Liesl & Po

by Lauren Oliver

  “That’s a relief,” Liesl said. “Though how I’m going to get out of here is beyond—”

  Just then, Bundle began mwarking sharply.

  “Shhh,” Po hissed. “Someone is coming. Quick, in the bed.”

  Liesl leaped into the bed and pulled the covers to her chin, just as a key clicked neatly in the lock and her door swung inward.

  “I see our little sleeping beauty has awoken,” Augusta Hortense Varice-Morbower sang cheerfully, as she swept into the room, carrying a tray.

  Liesl gasped. “What—what are you doing here?”

  “Well, hello to you too, pumpkin.” Augusta tried to smile but only managed to grimace.

  “Who is that?” Po whispered.

  “My stepmother,” Liesl whispered back.

  Augusta, who did not see Po, because she was used to seeing nothing but what could be bought, or weighed, or measured, thought that Liesl was only greeting her. “You know I’ve always despised that word,” she said, setting the tray on the little table. On it was a bowl, covered with a dented metal lid.

  “I won’t call you mother,” Liesl said, lifting her chin.

  “Of course not, sugar pie. It’s the mother part I object to most strongly.” Augusta showed her teeth again.

  It had been months since she had seen her stepmother, except from a distance. Augusta never came to the attic. Now Liesl was struck by how very ugly she was—even in her fine socks and expensive shoes and her silk dresses, she looked just like a toad, like a creature that should be wallowing in muck.

  “How did you find me?” Liesl asked.

  Augusta sat on the bed, which groaned under her substantial heft. “Well, you couldn’t expect to get far, could you? Not pulling a stunt like that.” She waggled a finger at Liesl. “The Lady Premiere is quite put out about the loss of her magic. Quite. The alchemist, too. It’s all he could talk about on the carriage ride over—how he would torture the boy, when it was all over. Turn him into a worm and put him in a birdcage—things like that.” Augusta said this with relish. She had decided she very much liked the alchemist. That was a man with a head on his shoulders!

  Liesl felt hopelessly confused. “Magic . . . ?” she repeated. “I—I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  Augusta stared at her narrowly. The girl appeared to be perfectly sincere. “Why did you run away?”

  Liesl was quiet for a minute. Then she lifted her head. “I wanted to bring my father’s ashes to the Red House, so he could rest. He told me to do it,” she added, somewhat defensively. He hadn’t exactly told her, of course, but he had told Po, and that was almost the same thing.

  “Told you to, did he? You’ve talked to him, then?” Augusta asked, and there was a dangerous softness to her voice.

  “Y-yes,” Liesl said, after only a second’s hesitation. “He wanted to be laid by the willow tree, near my mother.” She did not feel like explaining about Po; it was obvious to her that her stepmother could not see either of the two ghosts.

  Augusta’s face hardened. She did not know what to believe. Either Liesl knew she had the magic and had raised the ghost of her father, or she did not know she had the magic and had not raised the ghost of her father. Either way, she was lying about something, and Augusta didn’t like it. Not one small bit.

  “You’ve seen him, then?” she asked, even more softly, and if Liesl had known her stepmother better, she would have known to be afraid.

  “He is on the Other Side,” Liesl answered in a roundabout way.

  Augusta considered the little girl lying in the narrow bed. Perhaps she had underestimated Liesl, after all. He wanted to be laid next to the willow tree, near my mother. It did sound like something Henry Morbower would say, that floppy-hearted fool. Sickening. After all these years, he still had not forgotten that simple woman.

  Augusta vowed then that whatever the truth, she would get rid of the ashes as soon as possible—preferably in some dark, dank hole. While Augusta was alive, Henry Morbower would never get to lie beside that useless flip of a first wife.

  Then she composed her face into her best approximation of a smile, and lifted the lid off the bowl on the tray. Instantly, the room was filled with the delicious scent of rich butter and broth, carrots, and chicken. Liesl gaped. She had not seen food of such richness—and quantity—in ever so long, and her mouth began to water.

