“Do you want luncheon? It’s getting dark up here.”
“Yes, thanks. I just needed quiet.”
After two nights cooped up, Wilhelmina was able to arrange for the women and children to move to the Wachters’ house. It was close to the Chancellery and accessible via old tunnels. A stone wall surrounded it, providing a natural defense where a guard unit could camp, and the bedrooms were far more numerous and hospitable than the Chancellery’s bunkers. Marlis wasn’t used to sharing space with so many other people.
“Tired children are too much,” Wilhelmina said, understanding. “I only had one; I don’t know how anyone can handle six or seven. They’ll quiet down and eat with the nannies. Then again, we’ve got Mrs. Rasp and her opinions at our table. I might prefer to eat with the children.”
The lunch spread was thin for the city’s most prominent wives; mostly things that would spoil if they weren’t used. Marlis guessed Wilhelmina had given the kitchen detailed instructions on rationing the food in case this dragged on. At least they still had electricity, they still had maids. The danger didn’t feel real, with everyone sitting around all day, talking and drinking tea and coffee from dainty cups.
Mrs. Rasp was indeed the first to make a barb about the meal, once the pleasantries were out of the way. “Very practical of you to offer such simple fare, Wilhelmina. I know I certainly don’t have an appetite after that smell.”
“Horrid.” Mrs. Stangler shuddered.
“I still don’t see how those people can burn their own loved ones,” Mrs. Rasp continued. “It’s barbaric. No rites, no attempt at a proper burial at all?”
Wilhelmina was uncharacteristically quiet.
“This just doesn’t seem like anything good people would do,” Mrs. Rasp continued. “This seems like heathenism to me.”
“I think we should be responsible for proper burial,” Wilhelmina said, poking at her salad. “We promised free cremation for the poor, and we dragged them from their peaceful death instead. It’s the least we could do, not to let these poor souls decompose in the gutter or toss them in a mass grave.”
“Oh, I suppose now you’ll act like you had no part in this,” Mrs. Rasp said. “Wasn’t your husband the one who destroyed the tree?”
The tree.
Marlis had never heard anything about a tree, and yet she sensed it was important. But if it was significant, wouldn’t Papa have told her? Didn’t he tell her everything important?
She was beginning to wonder.
Wilhelmina shot Mrs. Rasp a stern look. “You know you shouldn’t be talking about this.”
“It’s all going to come out,” Mrs. Rasp said, tugging on her earrings fretfully. “It’s all going to come out, and they’re going to twist everything we did. We’ll be lucky to have our heads a few weeks from now.”
“The rebels are not going to behead anyone,” Wilhelmina said firmly.
Marlis kept thinking of the speech she’d given. She’d said those words on the radio, and everyone heard them. The more she considered it, the more they jumbled inside her. They didn’t feel true. And what Papa said to the people was a lie. Coming after him, she might as well have given his speech, too.
You know it’s just politics. She tried to swallow that thought along with her cold cuts.
What will become of me if I stand on the wrong side? Everyone will know I lied. But what could she do if Papa wouldn’t listen to her ideas? She wouldn’t turn against her own father. Better a liar than a traitor…right?
“And now I hear the worst kind of rustics are pouring across our borders and no one is there to regulate them. They’re going to join up with the revolution. God save us from whatever dark magic these forest folk have dreamed up,” Mrs. Rasp said.
“My cousin said when she was in Irminau as a young woman, she met a girl who was possessed by demons—cursed for sleeping with a married man,” Mrs. Stangler said. She always liked a bit of gossip when her children were out of the way. “Her family turned her out, so she lived on the streets. If she touched you, you’d get warts, they said.”
“Yes, demons, mind control, curses.” Mrs. Rasp shook her fork. “I would rather be hanged than have anything to do with demons.”
“Oh my,” Mrs. Rosen said, sounding almost amused.
“People are born with magic here, too, you know,” Wilhelmina said. “So if it’s true, we might as well be suspicious of our own citizens. I’d rather they come here than join King Otto’s army.”
