Blue Window

by Adina Rishe Gewirtz

  They caught up to the others in a copse studded with yellow birches, their bronze bark peeling in strips and smelling of wintergreen. Beneath them, Max could see the outline of fallen leaves the ground had withered. Susan emerged from a cave in the hillside.

  “No snakes,” she said to Kate. “I checked with a stick this time. Wish I could do that just by thinking,” she said to Max.

  “Maybe later,” he told her. “Or better yet, think up that window, and we can sleep in beds tonight.”

  She wrinkled her nose at him. “I’ve been trying all day. Maybe I’m just not as loud as you think.”

  He resisted responding to that. Instead he said, “So we’ll work together. And maybe windows are too big a start. Let’s go with something simple, like water. My hands are full of peach.”

  They sat together beneath the birches, and soon Nell and Kate and Jean joined them.

  “Think of water,” he whispered. “Really hard.”

  “No problem,” Nell said. “I’ve been thinking of that all day already.”

  At last they settled down, and Max closed his eyes.

  Water, he thought. Despite how much he wanted it, it was surprisingly hard to think about just water without his mind skipping away — to the problem of the wood itself, and to the strange nature of Ganbihar, and then, much as he hated it, back again to the tiled room. He opened his eyes with a grunt of frustration. The others were doing the same. He saw Nell frown and squint before her eyes popped open. Kate gritted her teeth; Jean had already given up and was drawing lines in the dirt with the feet of her Barbie.

  Only Susan continued to sit there, motionless, eyes closed.

  He stifled the urge to say something that would help. Water, he thought at her as hard as he could. Can you hear us, whatever you are in the air? Water!

  A faint crackle distracted him. Had the humidity thickened? And yet it was no hotter than it had been. Max sat motionless. If he hadn’t been concentrating on it so severely, he’d have missed the low buzz in the air. And yet there it was. Susan hadn’t moved, and he worried he’d imagined it.

  Again that buzz, just at the edge of hearing. Max felt the hairs on his arm rise, despite the heat of the wood as it settled into evening. The light had softened, but the air felt sharp. Max held his breath to hear it better and kept his eyes on Susan.

  Then came another sound, a gentle lapping. Max searched for it, sweeping his eyes across the ground until he found a slick spot.

  Water, pumping out of nowhere.

  The dagger of madness was hidden in dreams, and though the exile knew it, still it cut deep. In the night a vision had come of the sea rising to land, and children drawing water from the dust.

  How many had been undone this way in the years of wandering across the sea? Thwarted prophets aplenty there had been then, dreaming their false dreams of homecoming and return.

  Thinking it fruitless, the fool cuts the frosted tree;

  He calls the winter field dead and passes it by.

  And the simple? He hacks at the sleeping earth,

  Demanding spring replace the snow.

  So the ancients had left their warning against both impatience and despair. And yet they had written, too: The years will turn, and even the barren wood will have its day.

  How many in their madness had clung to that promise? How many blinded by longing and made foolish with desire? Yet another, the exile thought. Yet one more, alone in a silent house on a hill.

  Asleeping potion couldn’t have made them sleep more soundly. After days of being parched, of running in the heat without end, they had drunk and drunk and then collapsed beneath the broad moon and slept like stones until the late-morning light turned the mouth of the cave into a bright circle.

  They woke to barking.

  Max opened his eyes and tried to place himself. He was lying on the edge of Nell’s blanket. Peaches had rolled from it across the cave and glowed gold in the shadows.

  Outside, the noise sounded too close. It was no longer a distant part of the din of the wood, sometimes lost amid the voices of squirrels and birds. This was sharp, insistent, and nearby.

  “Susan! Nell! Get up! How long have we slept?”

  They rolled over, sat up, listened. Susan leaned out of the cave and squinted at the sky.

  “It’s late! Nearly noon!” she gasped. “They’ve had all this time!”

  Panicked, she looked wildly around the cave. “Can we still outrun them?”

  They had to try. There was no time to collect the peaches, but Jean grabbed her doll. They fled the cave and scrambled up the rise, out of breath with the sudden exertion.

