Girl with the Red Balloon (The Balloonmakers)

by Katherine Locke

  We headed back to Kai, standing like a sentry at the end. His eyes were less glazed over, a little more focused. He took the bag from me without a word and slung it over his shoulder. His eyes ran over the tears on my cheeks, and I turned away from him, sniffling. I didn’t need to be questioned on this right now. To my relief, Kai respected my silent plea for space.

  “We shouldn’t be here when the Volkspolizei get here,” he said, looking at Mitzi. “We need to go to the workshop.”

  “We need to find Felix,” I said, surprising myself. “He helped me when I found that body. He can make them disappear.”

  “I don’t care about making bodies disappear,” Kai said, striding ahead of us, Mitzi and I exchanging looks and scrambling to catch up. “I want answers. And I want them now. I don’t care what I need to do to get them.”

  “Kai.”

  “It’s Friday night,” he snapped. “No balloons Friday and Saturday nights, Mitzi. Someone’s sending off balloons illegally.”

  “Maybe there’s a delayed reaction.”

  “Does that mean that there are sixteen dead Passengers too?” I asked. Mitzi stumbled and I reached out with a hand to catch her, but she waved me away, looking pale.

  “People would have to notice sixteen other dead people. Not to mention, the entire Council doesn’t send off sixteen balloons in a week! It doesn’t matter. We’re getting answers. We’re going to the workshop.” Kai’s strides shortened so he walked with twice the speed. Mitzi and I followed behind him but he drew away, even from us.

  Mitzi said under her breath, “Just follow his lead. If he gets out of control, I’ll knock him out at the workshop. We don’t need another body on the streets right now.”

  By the time we got to the tunnels, Kai was far enough ahead of us that we could only hear his footsteps echoing. He sounded lonely, all the way up there by himself in that head of his. I began to shiver. The cold caught up with me, and in the dank, dark of the tunnels smelling like rotting spring air, it sank to the center of my bones. I shook, stuffing my hands into my armpits and grinding my teeth together against the shriek that sprang to my tongue.

  A glint of light burst in the tunnel…and disappeared again. Kai beat us to the workshop. Mitzi cursed and looked over her shoulder. I waved her on, so she sprinted to the end, calling his name even though it echoed behind us and ahead of us in the tunnel, alerting everyone to our presence. Once in these tunnels, Kai’s hands had been all over me and we had kissed standing on the rails. Today couldn’t be farther from that moment.

  I found the door, much to my surprise, and opened it tentatively. Inside, Mitzi chewed the ends of her hair, blocking Kai from my line of sight. I could hear his voice, gentle and soft. I shut the door behind me as quietly as possible, looking around the eerily quiet workshop. Where did they all go when they weren’t in the workshop? Why wasn’t anyone here?

  I made my way to Mitzi and Kai, who sat holding his sister’s hands. The girl looked exactly like Kai, but with long, pretty dark hair that fell below her shoulders. Her eyes bounced everywhere but on her brother’s face. She tried to tug her hands free from him more than once, and he held on tight both times.

  “Sabina,” he murmured quietly, and then he said something in a language I didn’t recognize. She flinched, hiking her shoulder to her ear, scrunching up her face tight. She shook her head.

  “Use German, Kai,” Mitzi said. “She understands more German. I know you don’t like that but…”

  Her voice trailed off, but Kai nodded and said in German, “Bean, where’s Aurora? Why are you here on a Friday night?”

  “Aurora’s on the streets,” said Sabina, and then she jerked violently. “Let me go go go. Go, Kai, go.”

  “I don’t want to go,” he said a little too harshly, and tears filled Sabina’s eyes.

  “Kai,” I whispered.

  His shoulders slumped. “Sabina, are Ashasher or Aurora doing something they shouldn’t be doing?”

  “They’re working,” Sabina told him, her eyes going to the ceiling. “Fixing the world.”

