I had forgotten about them. “Why not?”
Felix smiled. “That was a problem. I handle problems. Take care, Kai.”
When the door clicked behind him, Ashasher said, “I don’t know if you’ll ever forgive me, Kai, but I hope you will. I had no idea that Aurora…It’s terribly hard to imagine someone you’ve known your whole life, someone you thought you knew very well, shunning ethics and morals to pursue a path so dark and treacherous that it nearly claimed the life of three, four young people. And she did kill people. She killed people.”
The wonder in his voice sounded genuine, and he shook his head as if he couldn’t believe it. Ashasher and Aurora had worked together for twenty-seven years. I’d say that I couldn’t believe he didn’t know, but the grief in his eyes and his voice, the slumped shoulders of a man who always sat so squarely and so properly, resonated deep inside me. I was not the only one feeling lost and adrift at the moment.
I swallowed and said, “It wasn’t your fault. I-I should have…I don’t know where I went wrong. I don’t know.”
“Me either,” admitted Ashasher.
I pointed at the ceiling. “I’m going to go check on them.”
“Of course,” Ashasher said, sounding sad and defeated.
In Ellie’s room, Mitzi sat in the windowsill, a book on her lap, her eyes swollen from crying. She climbed off the sill, the book toppling to the floor, and wrapped her arms around me. I gripped her tight, pressing my face into her hair. She smelled so clean and fresh. No smoke. Her shoulders shook as she tried to keep the tears at bay. Her fists clutched at my shirt.
“I’m fine,” I told her. Liar, I thought.
“Liar,” she whispered against my neck. I smiled. “You’re such a goddamn liar, Kai. I could have lost you today and I was so fucking mad at you.”
I couldn’t breathe. When I closed my eyes, I saw the fire. If I lifted my head, the smoke came back, searing the inside of my nose. “They’re investigating Sabina. Aurora’s dead. And everything’s gone.”
“Why did she do it?” Mitzi whispered.
My eyes found the girl asleep in the bed behind her. The long brown curls strewn over the white pillow. The burns on her face and arm covered in salve and bandages. Her lungs gasping and rasping with every breath. Mitzi had given her some sort of medicine for all the smoke she inhaled, but our medicine wasn’t as good as it could be. I wondered if we could get a balloon for her to get into West Berlin. Over there, they could take care of her properly.
And I still didn’t want her to leave. My selfishness felt like a black pit at my core.
I shook my head. “I don’t know.”
Mitzi stepped out, probably thinking I wanted to be alone. But I didn’t know what to do, standing in the room with the sleeping girl who had burned down everything, who had nearly gotten my sister killed in the process, who had warned me before we went in that she would do anything to keep more people from dying because of the rogue balloons. She had warned me, and I hadn’t listened. Because I hadn’t thought she was capable of that.
And I hadn’t thought Aurora was capable of circumventing law and ethics to pursue her own moral code.
Once, I’d thought I was good at reading people. At knowing people.
I no longer thought that. How could I?
I sat on the edge of Ellie’s bed and rested my elbows on my knees, watching her over my shoulder. Her breathing changed, and she blinked open bloodshot eyes.
“Sabina,” she rasped.
“Safe,” I said, running my fingers over her hair. My hands were clumsy in the bandages, but I still managed to tuck her hair behind her ear. “Just rest, Ellie.”
She reached up, lacing her fingers through mine. I let her.
For a few days, this was our routine. Mitzi and I played nurse to two girls. Mitzi helped them to the bathroom and cleaned Ellie’s burns, and I sat with them, holding their hands and getting them water and food as necessary. Mitzi or Ashasher changed my bandages, and when Mitzi told me that there’d be scars, I didn’t mind. Then I wouldn’t see the scars from the fights in England anymore.
Sabina recovered quicker, medically, than Ellie, but refused to speak to me. I couldn’t figure out if she was embarrassed or pissed at me, but it didn’t seem to matter why. I couldn’t find the answer because she wouldn’t talk to me. She kept her hands over her ears when I came into the room. Sabina didn’t talk much to Mitzi either, but at least she was talking. It was hard not to be jealous. Ashasher came by with food for us, but we didn’t hear from Felix for a few days.