  “Now, that’s enough talk,” Augusta said sweetly, leaning over to tuck a napkin in the collar of Liesl’s shirt. “You’ve had a long, exhausting journey, and you must be starving. I want you to eat up.” Her face was very close to Liesl’s; her smile was a half-moon. “I want to be sure you are healthy and strong.”

  Augusta picked up the bowl with one hand and, with the other, filled a ladle-sized spoon to the brim with hot broth, and golden chicken, and rice, and carrots.

  “Open wide,” she crooned. “Here comes the airplane.”

  As much as Liesl resented being treated like a baby, she was too hungry to resist. She opened her mouth as the spoon came zooming toward her.

  Then Po shouted suddenly, “No, Liesl! No! Don’t eat it!”

  She snapped her mouth shut quickly. The spoon collided with her chin and hot broth soaked into the napkin. The piece of chicken and the carrot rolled onto her lap.

  “Stupid girl!” Augusta hissed, and then immediately recovered herself. “You must keep your mouth open, my dear.”

  Liesl was glaring at Po, who was standing next to the bed. Po’s edges were flaring white with panic. “What’d you do that for?” she said.

  “I didn’t do anything,” Augusta said, assuming that Liesl was addressing her. “I am just trying to make sure that my darling little dearest gets the soup Augusta made especially for her. Now, let’s try that again, shall we?” She filled the spoon again.

  Po was speaking in a rush. “Remember what your father said when I met him on the Other Side? He said, I should never have eaten the soup. Remember?”

  Liesl’s head was spinning. Images returned to her: peering down from the attic window, watching Augusta bustle out of the house on her way to the hospital, carrying a large tureen with both hands; lying next to the radiator and listening to the servants gossiping below her room, saying, “No matter what people say, the woman can’t be all bad. She brings the master soup every single day, made by her own hands. Sits by his bed and feeds him too, won’t let him waste a drop of it.”

  I should never have eaten the soup.

  Terror and hatred crested suddenly inside of Liesl, and on its waves came a single word, clear and sharp and true.

  Murder.

  “Open wide!” Augusta said.

  “No!” Liesl shouted, scrabbling backward on the bed, pressing up against the pillows, and striking out at the bowl with one foot. It flew off the bed and shattered against the wall, leaving a temporary tableau of limp parsley and liquid and onion bits on the plaster.

  Augusta, enraged, sprang to her feet. She grabbed Liesl by the shoulders and shook her.

  “Idiot!” she snapped. “Stupid, silly, terrible thing!”

  Augusta shook Liesl so hard her teeth knocked together. But Liesl managed to cry out, “Murderer!”

  Instantly Augusta released her. Liesl fell back on the sheets and then scrambled to her feet, placing the bed between herself and her stepmother.

  “What did you say?” Augusta’s voice had become quiet again, and this time Liesl could hear the danger there. But she didn’t care. All the hatred filled her, fueled her, made her burn bright and hot and dangerous herself.

  “Murderer,” Liesl repeated. She squeezed her fists so tightly her nails dug into her palms.

  Augusta stared at her for a moment. Her black eyes glittered like a snake’s. “You don’t know what you’re saying,” she said at last, coldly. “You’ve had a bad shock. You’ll eat something, and then you’ll sleep, and in the morning you’ll feel better.” Augusta stooped to collect the broken pieces of the soup tureen.

  “I know ex
actly what I’m saying!” Liesl burst out. “You killed him. You poisoned him; and you lied to me; and you wouldn’t let me see him as he was dying.” Her voice trembled with fury.

  For a moment, Augusta said nothing. Liesl thought she would deny it—a tiny piece of her almost hoped she would—but then Augusta smiled, and the smile was terrible, like the grin of a wild cat just before it pounces. Liesl felt a cold, sharp blade of terror knife through her. So it was true.

  “Yes,” Augusta said softly. “Yes, you’ve found me out. I killed him. Drop by drop, bit by bit, so no one would ever know. It was hard to be so patient. Very hard. But it was necessary.” Her predator’s grin grew slightly wider. “With you, my dear, I fear I will not be so indulgent. With you, I think it must go quickly.”

  “Stay away from me.” Liesl could barely spit out the words. “I hate you.”