  Kai reached out and cupped his sister’s cheek. I sucked in a breath at the tenderness in his face as Sabina’s eyes settled on him. He said, his voice low and sincere, “We’re all fixing the world, Sabina. We all want it to be a better place, right? Yes, some of us have better paths. You know how when you’re walking outside, you can walk on the sidewalk or the street? Some people are walking in the street. They’re going to get hit by cars. And they’re going to get people in trouble and a lot of people hurt. More than them.”

  Sabina’s eyes flickered from Kai’s face to the ceiling. “We’re all fixing the world.”

  “What are your teachers doing on the streets tonight, chey?” asked Kai.

  Sabina’s whole body vibrated violently. “Can’t tell you, can’t tell you. Fixing the world. Go, go, Kai. The dissonance between two balloons and the genetic markers for magical transference create a sequence of events that alter the indefinite integral of the f of x. The disruption of the continuity causes…”

  She rambled on until Kai leaned forward and kissed her forehead. She closed her eyes, and we all held our breath as she fell silent. Kai said, “It’s okay, Sabina. I’m not mad at you.”

  “Do you promise me?” she asked, breathless.

  “I promise you forever and always,” he said, and stood up. “Can you do a favor for me? Don’t look at me like that. I’m not going to ask you to break a rule.”

  Sabina smiled at the floor. Her smile reminded me of Kai, so quiet and unsure. “What do you need?”

  “For you to go to the bathroom for seven hundred and twenty seconds,” he said. “Precisely. Can you do that for me?”

  “Okay,” she said and stood up, wrapping her arms around his neck. She said something to him in the strange language he’d used at first, and he replied in the same language. It must have been their mother tongue.

  She disappeared into a room, shutting the door behind her. Kai said, “Mitzi, watch her. Ellie, come with me.”

  Neither of us argued. He seemed less manic now that the only person in the workshop was his sister. I followed him up the metal stairs that clapped beneath my shoes. I ran my hand along the yellow railings as we walked around the curve of the library overlooking the workshop area, and then Kai jimmied a door between two bookcases. He held it open and gestured me through first.

  “Ashasher and Aurora share an office,” he said quietly.

  I stepped through cautiously, but saw only a messy desk and books stacked to the ceiling. A big, fancy desk made out of bright, polished red-colored wood with ivory knobs and handles sat in the middle of the room, lit by a giant overhead chandelier. The room felt like an aboveground study in a fancy mansion. It didn’t feel in the least like I was beneath ground in a former subway station turned magic balloon workshop. Except for all the drawings of balloons scattered over the desk.

  Kai turned over papers on the desk and said, “We’re looking for anything with an equation.”

  I began to go through the piles of papers with him. We worked in silence, turning over sketch after sketch of balloons in different angles (who knew there were angles to balloons?) with only words written on them (“hopeful,” “maybe,” “promising”). Kai folded and stuck a few of these in his back pocket, but he shook his head and tossed most of them into a different pile. There were no equations written down. We opened drawers and pulled books down from the shelves, looking for answers.

  What answers, I don’t know. Just something. Something to explain what was happening, I guess. And I guess that Kai thought Aurora and Ashasher, one of them, had to be the one behind it now. I couldn’t exactly disagree, but G-d, how could they? How could it be them? Ashasher was so kind, and Aurora really believed in saving people. She had been doing it so long. But no one else was here, other than their student, Sabina, and there were sixteen dead people on the street because of balloons.

  Kai held up a handful of papers. “A lot of st
uff here. It’s hard to understand but…” and then he held up a single black feather. Ashasher. “Only he can remove the feathers. He doesn’t shed them.”

  We stared at each other for a good long moment. It couldn’t be him. It was just a feather. Perhaps he’d used it as a bookmark. But I’d barely seen him since I arrived, and whenever I came to work on the maps with Aurora, she said Ashasher was working. Could he be working on the rogue balloons? Was he working alone?

  “Kai,” I started to say, then fell silent. Below us, Mitzi said something and Sabina answered her. Seven hundred and twenty seconds were up.

  Kai tucked the papers into his back pocket and said, “Maybe this will slow them down. Or maybe it’s the evidence Felix needs. Come on, let’s go.”

  We ran down the stairs, and Kai kissed his sister’s cheek as he grabbed Mitzi’s wrist. “We’re out of here. See you later, Sabina. Be safe.”

