Liesl & Po

by Lauren Oliver

  In that moment, as Augusta bustled through the grand hallway with her guests, she came to a snap decision.

  Risk or no risk, she could not have Liesl, the real Liesl, running around, ready to turn the life Augusta had earned—the life she deserved—to smoke.

  No. It could not be. When she found the girl, she would kill her.

  Augusta felt much better after coming to this decision.

  “Would you like tea?” she asked brightly. “Coffee? Chocolate?”

  “There is no time for that.” The Lady Premiere sailed past her into the drawing room, as though it were her house and not Augusta’s.

  Once Augusta, the Lady Premiere, and the alchemist were safely seated—Vera having slipped away as soon as the opportunity presented itself—the Lady Premiere directed her penetrating gaze at Augusta. In that moment, Augusta couldn’t help but feel a slight chill. Perhaps the idea of the Lady Premiere’s visit was preferable, she thought, to the real thing.

  “I will come right to the point,” the Lady Premiere said. “There has been a terrible misunderstanding. You are in possession of something that belongs to me. And I am in possession of something that belongs to you.”

  “Oh?” Augusta was more than a little disappointed that the visit was not purely social—she had been hoping that this marked her ascension into the highest ranks of society—but she did her best not to show it. “And what is that?”

  The Lady Premiere stared at the alchemist, who had, in the short time he had spent with the Lady Premiere, learned that it was best to remain absolutely silent and hope that she would forget you were there. When the alchemist did nothing, the Lady Premiere stepped on his foot, and he started nervously out of his chair with a yelp, producing, as he did so, a wooden box.

  “I believe this is yours,” the Lady Premiere said. The alchemist opened the box, and Augusta found herself staring at piles of soft ash. “His name was Henry, was it not?”

  “I don’t understand,” Augusta said.

  “That is your husband,” the Lady Premiere said placidly. “Or, it was your husband. I imagine there was more to him when he was alive.”

  “There must be some mistake.” Augusta was beginning to feel that the Lady Premiere was quite out of her mind. “The remains of my dear husband—rest his soul—are sitting right on top of the . . .”

  Augusta trailed off in the middle of gesturing grandly toward the mantel, where she had been keeping Henry Morbower’s ashes on the off chance that anyone important came by to pay respects. (She wanted to play the part of the grieving widow convincingly. Eventually, she planned to bury the box in the backyard, next to the turnips. Or perhaps she would just dump the ashes in the little servants’ latrine out back. The wooden box itself was very nice, and could easily be reused.)

  Now, she saw, the wooden box was missing.

  Augusta made a strangled sound in the back of her throat. The sound turned into a high whine, which soon became a roar. Hearing the terrible sound, Vera came running into the room. She looked more like a sad tadpole than ever, now that she had removed her hat. Her brown hair was plastered listlessly across a large, shiny forehead.

  “Is everything all right, Mama?” she ventured.

  “Everything is not all right,” Augusta croaked out. “Did you remove the wooden box from the mantel?”

  “No, Mama. I haven’t touched it.”

  Another rumble quaked upward through Augusta’s expansive body. The warts on her forehead looked ready to explode. “Karen!”

  Karen reappeared, her eyes red and swollen.

  “Karen”—Augusta’s eyes glittered dangerously—“where is the wooden box containing the ashes of my dear departed husband?”

  Karen looked at the empty space on the mantel, opened her mouth once, closed it, and opened it again. “I don’t know, ma’am,” she croaked. “It was surely there this morning, when I did the dusting. Just before I brought up the tray and was attacked by the ghost.” Karen regretted the word ghost as soon as it had escaped her lips. She had already been paddled once today for her silliness.

  To the surprise of everyone in the room, the alchemist startled suddenly from his chair. He had gone a deathly white. “A ghost? You said you saw a ghost?”

  “Never mind her,” Augusta snapped. “I’ve already told you about the head trauma she sustained as an infant. Quite tragic.” She turned toward the Lady Premiere and made a sipping gesture with her hand. “It was the whiskey that did it.”