Then he came back to interview Ellie, who was still prone to coughing fits and slept more than she was awake. I was sitting in Ellie’s window when Mitzi came up the stairs and opened the door. “Felix is here. To see Ellie.”
I closed the book. Ellie’s eyes were open, but she stared resolutely at the side of the bedside table. “Okay.”
Felix stepped into the room, carrying a chair from the kitchen. He sat next to Ellie and turned on a tape recorder. He spoke in English, surprising me, and Ellie, I think. “I’m recording this, Ellie, for others. You’re not in trouble. How do you feel?”
“Like crap,” she said softly.
Felix said, “It’ll take a while for your lungs to recover. You need rest more than anything.”
She smiled, the first smile I had seen from her since before the workshop fire. “I’ll stop running up and down the stairs.”
When Felix asked her why she’d set the fire, Ellie turned away from me. “I kept thinking about all those people missing from their lives, how no one would ever find out what happened to them, about how their families would never have closure because their bodies were here, not there. That killed me. I couldn’t…I can’t, I can’t stand that idea. Even if she was right. Even if she’d be able to save other lives, what about these ones?”
She paused to drink from the water Mitzi offered her, and then she slumped back onto the bed. She sounded weak when she said, “I didn’t know what else to do. I didn’t see another way. Your way was so slow, Felix. More people were going to die. She was committing genocide to prevent genocide. It didn’t sit right with me. Besides, you’re not supposed to mess with history.”
She opened her eyes. “Am I terrible? What if she could have killed Hitler? What if she could have stopped the Holocaust? What if she could have saved my family?”
Felix sighed, setting down the tape recorder. For once, he looked thoughtful, and young, and like he was actually giving Ellie’s question some thought instead of readying a glib company line from the Zerberus.
“I can’t speak for your family, Ellie. I don’t know if Aurora could have done what she wanted to do. I think she was extraordinarily arrogant about her skills, and you’re right, many people would die in the pursuit of that magic. But I can tell you one thing. Hitler,” Felix said, “came to power because of a multitude of reasons. The Holocaust happened not because of one person, but because of many people believing in an ideology promoted by a charismatic man at the right time and place, and millions of people colluding. History is not singular. Events do not happen in a vacuum. Altering history is far more complicated than the death of one man. If we knew how to go back in time and prevent genocide, we would. We’d have many more genocides than just the Holocaust to fix. History is riddled with deaths. We’re all here because of ghosts.”
Tears ran down Ellie’s cheek. I brushed them away with the back of my hand. She turned her face away from me, and she might as well have stabbed me in the heart. She whispered, “I’m always going to wonder. I’m always going to regret.”
“I’d think it strange if you didn’t,” Felix told her gently. “History and time are impossible knots. We’ll never understand every moment that makes the next moment more likely. If we understood time, as both a metaphorical concept and a physical thing, then you’d be home by now, Ellie.”
Sabina appeared in the doorway and I slid off the bed, walking toward my sister. I shut the door behind me. S
abina stood, rocking back and forth on her bare feet, picking at her lips while her eyes darted around my head nervously.
Even though I was tired of trying to take care of people who didn’t want me to take care of them, I said, “You okay?”
Sabina stopped rocking, and her eyes met mine. She shook her head. She said, “No.”
My heart stopped. “What’s wrong? What do you need?”
She started to cry. Everyone was crying today. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”
I wanted to claw open my skin. I didn’t know what to do with the tightness inside me. I didn’t even have a name for it. I couldn’t breathe, but I said, “You have nothing to be sorry for. I’m sorry I didn’t ask more questions. I’m sorry you went through any of that.”
She wrapped her arms around me, and I kissed the top of her head. I sighed and said, “You went with her sometimes, didn’t you?”
A small figure trailing behind a taller one with a purple scarf. The night by the wall, the second illegal balloon after Ellie’s. I saw, and I didn’t want to see. Could I have saved lives too? Ellie wasn’t the only one with questions. Sabina’s arms tightened. “Yes.”
