Orphan Monster Spy

by Matt Killeen

  “Schnauze, dumme Schlampe!” her mother screamed at her. “You know nothing, nothing, nothing—”

  Sarah raised her head to see the resentment and loathing in her mother’s bloodshot green eyes. She waited for it to melt, for the words and spite to ebb away. For all the hate to gurgle away like dishwater. Waiting . . .

  In her nightmares, she waited forever.

  Her mother’s chin began to tremble and the top lip joined it. Her eyebrows rose and the face emptied of viciousness, to be replaced by sadness and regret. Arms reached out for absolution—Sarah could provide that. Would always provide that.

  She just had to wait.

  Sarah knew her mother loved her.

  Sarah knew her mother needed her.

  “We just have to wait a little longer, that’s all. We can move to a bigger place and get a new piano and . . .”

  Sarah stopped listening and just nodded.

  Once her mother had smelled of musky perfumes and expensive soaps. It was the smell of safety and love. Now her pores released nothing but sweat and liquor, so Sarah remembered instead. She closed her eyes and imagined the house in Elsengrund and the apartment in Berlin, the thick warmth and full belly, velvet and shiny surfaces, tuned pianos and clean windows.

  Her mother had said something.

  “Sorry, Mutti, what was that?”

  “You’ll find me some medicine?” she asked again in Czech.

  “Yes, Máma. Of course I will,” Sarah replied with a perfect Prague accent.

  “That’s my girl. My clever, clever girl.”

  * * *

  • • •

  It was bitterly cold to be out in athletic gear. Each time the wind blew, it stole tears from Sarah’s eyes and brought an audible cry from the waiting girls, quickly lost in the roar of the river. Sarah’s hands were so chilled that she found she couldn’t touch her thumb to her little finger, a sure sign back in Vienna that she needed to steal more firewood.

  The clearing in the woods was a trap that Sarah felt closing around her. Each class stood, awaiting selection by the Final Year girls. The staff stood behind, prison guards unaware of their role.

  Dumme Schlampe. You still don’t have a plan, do you?

  Shut up and let me think.

  “Where are we, Mouse?” This day had arrived too quickly. The information she had gathered was too vague. She needed to know what the enemy knew and more. She needed secrets. She needed more time.

  Too late now.

  Shush.

  “About two kilometers from the school, I think. The bridge we came over just now is the only way over the river for three kilometers in either direction. It’s deep and wide and fast-moving this time of year, so no shortcuts, no cheating.”

  “You do notice things, don’t you?” Sarah smiled at the Mouse, who lit up.

  “Shut your mouths, you two,” ordered Liebrich.

  “Shut up yourself,” answered Sarah with vehemence.

  Sarah watched the Ice Queen and her retinue drift from class to class, selecting runners. Fast? Slow? It didn’t matter. The exercise in power was everything. The staff didn’t need to terrorize the students, not if they could leave it up to the Schulsprecherin and her friends.

  “O, it is excellent to have a giant’s strength,” thought Sarah in English, “but it is tyrannous to use it like a giant.”

  Clear your head, dumme Schlampe. You need to think.

  Elsa Schäfer was at the back of the group. She did look small compared to the others, but that was illusory. The Ice Queen’s courtiers were giants and the rest of the girls were peons, miniature people. To talk to her, to befriend her was ridiculous. Sarah might as well have been on the moon.

  The Ice Queen looked like she might pass the Third Year class altogether, causing a quiver of hope in Sarah’s stomach. That was, of course, her intention.

  “Schlafsaalführerin,” the Ice Queen shouted.

  Liebrich stepped forward. “Meine Schulsprecherin,” the girl barked enthusiastically in response.

  “Who is the quickest in this class?”

  “I am, meine Schulsprecherin.”

  “A fat little thing like you? No, surely the Reich doesn’t have to rely on your swift heels?” The Ice Queen smiled at her retinue. They dutifully laughed, and some thoughtless Third Year girls giggled, too. “No. Not you, but then who?” She made an act of looking around and over the heads of the smaller girls.

