Liesl & Po

by Lauren Oliver

  “Wait!” he called out. “Wait, please! Wait for me!” He wished more than anything, now, he had had the courage to ask for her name. He began calling out all the girls’ names he had thought of for her over the past thirteen months, hoping that one of them would be correct. “Rebecca! Katharine! Francine! Eliza! Laura!”

  But she kept walking.

  Dimly he was aware of the loud clattering of a cane behind him, and heavy footsteps, and a confusion of voices—one high and shrill and demanding, one a low growl—but he could think of nothing but the small figure in front of him.

  And finally, when he was no more than ten feet away from her, he burst out, “You! The girl from the attic! Wait.”

  She stopped walking right away. He stopped running only a few feet away from her. He stood there, panting in the thick and smoke-clotted air, while the girl from the attic turned around—slowly, so slowly, it seemed to him. In the time it took her to turn around, he had time to think of all the things she might do when she saw him there. Her face would light up. She would say, “You—the boy from the street corner.” Or somehow, miraculously (for she was a miracle to him; her presence there, on the platform, was proof), she would know his name, and she would greet him by it. “Hello, Will,” or “Hi, Will,” she would say.

  But Liesl did none of those things.

  Liesl turned, and saw a strange boy she had never seen before, red faced and panting; and behind him, she saw the old woman who had pretended to be on her way to get a hot potato muffin when really she had gone for the policeman; and behind her, she saw the policeman with his sharp silver handcuffs in his hand. Her mind went click-click-whirr, and she thought, Boywomanpoliceman, one unit.

  In her ear, Po spoke the word, “Run.”

  And so she turned and ran. She threw herself headfirst into the crowd, darting past fat women and squat children and men with dirty faces. She bumped up against a soft belly and heard a very quiet meow. She had collided with a man in a guard’s uniform, carrying a cat in a small sling.

  “Excuse me,” Liesl said, always mindful of her manners. Then she took off running again.

  The guard, who had managed to intercept train 128 thanks to an express train and a well-timed coach, and was standing on the platform waiting to board, took no notice of her. He was holding a hat, and staring determinedly at the small pink-eared boy who had just had his deepest dreams bashed to pieces.

  Will was so distressed by Liesl’s horrified reaction—so different from what he had imagined!—he did not immediately have the heart to pursue her. What, he wondered, had he done? What could have caused her to have so violent a reaction? Was it his hair? Had he yelled too loudly? Or perhaps (he cupped a hand in front of his mouth and sniffed) the potato breath?

  The old woman clomped up behind him and dug her nails sharply into Will’s shoulder.

  “Where is she?” she demanded. She, too, was panting. “Where has she run off to?”

  “What?” Will was still too devastated, and dazed, to think clearly. For over a year he had prayed to speak to the girl in the attic, and finally he had spoken to her, and she had run away! It was a cruel joke.

  “The girl.” The woman narrowed her squinty eyes at him, until they were no more than two brown-colored peas settled neatly inside the wrinkles. “Your little friend. The nutty one.”

  “She isn’t nutty,” Will said automatically, but immediately he began to have doubts. He didn’t really know anything about her . . . and that would explain the running off. . . .

  “She’s as nutty as an acorn,” the old woman scoffed. “She’s as batty as a belfry! She’s a public menace, and she needs to be locked up!” The old woman stared pointedly at the police officer next to her, who grunted in agreement. Will noticed, uneasily, that the police officer was holding a pair of handcuffs.

  “I—I don’t know anything about an acorn,” Will said nervously. He tried to back away, but the old woman kept her hand on his shoulder. Her nails dug into his skin.

  “You will lead us to her,” she said, leaning closer, so he could see her yellow teeth very clearly. “It is your duty. It is for the Public Good.”

  “I—,” Will started to protest, when a heavy hand clamped down on his other shoulder. Turning, he let out a squeal of disbelief, and the words died in his throat.

  It was the guard from the Lady Premiere’s house.

  “There you are,” Mo said cheerfully. “I had to follow you all the way from Dirge. You’re a pretty slippery thing, you know that?”