“Or, they could be Otto’s spies,” Mrs. Stangler said, undeterred.
They knew nothing, really. They all had the same vague reports and occasional news from their husbands. The border breach seemed far away compared to the pictures of the revolutionaries and the pyre of the dead on the front page of the newspaper. Freddy’s lifework, all of the city’s hidden power, reduced to a pile of dirty dangling limbs and grainy black-and-white faces.
Marlis approached Wilhelmina after the meal. “Thank you for lunch,” she said. “I appreciate you hosting all of us.”
“Of course.” Wilhelmina smiled gently. She was not that gentle of a person, and her smile was disconcerting. “I’m sorry about the conversation. They’re just scared.”
Marlis wouldn’t admit she was scared. She liked to think she wasn’t. An uncertain, unpleasant feeling kept turning around inside her. She thought of the speech one minute and Freddy the next, then the protestors and the car blowing up with Ida inside it. Ida’s light, flirtatious manner had often annoyed Marlis, but now she wished for her company, to keep her mind off things. Ida would have laughed at Mrs. Rasp’s nonsense. “What do you think will happen, really?” she asked, in a voice barely above a whisper.
Wilhelmina paused. Marlis, unfortunately, knew that pause. Her mother had paused that way when Marlis asked her if she was going to die. “I think your father and my husband and all the men taking care of this country are trying their best to keep things together in a difficult situation. But some of the decisions that were made…” She looked at Marlis for an uncomfortably long moment. “We took it too far.”
“What was Mrs. Rasp speaking of? The tree?”
Wilhelmina squeezed her hand. “Dear, at this point, the less you know, the better.”
“Father always tells me things,” Marlis said. It sounded petulant. She was going crazy with being pent up.
“We could be brought to trial. It’s better if you can’t answer questions.” She drew away from Marlis, returning to the other women across the room, who were conversing in voices that occasionally grew heated.
Marlis lingered alone in the empty half of the room, catching sight of herself in a decorative mirror. Although she was not especially pretty—she’d once heard her great-aunt describe her as “all bones and nose”—she had always liked her appearance. She thought she looked intellectual and older than her years, with her dark bob and straight bangs framing serious brown eyes behind round glasses.
Right now she saw only vulnerability—slender shoulders and full lips slightly parted in worry. She pressed them together, staring at her reflection.
But behind her own eyes, she thought she saw a flash of someone else.
Urd.
She covered her ears reflexively, then lowered her hands quickly. She felt silly. No one had spoken. It was just nonsense in her mind, the fancies she usually smothered surfacing in these traumatizing days.
When Nan woke that morning, Thea was still sleeping. Nan stared at her peaceful face for a long moment. If Ingrid had enchanted Thea, she owed it to her friend to dig deep until she found out what was wrong.
First, she needed some fresh air. The thought of spending time close to Ingrid was repellent. Deep down she knew something was very wrong: Ingrid was not the Skuld she had known. But if Nan reached for answers, she might become Verthandi. Maybe she wouldn’t even care about her friendship with Thea anymore. It seemed logical to assume that Yggdrasil’s destruction had given her a closer connection to other people, even if it was h
anging by a thread.
She hurried from the room, heart pounding with guilt, and found Sigi downstairs eating breakfast.
“Do you still want to go to your father’s place and find a camera?” Nan asked.
“Oh yes.”
She thought the guards might try to stop them leaving, but they just told them to be careful. The only sound on the street was the rustling of dry leaves in the wind. The smell of smoke still lingered in the air, and Nan tried not to think where it had come from.
Sigi had her hands thrust deep into the pockets of her black wool coat. She was short, and these were men’s coats they had swiped from a dusty closet, so the hem grazed the tops of her boots, and the broad shoulders swallowed her. While it might have looked comical, nothing about Sigi was comical just now. She looked pensive, the wind tossing a wild dark lock across her brow.
“You know when someone dies,” she said softly, “and the world keeps turning even though it feels like it should stop, because you’re so sad? The way the city looks today is how I thought it should look when someone dies. Everything’s stopped.”