I didn’t say anything for a moment because I didn’t know how to tell my sister I forgave her, even if what she did bordered on unforgivable. Then I said, “We’ll be fine, Bean. You and me.”
She whispered, “Do you remember, in England, when we used to ride the Tube from one end all the way to another, just to see the people? Vroom-vroom, gaps, and the clatter. The lights.”
I nodded a bit. Her hair still smelled of smoke. “Yes.”
“I want to go back there, Kai. I want to go home. This isn’t home. I’m scared here,” she whispered. It had been a long time since Sabina had said something so sensible and straightforward to me.
I closed my eyes. There wasn’t a home for us, or if there was, I wasn’t sure what it looked like. Sabina barely remembered what home was like for us when her magic spilled over everywhere. But it was controlled now. Maybe we needed to try. Ask for forgiveness. “Then we’ll go home. That’s where we’ll go.”
“Felix said he’d take me,” she said. “If you didn’t want to go. You’re happy here.”
“I’m happy with you, chey. You’re my sister.”
“If Ellie stays…” Sabina said, and then she shivered. “She used to tell me that I held you down. That you could be at university being brilliant, but I made you change everything.”
It took me a moment to realize that she didn’t mean Ellie. She meant Aurora. I shook my head again. “No, kid. She’s wrong. I love you. If you want to go back to England, then we’ll go back to England.”
“I’m sorry,” she said again, still holding on to me.
“I’m sorry too,” I told her.
I was sorry for so much more than I knew how to say. Ellie held a good portion of the words trapped in my chest. I didn’t know how to ask for my apologies back.
Chapter Thirty–Four
CHIMES OF FREEDOM
East Berlin, German Democratic Republic, June–July 1988
Ellie
It took me a few days to be able to walk around without coughing, but slowly, my strength returned to me. I showered on my own and rinsed the smoke from my hair gratefully. I slept through the night without waking, after night after night of nightmares.
I began to make doves again.
Kai and I talked, cautiously at first, and then he finally said what had been sitting between us since the fire. “I don’t know if I would have done what you did.” My heart squeezed in half, but then he added softly, “But you were willing to die in there, just so others didn’t die because of Aurora’s balloons. I don’t know if I could have done that either, El.”
I whispered, “You would have died for Sabina. That’s about the same thing.”
When all of the pieces of history and magic fell into place in my head, I closed my eyes against the incompatibility of two truths in my mind. “Aurora saved my grandfather.”
“Yeah.” Kai shifted a little on the bed, his feet cold against mine.
“And she killed people.” We’d been over this so many times in the last few days, but it still confused me. After all the horrors of the Holocaust, how could Aurora ever want to see another person die?
“She did.” Kai rolled over, propping himself up on an elbow. “Where are you, Ellie?”
“She saved Saba’s life. I wouldn’t be here, if it weren’t for her. And I wouldn’t be here, if it weren’t for her,” I said, mostly to the ceiling because it was too hard to look at Kai right now. My heart ached, like its four chambers were being torn apart.
“Ellie,” Kai said, his voice low and warm against my ear. “You’re making it hard for me to stay pissed off at Aurora.”
I smiled a bit, letting my eyes close so I could only know him at the places where we touched: his forehead against my temple, our hands clasped between our hips, our cold feet bumping off the edge of the bed. “Time’s twisty. I wouldn’t be me, if she hadn’t saved him. But I wouldn’t be here at all. I wouldn’t be missing either. Everything we do now…Will I remember this? If I ever get home, will I remember this?”
For a long time, Kai was quiet, and then he said, “Is it selfish to say that I hope you do?”
I twisted my fingers with his. My thumb ran over the thin bandages, knowing that beneath, his burns were still healing. “Most of the things we think are selfish aren’t at all. We’re just so conditioned to think that wanting things is wrong. We can want to be missed, Kai.”
“I always want to be missed,” he told me, his voice shaking, like this was a confession. I opened my eyes, looking at him so close that he was out of focus. “I miss my Passengers. Every single one of them. And sometimes, I worry that I only miss them because they’re the only people to whom I was important.”
I touched his cheek with my other hand and kissed him softly. “You’re important to me.”
