Liesl & Po

by Lauren Oliver

  We’ve been too long on the Living Side, Po thought to Bundle, and as usual Bundle mwarked his approval. “We don’t belong here.”

  Mwark.

  “Come on. We must go back to our place and get away for a bit.” And Po felt the living world—with all its corners and boundaries and hard, sharp edges—disappearing as it crossed back into the Other Side.

  Po only intended to stay away a minute or two. No harm would come to Liesl, the ghost was sure of it.

  But time is not easy to measure on the Other Side, where infinity is the only boundary, and seconds do not exist, nor minutes nor hours nor years: only space and distance. And so on the Living Side, Liesl and Will slept soundly, and minutes added up to an hour, and just after midnight the door creaked open and the black-haired man slipped silently into the barn.

  He was, as Mrs. Snout had guessed, a career criminal. His nickname was Sticky, and he was a thief. He would steal anything that wasn’t nailed down: money from church collection plates, candy from a baby, the shirt off the back of a beggar. The reputation of his long, pale fingers, which attracted wallets, coins, and earrings like a magnet attracts steel filings, had earned him his nickname.

  He had seen the little girl clutching the wooden box protectively to her chest and, like Mrs. Snout, suspected she was lying when she had claimed there was nothing inside.

  Why would she be carrying an empty box with her?

  And not just any box, Sticky thought: a jewelry box. Standing in the dark, listening to the two children snoring, he allowed himself a small smile of satisfaction, imagining the beautiful jewels he would find winking in its rich velvet interior, the gold and silver, the tiny flashing stones.

  It would be, he fantasized, the payload he had been waiting for his whole life, since he had lain in his narrow cot as a young boy in Howard’s Glen, next to his pushy and pinchy older sister, and dreamed of someday having money to buy an enormous house of his own, and money to bathe in, and money to roll between his fingers. Money to burn and waste and hoard and love!

  He moved silently across the barn. Not even the bats, sleeping in the rafters, were disturbed by his progress. As always, his heart was beating rapidly—not from nerves, because he had years of practice and was excellent at what he did—but from pleasure and excitement.

  Closer, closer, closer. Finally he stood just beside the two slumbering forms, each folded like twin commas. Slowly—moving inch by inch now—he knelt to the ground and removed from his overcoat the small rectangular wooden box he had stolen from Mrs. Snout’s pantry, which contained a load of potato flour. He allowed himself another small smile. It was, as he expected, almost exactly the same dimensions as the girl’s box, and roughly the same weight, which meant that with any luck he would be miles and miles away before she noticed the substitution.

  He tucked the jewelry box carefully under his arm and left the box filled with flour in its place, barely concealing a chuckle of glee. It was really so easy . . . almost too easy. . . .

  Then Sticky slipped back across the barn and out into the night. Liesl slept; Will slept; the bats slept. Everyone slept, it seemed, but for the black-haired thief who moved through the streets of Gainsville quickly and with purpose, carrying (though he did not know it, of course) the greatest magic in all the world.

  Some time later, Po and Bundle squeezed through a narrow opening in the folds between worlds and re-entered the Living Side. Po was surprised to find that outside, the edges of the sky were lightening. They had been gone for longer than the ghost had anticipated.

  At that moment, Liesl stirred. She sat up, rubbing her eyes and blinking.

  “Is it time to get up?” she asked, her voice still thick with sleep. Next to her, Will groaned.

  “Yes,” Po said.

  Liesl yawned broadly. “Poor Po,” she said. “You must get so bored, just sitting there watching us all night.”

  Po felt another foreign twinge (guilt was the word, only recovered that instant). “It’s not too bad,” the ghost said vaguely.

  “Po can’t sit down, anyway,” Will said, raising himself onto both elbows. His hair was sticking up most ridiculously. “Can you, Po? You don’t have legs to fold or a bottom to sit on.”

  Po did not dignify Will’s comment with a response. Instead it just flitted to the window and said, “We should go.”