Nan nodded.
“I don’t like it much after all,” Sigi said.
They had walked to the end of the street now, passing the boarded-up subway station. The air was sharp, the sky overcast. It seemed too early for snow, but Nan wouldn’t be surprised to see a few flakes. A policeman on the corner regarded them as they passed.
The next corner marked the boundary between the residential district and a row of shops with apartments above. Here, a lamppost was plastered with papers describing missing people. Although the disappearances had been going on for a long time, Nan had never seen so many notices about them. They were all written on crisp new paper, probably posted since the night the workers escaped.
“So many missing.” Sigi grabbed one of the papers, with a girl’s graduation picture taped to it. “I remember her underground, I think. A tall girl who never talked. She lived in the bunks below ours.” She squinted up and down the street. “Do you think they’ve cleared all the bodies out of the square?”
“You don’t want to go there, do you?”
“Not really. No. It would be awful. But I have this feeling like I need to do something, and I’m helpless.”
“I think they probably have cleaned things up by now,” Nan said. “They’ll want to hide as much of this as possible.” She understood the desire, realizing she had been unconsciously scanning the landscape for bodies left behind, as if she simply needed confirmation that the events of last night were real.
Sigi walked in a silence Nan didn’t disturb for a block and a half. Sigi kept looking all around, even up at the top stories of the buildings, as if she was searching for some sign.
“Do you want to walk by the square anyway?” Nan finally asked. “Maybe it would provide some closure. We could pay our respects, or something.”
Sigi shook her head. “No, but—maybe we could get a drink. Toast to them. I feel that being sad doesn’t do anyone any good. Even though I am sad, I want to pretend I’m not.”
“Sure.”
Usually Parc was one of the brightest of streets, where wealthy people drove their automobiles up and down the boulevard and parked to shop for clothes and jewels and trinkets only they could hope to afford. On this quiet afternoon, mannequins in the latest fur-trimmed coats and winter gowns posed in dim windows next to shuttered doors.
“I hope he’s home,” Sigi said, looking ahead to a modern apartment building. The front of the building was a clean white edifice rising above the overhang of the lobby, with curved white balconies bending behind like an abstract paper sculpture. “It’s nice to see something familiar.”
The lobby was a large spare room with big windows, everything made of angles. The doorman acknowledged Sigi with a nod of recognition. She laughed quietly. “My father must not have even told the doorman I died.”
They rode the elevator to the fourth and highest floor. The doors swung open onto a white hallway with electric lights in diamond-shaped fixtures edged in black. There were only two apartments on this entire floor, with the hall leading to the exit stairway. Sigi knocked. Her brow was sweating.
The door swung open. “Sig? By god, ’zat you?” The man standing in the doorframe shared Sigi’s stocky build and dark curly hair. He was swarthier, with a suggestion of beard and mustache, and wearing an untucked cotton shirt and matching trousers. They looked like clothes rich people brought back from cruises to warmer climes, and they had fresh paint stains as well as older, faded ones. Nan wondered how colorful he was to other people’s eyes.
“Yeah, it’s me.”
“Your mother kept saying you were still alive.” He hugged her in a very ordinary familiar way. “Come in. Who’s your friend?”
“This is Nan. She’s…” Sigi trailed off, apparently deciding not to explain at all. His eyes looked Nan up and down with approval.
“You girls want something to drink?” He was in the kitchen now—the apartment was very open, the spaces partitioned by half-walls in a way that seemed fashionable, though Nan was not too familiar with fashionable apartments.
“No. Well, I don’t know. Wine, maybe. Just a glass,” Sigi said, shedding her coat onto the back of a chair.
“So were you never really dead?” He took out glasses.
“I was dead.”
“You didn’t really kill yourself, did you, Sig?” His voice was almost a whisper now.
Sigi twisted away from him and Nan both. “I’m sorry….”