  Sarah stared ahead and didn’t move. Oh, get on with it.

  “Haller! Come here.”

  Sarah waited an insubordinate length of time before stepping forward.

  The Ice Queen came very close and spoke quietly. “So, here we are. Now is the moment. Remember, this is for the betterment of the Reich. I’ll ensure that you can continue to contribute. You do have a keen brain.” She paused. Despite the jaunty tone, Von Scharnhorst’s blue eyes were infinitely cold and oppressively perfect. “But you don’t need your legs for that,” she whispered before wheeling away and addressing the whole school.

  “Girls! Not only has Haller volunteered for the River Run, but she thinks she might win it!” The Ice Queen waved her hands in the air theatrically. There was a smattering of laughter. “The Führer loves confidence, but when does that become hubris—pride and a fall? This race is dangerous, Haller. Anything could happen. Anything at all . . .”

  Sarah listened to the river.

  “If I cross the finish line first, then this is over,” Sarah called softly, so only the Ice Queen could hear. “No more tests, no more trials.”

  The older girl turned on her heel. Her mask dropped.

  “You will not win,” she growled.

  “I will cross the line first,” Sarah shouted, so everyone could hear. “I do this for the good of the Reich and for the Führer!”

  There was a flash of recognition on the Ice Queen’s face.

  “Well played, Haller, well played,” she said, close to Sarah’s face. “Again, I wonder why we’ve been forced into this position, when you have so much potential. But there is no winning. Not for either of us. Shame.” She threw her head back and cried, “Haller is dedicating her run to the Führer; win . . . or lose, this is noble. Heil Hitler.”

  The girls cheered. They broke ranks and crowded around the runners. Sarah couldn’t hear the questions or feel the back pats over her own desperation.

  Whatever the Ice Queen had planned, it didn’t sound like Sarah would still be at the school afterward, and that would end the mission. Meeting Elsa on a level footing meant penetrating that inner circle, and that meant proving herself somehow. She didn’t really know what the Ice Queen would do if Sarah did win, but survival and any chance of completing the mission? They were now the same thing. To lose meant losing twice over. Being broken.

  So what’s your plan, dumme Schlampe?

  I’m going to cross the line first, that’s what.

  Always with the great plans.

  The girls in the crowd were herded toward the starting line and began to gather on either side of the cinder path that marked the start of the course. Here Sarah got a look at the competition.

  There were six other runners, all bigger than Sarah, but three were too insubstantial to present a problem. One was possessed of a large bosom and had probably been chosen to supply comic relief. Of the other two, the Final Year girl, Kohlmeyer, who was one of the Ice Queen’s train, was clearly the born athlete. Sarah watched her stretch and flex her muscles, saw the strength in the shoulders beneath her shirt, and knew the impossibility of the task. Kohlmeyer was die Eiskönigin’s insurance against anything Sarah could muster.

  “Good luck, Haller,” exclaimed the Mouse, her reedy voice almost lost in the clamor. One of her classmates repeated the phrase, and then, to Sarah’s horror, several others began to chant her name.

  “HAL-
LER!”

  Stop it, for the love of God, stop.

  “HAL-LER!”

  The Ice Queen is right. I am a threat.

  Sarah wondered momentarily whether she could lose, be injured, fail, and disappear into the background. It was so tempting to just surrender, to let go, to drown in the circumstance. Forget the mission, run away.

  Then she saw the Ice Queen across the clearing, her piercing blue eyes so alive with intelligence and disapproval. Sarah did not want to lose.

  Sarah remembered a story from the Brothers Grimm collection, Kinder- und Hausmärchen.

  Tired of his arrogance and bullying, the hedgehog raced the hare. The slower beast with little crooked legs used his failings—his small size and the fact that all hedgehogs look alike—and turned them to his advantage.

  He placed his wife at the finish line at the end of a plow furrow, so no matter how many times the hare ran the course, the hedgehog was always waiting for him.