  Below, a dog barked frantically, its pitch rising to an excited whine.

  “Susan!” Max huffed. “Do you think you can make the wind blow? You know how now, don’t you?”

  He tried to do it himself, desperate to throw the dogs off their scent, but found he couldn’t. He kept thinking of the pungent heat rising off his skin and signaling to the dogs, like a pointed finger, like a whistle. He shuddered and tried to focus. The sound of barking shattered his concentration.

  Susan, too, was trying. As Max watched, a faint breeze swept the dirt. He looked up into the trees. The leaves had begun to lift.

  “Send it up the mountain!” he said. “Throw them off!”

  Susan’s forehead creased, and she bit her lip, but they could hear the sound of the search getting closer. Someone shouted in the distance. She shook her head. “I can’t keep it up!”

  The effort made it hard to run. They’d fallen behind the others. Nell turned, bouncing on the balls of her feet. “Come on!” she begged. “Hurry!”

  For another second, Susan and Max kept at it, but they could hear the dogs shuffling through the trees now, not far beneath the nearest ridge.

  Susan let out a shuddering breath and shook her head.

  “It’s no use!” she said. “We can’t do both!”

  They ran. Nell bounded up the mountain with the younger girls, half dragging them over rocks and helping them scramble over sudden rises. Max sprinted to keep pace, but below him, he could hear individual dogs now, amid the frenzied baying and clamoring. He looked behind him. Six huge black-snouted beasts streaked through the trees, ears up and teeth flashing.

  “Faster!” he shouted.

  The girls charged ahead. Max’s lungs ached, but he pushed himself to speed up. He came abreast of Kate, her arms pumping, face pink, curls flying.

  He could hear the dogs panting, hear their feet hit the dirt. Their barks rose in pitch.

  Faster!

  The barks turned to growls, and then Kate shrieked and fell, a dog on her back. Before Max could do a thing, a second one lunged at him, snatching his sleeve. Teeth grazed his arm, and the dog yanked him sharply to his knees. He hit the ground so hard, his jaw rattled.

  “Susan!” he panted. “The wind!”

  Max squeezed his eyes shut, mind scrambling. He tried to see the wind swooping through the trees as it had swept across the tiled room, throwing off the dogs and toppling the men he could hear coming. But the dog’s hot breath fired his wrist, and the animal shook him until his arm flailed and he fell onto his back, feet bent beneath him. He cried out.

  At last the dog held still, pressing his arm painfully to the ground. He tried to find the others. Susan stood trembling, her back against a red oak. One of the dogs had leaped up and pinned her there, its paws on her shoulders. She stood with her eyes squeezed shut as it growled in her face. Another dog had Nell by the shirt, and still another had clamped its teeth around Jean’s skirt and pinned her to the ground. Kate lay with a cheek pressed to the dirt, eyes wide, struggling for breath beneath the dog’s weight. A sixth animal circled the others, snarling.

  Think, Max told himself. Focus! But his thoughts ricocheted through his head. The dog shook him like a doll, wrenching his arm nearly out of its socket.

  A zip of electricity, like a static shock, nipped at him, and dirt rose in a puff nearby. He loo
ked to Susan and hope surged through him.

  Then he heard the sound of running feet, and the breeze died. Two soldiers, muskets up, broke through the trees.

  “Good dog!” one of them said. “You hold him!”

  The dog wagged its tail and jerked Max’s arm. He winced and twisted to look at the soldiers.

  The first was a ruddy-faced, middle-aged man whose round knob of a nose looked out of place amid the rest of his strange, stretched, and stubbled features. His companion was a hard-eyed, thick-bodied young man with light hair. He glared at Max.

  “Stand up, you! You’ll be coming back with us now.”

  He snapped his fingers at the dog, and it bobbed its head, yanking Max’s arm wrong way back. Max yelped and writhed, twisting until he was able to scramble painfully to his feet. The dog answered by tugging his arm so sharply that he stumbled, sleeve shredded, and fell back to his knees with a gasp. Growling, the dog snapped at him, and this time teeth found skin. Max winced. If only he could throw the thing off him!