  Po had debated telling Liesl it had gone to the Other Side, but Will’s comment made the ghost decide firmly against it.

  Besides, Po thought, the box was clearly sitting right next to her, and no harm had been done.

  In its mind, Bundle went, Mwark.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  THE WAY OUT OF GAINSVILLE WAS BARE AND bleak, though it must once have been less so. On either side of the narrow dirt road, bald brown fields extended toward the horizon. Most of the farms had been abandoned years ago, and nothing looked familiar to Liesl.

  The rain, at least, had stopped, and it was slightly warmer than it had been for some time, so both Liesl and Will were able to unbutton their coats. Still, it was slow going, especially when the road began to wind up into the foothills. Here the path became less clear. For long stretches it disappeared altogether, and Bundle and Po had to float on ahead and come back and report the correct way, so that Liesl and Will would not exhaust themselves tracing and retracing their steps.

  Everyone’s temper ran short.

  “I swear,” Liesl said for the hundredth time, pausing to wipe sweat off her brow, “this box is heavier than it was yesterday.”

  “If you would let me carry it . . . ,” Will said, also for the hundredth time.

  “No!” Liesl said sharply.

  Will muttered something under his breath and went on ahead.

  “What did you say?” Liesl’s heart was beating very fast.

  “I said it’s loony!” Will cried out, turning back to her. “This whole trip is loony!” And then, frustrated, he kicked a very large stone to his left. Pain shot through his toes and he began hopping up and down. “We’ve been walking all day and we’re not getting anywhere. I’ve passed this rock twenty times in the past two hours, I’d swear to it!”

  “Are you questioning my capacity to navigate?” Po asked coldly, and Bundle made a noise somewhere between a growl and a hiss.

  “I’m sorry if I’m not particularly inclined to believe a ghost. Probably just bringing us out here to kill us.”

  “So I could spend eternity in your delightful company? I don’t think so.”

  “Stop it, stop it, stop it!” Liesl cried out, so loudly that Will and Po did, in fact, stop it. She sank to the ground. “It’s no use,” she said. “We’ll never make it. We don’t know where we are; we don’t know the way. And you two are fighting. It’s horrible. I can’t stand it.” A tear slid down her cheek to the very tip of her chin.

  Will forced a laugh. “Me and Po weren’t fighting. We were just, um, joking around. Weren’t we, Po?”

  “What is joking?” Po asked, but seeing the way Will glared, quickly said, “Oh, yes. Yes. Joking.”

  Liesl wiped her nose on the cuff of her jacket. “Really?” She sniffed.

  Will nodded vigorously, and the ghost flickered its agreement. Both were desperately uncomfortable, and unhappy because Liesl was unhappy. Above all, they wished—fervently, more than anything—that a second tear would not follow the first, as neither had any experience with a crying girl.

  Only Bundle went to her and wrapped its Essence as close to hers as possible, so that in her soul she felt a comforting warmth. She wiped the tear from her chin with her forearm.

  Will felt encouraged to speak again. “Er—it’ll be all right, Liesl,” he said, feeling horribly awkward. “We’ll get there. You’ll see.”

  Just then a terrible, shrill scream echoed up through the hills. Liesl gasped and nearly dropped the wooden box. Will jumped, and even Po flashed momentarily to the Other Side, reappearing a second later.

  “What was that?” Liesl asked. Instantly sh
e forgot about the difficult way ahead, and the fact that Po and Will had been fighting.

  “Sounded like a wolf or something,” Will said uncertainly. He had never actually heard a wolf, but he imagined they would howl like that.

  “We must move on,” Po said. “It will be dark soon.”

  Liesl climbed heavily to her feet. Every one of her muscles ached. And this time, when Will reached out and said, “Here, let me,” she passed him the box.

  “Don’t drop it,” she said.

  “Never.”

  “Swear?”

  He made an X over his heart.

  They walked on.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  THE TERRIBLE SCREAM THAT HAD SO STARTLED Liesl and her friends did not come from a wolf.