  Finally, a blood vessel in the hare’s neck ruptured, and he bled out into the soil without ever knowing the hedgehog’s secret.

  Sarah would use her size and turn it to her advantage. Sarah would cheat. The Ice Queen was going to bleed and bleed and bleed.

  “HAL-LER!

  “HAL-LER!

  “HAL-LER!”

  FIFTEEN

  THE SEVEN COMPETITORS were shoulder to shoulder on the line. There wouldn’t be room for everyone on the path as it entered the trees. Beyond, roots sprung from the ground to trip the unwary, the track barely visible where bushes had encroached on last year’s footsteps. A fast start on the flat ground was a must, especially for a city girl.

  Sarah closed her eyes. She pictured a long, smooth running track in an empty stadium. She let the cheering and clapping fade away.

  “Achtung . . .”

  Sarah crouched.

  “Fertig . . .”

  She felt her feet compressing the cinders as she tensed.

  “Los!”

  Eyes snapping open, she exploded out of herself, legs like pistons, hard but light. She kept her body as low as possible, and as the taller girls on either side began to close in, Sarah drifted between and under them, into the clear air.

  Three meters from the trees, Kohlmeyer outpaced Sarah, moving in front from the flanks, and was first though the gap.

  Sarah followed, the noise of the other girls loud in her ears. The first leg was uphill, pitching her forward, and as her feet slid sideways in the damp earth, she heard two girls collide with a scream behind her. She received the merest shove, which carried her over the mound, allowing her to speed on between the branches.

  She looked up to see Kohlmeyer release a branch she’d held out of the way. It swung back across the path, and even though Sarah had time to turn her head, it caught her across her cheek with a slap.

  Sarah stumbled into a bush, but her momentum pushed her through. She kept her legs going and bundled down the bank to the river’s edge. She slowed herself on the crumbling verge, and as she did so, she saw it: there, right on the bank, was a narrow second track, trodden flat by the summer’s fishermen. It wound off into the distance and around the next bend in the river. Not a shortcut but a clear path, slippery with frost but firm underfoot. She hit the track, skidded, regained her balance, and sped away, feeling rather than hearing her footsteps and breathing over the roar of the river.

  She upped her pace, going as fast as she could over the good ground. She needed to break away from the pack for what she had in mind—even if she found what she was looking for.

  The river was wide, deep, and fast, littered with sharp rocks. She grabbed a twig as she ran and tossed it into the torrent. It vanished in the spray and didn’t reappear. To try and swim across was probably suicide.

  * * *

  • • •

  After Kristallnacht, when the Nazis had run riot through the Jewish communities throughout Germany, arresting, killing, and destroying, it was impossible to walk the streets of Vienna. Sarah’s blonde hair was too noticeable around the neighborhood, and the prowling gangs of thugs simply couldn’t resist harassing her. Anyway, she couldn’t stand to see the shopkeepers forced to vandalize their own shop fronts, or to watch the old men being made to scrub the pavements, hands bleeding and backs red from horsewhips. The last few had been given buckets of acid to use instead of water, at least that was what people said. Those men had been taken away afterward, so no one got to ask them for sure.

  However, their tiny, stinking, top-floor apartment turned out to have one positive feature: the kitchen window opened onto the roof. Sarah had started off clambering out just to escape the smell. Then she began scrambling up onto the ridge to watch the sunsets over the city, the pinkish-red tiled roofs glowing in the vanishing light. She soon realized that she could move from building to building across the ridges and valleys of the old town’s crowded roofs. Leaping the small gaps and riding the fragile dormers was treacherous, but for someone with Sarah’s training, quick feet, good balance, and strong fingertips, it was almost safer than running the gauntlet of the storm troopers in the streets. Compared to the floating edge or the horse, this red-tiled landscape was a playground, a playground that became a secret passage and, finally, an escape route.