  Susan’s eyes were open now. He saw her looking past him, fixed on something — a scattering of pebbles. With all the effort he could muster, Max focused on those stones. Move them! he told himself. Use the wind the way Susan did! The air whined thinly, and the dog bristled.

  Think of the stones! He thought of wind hitting the smooth curves, finding the grooves, diving from the trees to lift them.

  Was he imagining it or had the air sizzled? Now Nell and Jean, too, were looking at the stones.

  Wind, he thought as loudly as he could. Wind!

  The pebbles jumped in the breeze, and a gust lifted them and flung them at the dog holding Kate. One, two, three. The fourth was bigger than a pebble. A good-sized rock, it popped from the ground and hit the animal squarely in the ear. It yelped.

  The soldiers jumped, and the knob-nosed man’s jaw dropped. He gaped at Max.

  “You — did you do that?”

  The younger soldier glared at his companion. “Shut it, you!”

  But Max seized the opportunity.

  “Yes! And we’ll do more if you don’t leave us alone! I’m warning you!”

  He wondered how menacing he could sound, still on his knees with a dog clamped to his arm, but the first soldier lowered his musket slightly. The second only tightened his grip.

  “Quiet, discard!” he said to Max. “You’ll be sorry for it soon enough. There’s more coming to help us. The searchers are spread out all across the mountain. You’ve got nowhere to run!”

  But Max thought he talked a little too much for someone completely sure of himself. He stared back at the man, trying to look confident.

  “You’ll need help,” he said. “Didn’t they tell you what happened in the city? Didn’t you hear how we got out?”

  His words hit the mark. The knob-nosed soldier blanched. The younger one glanced at his companion uneasily.

  “You! Lift that weapon! It’s like they told us, a harmless trick. You afraid of wind now?”

  From the corner of his eye, Max saw Kate trying to squirm from under the dog’s paws. It growled warningly.

  “But there’s stories,” the first soldier was saying. “Old ones. There’s worse they can do if what people say is true.”

  The second soldier’s laugh sounded forced. “Does this one look like he could do worse? Those are nothing but village tales. You idiots from the edges all tell tales.” He shook his head. “Who told you that one, your grandmother?”

  “Grandfather,” Knob-Nose said.

  They argued some more, and as they did, Max looked around. A silvery beech stood a few feet from him. One of its branches hung strangely, and after a second, he spotted a crack running through it. Damaged in the storm, he thought. He caught Susan’s eye, nodded toward the tree, and raised an eyebrow. She looked and answered with the faintest nod. Next she got Nell’s attention, and showed her.

  It was easier this time. Max called back the feeling of the wind against his cheek and thought of the storm he’d seen, the wind thrashing through the trees, flattening the leaves, making the branches bend . . .

  Again, that tickle along his skin. Leaves fluttered, and the tree swayed. After a moment, he could hear the waterfall sound of air in branches, followed by a crack. The branch snapped and spun from the tree, whirling toward the light-haired soldier.

  It clouted him sharply on the side of his head, and he fell like a stone.

  At the sound of wood on bone, the older man jumped as if he’d been the one struck. He dropped his gun, and it went off with a bang, narrowly missing Max and the dog. The animal yelped and cowered, and Max rubbed his newly freed arm.

  The soldier looked down at his colleague, stunned.

  “It’s true, then! The stories!”

  He looked at Max, and all the color had gone from his face. After a moment’s hesitation, he snapped his fingers, and the dogs came to him, leaving the children alone. He muttered a command, and the animals lay obediently at his feet. He bent down beside them, never taking his eyes off Max.

  “You one of them, then?”

  The tone of the question was so unexpected that Max stopped rubbing his arm and just looked at him.

  “One of who?”

  “The powerful. Heard talk of them when I was a boy, but I thought them all dead now.”

  Village tales, the other soldier had said. Max looked over and saw the blond man safely out for the moment.

  “Well, we’re not dead,” he said firmly. “And you can see we’re powerful. You’d better let us go if you don’t want more trouble.”