  “You be safe,” she said, and as the door shut behind us, I realized that was the most sane and hopeful thing she had said the entire time we were there. It wasn’t particularly comforting.

  We trotted through the tunnels at a steady clip, climbing up at the abandoned Potsdamer Platz station platform and climbing out the stairs, breathless and staying low to the ground as we slipped out of the death zone under the cover of darkness. With police sirens blaring and the sound of more and more coming closer, we stayed in a quiet street, hiding beneath a tree.

  “Mitz, go home. Ellie and I are going to find Felix,” Kai said.

  “Ellie will come with me,” Mitzi said calmly.

  “What?” I looked back and forth between the two of them. “Why aren’t we all going together?”

  Splitting up at this point seemed like a really terrible idea. In every movie, splitting up was how people died.

  Kai shook his head. “You are wearing absurd shoes, Mitz, and you stand out more. Someone has to be home in case Aurora stops by for some reason. I need Ellie with me. Felix won’t play nice unless she’s with me.”

  That sounded plausible. I shrugged and nodded when Kai raised an eyebrow at me. Felix had been a bit short and cold when I met him. I could imagine him being very difficult with Kai.

  Mitzi glared at Kai for a good long moment and then said, “Fine. Don’t you dare get Ellie killed.”

  “I’m taking her with me to prevent exactly that,” Kai said. He twirled one of Mitzi’s teal locks around his finger and then tugged on it. “Pretend to have faith in me.”

  “I don’t, and I’m not pretending,” Mitzi said. She shot him a glare as she hugged me. “If he’s an asshole, just run home.”

  “Deal,” I whispered back and let her go.

  Kai took my hand, holding the papers with the other hand. “Come on. I know where he is.”

  For no reason at all, Felix was waiting for us in a park in an affluent neighborhood far from the wall. He sat on the back of a park bench, tall, his tattoos lit up in the streetlights, and completely at ease with standing out in the middle of the night. He stood up as we approached and nodded to the lights and screech of sirens whipping by us and going toward Phantasma.

  “Thought you might have been involved in that,” he said calmly.

  Kai handed him the papers and the feather. “Sixteen dead bodies this time. Found these in Ashasher and Aurora’s office.”

  “I know,” Felix said, frowning. “The Volkspolizei got to the bodies before I did. That’s going to be a disastrous amount of paperwork. All from the future.”

  “Varying times,” I told him, feeling Kai’s surprise through his hand in mine. “A few from the early nineties, a few from early two thousands, a few from around my time. Why didn’t any of them survive?”

  “I think sharing blood with Garrick must have protected you,” said Felix slowly. “I suspect, though I cannot prove it, that he died when the balloon tried to jump through time. The jump killed him, not you. A balloon couldn’t travel without a person, which means we have sixteen dead Passengers too. Somewhere.”

  “And it’s likely because of something Ashasher or Aurora is doing,” Kai said, his voice rough.

  Felix shook his head. “It’s hard to imagine two of the people who invented balloon magic being sloppy in their mathematical equations. Evidence is paramount. The accusations are serious, you understand.”

  But he was flipping through papers anyway, like he almost already believed us, even without the evidence. He handed them back to Kai. “This is not enough. I need real proof. What else?”

  “That’s what we have. Sixteen dead people, sixteen dead Passengers somewhere, and all of those papers,” I protested. “How is it not enough?”

  “I want a new safe house for Ellie,” Kai said, skipping Felix’s protest and deliberately not looking at me. “One safe from even Mitzi and me. I’m not going for more evidence and risking any more until you take her out of this.”

  “No.” My voice stayed calm, even though my insides trembled. If he thought that would keep me safe, he was wrong. I couldn’t imagine staying inside again, but staying inside indefinitely without him and Mitzi? I couldn’t. I wouldn’t. I’d leave the house. I’d climb out a window. I didn’t care. I wasn’t going to stay a prisoner like that.

  “If we’re caught or tortured, or if someone we think we trust is behind this and asks us where you are, I don’t want to know,” Kai said, staring ferociously at Felix who stared back at the two of us, his facial expression placid, as if he’d expected this fight.

