Mitzi watched me draw a line of nail polish down her thumb-nail. “Sometimes when I sit up here, it’s like a simultaneous fuck you to my state and a penny in a wishing well to West Berlin. They’re screwed, you know. They’re this tiny island of hope in a sea of sadness. That’s a lot for any city to carry.”
“The other side of the wall is covered in graffiti and art.” I painted the nails on her right hand first. “I think they’re carrying it just fine. They know exactly what they are.”
“That must be nice.” Mitzi’s voice fell into wistfulness. “To know yourself as a collective and as an individual. Sometimes I think about applying for a balloon myself.”
“Blow on this.” I traded her right for her left hand. “Why don’t you?”
“My family’s here,” she said, and I dashed the paintbrush across her nail. “Ellie!”
“It’s not dry. It’s fine.” I rubbed at her finger with my thumb. With the sunset behind her, Mitzi took on a strange, unnatural glow, her pale skin almost jaundiced in the light, her hair tiger-striped around her face. “I came anyway.”
“Maybe you were always supposed to come. Maybe when you go back, you’ll remember everything that happened here,” she said slowly. “Maybe as our time progresses and you’re born, you’ll feel like you have to come here. Maybe this always repeats.”
I finish her pinkie finger and release her hand, recapping the nail polish. “Do you think it’s a loop? Time?”
“I don’t know,” Mitzi said, smiling a bit. “I must have slept through my physics class. When you know balloons can carry people over the wall, you start to think that physics isn’t the be-all and end-all.”
She had a pretty smile. Not the same type of smile that she had on her face when she was grinning and goofy and bouncy. This one wasn’t a smile for me, or for anyone else. I think it was the first time I saw Mitzi smile to herself.
“Your turn,” Mitzi said, picking up the magenta-colored bottle. She turned it over. “Oh my God. Nail polish colors are the best.”
“What’s that one?” I asked, picking up the lime. “This is Limerick.” It took me a moment, but then I burst out laughing, bending over and holding a hand over my mouth to control the volume. “That’s genius. But it only works if you know English. Mitzi, where’d you get these?”
“Not telling. This one’s called Flirt with a Stranger,” Mitzi said, wiggling the magenta bottle at me. “That sounds like an excellent idea.”
I smiled a little, my stomach aching a little for Kai. I wondered if he was over the border already. I wondered if they were out of Germany, well into the land of the free. I wondered where they’d go. I didn’t want to ask Mitzi. It was better, I thought, if we didn’t know.
“I need your help,” Mitzi said quietly. “I need a distraction in the workshop. I want to check the office and see if there’s anything Kai missed. He might be gone, but it’s not like the dead time-travelers just left with him.”
I didn’t hesitate. “Whatever you need.”
Which was how, once our nails dried and the sun had fully set on the Iron Curtain, I ended up hysterically crying on the floor of the workshop with Aurora trying to calm me down. Meanwhile, behind us, a slip of a girl with teal-blue hair slid up the stairs. I tried not to look at her while I mopped up my tears and talked about my homesickness, how angry I was at Kai, and how alone I felt.
“I’m never going to get home,” I cried, leaning into Aurora. She stiffened, but I didn’t relent. “Do you think it was Kai? Is that why he left? Did he mess up the balloons?”
“I don’t know,” Aurora said after a long pause. “I didn’t think Kai’s understanding of magic was that in-depth, but I suppose it could have been, given his sister’s genius. But Ellie, you must know that we are doing our best to make this time livable for you.”
I wiped my tears off the back of my hands. Not all of this was invented, but maybe that was why they were buying it so easily. “Livable is a low standard.”
Her voice was so sad. “I know. We’re trying, Ellie.”
Behind her, Mitzi reappeared on the second level, her jacket a little puffier. She had the papers then. I scrambled to my feet and said, “I think maybe I just need to take a hot bath.”
“Yes,” Aurora said with evident relief. “A hot bath cures a great number of ills and broken hearts.”
“Something about the steam,” I stammered. She stared at me and then Mitzi appeared, taking my arm with a sympathetic smile on her face. “Okay. Thank you for listening. Bye!”