He took off his glasses and wiped them off, like he was avoiding eye contact. “Your mother’s in so deep, I wondered if maybe someone killed you to get to her, and she was trying to cover it up. But however it happened, how did you come back?”
“That’s the thing—” She locked eyes with him as he handed her the wineglass. Her bottom lip quivered slightly.
He put a hand on her shoulder. “It’s okay.”
“No, it’s not. Mother’s dead. She gave her own life for me.”
He looked taken aback for a moment, as if he didn’t know how to process this and maybe didn’t even believe it. “She was probably knee-deep in trouble,” he said, trying to reason through it. “All that revolutionary business. Would’ve gotten herself shot if she hadn’t—Not really surprising—”
“It just feels like—” Sigi broke off, as if deciding he wouldn’t understand.
He hugged her again, his eyes wide. “Sweetheart, your mother was crazy. Don’t feel bad about this. Don’t feel bad.”
“Aren’t you even going to mourn her at all?”
“We had quite a history,” he said heavily.
She just cried against his chest briefly, and he stroked her hair. He handed Nan her wineglass over Sigi’s shoulder, but he looked uncomfortable, as though he wasn’t used to sharing emotions with his daughter.
Nan shifted her feet, trying to seem invisible during this private moment. The apartment was disheveled, with shoes sitting in the middle of the floor and the remains of what looked like a small dinner party at the table and around the kitchen. Each wall was dominated by a large painting—an abstract, a portrait of him, a modernist café scene.
“Sig, do you need a place to stay?” he asked, his voice rough but gentle.
“No, I could use a little money, though. I don’t have anything. My camera, my clothes…”
“Money, camera, clothes. All you ever needed, right? You can take my camera or anything else. Look in the closet, see if any of Gretchen’s clothes fit you.”
Sigi wrinkled her nose. Whoever Gretchen was, she didn’t seem pleased at the idea of taking her clothes.
“Are you sure you don’t want to stay?” he continued. “For dinner, anyway. I’d like to know you’re safe. It’s crazy out there. I was just heading out the door to check on a friend. Can you hang around for a bit? Sit back, finish up the wine, eat anything you want. I’ll be back in no time.”
He opened a drawer and t
ossed her a pair of keys, which she didn’t catch and had to pick up off the floor. He grabbed his coat and paused before leaving. “I love you, kid.”
“I love you, too,” Sigi said. She looked pained as he closed the door, and took a deep, shuddering breath. “I knew he wouldn’t want to hear it,” she said. “He can’t deal with the bad stuff. He never wants to talk. I bet he doesn’t even have a friend to meet. He doesn’t want me to see him cry. He’ll go have a drink and talk to a bartender about it instead.”
“I understand,” Nan said. “I knew some of those men at the club. They’d come talk to me, and sometimes they’d comment that they could talk to me but not their own kids. I don’t know why that is.”
“Well”—Sigi wiped a few tears away—“should I look at Gretchen’s clothes?”
“Does he have a lot of mistresses?”
“A revolving door.” She took a long drink of wine. “In some ways, though, I’m comforted that he’s acting exactly the same as he always does, even as the world crumbles around him. Can you believe my mother married him?”
“I’ve seen stranger matches.”
“Oh, you would have stories about that, too.”
“So many. Thea tells them better, though.”
“I guess I’ve seen it all, taking my photographs, but I don’t take many of couples,” Sigi said. “Maybe I should. I like the old people sometimes. When they’re holding wrinkled hands together. It’s sweet. My parents would never last that long with anyone. Should I top off your glass?”
“I’m good.”
As Sigi started to walk toward the bedroom, she paused in the living room. The sofa faced the balcony. The entire wall was glass, filling the room with sunlight. All the furniture was angular and new. Sigi’s mother’s house had been full of older well-crafted wooden chairs and tables; this stuff was not so much crafted as designed, each lamp and table like pieces of a puzzle that you’d imagine might somehow fit together into a giant cube. Sigi paused and tapped her fingers to her lips.
“I could photograph you here,” she said. “If you still want me to photograph you.”
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