  “No. Don’t ask me to be isolated and alone again. I can’t…I won’t lose you and Mitzi just because of some madman.”

  “Ellie.” Kai’s voice cracked in the middle.

  My hands curled into fists. “I am a person, Kai. Not a thing. You can’t put me where you wish and hide me without my consent. You can’t move me around without any input from me. You can’t—”

  “Please,” Kai said, turning toward me. “We’re trying to keep you safe.”

  It took me a moment to gather my thoughts. Between his eyes, and the complexity of the emotions swirling in me like a hurricane gaining speed over warmer waters, I needed to close my eyes and pick my words carefully. “Please do not keep me safe at the expense of my sanity.”

  No one spoke for a moment. My heartbeat echoed in my ears, and when I opened my eyes, Kai had his covered with his hand, like that alone would be enough to ask G-d to protect us. Felix studied me under his hooded brow, playing with his bottom lip, thick arms crossed across his powerful body. I wanted to believe that with Felix on our side, no one would hurt me. No one had come after me. They had only pulled through more people who hadn’t survived. Maybe I wasn’t special. Maybe I was just lucky. Just an anomaly.

  “I cannot move her to a safe house if she won’t go, Kai,” Felix said at last. “You know better than most that the Zerberus cannot take people against their will, even if it is in their best interest.”

  Kai flinched. I had no idea what Felix was talking about, but it was clear that Kai knew. His shoulders slumped. He said, “We’re running out of time. Whoever is doing this is getting bolder. Maybe it’s not Aurora, and maybe it’s not Ashasher. Maybe someone’s planting papers in their office.”

  “Not bolder,” Felix said, shaking his head. The python on his arm moved, I swore. “Desperate. They’re panicking. They’re getting sloppy. And that’s exactly how we’re going to catch them.”

  “It’s going to be someone I know, no matter what,” Kai said, his voice breaking again. If we were alone, in the kitchen, I’d reach for him. But we weren’t alone. We were on the street in the night with police sirens wailing in the distance.

  Felix’s shoulders sagged a little, and he sighed. “Likely. But we can’t think about that right now. What we need is evidence. I cannot ask the Zerberus to strip someone of magic without evidence. I need a confession, or papers that have a name and say “time traveling” on them. Or, to witness it. I’m sorry. That’s what I need to get the Zerberus to move on either Ashasher or Aurora.
”

  I tried to imagine the raven-feathered man and his kind voice and his strange cadence killing people out of desperation. Or making balloons badly because he wanted to alter time for some unknown reason. Or quiet Aurora, who seemed to care so much for her students, for her people. The Aurora out of Saba’s stories, the girl in the purple dress at the fence who wanted to share in his stories, the girl who brought him a red balloon when he needed it most.

  It was the empathy, I realized, that kept me from believing ill of them. Could empathetic people kill?

  Kai sighed, echoing Felix, and shook his head, his hair momentarily obscuring his face. “Scheiße.”

  Felix smiled a little, the corner of his mouth tipping up just enough for me to see under the glow of the streetlamps. “That’s one word for it. We’re going to find who’s doing this, Kai. And we’re going to keep Ellie safe. But I can’t promise it won’t get worse before it gets better.”

  “How do you know?” I asked suddenly. Kai startled, as if he had forgotten I was standing there.

  Felix watched me with his eyes that caught every cut of light. “This is what I do. I bring people in for the Zerberus. Usually it’s people”—he glanced at Kai—“with unusual talents. But sometimes it’s people who stray outside the guidelines of balloon magic.”

  “You kill them,” I said.

  Felix shook his head. “No. I bring them in. We try them. And if they’re found to be guilty, we strip them of their magic.”

  “Most commit suicide after that,” Kai added quietly.

  Felix’s eyes glinted. “That’s their choice. You know as well as I that one can live a good and meaningful life without magic, even in the face of incredible darkness.”

  Kai nodded. I reached out and slipped my hand into his, glad when his fingers laced between mine, and he squeezed my hand. I squeezed back.