“You were great up until the end,” Mitzi muttered in the tunnels. “But it doesn’t matter. We got the papers. Let’s go.”
And back into the tunnels we went.
Chapter Twenty–Nine
CULPRITS WITHOUT CAUSES
East Berlin, German Democratic Republic, May 1988
Ellie
We spread the papers out in the kitchen, piles after piles of paper that tumbled onto the floor, where we didn’t bother to pick them up because we’d run out of room to put them. The floor was as good a place as any. We sat there, sipping tea and trying to sort through papers, while the sun rose and crept in through the windows. Exhaustion lingered deep in my bones, but I didn’t think I could sleep if I tried. For once, I felt like I was doing something.
Mitzi had just stood to make another pot of tea when someone started banging on the front door. Mitzi and I both stopped moving, our eyes meeting across the kitchen. She hesitated and then grabbed a knife off the table and gestured to the small pantry in the kitchen. “Hide.”
We ducked into the pantry, and Mitzi pulled the door shut tightly behind us. She shoved boxes against the door while I crawled into the back. I found the rat poison I’d found the first time I hid in here and wrapped my hand around it again. Mitzi scooted next to me and gripped my hand. This time, I could feel the paper dove’s wings in my pocket, trying to move without any room. I breathed in.
“If they come in…” she whispered, and then the banging on the front door increased, making us both flinch. She cleared her throat and spoke faster. “If they come in, Ellie, you need to let me do the talking. If you can escape, go to the workshop. No one wants you dead. They don’t know what we did. You can blame everything on me.”
“They won’t take you,” I hissed. “Mitzi.”
She shook my shoulder. “Promise me you’ll let me take the blame if they come for us.”
I didn’t want anyone to take the blame for me or what was happening. Kai had already fled, and now Mitzi was preparing to be arrested. They’d never let her go if they got her. So many people never came back when the Stasi got their hands on them. How could this be any different?
The lock turned audibly and the door opened, creaking as it went. Boots in the hallway. I thought about praying, but my mind spun too hard to reach for any words. I pressed my forehead into Mitzi’s shoulder, and she ducked her head.
Footsteps, quiet and slow across the living room. Into the kitchen. Then a pause before the person spun and ran, taking the stairs two at a time. Above us, doors opened and slammed shut. More than just the bedroom. Every closet was checked, and with every door that slammed shut again, Mitzi and I shook harder in the back of the pantry. It was only a matter of time before they’d check the kitchen. They were searching the whole house.
Footsteps pounding down the stairs. A chair knocked over in the kitchen. My throat closed tight, and I shook so hard that I bumped a soup can off the shelf behind me. It hit the floor with a thunk and rolled away from me. Mitzi hissed softly, but it was too late. The footsteps stopped.
This is it, I thought to myself wildly. This is where this unfathomable adventure ends. In a pantry in a kitchen in the wrong country in the wrong year. I held on to Mitzi. She was all I had left.
The pantry door rattled as someone yanked on it. But the inside latch held. In the dark, we could only see the boots crossing the thin line of light under the door. The door shook again.
“Mitz? Ell
ie?” A warm, familiar voice, trembling like the door. “Open up.”
My first thought was that it was a trap, but Mitzi didn’t have that thought. She dropped my hand and stumbled to her feet, flipping open the latch on the door and shoving it open. Light poured into the dark, blinding both of us temporarily.
“What in the name of…” she said. “You should be in Argentina by now.”
Not Stasi. Not Stasi at all. I dropped the box of rat poison and pulled myself up on the shelves around me, pushing past Mitzi as Kai said, “We were at a Zerberus safe house, waiting for a way out. Felix said you found more papers, and I realized I couldn’t leave, not until I saw this through,” and I threw my arms around him.
He caught me, burying his face against my neck. He exhaled slowly, his body vibrating with intensity under my hands. I could hear his heart slamming around in his chest, loosed from a cage and wild. Slowly, I felt him unwind beneath the heat of his body against mine.
“You’re here,” I whispered into his chest. It reminded me of how he was on the dance floor of Phantasma. “Where’s Sabina?”
