Beautiful Blue World

by Suzanne LaFleur

  MEGS AND I SAT together at lunch, though we were both very quiet. It took me the whole meal to get out the sentence I needed to say.

  “Come with me.”

  “Okay.”

  On the way out of the lunchroom, I caught Gunnar’s elbow.

  “Come with us?”

  “Where?”

  “You’ll see.”

  Making sure no one followed us, I led them up the stairs and along the hallway to my door to Rainer’s room. I took the key in my hand, and just held it.

  My friends waited.

  “My assignment here…I spend time with a Tyssian soldier. It’s my job to get to know him. To find out what he knows. That’s all. I thought you might like to meet him?”

  Megs and Gunnar looked at each other.

  “I mean, maybe not like to. Would you come to meet him?”

  “There’s been a Tyssian here, all this time?” Gunnar asked.

  “About as long as I’ve been here. If you come in, you can talk to him, about anything except our work, okay?”

  They both nodded.

  “And don’t be afraid.”

  I opened the door, and the three of us stepped inside.

  —

  “You brought people to stare at me?” Rainer’s eyes opened wider as all three of us filed into my side of the room. He came close to the fence.

  “To meet you.”

  “Hello,” Megs said in Tyssian.

  “It must be true, then, that Sofarenders do not go to school.”

  “There’s a war on,” Gunnar said. “We’re learning plenty.”

  Rainer smiled. I relaxed.

  “Rainer, these are my friends, Megs and Gunnar.”

  “Miss Megs. Mathilde told me about you.”

  “She did?” Megs’s cheeks went pink.

  “Yes. You have been good friends for a very long time. I have not heard of you, Gunnar.”

  “I’m…new. We met here.”

  “The mysterious ‘here.’ Where are we?”

  All three of us pressed our lips tight.

  “Right. The place no one talks about.”

  Megs looked at me, and I nodded at her to go ahead.

  “What do you want most? To win the war?”

  “To go home. I have had enough of the war.”

  “Us too,” Gunnar said.

  “But I cannot go home.”

  “Why not?” Megs asked.

  “It is not honorable to have been caught by the enemy. My family will be ashamed of me. If the army found me…”

  Gunnar, Megs, and I all looked at each other. I could guess by the looks on their faces that, like me, neither of them had thought about not being welcomed home if we got to go back.

  Rainer wasn’t welcome on either side. He never would be, ever again.

  “I’m sorry,” Megs said.

  “You were captured in Sofarende?” Gunnar asked.

  “Yes.”

  “What were you doing here?”

  Rainer looked from one of us to the next. “There’s a war on.”

  Gunnar stared back at him and crossed his arms over his chest, but then he shrugged.

  “You go ahead,” I said to Megs and Gunnar. “I’ll come down soon.”

  “Goodbye, Miss Megs and Mr. Gunnar. Be glad you Sofarenders do not go to school.”

  Megs and Gunnar didn’t know Rainer well enough to see the change that came over his eyes as he said that. It happened so quickly.

  After they left, Rainer looked at me.

  “Do Sofarenders seem like people who have stolen from you?” I asked.

  “Your friends seemed…nice.”

  “The whole world is not there for you to take. You have to let other people have a part of it.”

  Rainer sighed. We both sat down in our usual spots. We were quiet for a little while.

  “What did you mean, about ‘be glad’ we don’t go to school?”

  At first, Rainer did nothing. Then he covered his face with his hands.

  “What is it?”

  I waited.

  Finally he said, “In the Skaven lands…they made us burn down a school.”

  —

  I stared at him. He didn’t move. He kept his face covered.

  “Why?”

  “The schoolmaster, he would not follow the rules. He would not conduct the school day in Tyssian. He would not teach our Tyssian history. We received orders to make an example of him….”

  My heart was pounding. “But, the school was empty, right? Everyone had gone home, right?”

  Covering my ears didn’t block out his crying. It would echo in my dreams. My nightmares. They rose in my mind again, like when your throat warns you before you throw up.

  The nightmares I shared with him.

  I didn’t want to share anything with him!

  I scooched backward, pressing against the wall, to get as far away from him as I could.

  When I couldn’t feel my hands anymore, I dropped them, letting the blood trickle back on pins and needles. I twisted my cardigan in my lap. Mother always told us not to do that; we’d stretch our sweaters out.

  I wanted to lie down. But not in the cell. I needed to get out of the cell.

  “You must hate me.”

  What did he care if I hated him? What did he care about one Sofarender girl?

  I didn’t know that it was possible for my heart to beat so fast. “What were you doing in Sofarende?”

  After a while, he said, “Looking for gaps in your border defenses in the mountains. We made it in, but not too far. As you know.”

  That should have been reassuring, but…

  “What were you supposed to do after that? After you got in and told others how to get in?”

  It was my job to find out.

  But wasn’t that what Rainer had been doing? His job?

  I didn’t want to know any more.

  —

  I was late for playtime.

  I went down the steps, looking around for my friends. No Tyssia Tag. Again.

  Gunnar waved. I waved back. We would talk later.