  Augusta regarded her stepdaughter critically for a minute, as though evaluating her. Then she said, “You know, I always thought you were quite stupid. It appears I underestimated you. But it is no matter now.” She moved to the door. “I’ll be back shortly, with a new bowl of soup. I made it especially for you, with extra butter. I promise you won’t even taste the poison. I believe that people should enjoy their last meals, don’t you?”

  “I won’t eat it!” Liesl cried. “You can’t force me to!”

  Augusta whirled around. “Then you will starve slowly,” she hissed. “It is up to you how you choose to die, but you can count on this: Either way, you will not leave this house alive.”

  Then she spun out of the room and slammed the door shut behind her. Liesl heard the key turn sharply in the lock. Then footsteps, leaving. Then nothing.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  “THIS WOULD BE FAR EASIER IF YOU WERE A ghost,” Po said for about the thousandth time.

  “You’ve made that clear,” Liesl said wearily.

  “I’m only trying to help.”

  “I know, I know.” Liesl rubbed her eyes. She had been up all night and was very tired. “I’m sorry.”

  “Are you sure you can’t dematerialize? Not even a little?”

  “I’m sure.” Liesl sighed and sat down heavily on the bed. She had been pacing the tiny room for hours, from the bed to the locked door to the window, but the dimensions of her problem were always the same: She was trapped, with no possibility of escape. The second bowl of soup—poisoned, she was sure—was sitting cold and untouched on the bedside table, and Liesl knew what Augusta said was true. Eventually, she would either have to eat it or starve.

  It was hopeless.

  Po passed through the table and back, as though trying to show how easily it could be done. “Far easier if you were a ghost,” it muttered.

  Liesl stiffened. Then she stared at Po for so long that the ghost began to get nervous and faded to an almost imperceptible shadow-gray.

  “Po,” Liesl said, a note of wonder creeping into her voice. “You’re absolutely right.”

  “I know I’m right,” Po said, slightly uneasily, thinking that Liesl was behaving in very contradictory ways. One second she lectured; the next second she praised. Living ones were really quite incomprehensible. “But you aren’t a ghost, are you? So it doesn’t help us.”

  “No . . . ,” Liesl said. A glimmer of a glimmer of an idea was taking shape in her mind. She struggled to hold on to it. “I’m not a ghost. But that doesn’t mean I can’t pretend to be one, for a little bit.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Po said. The ghost was starting to get irritated. It did not like riddles.

  “I’m talking about the Other Side.” Liesl sprang from the bed, eyes shining. “Don’t you see? I can follow you there. I can cross. And then we’ll cross back to the Living Side somewhere different—somewhere safe.”

  For a moment there was perfect silence. Liesl held her breath. Even Bundle was uncharacteristically still.

  Then Po said, “Impossible.”

  “Why?” Liesl demanded. “Why is it impossible?”

  “Living people cannot cross to the Other Side. It is unheard of. It can’t be done.”

  “It can’t be done or it isn’t done?”

  “Either. Both.” Po was having trouble keeping its thoughts together. “It wouldn’t work. It couldn’t possibly work.”

  “When you go to the Other Side, you must slip back through some kind of opening, don’t you?”

  “Places where the universe is stretched thin, yes . . .”

  “And you can choose where to cross back from the Other Side, can’t you? You can find your way here through different tunnels and pathways?”

  “Yes, within certain limits . . .”

  “So why can’t I do those things? Why can’t you just lead me, in and out?” Liesl turned very serious. She lowered her voice. “Either way I’ll end up on the Other Side, Po. If I don’t find a way to get out of here, I’ll be there soon enough.”

  Po was quiet again. The ghost had not thought of it that way.

  Finally Po said, “I suppose I could try and . . . enlarge the opening somewhat. So that you could fit through with a body.”

  Liesl clapped her hands and bounced up and down excitedly. “I knew it! I knew we could do it.”

  “We don’t know if we can do it at all,” Po said sharply. “I said we could try. Once we’re on the Other Side, you’ll have to stick closely to me. It is vast, and some of its places are very strange.”

  “Okay,” Liesl said, with a slight catch in her voice.