  It came from Sticky, who had at that moment—having finally reached an area he felt was sufficiently remote—lowered the wooden box to the ground with eager, trembling fingers, and unlatched it.

  How to describe his fury—his outrage—his pure and searing disappointment—when instead of piles of rubies and strands of pearls and little, clinking rings—he had instead beheld a pile of dust, of nothing, of worthlessness? (For so the magic looked to him—like dust.)

  There is no way to describe his feelings at that moment. Even he could not describe them, which was why, instead, he screamed: a great, long howl, which carried up all the way into the hills.

  Had Sticky taken the time to examine the contents of the box more closely, he might have noticed some interesting and unusual features of the substance that, at first glance, appeared to be dust. He might have noticed the very slight way it shimmered, almost as if it was moving and shifting ever so slightly. He might have noticed, too, that from certain angles it appeared to shine, just like the long-missing sun, and that it was not a uniform dark gray color, but a hundred different colors all at once—blue and purple and red and green.

  But he did not look more closely. Enraged, he drew his leg back and gave the box a quick, hard kick. The box flew several feet and landed heavily with a large crack. Sticky noticed with satisfaction that the latch had broken off and the box had sprung open.

  Then something occurred to him: The girl had made a fool of him. She had known, somehow, that he was after the jewelry, and so had replaced it with a box full of dust before sleeping. Yes, yes; it must be so. She believed she could outwit him.

  The idea was like a deliverance. The jewelry existed—it must exist. The future that Sticky had dreamed of for himself all those years ago was still within reach. (And how he would take revenge on that snipe-y, snoopy sister of his once he was rich! He would track her down, wherever she was, and make her pay for every time she had pulled his ears, and pinched his elbows, and called him a worm!)

  Sticky remembered that the girl had asked the way to the Red House, and so he set off in that direction. This time, there would be no midnight sneaking. This time, he would have the girl’s riches, even if he had to pry them from her cold, dead fingers.

  Sticky smiled.

  The magic—now exposed to the air—spilled from the box onto the ground. Slowly, very slowly, encouraged by the wind, it began skipping and spreading over the surface of the world.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  EVENTUALLY THE IMPERFECT PATH THAT LIESL, Will, Po, and Bundle followed began to wind down and out of the hills. The stars were smoldering behind a thin covering of clouds by the time they were at last on flat ground. By then the path had disappeared. All around them were dark, bare fields; and in the distance, a house, with candles burning brightly in its windows.

  “That must be Evergreen,” Liesl said. “We’ll rest there for the night.”

  Nobody argued. It had been a long, exhausting hike. Even Po was tired—not physically, of course, but from a deep ache in its Essence, from flitting ahead and doubling back all the time, and having to wait for the others to catch up, and keep itself from speaking out when yet again Will had to stop and shake a pebble from his too-large shoes.

  It was very quiet and very still as they set off across the frost-coated ground toward the house. With every step, Liesl grew happier. Soon they would have soft beds to sleep in, and perhaps a meal. And they were close to the Red House now, she was sure of it—it was only a mile or two beyond the end of the hills. Tomorrow they would finish their journey, and her father’s soul would be at rest. And then . . .

  Well, the truth was, she was not sure what would happen then, but she pushed the thought out of her mind. Po would come up with something. Or she and Will would go to work at Snout’s Inn, where the woman had been so kind.

  Will, too, felt he could not get to Evergreen fast enough. The box was heavy—Liesl had not lied—and he was so hungry it was painful, as though there were a small animal scrabbling around in his stomach, sticking him with its claws.

  When they were thirty feet from the house, Liesl got a last-minute burst of energy and broke into a run. “Come on, Will!” she called. “Almost there!”

  Will tried to run and felt a sharp pain in his heel. “Daggit.” He had gotten another stone in his shoe. “Be there in a minute!”

  Liesl had already reached the house and was knocking firmly on the door. Will sat down on a large rock, rolled up his pant leg, and wrestled his shoe from his foot, muttering curses as he did.