When he told me that Sabina had been suspended and remanded to the London Zerberus for the next two years, I looked away and said, “So you’re going to London.”
“Yeah,” he said, scooting closer on the bed. “Felix offered me a job with the Zerberus. Doing more of what he does. Fixing problems, not just running balloons.”
“You’ll be good at that,” I said. I felt like I’d spent most of the last few days unable to look him in the eye. But if I turned to him, I’d cry. I had burned my only way home. I’d be staying in East Berlin until further notice. No one said that directly, but they didn’t have to. Ashasher had looked through the paperwork we had given Felix and said that it was incomplete. He didn’t understand enough of what Aurora had written to duplicate it. He told me this with clear remorse, but I understood. It wasn’t his fault.
“Will it be weird?” I asked him. “Being so close to your family but not at home?”
His fingers brushed against the back of my neck, at the tiny wisps of hair curling there in the heat and humidity. “I’m going to try to repair that bridge. Sabina will be living with the Zerberus, but maybe I can go home. They didn’t understand her before, but if we can explain to them, if her magic is under control…”
His voice trailed off, and I heard the unsaid words. If they understand that everything I did, I did for her. When I breathed in, I found something firm inside myself, an anchor by which to steady myself. “They’ll understand, Kai. They’ll be glad you came home.”
“You could come with me…us,” he corrected himself quietly. “Felix said that if you wanted to, he could get you out of here. Maybe the Zerberus in London will find you a way home. They’re working on it.”
I thought about London, speaking English, living in a whole new city again, a whole new world, all over again. Still the wrong year. Still the wrong time. Mitzi here, all alone. She was losing her best friend already. Everyone was always leaving Kai and Mitzi, I realized. I didn’t want to be one of those people who left. Mitzi wanted me to become a Runner w
ith her, but my fingers itched for doves and the balloons. I didn’t want to ask, not yet, but if I were to stay, then I wanted to do everything I could.
The cool early summer crept into hot, humid days, turning my room into a sauna. I sat downstairs more often these days with Sabina. We crept around each other, unsure, both very aware that we were unintentionally pulling Kai in opposite directions.
Almost two months after the workshop fire, Kai bounced back into the house and pulled me off the couch, turning me in a big circle, an overdramatic dance. I laughed, and then had a coughing fit. My lungs still hadn’t caught up with how much better the rest of me was feeling. He pulled me against his side, steadying me as I sucked in a deep breath.
“Surprise. Ready?” he asked.
Sabina glanced up from the table where she was writing out more testimony to Aurora’s manipulations. “Just tell us.”
“Bruce Springsteen is playing. In East Berlin. Here. On this side of the wall,” crowed Kai. “And we’re going. Ellie, you think you can?”
I didn’t care if I could. I was going. Mitzi, Sabina, and I laughed together for the first time as we dressed upstairs, letting Mitzi play with our hair and do our makeup. Glitter covered the floor, and I didn’t even care. The city felt restless, an excited simmer building below the surface as thousands of people of all ages, but especially people our age, streamed toward the Radrennbahn Weissensee where the stage was clearly set up and we could hear the roar of people. Halfway down the street, Kai caught up with me and turned his hand over, offering it to me.
I slid my fingers between his, feeling the scarring skin on the back of his hands. My shoulders were already pink in the sun. My white sundress clung to my skin. The heat was almost as oppressive as the government, and I wished I had Mitzi’s guts. She had ditched her bra, declaring it unnecessary with a sundress in this heat.
Kai swung our arms between us. His enthusiasm was contagious. I rocked on my toes for a few steps, missing his cheek the first time but pressing my lips against it the second stride I took. He stopped dead in his tracks, tilting his head to kiss me. I reached up with a hand, curving my fingers into the side of his face and around his ear. Our lips tasted like salt from our sweat, but it might as well have been the tears that I knew neither of us would shed. He gripped my body through my thin sundress and pulled me flush against him. He kissed me hard, hard enough to bruise, hard enough to make the color rush back to my own cheeks.
Girl with the Red Balloon (The Balloonmakers) Page 24