  Will tried to speak, but only managed to gurgle.

  “Had to take the express,” Mo continued, unaware that beneath his hand, Will had started to tremble violently. “Made it just by the skin of my coattails. I was just about to pop onboard when I looked around and saw you. Funny, isn’t it?” Mo chuckled to himself.

  “Excuse me,” the old woman said witheringly. “I was having a conversation with this boy, and you have barged right into it.”

  “I beg your pardon, ma’am.” Mo swept off his hat and performed a little bow, all the time keeping his hand on Will’s shoulder. “My name is Mo, and I am at your service.” As he tipped forward, Lefty peeked his head out of the sling strapped around Mo’s chest and let out a small meow.

  The old woman shrieked. “What is that filthy animal doing on your—on your—” The rest of her words were swallowed by an enormous “ACHOO!”

  “Lefty’s not filthy,” Mo said reproachfully. As he spoke, he tugged Will closer to him. “Might have a bit of sardine breath, of course, but other than that she’s clean as a whistle.”

  “All cats are—ACHOO!—filthy.” The old woman tugged Will back toward her side. “And I am deeply—ACHOO!—allergic, and demand that you—ACHOO!—get rid of that animal at once.”

  Tug. Will went back to Mo’s side.

  “With no disrespect, ma’am, I’d ask you whether you’ve had your bath today. Lefty has already had two.”

  Tug. Back to the old woman.

  “If my ‘bath’ consisted of—ACHOO!—licking myself from head to toe to—to—to—ACHOO!—tail, we might be glad that I had not—ACHOO!—taken it!”

  Lefty seemed to be quite enjoying the argument about her cleanliness. Her tail, which protruded from the sling, was whipping merrily back and forth.

  Will, sensing his opportunity to escape, sent a quick, silent apology the cat’s way—Sorry, girl, this might pinch for a minute—reached out, grabbed the cat’s tail, and squeezed as hard as he could.

  Lefty let out a mighty yelp and jumped clear out of the sling on Mo’s chest.

  For a second she hung, suspended, in the air.

  Then the cat landed, right on the middle of the old woman’s sizable and sloping chest, and began scrabbling desperately to hang on.

  Both the old woman and Mo released Will immediately.

  The old woman let out a shriek that even Liesl, who had already left the train station and was winding her way through the dark and littered streets of Cloverstown, could hear.

  “Get this beast—ACHOO!—off me!” she was scream-ing, as she danced around frantically, trying to use her cane to pry the cat from her chest. The harder she writhed and the more she twisted and turned, the harder Lefty clung to her chest. “Get the little monster—ACHOO!—off! It’s clawing me!”

  “Just stay still, won’t you! I can’t get ’er if you aren’t still!” Mo was saying. “If you’d only stop moving for a second.”

  The policeman stood there dumbly, scratching his head.

  And once again, Will ran.

  “Hey,” the policeman said glumly, watching the small boy dart into the crowd. “Hey. The boy is getting away.”

  But neither Mo nor the old woman paid him any attention. She was shrieking and dancing; Mo was trying to reason with her; Lefty had just started to bite at one of her earrings.

  So the policeman shrugged, yawned, and went off in search of a nice potato doughnut. It had, after all, been a very long night.

 
Chapter Eighteen

  FOR SEVERAL HOURS, WILL WANDERED THE winding streets of Cloverstown aimlessly. He did not know whether he should be looking for the girl in the attic or not. It was possible that the old woman was correct: Perhaps she was off her rocker. But the idea was distressing to him, and Will did not want to believe it. Still, she had run from him. And the look on her face! The horror and fear! It made Will sick to think of it.

  Then there was the fact of her appearance in Cloverstown at all. What, Will wondered, could she possibly be doing here? He hoped she had not been sent away to be a factory girl. Even more terrible than the memory of the horror on her face when she had seen him was the idea of that sweet, pale face bent over a sewing machine or a whirling cauldron of chemicals, those long, elegant fingers picked to bits by needles or scalded with hot liquids. He felt if she had been sent away to work, he must rescue her.