  Megs stood waiting for me, hands in her skirt pockets. I headed over to her.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I had no idea. I understand why you had to keep that secret.”

  “It’s all right. The war pulled us apart once already. I wasn’t going to let one more soldier come between us.”

  Megs smiled, but the gentle look in her eyes disappeared quickly. “Mathilde—what’s wrong? You’re shaking.”

  I pulled my sweater around me as tight as I could.

  “It’s not cold out. Did something happen? Did Rainer upset you after we left?”

  I nodded, but I couldn’t tell her.

  He had done that terrible thing. And he lived right here in the building with us, where we ate and slept and played.

  Megs squeezed her arm through mine. We walked around the wooded area of Faetre’s enclosure.

  I could almost pretend we were back home.

  As we came out to the clearing again, we could hear it. A low, low rumble at first, then distinct.

  My stomach tightened.

  We all looked up as a team of tiger-striped aerials zoomed overhead.

  For a moment, we all stood still. Then most of the children raced to go back inside.

  The Examiner halted us on the steps.

  “Stay outside. Keep playing.”

  A couple of girls gasped.

  “They’re not bombers,” Hamlin explained. “We’re okay.”

  “But where are our aerials? Aren’t they going to chase them?”

  “We need to help!”

  “We’ve given word of these sightings to the right people, but we need your protection now more than ever. Make us look like a school from the air. Annevi, you’re it.”

  Annevi nodded. She hit the girl next to her.

  At the same time, Gunnar and Megs declared themselves it, too, Megs hitting me and Gunnar chasing after someone else.
Brid slammed into Caelyn. Hamlin was also it somehow, running in the direction of Annevi to make her it again. I took off. Maybe I could get Hamlin after he got Annevi.

  Suddenly we were playing the most furious game of tag in the history of the world.

  I WOKE SEVERAL TIMES in the night, expecting sirens.

  And aerial engines.

  But waking was better than sleeping.

  Sleeping only led to nightmares.

  I wished I’d thought to stay with Megs.

  I wished Annevi would wander by to check on me.

  I wished Faetre still felt safe.

  —

  In the morning, I wasn’t even tired. I silently trooped through our morning parade around the grounds. Megs stomped along next to me, knowing something was still wrong but not asking what.

  I went to the living room with everyone else. I didn’t want to see Rainer. Not ever again.

  Megs, Brid, and Caelyn settled in to their pages, but I couldn’t sit still. I wandered to the bookshelves, sliding out and shoving back every book I touched.

  The Examiner came in, started talking with different children about their work. I watched her move about the room, and I moved, too, always as far away as I could get.

  How could she think her plan of us being a school would work?

  She doesn’t know. That’s why you have to tell her.

  That’s what she wants from you, isn’t it?

  My feet marched me over toward her, where she sat speaking softly with Fredericka on a couch. They smiled, poring over some information in the pages of a book in Fredericka’s lap.

  “You locked me up with a murderer!” I yelled.

  They both looked up. Fredericka’s mouth fell open as the book tumbled to the floor.

  The room went still and quiet.

  The one voice that carried on was Hamlin’s, reciting a common prayer in Tyssian.

  Not praying.

  Testing the opening lines of the morning’s first coded transmissions for something every Tyssian would know.

  The Examiner picked up Fredericka’s book and handed it to her. “If you’ll excuse me, I think Mathilde needs a few minutes of my time.”

  She placed a hand on my shoulder, and guided me out of the room. Everyone was looking at me.

  She steered me along, but we didn’t go to her office.

  Were we going somewhere worse? Was she going to punish me for what I’d said in front of everyone?

  She didn’t take her hand off my shoulder until we were in the kitchen. I’d never been there before. She opened a drawer and took out a spoon. Held it up to me.

  It was an awfully small spoon to be punished with.

  “I’m not going to hit you. Take it.”

  I took it.

  She led me into a pantry, selected a jar, opened its lid, and set it on the table.

  “We don’t have your favorite raspberry glaze. Will raspberry jam do?”

  I stared at her. “How—”

  “Perhaps Megs didn’t tell you I took her directly back with me? We rode the train together. She talked a lot.”

  Megs.

  She was probably worried.

  My fist tightened around the spoon.

  “We won’t be safe here, if the Tyssians come, even if we pretend to be a school!”

  The Examiner breathed in and out. “I very much want to hear what you have to say, but you need to stop yelling or I won’t understand you.”

  I didn’t want to give in and eat the jam, but it shined so pretty red. I dipped my spoon in and had just the littlest bit. It was good. The sugar flowed through me as I licked the spoon clean and set it on the table.

  “Try again.”

  I swallowed. “The building in Rainer’s paintings…it’s a school. He had orders to burn it because the schoolmaster wouldn’t conduct lessons the way the Tyssians said to. It sounds like…there were…”

  The Examiner looked worried.

  She never let us see her look worried.

  “Why would he do it?” I asked.

  “What do you think would have happened to him if he hadn’t?”

  “He still didn’t—”

  “No, think about it.”

  But I knew what the answer was. If they were making an example of the schoolmaster, they would have done the same thing to their soldiers.

