by Amanda Dykes
The force of it knocked me to the ground with such power that it blew the air from my lungs. Was I dead? Had I died? And if so, had I at least taken the behemoth down with me?
I scrambled to see through the porthole and grabbed the binoculars stationed there. Scanning the airship, I spotted it: a hole. I jumped in the air, making to repeat the process. A little hole in a big creature like that would not a victory make, but by golly, it was a start! And perhaps enough of a distraction that it would slow their progress toward the train station. Even I, thickheaded though I was in matters of war, knew that would likely be their target. Stop the coming and going of arms and men and all that.
I repeated the process until my bones were surely obliterated inside of me. I had no hearing to speak of and when a sharp jab poked my shoulder, I nearly jumped out of my skin, shrieking.
Soldiers. Real ones. The ones who knew what to do, thanks be to God above! They took charge, and I helped to load the cannon, and they soon had one of the planes on the run, buzzing in loopy demise until it crashed well and good right into the zeppelin.
My ears still rang, but I could feel through the absence of vibrations that all went silent. As if the world held its breath. We all scrambled to the grass roof to watch an allied plane give chase to the remaining enemy plane. And the airship—an inferno glowing through the many holes in its grey flesh—sank slowly and ember-filled to the ground below it.
Right atop the train station.
32
Matthew
A churning inferno descended from above, shining through holes in a grey vessel overtaking the sky. It floated down upon us like a wounded giant, lopsided and spectacular in his fall.
Mira. I jolted to find her. She was frozen, neck craned, watching with sheer horror on her face. She, accustomed to seeing only eagles and falcons in the air, about to be swallowed by a German airship afire. My own fire lit—the Flame—and launched me into movement.
I ran for her. And she, perceiving my movement, ran for me. Our hands found each other mid-stride and we ran. Ran. Ran.
It was chaos. The train lurched forward, its conductor acting quickly to save every passenger aboard. I gulped. Captain Truett was aboard. Fear for him washed me. It looked suddenly minuscule, that train, with the mammoth-sized fiery frame falling above it.
If I knew Jasper Truett, he was in there somehow commanding that train with his iron will. It lurched forward, barely escaping the zeppelin’s collision as it nicked the tail end and set the car to rocking. Sparks flew as the track and the wheels grappled before settling, blessedly, into steady action behind the retreating train.
Truett was safe. But there was no wash of relief—that would have to come later.
Soldiers jumped from the airship, opting to fling themselves into a fall that would, without a doubt, crush bones and twist muscles, rather than go down inside the ship. I did not blame them. To collide with the earth was one thing—to collide with the earth and be still aboard as its gas-filled pockets inside exploded and surged, was another. It was that thought that sent me running blind to all but the sight of Mira, eyes afire, keeping pace beside me. We passed stone planters of bright flowers in a blur. We ran past the spot where the violinist had stood just moments ago, past the town that had been shelter to us and witnessed the cleaving of our souls together by shattering words the night before.
As we rounded a cobbled corner, a flash of motion collided straight into me, its source crumpling.
A girl. No more than eight years old, chattering in a muddle of French and panic, pointing at the sky like it was coming for her. Which—a quick glance confirmed—it was. I knelt to help her up, noting the way she cradled a small box with great care.
Mira looked at the looming airship, still coming down, and she knelt beside the girl, amid a fall of floating bits of ash and embers. Leaned in, eyes wide with a pleading for trust, as she infused her voice with calm for the child.
I did not know what they said—only a mention of a mama, as the girl gestured away toward the hills. Mira’s gaze followed, and she, too, searched the hills.
“We have to go,” I said. “Will she come?” If she wouldn’t, I’d carry her. Anything to get her out of here. But I didn’t want to scare her more, either.
Mira translated, and everything in me heaved relief when the girl took Mira’s hand.
We ran until Épermay was behind us, a billow of black smoke rising above it like an umbrella.
We ran, still, until we drew up at a crossroads, where the road was rutted and muddy, and a towering cross rose from the sludge like so many across France did, marking waysides and journeys of both foot and heart.
The girl detached herself from Mira, her smile dimpling as if they shared a secret surprise. She pointed at the box and down a winding path.
“Venez!” she said, gesturing for us to follow.
Mira looked between us, translating. “She wishes for us to follow,” she said. “Her aunt has just been married, and they are gathering to celebrate. A—I do not know the English word.”
A reception. I didn’t speak it, but I knew it. Recalled it well, from Mr. MacMannus and the new Mrs. MacMannus’s evening of celebration, and how Celia and I had watched on from the barn. She, dancing about the creaking boards, and I, wondering what it would be like, for once, not to be on the outside looking in. Always a window or a wall between me and the others. Mother bearing Celia, departing from this world. My father, opening his home in celebration of his wedding to the whole of society, but not so much as blinking our way.
And now here stood a young girl, poised on the path before us, gesturing us in.
I nodded. “We should see her home to her family, at least,” I said. We needn’t intrude upon the event itself.
The girl understood something of my answer, for she gave a small jump of celebration and started on her way.