  And so he walked, both looking and not looking, hopeful and fearful, and slowly moved farther and farther away from the train station, into the heart of the city, and then even farther, into its outskirts.

  Eventually he came to an area that was very bad. All the buildings were rammed so close together it looked as though they were hugging for warmth, and the trash was piled in great heaps on either side of the narrow streets, which were full of beggars of all ages—old beggars, young beggars, blind beggars, lame beggars. The smells of people and waste were overwhelming. Will felt as though he would choke.

  From all sides people pressed around him, pawing his jacket, touching his hair, murmuring, “Just a coin, just a coin, lad,” and “Have a heart, spare a little.”

  “I’m sorry,” Will said. He had never seen such a sea of ragged and sad-looking people, walking bones, shadow-lives. It made his heart ache. “I have no money myself.” He hurried on, and silently said a prayer that the girl from the attic had not come this way.

  He wondered if he should not, after all, return to the train station and continue north, as he had originally intended. But the idea of the girl tugged him on, just as she had drawn him back to that same street corner under her window, again and again, for months.

  Then he left the people behind and came to an area at the far, far edges of Cloverstown. The buildings were long, low warehouses, and carts piled with goods came in and out, drawn by sad-looking animals whose ribs were showing. The air was so black and thick with grime that Will could taste it. Many of the warehouses were shuttered. In others, Will could make out thin, sad faces wavering behind cracked and dirt-encrusted windows, like pale flames. In others, service doors had been flung open to admit the carts and the animals, and Will could see men moving slowly in the vast, gloomy inner spaces.

  He had, constantly, the prickly feeling of being watched, and he began to feel afraid without knowing exactly why. The warehouses became farther and farther apart, separated by long stretches of broken cobblestone and interspersed brown grasses. For a long time he passed no one. But still he felt eyes on him, and anxiety began to grow in the pit of his stomach—a gnawing, desperate feeling. It was not helped by the fact that his last meal had been the potato, nearly twenty-four hours earlier.

  Will made a sudden resolution. He would ask the next person he came across for directions back to the train station. Then he would get on a train going north and forget all about the girl from the attic.

  At that moment he was walking alongside an enormous building, built of black and moldering stone, and coated with white ash. It would have appeared to be abandoned, but for the black smoke churning from its four black chimneys. He thought he could detect the low murmur of conversation; and coming around the corner, he saw two men—both with filthy, knotted hair, and dirt-coated hands, and black and rotted teeth—standing in between several tarp-covered carts. Will could not see what the carts were holding. From the rectangular shapes outlined under the tarps, he thought boxes of some kind.

  The men were deep in conversation, and arguing about something. Will did not like to interrupt them—they did not look particularly friendly—but he sucked in a deep breath and screwed up his courage and went closer.

  As he approached, he could hear them better.

  One of them was in the middle of jabbing his gnarled pointer finger into the middle of the other one’s chest. “I told you them round-saws was dangerous,” he was saying. “That’s the fourth boy what’s lost his arm messing around with one of those things, and it’s only been a month.”

  The other man picked his teeth, unconcerned. “Hazards of the trade,” he drawled. “Saws is needed to cut wood. Wood is needed to make coffins.”

  “Don’t tell me how to run my work,” the first one growled. “The problem is the boys. We’re running through ’em! We’re running out! Boys is losing limbs, fingers, toes. One of the boys had his head chopped off last month!”

  “I can find you boys,” the second one said. “It shouldn’t be a problem to find you a boy.”

  Will stopped, half-hidden behind a cart. He stood very, very still. His heart was beating loudly, and he willed it to be quiet.

  “You better find me a boy!” cried the first one. “And right away, too, or it’s you what’s have to pay for the work I’m losing!”

  Will began to back away, very carefully, from the two men, going as quickly as possible while still moving silently. He had no desire now to speak up—no desire at all. He was quite fond of his fingers, toes, limbs, and head; he did not particularly like the idea of losing them to a saw.