  There was just a three-meter gap that could take Sarah out of the poor Leopoldstadt quarter and into a district of apartment blocks with unguarded windows, wealthy owners, and easily sold valuables. When Sarah stood on the ridge of the roof, planning her raids and choosing her route, she had felt truly free. Untied, unfettered, unencumbered. The dirty Jew, the grubby child, the hungry daughter of a bedridden mother—all this was gone. She charged helter-skelter over the dormers, swinging on the pipework and striding over the guttering, for all the world like a child running circles through a sunlit park, trailing her tiny hands and dress ribbons behind her.

  Accelerating across the tiles on the final roof, she reveled in the control. Knowing how dangerous it all was, how far she had to fall, even how forbidden her presence was, only demonstrated the hold she had over her own destiny. All those years of gymnastics, practiced at home when banned from her classes, gave her a perfection in her footwork, in her judgment, and in her power. All this was hers, uncontrollable and untouchable under an open sky . . . and to fly, to truly leave the Earth behind and sail across the final space, with the tiny oppressed animals and their demonic drivers so distant below and blurred by her speed? That was freedom. It was a fire that lit in her stomach and spread to her limbs and brain with a crackle and joyful hooting.

  The landing was difficult, painful on every occasion, but she didn’t care one bit. The hurt was hers and no one else’s. She could fly. The sky belonged to her. She was a bird.

  She was a bird and she would fly across the river.

  * * *

  • • •

  Sarah slowly rose to a standing position on the wide branch, panting. Back toward the river, a lattice of leafless branches was spread before her, a weave of possibilities and dangers.

  She had been nearly halfway to the bridge when she had found what she was looking for: a spot where the trees on either bank reached out to each other and almost touched in the center. It hadn’t been perfect, but she might not find a better option, and the clock was ticking.

  It had also taken an age to find a suitable tree to climb. The trunks that lined the river were tall and smooth, their lowest branches hanging tantalizingly out of reach. She had headed inland through the useless beeches, wishing for a rippled elm or old oak tree, all the while panicking that she had gone too far, wasted too much time, that no shortcut would be short enough to beat the muscled and well-fed competition. The wide tree with deep furrowed bark and clefts for small feet was a gift, but it was too long in coming.

  How long? Since she’d left the river? Four minutes? If so, Kohlmeyer and the others would be approaching the bridge
and the halfway mark. She had to move.

  Look how high you are!

  No.

  Sarah closed her eyes and waited for the moment to pass.

  Trust yourself, dumme Schlampe. You’ve done this a thousand times. Think wood beam. Think tiles and bricks, gutters and chimney stacks. Better still, don’t think at all.

  Commit to the move.

  Sarah loped along the branch to its end and, as it began to bend, leapt into the next tree, landing cleanly on a wide upward-traveling branch, feeling the heavy permanence under her feet. The floating edge, the vault, Viennese roof ridges, or tree branches: they were the same, she told herself over and over. She went on and jumped again. The limb of the third tree gave a little but held, so Sarah sped up and skipped onto the next. Tiles and bricks. Gutters and chimney stacks. Powdered canvas. She could hear the river grow louder as she ran, but she ignored it. The water was just a street polished bloody by old Jewish men. Nothing to do with her.

  She stepped lightly. Quickly. The branches were moist where the night’s frost had thawed, but they weren’t slippery like wet tile. Sarah noticed the limbs growing thinner as she approached the river, so she chose the biggest for her final three pathways to the other side.

  Three.

  Sarah passed the bank far below, arms outstretched to counter the slight twist in the branch. She skipped. Commit to the move.

  Two.

  She landed awkwardly as the penultimate limb sagged under her weight. She readjusted her balance by sweeping both arms to the left. She was over the water, the rush of the spray filling her ears. The third branch was just above hers, so she needed to leap and bring both feet up together to keep her momentum. Commit.

  One.

  She faltered as she landed but pushed herself upright with her hands before the branch grew too narrow. She looked up to see it dwindle to nothing ahead, but there, maybe just two meters away, was the beginnings of a new tree. Its slender twigs were the keystone of the bridge, behind them branches that could take her weight. How far behind them Sarah couldn’t tell, but she was committed now.