“I sent her back. I had no other option. Felix might be okay, but the Zerberus at that safe house wanted her to come with them.” He shook his head. “I told her to tell them I just got jittery because of Felix being Zerberus. I’m sorry. I thought when I came in that they’d taken you two.”
“You should leave,” Mitzi said, but the force wasn’t behind her words this time. Kai reached out with an arm and pulled her into the hug. We stood there for a moment, just the three of us holding on to each other in the face of the impossible task of unwinding an invisible path of untraceable magic. Then Mitzi leaned back and said, “But you’re here now. We should get to work.”
Kai gestured to the papers behind him in the kitchen. “Clearly I can’t leave you two unsupervised. You turn into thieves.”
“You were looking for something like an equation. But what if it’s not an equation?” Mitzi touched each of the piles. “We took everything. I’m sure Aurora will notice papers missing eventually, and Ashasher, whenever he comes back from wherever he is. I’ve been thinking about it, and has anyone seen Ashasher in the workshop other than that one day?”
We all shook our heads, looking around at each other. I could count on one hand the number of times I had seen Ashasher. But I saw Aurora every day that I sorted maps. None of it meant anything, unless it meant everything. My head spun.
Kai stared at the papers and said bitterly, “All those years of ignoring Sabina and shushing her when she talked magical theory. Biting me in the ass today.”
“Do you think she’d translate for us?” I asked, peering at the page. The equations looked like gibberish without any numbers. I blinked, suddenly remembering math class at home. I hadn’t thought about home in a long time.
“No, I don’t want to involve her,” Kai said shortly. “These are her teachers. I don’t trust either of them right now. We found that feather, Ellie. At least we know where Aurora is right now. Ashasher could do anything.”
His hands curled into fists on the table. Without looking at each other, Mitzi and I each covered one of his hands with our own. His head bowed, and we all stared at the papers meaninglessly for a short time. Then I took a deep breath. “We’re wasting time again. Come on.”
All day, the three of us sorted the papers from Aurora and Ashasher’s office into four different piles: equations; notes from unknown theory books; Ashasher’s notes; and Aurora’s private scribblings that sometimes made sense and sometimes didn’t, at least the ones we could read. Half of them were in Polish. As we went along, we tried to tease out what Kai called the two-pronged problem. We needed to find proof in these papers that one of them was the culprit behind the rogue balloons, and we needed to find out why. I doubted that Felix cared if we found out why, but Kai seemed to care.
He handed me a scrap piece of paper. “This doesn’t have anything useful on it.”
I frowned. “Why are you handing it to me?”
He lifted an eyebrow. “Make a dove. We could use one right now.”
So I pressed and folded and made a tiny paper dove that sat in the middle of the table, wings rising and falling, and we did all breathe deeper.
I measured the time by the number of times we refilled the kettle and made new tea. I didn’t understand the magic at all, so I sorted the theory from the diary entries. Ashasher’s handwriting was abysmal. Maybe he couldn’t see through all the feathers. Whatever the reason, none of us could read it.
Aurora’s handwriting in her theoretical notes was tidy and neat, as if she knew others would see it. Her handwriting in her diaries was atrocious, and the words switched between German and Polish. It was close enough to looking like Yiddish that I wished my grandfather had taught me the language he spoke with my grandmother. I only vaguely remembered her. She passed when I was little, but when they spoke just to each other, they used Yiddish. My grandfather didn’t speak a word of German after he moved to New York. Not a word.
“They just…” I shook my head and cleared my throat. “I don’t know. It’s hard to imagine that either of them is the culprit. Maybe they didn’t mean for it to happen.”
“Good intentions mean very little when the bodies start piling up.” Mitzi passed something to Kai. “Familiar handwriting. Not Ashasher.”
He grimaced. “Sabina.”
“Sometimes good intentions are understandable,” I said.
“Sometimes,” Kai said without looking up, and though there was no malice in his voice, it sank its teeth into my soft skin. “I think you forget that whoever did this is the reason you are here. You are not with your family. Somewhere in time, Ellie, you are a missing person.”