  “More than anything, Rainer wants to live. He was afraid to defy his orders. He let himself be captured, even though it was dishonorable. He has as much to fear from the Tyssians as we do. Maybe he’ll come around to help us.”

  I closed my eyes.

  I didn’t want to think of Rainer as the victim.

  He had done awful things.

  “How does he feel about what he did?”

  His crying had been terrible.

  The most desperate I’d ever heard.

  FISTS POUNDED ON MY DOOR. I gasped as I sat up in the dark.

  “Coats on! Meet outside!” a boy’s voice cried.

  Hamlin?

  I reached for my coat, feeling along the wall until I came to its hook.

  There it was. My fingers fumbled numbly, trying to tug my arms through the sleeves and do up the buttons. I shoved my feet into my shoes.

  Were we being bombed? Why would we need coats? The shelter was in the basement.

  The pounding fists and call to meet outside continued along the hallway, the noise louder as I opened my door and stepped out among other children, also trying to get their coats on over their nightclothes.

  When Hamlin moved on from our hallway, the silence was broken only by the quick slapping of shoes on the floor as we hurried.

  A hand grabbed mine.

  Megs, of course.

  I squeezed back.

  Someone found my other hand. Brid. With Caelyn hanging on to her already.

  And then we were outside, swept along in the crowd of children.

  The night glowed orange and flickering; the air was heavy, smoky.

  Like at home, during the bombings.

  If we were being bombed, why had they had us come out into the night? They’d promised Mother and Father I’d be under concrete and steel.

  We walked onto the grounds toward a large fire, its flames licking high into the night. I looked up at the sky, trying to make out aerials through the smoke.

  Nothing.

  And no roar of engines.

  We weren’t being bombed.

  Adults were around the fire. But they weren’t trying to put out the fire; they were feeding it.

  Our mapping tables.

  Our charts and codes and papers.

  Our books.

  Were Tyssians here to burn Faetre?

  No. The adults were in Sofarender uniforms and civilian clothes. They were our proctors, burning our things.

  While we watched.

  But hadn’t our work been important?

  As I watched the flames devour it, I realized that was why they had to burn it.

  So it wouldn’t be left.

  So nothing would be left.

  And there wouldn’t be.

  Not even us.

  We were leaving.

  Tyssia wasn’t here yet, but they would be.

  Pretending to be a school wasn’t going to be disguise enough.

  It was over.

  —

  When I finally looked away from the fire—was it the brightness or the smoke causing my eyes to tear?—and around me at the others, proctors were handing out packets of paper.

  When they got to us, Megs and I dropped hands.

  “Put these in the inside pocket of your coat. Keep them safe.”

  We each nodded as we accepted our packets.

  As the grown-up moved on, Brid whispered, “And what if something happens to us?”

  I shrugged and did my best to squeeze the papers inside my coat.

  The Examiner was talking, her voice loud. All the children turned, at attention, to listen.

  “We’re heading north to
the next train stop; with so many of us, we’ll have to go on foot, but we should be there by morning. A train will meet us. We’ll continue up to the sea, where we’ll board boats to take us across to Eilean.”

  We were each handed a personalized yellow card. We all stared at them.

  Leave Sofarende?

  “These are your passes for the boats, in case something causes us to be split up. Get to the water and show this pass to any boatman, and he should take you across. Keep your military ID and clearance on you for entry into Eilean, but if Sofarende falls and you are taken by soldiers of Tyssia, it would be better to appear as child refugees, so destroy everything at the time that seems imminent: tickets, military ID, documents.

  “If that happens, you were never here.

  “This place did not exist.

  “Let’s go; keep up.”

  With that, we turned to follow her out through the back gate, forming a moving column.

  When the Examiner paused, eighty shuffling feet behind her also paused while she spoke to a figure by the fire.

  “Tommy.”

  He turned.

  “You’re coming with us.”

  “No,” he said.

  “Yes, Tommy, come on.”

  “No. I work downstairs now. I’m staying with them.”

  “There is no more downstairs. No one’s staying. They’ll all be dispersing for different missions. You’re coming with us.”

  He shook his head.

  “We’ve promised your parents we would do our best to keep you safe.”

  “Who cares? What’s the difference now? I’m not a kid anymore.”

  “This isn’t about you being a kid. This is about us needing your brilliant mind when we get to Eilean. Your colleagues’ work will be in vain if we don’t get there to receive it. You’re coming. It’s an order.”

  The young man with Tommy nodded to him, but Tommy still hesitated.

  “I’ll need you there, Tommy.”

  Tommy stepped over to her, and accepted his yellow ticket.

  I stood still as the group continued to move on, my own yellow ticket in my hands.

  Where was Annevi?

  Miss Ibsen had said it would be impossible to lose Annevi.

  What about Gunnar? Where was he?

  “Come on!” Megs called to me. People hurried to keep up with the Examiner, who was setting an alarmingly fast pace at the front.

  My heartbeat thudded in my ears.

  It is easy to protect yourself and your loved ones; it is harder to protect and care about others….