougar, and I could feel her stretch languorously in my mind. Are we stalking, or can I hunt? she said, with the edge of a purr in her tone. Stalking, I told her firmly. I was absolutely not interested in bloodshed if I could possibly help it.
The drop to the forest floor was easy and felt a little like flying. The stink of sweaty wool uniforms and unwashed bodies hung in the air around where the German soldiers had sat, and I sneezed the stench out of my Cougar’s very sensitive nose. I took off at a silent sprint through the forest, following the scent trail that was about as subtle as if it had been painted neon pink.
I practically skidded to a stop just outside the clearing where their vehicle was parked. The soldiers were already seated inside with the engine running, and just as Grunty drove away, I finally caught a glimpse of the insignia on his uniform. The ends of the sideways Z jagged with the sinister angles of Hitler’s Werwolves.
The boxy tank-like jeep picked up speed down the dirt road, and I ran along the edges of the forest behind it until I was out of forest to hide in. They were far enough ahead of me that I knew I’d soon lose their scent if I continued, and the likelihood of being spotted was too high, even in the dusky light of early evening.
I reluctantly turned around to make my way back to the tree that loomed over my spring. My Cougar was strangely silent in my head as I loped through the woods at a steady pace, and I felt quite comfortable in my animal form. My Cougar was stronger than my human body was, with more endurance, and my senses were more automatically in tune with the sights and smells of the forest around me.
Which was why my heartbeat quickened as I approached my tree. Mine, my Cougar said firmly. The scent of him in the air marked his presence as well as if I’d already seen him.
I leapt to the top of a boulder, from which I could finally see down to my spring.
There was Archer.
And oh boy, did he look pissed.
Stake Out
I startled Archer with my jump to the rock, and smug satisfaction helped calm the instinct that had sent the hair on my Cougar’s spine straight up when I saw the expression on his face. An instant later he recognized me, and it was like his whole body sighed in relief.
My clothes fell from the sky, and then Ringo jumped down out of the ash tree holding my boots and looking, if possible, more angry even than Archer had.
“Ye couldn’t wait to go lookin’ fer trouble, could ye?” Ringo spat. I’d never seen him so fierce, and I hesitated up on my rock. It seemed safer in my animal skin, maybe because I knew it was the only way I could outrun him.
Archer hadn’t taken his eyes off me, but he spoke to Ringo behind him. “She’ll have an explanation.” His voice sounded reasonable, and not at all as disappointed as I thought he’d be.
“Ah, she always does.” Ringo was still spitting mad, and he turned his back. “Go ahead – Shift so ye can explain.”
I’d never seen Ringo act like this – usually he was an ally, or at least a neutral party when Archer got angry at me for being reckless. Archer gave me a small, wry smile, then turned his back too.
My clothes had fallen between Archer and Ringo, which Archer realized only when I jumped down off the rock and walked around in front of him to Shift back to my human form. His eyes widened suddenly, and he turned his back to me again, but not before he got the full show, and I was perversely delighted to make him uncomfortable.
I did throw my clothes on quickly though, because the sun had gone down and there was already a chill in the air. I’d barely gotten my feet in my boots when Ringo turned to glare at me.
“So? Did ye lie to Marianne or lose track of time?”’ he growled.
“Neither. And since when are you my keeper? Did you follow me here?” I threw my best glare back at
him.
“Ye left a trail a mile wide, and when ye didn’t come back in an hour like ye told Marianne ye would, of course we came to find ye.”
I fought the urge to stick my tongue out at him, because I’m not twelve. I wanted to though, so I bent to tie my shoe and said nothing instead.
“Who was wittlin’ ‘ere?” Ringo kicked at the wood shavings Loogie had left under the tree.
I looked up at him defiantly. “A German soldier – Werwolf, if I had to guess, based on the Wolfsangel rune.”
Archer exhaled sharply behind me. “In case the date has escaped you, Operation Overlord has gone into effect.” He knelt down to brush a leaf off my jacket, then sat beside me on the ground. “Tell us.”
The only thing I could detect in his voice was concern, and it siphoned a little of my defiance away. Ringo was still standing, arms crossed, a few feet away, so I ignored him and spoke to Archer.
I told him about walking in town with Marianne, about Mother Goose, and meeting Rachel, the girl mechanic. I told him about the village priest who made Jewish kids disappear, the villagers who turned in their neighbors, and the children singing at the old winery. I gave him the kind of details I would have saved up to tell my modern Archer, who always wanted to hear full retellings of conversations, and words that painted a picture of the experience. And I spoke to empty my head of all the things that I struggled with about being in this time, and this place, in these circumstances.
And when I finally got to the part about the German soldiers and the spitting and the grunting and the horrors of their conversation, Ringo had moved closer and squatted down to watch my face, and every bit of Archer’s attention was tuned to me. I could feel their interest sharpen and hear their breath catch at the part when Loogie tapped my tree with the butt of his rifle. I had a storyteller’s audience, and I felt them take ownership of my experience as they invested themselves and made it their own. I had followed the plot, unfolded suspense, and shared my own emotional journey as if Archer and Ringo had been right beside me. I allowed no stinginess in my words, and even as I felt myself beginning to unburden, I could see my truths settle in and become a part of them.