  And then he stepped on a bit of broken glass. The glass went CRUNCH! very loudly under his boots.

  Both men whipped their heads in his direction. Will dropped to a crouch behind one of the larger carts. This one was already hooked up to a donkey. The donkey sat, sadly pawing the dirt and nibbling at a single piece of frozen black grass.

  “What was that?” growled the first man.

  “Seems like we got ourselves a little spy,” said the second, and Will could hear him grinning. “Maybe a little boy, like? Wouldn’t that be nice? Suit yer needs just fine and dandy.”

  The men began clomping heavily in Will’s direction. Any second now, they would see him, and Will would be dragged off to some factory, to be beaten and mistreated and probably told he was useless, just as he had been at the alchemist’s. In desperation, Will swung himself onto the cart, lifted the heavy canvas tarp that was covering its load, and slipped underneath, at precisely the moment the men once again came into view.

  Underneath the tarp it was dark and warm. Will closed his eyes, lay very still, and prayed.

  For a moment there was the sound of shuffling boots, and some confused murmurs. Then the first man said, “Well, I’ll be dagged. I coulda swore I heard somethin’.”

  “Probably a rat.”

  “Don’t be stupid. A rat’s got no footsteps.”

  “I’ve seen rats in your factory so big, it’s a miracle they don’t got boots and a pocket watch.”

  “Oh, yeah . . . ? At least my wife don’t put rats in the stew when meat’s running low. . . .”

  “That’s cuz you don’t got a wife. . . .”

  The men’s voices grew more remote. Will allowed himself a small sigh of relief. They were walking away. When he could no longer hear them, he opened his eyes.

  And found himself staring at the girl from the attic.

  He started to cry out, but she brought a finger quickly to her lips and shook her head, and he swallowed back the sound.

  At that moment, the cart gave a tremendous, lurching movement forward, and Will heard someone saying, “Whoa, girl, whoa. Give me a second, give me a second. We’ll be on our way in no time.” Will assumed this was the driver, speaking to the donkey, and he was right. Boots scraped up at the front of the carriage; a leather whip slapped against the side of the cart; the man said, “Okay, thatta girl, nice and easy”; and the cart began lurching noisily forward.

  Finally Will thought it safe to speak. “What—what—what are you doing here?”

  “
Stowing away,” the girl said placidly. “What does it look like I’m doing?”

  “Stowaways are on boats,” Will couldn’t help but point out.

  “Well, hitching a ride, then. We need to go west. This cart is going west. I heard the men saying so. So we got in.”

  Will was not sure whether the girl from the attic had recognized him or not. She showed no signs of being inclined to run away. Of course, perhaps that was because she was trapped underneath a tarp, on a moving cart, surrounded by . . . Will squinted, trying to make out the wooden forms all around him, jostling in the darkness. His stomach squirmed. Coffins. They were surrounded by wooden coffins. Will hoped they were empty.

  The girl-no-longer-in-the-attic was sitting in a narrow space between coffins, holding the box on her lap. It looked, Will thought, awfully like the kind of box the alchemist had used to transport magic, but he put the thought out of his mind. He would not think about the alchemist again, now or ever.

  He lowered himself into the narrow space next to her. The girl’s eyes appeared to flit briefly to the empty air immediately to his left, and she stifled a giggle.

  “What’s so funny?” he asked.

  “Nothing.” She bit her lip. “You nearly squashed them, that’s all. But I don’t suppose they can be squashed, really, so it’s all right.”

  Will was confused. They were all alone in the cart; unless the coffins really were full of dead people, an idea that made him sick just to think of. “Squashed who?”

  She opened her mouth, seemed about to say something, but instead just shook her head.

  Perhaps it was as the woman with the cane said: Perhaps the girl really was mad as a hatter. He did not know whether the idea made him nervous or just sad. “Why did you run away from me before?” he asked, as a test.

  The girl squinted at him for a second. Briefly, a look of alarm passed over her face. “You’re the boy I saw at the train station,” she said, recognizing him for the first time. “You were with the policeman and the old woman.”