  But Karen was inspired by the alchemist’s response to her story. He believed her, she knew, and so she went on, “It was a terrible ghost. Enormous and evil-looking, with glowing red eyes.” She was making this up, of course; but then again, the ghost really had seemed terrible and evil to her, so it wasn’t exactly a lie. “He was just standing there next to the girl—the little girl—as though she had summoned it.” Karen mopped her forehead with her apron. “Very unnatural.”

  The alchemist was trembling. He could not speak.

  “A little girl?” the Lady Premiere said sharply. “What little girl?”

  “Just one of the servants, who lives in the attic.” Augusta tittered nervously. “Nobody to bother about. Skittish creature. She ran off early this morning. Somebody forgot to lock the door to her room.” She glared at Karen.

  “The girl!” the alchemist exclaimed wildly. “The girl has the magic. She has used it to raise a ghost. It is as the book promised. It works. The magic works.” He turned triumphantly to the Lady Premiere and performed a little skipping dance. “You see? I told you I would make you the most powerful magic in the world—a potion to raise the dead!”

  “You seem to forget a minor detail,” the Lady Premiere said sweetly.

  “What’s that?” The alchemist was still skipping his boots merrily across the rug.

  “WE DO NOT HAVE THE MAGIC!” the Lady Premiere screamed. Across the street, there was the sound of shattering glass, and a dog began barking. The alchemist toppled backward into his chair. His face seemed to collapse on itself like a soufflé taken too early from the oven.

  “Would someone kindly,” Augusta said, wiggling her pinkie finger into her eardrum in the hopes that it would stop the ringing there, “explain what is going on?”

  “It’s the boy,” the alchemist muttered darkly. “It’s that useless, worthless, disgusting, vile shred of a boy. It’s all his fault; I’d stake my life on it. He must have brought her the magic.”

  Augusta turned to the alchemist with renewed interest. She had never met the alchemist in person but knew of his work. In fact she had more than once sent a servant round to purchase one of his . . . concoctions.

  Here, she thought, was a man who understood children. “Useless, worthless, and disgusting, hmmm? That does sound like someone Li—um, my servant girl would know. The adjectives describe her most exactly.”

  “He brought her the magic I created—the product of nearly five years’ work—and she has used it to reverse the Order of Things. She has successfully raised the dead.”

  “Raised the dead . . .” Augusta felt a flutter of fear beating behind her rib cage. If Liesl could raise the dead . . . and if she should somehow raise the ghost of her own father . . .

  Augusta closed her eyes quickly against the image of a towering black shape, with eyes like two glowing red coals, pointing an accusing finger, thundering out, Murderer!

  “I did often see a boy standing on the street corner at night, looking up toward the attic,” Karen put in, desperate to redeem herself. “Looking quite lost. Muttering to himself, sometimes, and making signs with his hands.”

  “I knew it!” the alchemist spat out bitterly. “They are working together to ruin me. They are in cahoots! They are in collaboration! They are in cooperation! They are in collusion!”

  “And you will be in solitary confinement if you do not shut up,” the Lady Premiere snapped. She took a deep breath. It was apparent to her by now that everyone—the froglike woman in her ridiculous getup and
that sad-looking slippery daughter of hers, the servant girl, even the alchemist—was a complete moron. She would have to take matters into her own hands. “Mrs. Morbower, this servant of yours. What is her name?”

  Augusta’s mind went blank for a moment. “Vera,” she sputtered out.

  The real Vera squeaked.

  “Well, it is obvious, Mrs. Morbower, that this Vera and the alchemist’s apprentice—”

  “Former apprentice! He is most certainly fired!”

  “Former apprentice”—the Lady Premiere gritted her teeth—“have conspired to steal a most powerful magic. Magic that, incidentally, belongs to me.” She flicked an invisible speck of dust from her fur coat with a long, sharp fingernail. “This, of course, cannot be permitted. We must find them. The question now is”—she leaned forward—“where have they gone?”

  The drawing room was silent but for the sonorous ticking of the large grandfather clock in the corner.