  The man hesitated, and Max concentrated with all his might on the fallen limb. It stirred. The soldier jumped, then nodded.

  From behind Max, Susan said, “Where are the other searchers?”

  This time, when the soldier hesitated, Max felt the air buzz and saw one of the stones rise. He suppressed a smile at the look on the man’s face. Good for you, Susan!

  “All over these west woods,” Knob-Nose said hastily. “From here and down. We were ready to give up when we caught your scent again. Hard for the dogs with the bitter ground here. It fouls the air, too.”

  “Okay, then,” Max said. “We’ll go, and you can say you couldn’t hold us.”

  Another hesitation, another nod. Max got to his feet, wincing at the ache in his knees. Kate had already managed to back herself up to where Jean stood, as far from the dogs as possible. They started to move back into the trees, eyes on the dogs and the unconscious man. The animals growled softly.

  “Wait!” the soldier called.

  Max’s stomach dropped. He tried not to show it on his face.

  “What?”

  The knob-nosed soldier looked red now. He whispered to the dogs and then let them go. Max froze, but they only turned and ran down the mountain, back the way they’d come.

  The soldier twisted the end of his cloak.

  “The stories,” he said. “My granddad said . . .” He sounded sheepish but plowed on after a second. “He said that if the powerful ones blessed you, you’d stay blessed. Could you do that? Lay your hands on me?”

  Max didn’t know what he’d expected, but it wasn’t that. His cheeks burned.

  “It’s not like that,” he said. “I can’t bless anybody.”

  “Please,” the man said. “Else I’ll be taken, for letting you go.”

  Max had never seen such fear in a grown man’s face. He didn’t know what to say.

  “I wish I could,” he said. “I — listen, why don’t you run? Don’t go back. That city’s a terrible place. Just keep running until they can’t find you anymore.”

  The man dropped his head.

  “The dogs will lead them to me soon. Please,” he said again.

  Max was out of words. But Nell took a step toward the soldier.

  “I’ll bless you,” she said.

  He looked up at her. “What good would that do? I need him to do it.”

  Nell frowned, then glanced at Max.

&n
bsp; “Okay, then, Max, you bless him.”

  He started to protest, but she continued: “Just you remember, now: it only works if you don’t tell on us. Nobody can follow us or you’ll regret it.”

  The soldier paled a little but nodded. “Please,” he said. “Or it’s the back room for me.”

  Max understood the desperation in his face now.

  Awkwardly, he put his hands on the soldier’s head. His ears were on fire, and he felt like a fool.

  “Uh, consider yourself blessed,” he said.

  The man nodded.

  “Better hit me, too,” he said. “I can’t be found without a mark on me. They’ll know.”

  Max felt his stomach turn over. He didn’t mind fighting back, but hitting a man who sat there waiting for it — that was another thing. The soldier saw him hesitate. When Max continued to say nothing, he looked frantic.

  “You know what they’ll do to me if you don’t!”

  Feeling queasy, Max retrieved the branch that had fallen. He closed his eyes and swung.

  They were never going to stop running. Soldiers might not come for a while, but Max understood now what he hadn’t before. They would never be safe.

  He sat on Nell’s unfolded blanket beneath a stand of young aspens. They’d gone back to get it — and the last of the peaches — before climbing higher up the mountain. They had stopped near dusk here, in a clearing where the blackened trunks of a ruined poplar and several fallen oaks lay in the dirt. The aspens had sprouted in the space they made, white bark bright against the dark wood.

  They’d been so many days beneath taller trees that Max hadn’t seen the sky spread out this way. The sun was setting, and red and orange and gold colored the vast panorama overhead. It seemed bigger than he’d ever seen it — too big.

  It’s an optical illusion, Max told himself. The sky’s no bigger today than yesterday. But he realized it had been big then, too. It stretched for miles, keeping pace with the ground. Black despair followed that thought. They kept walking, day by day, but where were they going, anyway? Only into more trouble. He’d been thinking about it since his encounter with the soldier. Max had never seen desperation like the kind in that man’s eyes.