“Kai,” Mitzi murmured, her dark eyes fluttering over to me. In the dim light of the kitchen, she almost looked apologetic.
Kai blinked up at me and reached over, touching my hand with his fingers. I pulled away from him, turning my shoulder slightly as I pretended to read a paper. “Ellie.”
I took a deep breath, and then let it out. My eyes caught a word and I straightened up, leaning forward. “Kai.”
“I’m sorry—” he began to say.
I shoved a paper at him. “Shut up. This. I think I have it. I don’t know whose handwriting this is—maybe Sabina’s—but whoever it is, they’re trying to go back in time.”
“Back?” he repeated, taking the paper and frowning at it.
I leaned over and pointed out the lines, reading them aloud as I went. I didn’t know all the German, but it wasn’t necessary. The idea was clear as day. “Pulling someone from the past something-something would prove the something-something…reverse the equation.”
“Pulling an individual from the past, particularly in the nineteen thirties, would prove the potentiality to reverse the equation to send someone back into that time period.” Kai translated the line properly. He put the paper down. “It’s Sabina’s handwriting. I know my sister’s a genius, but she couldn’t do this without help.”
“Look through all the papers,” Mitzi said quickly. “Look for anything about the past.”
We shuffled through the papers and couldn’t find anything in Aurora’s handwriting and, despite our best efforts, still couldn’t read Ashasher’s. Kai sat back and said, “Process of elimination.”
“Ashasher,” said Mitzi grimly. “If it’s not in Aurora’s notes and it has to be one of Sabina’s teachers…It has to be him.”
“How is he getting it so wrong? Why do people keep coming from the future?” I asked softly. “I thought he was the mastermind behind most of this magic.”
“I read the physics about time travel after Ellie came,” Mitzi said lightly. “Time’s as much of a dimension as space. Like Ashasher says, space-time is like a fabric. But you can only go forward in time.”
“Those same books will tell you magic doesn’t exist,” Kai told her. “And you and I know differently.”
“But our magic, even if it
’s unbelievable to others, does subscribe to rules, doesn’t it? We use mathematical equations to write magic onto balloons to account for the weight, height, and genetic markers of a Passenger. We use blood to make sure that only that Passenger or his family members can use the balloon,” Mitzi argued.
“So the balloon can only go forward, but when the magic is disengaged,” I said slowly, “like by finding a Passenger, then it returns to its previous dimension.”
“I’m not a physicist but that makes sense to me,” Mitzi said. “Travel to the future means you’d have to be going closer to the speed of light. Or I guess, since the time between Garrick and his balloon disappearing and you appearing was a few hours, it was probably at the speed of light. Physics took the balloon forward, but magic brought you back.”
Kai rubbed at his face. He hadn’t shaved in a few days, and he seemed more exhausted than either Mitzi or me. “So no matter what Ashasher does, he’s not going to send a balloon back in time.”
“Not unless he’s smarter than the physicists from my time and your time,” I said, shaking my head. “But if his motivation is strong enough, then it probably won’t matter.”
“Then what’s his motivation?” Kai asked at the same time that Mitzi said, “Then how do we stop someone who doesn’t care that the science doesn’t support him?”
I shake my head. “I don’t know. I think he has to be arrested. I think Felix will have to do his thing.”
“Do his thing,” repeated Kai slowly. He shook his head a bit. “That’s a strange turn of phrase, but I guess you’re right. We can only all do our things.”
“Can Felix even get past the feathers?” Mitzi looked between us, her eyes widening as I was sure mine were. “Ashasher killed Garrick and all those other time-travelers. Maybe it wasn’t the balloons doing it at all. Maybe it was Ashasher and whatever he can do. Maybe Kai just beat him to you, Ellie.”
“And how many more do we not know about?” I asked softly because it didn’t seem like anyone wanted to consider the possibility that I wasn’t the first one. I was just the first—and so far the only—to survive. And maybe I was lucky. Maybe Mitzi was right. Kai had just reached me before Ashasher could kill me.
Girl with the Red Balloon (The Balloonmakers) Page 20