Mira’s gaze fixed fast on the horizon behind us. Now that the girl was a little ways ahead, Mira seemed to register the events she’d kept so calm in. She trembled slightly, and I placed my hands on her shoulders.
Not that it did much good. My own hand was shaking again, too. I clenched its muscles, willing sinews to still. But they would not. They were in another place, on another battlefield, pulling my thoughts back there, too.
But I would not go. Not to the place that lived inside Saint-Mihiel. That memory with its own pulse, its darkness eating slowly away at me in images of fields of red drenching the land. Encroaching on me now in my waking hours, as well as in my sleep. I heaved an invisible door—a heavy, thick one—shut on the thoughts. Fixed my attention on the moment before me now.
“Mira?”
She shook her head, torment in her eyes. “What was that?”
That was war, I wanted to say. But war she already knew. More so even than me.
“A German airship,” I said.
“Why did they come?”
I didn’t want to fill her world with more worry. But she valued information, I was coming to realize. I could see how she latched onto each bit like a puzzle piece, moving it around and sifting it into place in that mind of hers, to see a picture of this strange world outside the Argonne.
We walked, following the girl at a distance. She seemed to have forgotten us, until she stopped suddenly and turned, tilting her head as if she’d had a sudden realization. She said something and laughed. She opened her corner-crumpled box and reverently removed something. Lifting a hand to reveal her treasure, she pressed a finger to her lips and said, “Shhhh.” She giggled.
“Is that—”
“Brioche,” Mira breathed, her eyes wide. And it was. Brioche. A mouthwatering roll, baked to glistening golden-brown perfection. I could picture George rending his garments and releasing a mournful cry when he learned of this.
The girl turned, breaking off the smallest pieces and placing one each in our palms, face alight with expectant glee.
It was no more than a crumb. But I knew it was the treasure she treat
ed it as, in these times. Exchanging a glance with Mira, who looked as if she knew something I did not, I placed the crumb in my mouth and let it sit there as long as possible. Savoring the buttery flakes, the way my stomach came alive and remembered it was made for more than hard tack and old tins of meat.
The girl chattered happily, gesturing for Mira to take her turn.
Mira’s cheeks grew pink.
“It’s good,” I said, raising my eyebrows. “Go ahead.”
She did, hesitantly, and I watched the sheer joy of the way she closed her eyes, long eyelashes against her pale skin, and gave meaning to the word savor. Suddenly remembering she was being watched, her eyes flew open again and she smiled sheepishly.
The girl pointed toward a farmhouse where people were gathered. Clearly the wedding reception she’d spoken of, a small clutch of family and neighbors gathered beneath the open sky among leaves and laughter, both of them gold.
She spoke something and giggled—I only caught the words merci and l’amour. And then she was gone, dashing down the slope to her destination, leaving Mira’s cheeks growing pink.
“What did she say?” I asked, curious.
She shook her head. “It was nothing.”
It wasn’t nothing, judging by the way Mira blushed. I waited, and Mira looked at me with a tentative smile.
“She said it is like the French wedding procession.” I must have looked confused. “That . . . we are like the French wedding procession. Children lead the way for the new bride and groom as they approach the celebration.”
Which, in this scenario, made us . . .
I swallowed.
Mira’s smile dimpled as she pursed her lips. “The people have each brought a roll or small cake and will stack them into one big cake,” she said. “Just as it was done long ago. Hers was baked especially for the bride and groom in the village boulangerie. Very secret, such a delicacy in a time of war. She said—that it was right for us to have a bit of that one, in the procession.” Mira looked away, her smile bashful. “It is only her game she is playing, of course.”
“Of course,” I said, letting my eyes dance over Mira in amusement.
“I played such games many times when I was young,” she said, her voice easing into its musical depth, more normal.
“Oh?”
She laughed. “My papa would catch me pretending to dance at balls, right in our woods. I must have made such a sight, all alone, with no music but my own silly humming. Twirling about the meadow like a lark gone mad.”
I listened, transfixed. Even her stories felt musical, transporting.
“I once imagined this old scrap”—she lifted her apron—“to have been a part of a beautiful lady’s ball gown.” She laughed. “Can you imagine? What would Henry say to that?”
“Henry would proclaim with great conviction that the balloon it came from was indeed a fine lady. And then he’d wax eloquent about how that symbolized liberty.” I furrowed my brow and spoke gravely in my best Henry Mueller impression.
She laughed at my quip. “He is a good fellow.”
As we neared the bottom of the hill, snatches of music drifted into our conversation. Happy bits of accordion with a lilt and quirk about it.
“And what do you say of my imaginings, Matthew Petticrew?” She paused, laughter in her eyes. She lifted her apron, fingering a fresh tear from its run-in with a floating inferno. The smell of smoke still in the air. “I was very wrong, thinking it part of a ball gown, was I not?”
I swallowed, my throat thick. She was entirely captivating, cheek smudged with dust. “You were very right,” I said, meeting her eyes. “A beautiful lady’s gown.”
The words were out before I could stop them. I didn’t know how to say these things. I was such a buffoon I couldn’t even come right out and say what I meant so that she’d take my meaning.