  The real Vera, who was pretending to be Liesl, coughed. “Excuse me,” she ventured, blushing a deeper green as four pairs of eyes turned instantly on her. “I found these today in L—I mean, in Vera’s room. When you asked me to search it this morning, Mama.” She reached into her small fur-lined satchel and pulled out a handful of crumpled-up paper.

  “What is this trash?” Augusta snatched the papers from her daughter’s hands and smoothed them against her lap. Her face grew very still.

  “I believe they are drawings, Mama,” Vera squeaked. Then she added, “I think they are quite good.” When to her surprise her mother did not tell her to shut up, or turn around and cuff her around the ears, she felt inspired to say, “That is a weeping willow tree, I believe, and beyond it, a pond. Quite realistic. My art teacher, Mrs. Gold, would say she had l’oeil. That’s French, of course, and means—”

  “Shut up!” Augusta hissed, and Real Vera shut her mouth quickly.

  Augusta stared wonderingly at the collection of drawings heaped on her lap. She was surprised the girl remembered so accurately. It had been years since she’d lived in the Red House, which stood near the pond and the willow tree—exactly four years since Augusta had become her stepmother and insisted the family move into the city. Augusta had visited that awful, creaking place only twice, but that had been sufficient. She knew she could never live in that shambling, fallen-down mess—with its maze of small rooms and faded yellow wallpaper and slanty wooden hallways and smell, all the time, of wild heather. She shuddered to recall it. And why should she have lived in such a hovel, when Mr. Morbower could practically afford a palace!

  She frowned. Yes, the first Mrs. Morbower had been most definitely soft in the head.

  Liesl had been only seven years old when they moved: And yet here it was, every detail on the page, every blade of grass and leaf exactly where it should be. Remarkable.

  Augusta realized that the alchemist and the Lady Premiere were both staring at her with thinly veiled impatience.

  She stood up, folding the drawings as she did so and tucking them carefully into her purse.

  “I have a very good idea of where she is,” Augusta said grimly. “She is no doubt headed for Gainsville even now. And she must be gotten back.” She added in her head: And then, she dies.

  The Lady Premiere felt a sharp pulsing in her chest: Her heart, which very occasionally still made itself known, let out a few panicked movements. Gainsville was not far from Howard’s Glen, and she had vowed never to go to that part of the world again for as long as she lived. But there was nothing to be done about it.

  “We leave at once,” the Lady Premiere said, and swept to the door before anyone could contradict her.

  Chapter Seventeen

  PO WOKE LIESL SOMETIME TOWARD DAWN. FOR A moment she didn’t know where she was. Then, as her eyes adjusted, she made out the looming shapes of the boxes and suitcases all around her, and recognized the musty smell and the lurching of the train car. Her hand went reflexively to the wooden box tucked behind her feet. Safe.

  “Liesl, come look,” the ghost said, then skated to the window. The sky was still a velvet purple dark, with just a thin line of gray ringed around the horizon.

  Liesl stood up unsteadily. Her legs were cramping, and she was very sore. She navigated the teetering piles of luggage with difficulty and joined Po. By standing on her tiptoes on top of a hatbox placed on a wooden trunk, she was able to see out the window. She saw all the many train cars ahead of hers shaking and clattering and shimmying past the flat, dark fields that surrounded them, looking like a long metal snake.

  “A city made of smoke and fire,” Po said, with a note of excitement in its voice. It pointed with what would have been a finger, if it had had one.

  Ahead, Liesl saw the rising spires of an approaching city. The buildings seemed to be built out of soot and blackness; a haze of smoke clung to them like a shroud, and everywhere high towers sent bright orange flames toward the dark sky, and belched terrible-smelling fumes.

  “That is our stop,” Po said, although the ghost made it sound like a question.

  Bundle went, Mwark.

  At that moment the train began to slow; the lurching began to lessen. A sign flashed briefly in the darkness. It read CLOVERSTOWN, 2 MILES.