  “Hello,” he heard Liesl say as the front door opened. “We have come from Gainsville. Mrs. Snout said we might find lodging here.”

  Dimly, distantly, Will was aware of a large rectangle of light spilling out into the night, and the blurry, dark figure of a person silhouetted within it.

  The silhouette crooned, “Of course, dearie, come in, come in!”

  Panic shot through Will like a sudden jolt of electricity. All at once he forgot his exhaustion and the pebble in his shoe.

  There was something wrong with the voice—something wrong with its sweetness.

  It was too sweet, like flowers laid over a corpse.

  He recognized it.

  “Thank you,” Liesl was saying, even as Will found his voice and screamed, “No, Liesl! No!”

  Liesl turned, alarmed. But at that moment the Lady Premiere stepped out onto the porch and seized Liesl with both arms, snarling, as she did, “Come here, you nasty little creature!”

  “Run, Will!” Liesl screamed as she was dragged backward into the house. “Don’t stop until—”

  He did not hear the rest of her sentence. The door swung shut, and there was nothing but silence.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  LIESL WOKE UP FEELING AS THOUGH SHE’D BEEN clubbed over the head—which, in fact, was almost exactly what had happened. During her frantic struggles against the Lady Premiere, she had smacked her head against the doorjamb and gone as limp as a lettuce leaf.

  The Lady Premiere had thus made two important discoveries:

  1. She much preferred children when they were unconscious.

  2. The girl did not have the magic, which meant that the boy must have it.

  Liesl was lying in a narrow bed in a plain white room. She was quite alone. She did not know what had happened to Bundle or Po, and she shivered a little underneath the thin wool blanket that was covering her.

  From beyond the door she heard the muffled sounds of arguing: a man’s voice she did not recognize, and the voice of the woman who had captured her.

  “He can’t have gotten far with it,” the man was saying. “It’s dark as pitch outside, and he’s got nowhere to go.”

  “Then it should be easy for you to find him and bring him back!” the woman retorted. Liesl heard footsteps, and their voices receded, though she heard the man mutter “useless” several times.

  Liesl looked around the room more closely. There was a small oil lamp burning in the corner, a plain wooden table next to the bed, and next to that, a chair. Otherwise the room was empty.

  Liesl sat up slowly. As she did, the pain in her head intensified. For a moment she had to sit gripping the edge of the bed and repeating th
e word ineffable over and over.

  At last she felt well enough to stand. She did not have to check the door to know that it was locked. Instead she went to the window. Her heart soared as it slid open effortlessly, then her heart immediately plummeted again. She was very high up—on the third or fourth floor, she thought, though it was hard to tell exactly—and the ground below her window was rocky and uneven. The nearest tree was twenty or thirty feet away—too far to reach, or jump to.

  She was well and truly trapped, and could only hope Will was on his way to the Red House with the ashes.

  She slid the window closed again, momentarily startled by her own image in the glass: Her face and the room behind her were reflected clearly against the backdrop of the darkness outside. She had so often seen herself this way, reflected in the attic window, as she stared out onto the world beyond the glass and fantasized about being a part of it. Now she was a part of it, and that girl—the caged girl in the window, stuck onto a pane of glass—seemed almost unrecognizable.

  Things had changed. She had changed.

  Liesl resolved that no matter what, she would escape. Even if she were all alone, even if it was hopeless, she would escape or die trying. Anything was preferable to being a prisoner again.

  “Hello.”

  Liesl jumped as Po materialized suddenly beside her, followed closely by a very excited Bundle.

  “Where did you go?” Though only moments earlier Liesl had determined she would be okay on her own, the sight of her ghostly friends made her want to shout with joy.

  “I went to tell Will what happened,” Po said, “and to warn him that he is not safe.”

  “Is he okay? Did he escape? Is the box safe?” Liesl demanded eagerly.

  “He is fine,” Po said, sounding (to Liesl’s mind) almost regretful. “He has made it to a stretch of woods, where he is quite concealed. The box is still in his possession.”