But the flush on her face had returned. She had taken my meaning. Every bit of it.
If I could have completed her childhood imaginings for her, I would have. Some other fellow would sweep her into a dance and never look back. But I didn’t know the first thing about dancing. I knew marching. Farther back than that, I knew galloping. I knew running a track in the middle of the night.
I did not know dancing. The closest I’d ever even come was seeing the couples dance through those glowing windows at Maplehurst, so far in the distance.
But I’d do anything to give her what she dreams of. Such a small thing when she’d lost so much, and I had so little I could give.
So, I slowed my march to a walk.
I offered my hand. And I waited.
It would be no waltz. But this stroll through a field, hand in hand if she’d allow it . . . it was more a dance than any other this world has ever played witness to.
Her fingers found mine. Tentatively, at first. And then, like they knew they’d discovered a safe place, they relaxed into the warmth of my own. My hand, still trembling, had a mind of its own. Holding hers tighter, and gentler, found in that gesture the home it had been searching for all its life.
The accordion music stopped, and so did we. It picked up again in a moment, and I felt her fingers stiffen.
“What is it?” I asked.
“The musette,” she said. “The accordion music. I had forgotten . . .” She studied our hands, intertwined, a slow smile spreading over whatever memory she now held. As if a lost hope had been found.
And I filled with it. There was no window between her and I. I was not on the outside looking in. I didn’t know what the next days would hold or how I would ever leave her once we reached Paris. . . . But in that moment, all I could think of was the rightness of her hand in mine.
A few stray flecks of white ash drifted on a breeze from the direction of the town. Remnants of the destruction, masquerading as snow. She held her other hand out, letting a piece of ash fall on her upturned palm, and closed her hand around it. Her bag was gone—left behind somewhere in the fray of the day. But even empty-handed, she sought to give. So like her, taking something broken and wrapping it in safety.
I looked at her other hand, holding mine.
And I noticed, then—my hand had stopped its tremors.
She released the ash into the field, watching it drift down over some late-blooming poppies, crimson in the gathering blue of night.
“Au revoir!” The girl was in the distance now, waving her farewell to us at the fence of an orchard where the music played and couples danced among the branches, bride and groom weaving through them.
Mira waved back with a sincere smile.
“The airships,” she said as we walked on. This time—for the first time—with no destination. “What do they do?”
I told her of the zeppelins, the way they hovered above London and dropped bombs there, the way they traveled to the western front, the eastern front, floating high above the reach of any planes. And of the rumors of a push for Paris, which Captain Truett had confided.
At the mention of Paris, her presence grew heavy. Burdened. “Don’t worry,” I said. “We’ll get you on another train to Bordeaux. Maybe back in Épermay, if the railway still stands. Or—or from Paris.” It was occurring to me how close we were to the city now, at least according to the map. It may well be the next place a train was possible.
And suddenly the very thought—Mira on a train—seemed the most preposterous idea in all of history. This heart, carried away from mine by a heartless machine driven by coals and steam and seven thousand tons of metal. No locomotive would dare.
There was mud on her cheek. Sun on her hair. I watched as she, in burdened silence, knelt at a spring and cupped her hands. Scratches and scrapes from the night before screamed angry red. She gathered clearest water in them, bringing it to her face.
It was the simplest action. The sky did not rend. The ground did not shake.
But I rended. I shook.
Standing there on God’s green earth, beholding something pure and good and true—it was air to my scorched
lungs.
I crossed the grassy rise and knelt opposite of her, that spring running between us. She looked up in that wide-eyed, studying, unhiding way, droplets of water clinging to her lashes.
I swallowed. Every muscle in me ached to gather her up. Hold her close, right up to this chest that pounded with a homecoming cry.
But I did not gather her up. The apparition of the locomotive that would dare to carry her from me plowed invisible between us—and those blue and watching eyes pierced right through it. Seeing me.
I willed the pounding inside to fall quiet. I schooled my arms, the yearning to pull her close, and instead I reached out. Slid my palms beneath her upturned hands. Traced the angry red of her wounds and lowered them once more into that clear flow of water, where currents ran about her fingers like liquid silk.
The blood ran with it, red mixing with the water, until all was clear and all was clean.
I lifted her hands again into the air. Pulled a ball of bandage from my sack and began to wrap them, binding her wounds like she had bound the rawness of my heart.
In the distance, strains of that music set merrymakers’ feet to dancing. In the far-off distance, the sound of shells set soldiers’ feet to pounding.
And right here—her hands in mine, her eyes fixed on mine, the sound of the water wrapped us until surely, surely she felt my very pulse.
But this could not be. She needed more. She needed what I could not give: a home, a person who would not leave her in the coming days, weeks, months. A soul that was not already claimed by the bleeding trenches of the front.
And so, requiring the strength of at least a seven-ton locomotive, my words came out ragged. I hated them as I spoke them. Plans to send her away, to do as she had decided. And yet, as the words tumbled out, my hand that held hers pulled her close, until she leaned against me, her shoulders falling into mine. Her form crumpled close, my entire being holding her, telling me to shut up, that I would never, ever, ever let her go.