  “I will lead you as quickly as I can to a different opening between the worlds, and we will cross back. I don’t know what would happen to a living one who stayed too long on the Other Side. Nothing good, I imagine.”

  Liesl nodded. Her heart was beating very fast, and all of a sudden her throat felt desperately dry.

  “Are you ready?” Po asked.

  “Now?”

  “I don’t see any point in waiting,” Po said. “Do you?”

  Liesl shook her head. Her excitement had been replaced with fear. She regretted, now, having made the suggestion in the first place. But she knew, in her heart of hearts, that there was no other way.

  “All right,” Po said. “I will try to open a door for you.” At the last second the ghost said, “I don’t know how the Other Side will seem to you. It’s possible you’ll be frightened. It’s probable you’ll be confused. Perhaps it is better if you close your eyes. Follow the sound of my voice, and I will lead you through.”

  Liesl nodded. She squeezed her eyes shut tightly.

  She thought she heard the smallest ripping sound, like a sheet of tissue paper being torn in two. Then she felt a cold wind on her face.

  “Hurry,” Po said, and Liesl could tell from the ghost’s voice that it was straining. “Step forward.”

  Liesl stepped.

  Suddenly all around her was howling, rushing confusion: the sensation of a thousand winds tearing at her from every side. The breath left her in an instant and she felt she was suffocating. She couldn’t move; she couldn’t breathe; her whole body felt like a scream.

  And then she heard Po’s voice, but somehow its voice was inside of her: like one part of her mind was speaking to the other part.

  “Go quickly,” the voice said. “Straight ahead. Don’t open your eyes. Listen to me. Listen only to me.”

  Slowly, painfully, feeling as though she was moving through molasses, Liesl inched forward. The shrieking all around her grew worse; the wind tore at her skin and she felt her head would explode.

  But she was aware of the sensation of Po inside of her, urging her forward: a comforting presence, but strange, too, like suddenly feeling a division down your middle and being two people. Bundle was there too, a wet and shaggy presence in her mind, all panting excitement and forward, forward, forward.

  Liesl, carrying her ghostly friends inside of her Essence, walked the strange and twisted paths of the Other Side.

  After what seemed like an eternity to Liesl—and w
as in fact both forever and the tiny, barest space between seconds at the same time, for those things have no meaning on the Other Side—Po spoke. Again its voice was strained.

  “All right,” it said. “It is safe to cross back now.”

  Liesl still had her eyes squeezed tightly shut. She was too scared to open them. She tried to move forward but hit a solid wall, directly in front of her.

  “Come on!” Po urged her. “I cannot keep the door open forever.”

  “I can’t!” Liesl cried out. “Something’s blocking me.”

  “Nothing’s blocking you. You have to trust me.”

  “I can feel it!” A sob was building in Liesl’s throat. “There’s a wall.”

  “Liesl.” Po was speaking quietly, but she could feel the panic in its voice. “Liesl, the Other Side has started to take you. You are beginning to blur.”

  Liesl felt she would cry. Her body was filled with an impossible, heavy weight, as though she had been filled from head to toe with sand.

  Po continued speaking. Its voice was shaking; it could not keep the space between sides open forever. “When I tell you to, you must jump. Okay? You must throw yourself forward.”

  “But—”

  “No buts,” Po said sharply. “Just do it.”

  “Okay,” Liesl said, though she knew it was impossible. She could no longer move. She was frozen, paralyzed; she would be picked apart by winds like a dead animal by vultures.

  Suddenly Po’s voice was screaming in her mind. “Now, Liesl! Jump!”

  Liesl willed her muscles to jump. She focused on the word with every single dark and dusty corner of her mind. She thought of the sparrows soaring off the roof of 31 Highland Avenue. She thought of air. She thought of her father.

  And even though she moved only a tiny bit—just a mere fraction of an inch—it was enough. The bonds of the Other Side released her. She had the impression of an enormous tumble through space. She was in free fall; she wanted to scream. The shrieking winds around her reached a howling crescendo.

  And then the winds and the shrieking stopped, and she was landing on her knees on damp, hard ground.