  “Yes.” Liesl gripped the windowsill tightly, keeping her eyes on those leaping chimneys of flame and trying not to think of the safety and the closeness of the attic. “That is our stop.”

  Will had balled up his jacket to serve as a makeshift pillow and had slept most of the night with his head resting against the window. He woke up as the train was drawing into a station.

  The conductor moved through the aisles, ringing a bell, bellowing, “Cloverstown! First stop, Cloverstown! This is Cloverstown!”

  “He doesn’t have to shout,” someone muttered. Will started. He had not seen anyone sit down. An old woman, working a finger irritably in one ear and tapping her steel-tipped cane agitatedly, was seated across the aisle from him, next to an enormous police officer who continued to sleep, head to chest, snoring.

  Will turned back to the window. He knew of Cloverstown. It was a factory and mining town. In the hills that surrounded it were the mines, where boys from the orphanage who had not found families or employment were ultimately sent, to work forever underground in those dark and terrible tunnels, burrowing like insects and living with the constant crushing fear of all that stone and earth over their heads, ready to come crashing down.

  The girls went to work in the Cloverstown factories, sewing day in and day out, stitching cheap linens and hat linings until their eyes gave out and they went blind, or stirring large vats of poisonous chemicals until, one day, their minds went as soft as cheese that has been left too long in the heat. The end result was always the same: They ended up beggars, endlessly walking the filthy, teeming streets, begging money from people hardly richer or better off than they were.

  For the first time, as Will stared at the awful black buildings—so coated with coal dust they looked like they’d been crafted from smoke—and heard the roar of the furnaces, he began to question his decision to leave the alchemist’s. At least at the alchemist’s he had had food (most of the time) and a roof over his head. He thought about the boys who had gone into the mines. He thought about the way they had shivered when the cart came to retrieve them from the orphanage, and the look of their sad, pale, defeated faces, as though they were already ghosts.

  “Cloverstown! Cloverstown! First stop, Cloverstown! Next stop, Howard’s Glen!”

  “Enough to take your ear off,” the old woman muttered, this time working her finger in her other ear.

  Well, he would most certainly not get off in Cloverstown. He would keep going, he decided. He would go all the way north, to the last stop. Perhaps he could build a snow hut and live in it for a time.

  And then the unthinkable, the unbelievable, the impossible happened: As Will was staring at the grimy Cloverstown station, the girl from the attic passed under-neath his window, walking neatly and
deliberately down the platform, carrying a small wooden box.

  Will let out a cry of surprise and jumped up from his seat.

  “It’s her!” He was filled with such a tremendous, tumbling sense of joy he could not help but exclaim out loud, to no one in particular. “It’s the girl in the attic. Only she’s not in the attic anymore. She’s here. Or, um, there.”

  “What are you babbling on about now?” demanded the old woman irritably, thinking that no one had the decency to speak at a normal volume. But she stumped to her feet and leaned toward the window to see what the scraggly boy was so excited about.

  Liesl had at that moment paused outside to get her bearings, and as she turned and looked around her, both Will and the old woman, staring down, got a nice long look at her face. Will thought, Angel, precisely as the old woman thought, Devil, and let out a wicked howl.

  (That is the strangest thing about the world: how it looks so different from every point of view.)

  “It’s her!” the old woman screeched. “The batty one!” She prodded the policeman forcefully awake with her cane. “Come on, now. Move it.”

  Will had already darted around her and was pushing his way toward the door, threading past the other passengers who were disembarking. His heart pounded painfully in his ribs. It was a sign! She was a sign—a sign he had made the right decision. He must, he absolutely must, find her.

  The old woman and the police officer came clomping along behind him, but he took no notice of them.

  “Excuse me, excuse me.” He ducked past a frail man carrying an empty birdcage and burst onto the platform.

  The spot where Liesl had been standing was empty. She was gone.

  For a second his heart dived all the way to his toes. He had lost her. But then he caught a glimpse of a dark purple coat and a bit of straight brown hair, a little ways farther down the platform. Instantly he set out at a run.