Page 53 of The World That We Knew

Lea was in the house, asleep, or sleeping as best she could. She had bad dreams of bees and of those she had lost, dreams that had turned her hair white.

“We had no right to make you and she has no right to unmake you,” Ettie said.

Ava saw Azriel’s eyes flicker over her maker. “If I don’t stop you, you will die.”

She was strong enough, she could do so if she wished.

Ettie nodded. “And if I don’t stop you, you will.”

They exchanged a gaze, aware that they would leave each other to their own fates.

“You have fulfilled your part of the bargain,” Ettie assured her creation. “A mother could not ask for more. As soon as the girl is safe, don’t think twice. Run away.”

But the vow Ava had made was no longer a burden. It was a choice. She might have run if the bees had not changed her fate, but now she would stay. She had been wrong to try to gain more time on earth. That was not why she had been made, but perhaps the first human trait a creature such as herself would acquire was to be selfish. She was renouncing that now. She sat with her maker and they both wept because they would not see each other again. What had been created was alive. Ettie did not see clay before her, but rather a woman who had been made by women, brought to life by their blood and needs and desires.

Later, as the sun was breaking, after Ettie had gone inside, Ava made her way through the woods until she reached the bare reeds. The river was only a trickle now, splashing over the rocks. The fish were singing with their silver voices. It was a perfect summer day, despite the cruelty of the world. When the heron came, Ava bowed to him, then asked for one last favor.

Find him if you can.

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

THE BEAST

HAUTE-LOIRE, AUGUST 1944

ETTIE SLEPT MORE FITFULLY AS the day drew closer. It was hard to sleep after you had heard a prophecy, harder still when you believed it. Once Victor came for her, time moved in a rush, as if they had stepped inside a rocket ship that was rattling through the Milky Way, a journey that, once begun, could not be undone. She would be lingering on the road when the captain drove to a café, as he did every Friday. She was to convince him to let her into the car. Victor would be waiting for her, and if anyone could quickly get them away from the scene it was he. She knew what might happen with the captain. Victor had mentioned how she might hold the captain’s attention while the bomb was set in place in the tailpipe of his car, not quite able to meet her eyes as he spoke. She was then to escape from the car and run back to where Victor was parked.

Ettie brushed her glossy red hair, then chose the doctor’s wife’s black dress and slipped on the lucky red shoes. She hadn’t said goodbye to him. It was better this way. Instead she went to stand near a clutch of snowy white phlox Sarah Girard had planted in the last year of her life that were scattered beneath the trees. They had become a field of light. She closed her eyes and recited a section of the Amidah.

We hope all evil will be lost on earth.

The dusk was falling in ashy waves and the white flowers were turning blue when Ava came to stand beside her.

“You should leave,” Ettie told her. “You don’t have to be anyone’s slave.” She took Ava’s hand and shook her head. “You should listen to me, but you won’t.”

“You should listen to me,” Ava responded sadly.

They both knew that when Ettie left she would never return to this place. But she was not really here anyway, she was in the field with her sister.

She’d been there all along.

Victor dropped her off on the road and she stood there in the gloaming. They’d both had a case of nerves on the ride, which was not a bad thing, even though Ettie’s stomach was lurching so violently she had to stop so she could get out and be sick in a nearby jumble of marshy weeds. All the same, their nerves would serve to make them cautious, so fewer mistakes would be made.

Victor felt a stab of guilt once he’d let Ettie out on the road. He waited in the field, parked in the tall grass, ready to follow once the Milice captain had picked her up. Everyone had doubt at a moment like this, everyone had a stab of fear, but by then the captain’s car was headed toward the village and Ettie was standing in the road waving and there was no time for doubt. The car, a Delage sports car, with black and red paint and red leather seats, had belonged to the previous owner of the house. It pulled over and idled. To Victor, from the darkness of the field where he crouched behind the wheel of his stolen car, the sports car looked like a lizard. Ettie went over to talk to the driver. She was shaky on the high heels, but she quickly regained her balance. She walked around to the passenger seat and then it began. Victor’s hands were sweating as he followed the speeding car. He had a rifle and more explosives in the backseat and the detonator on his lap, wrapped in a cloth so nothing would jog it before it was time.

The captain had suggested to Ettie that they go back to his house. The Jew’s house where the gardens were in ruins and there were still piles of ash from all of the books he had burned. He told her she’d never been in a house like it and would be stunned by its beauty when he led her up to the bedroom where there were silk sheets. She convinced him to pull into a field. Why should they wait? For weeks, Victor had been teaching her to flirt, and she understood she must keep a smile on her face, even though she knew the captain had been responsible for forty souls that had been deported to Auschwitz. Victor had been funny and charming as he pretended to be a girl seducing an old man. You’re so handsome, he had crooned about their ugly, old target. I’m so lucky I met you. Come closer. Closer. They’d laughed over it, but now she felt sick to her stomach again.

As soon as they pulled off the road, the captain kissed her. She thought about the way she’d run when she’d left her sister behind. She had forced herself to go forward, even though it had become impossible to spy Marta when she looked back. Just the hem of her dress, her boots, her newly cut hair. Ettie twisted away now so she could whisper in the captain’s ear. Turn the car off, we will be here for a while. This was her reason to be alive, this was the reason she’d run into the woods.

By then Victor had crept near. The ignition was turned off, and as soon as the tailpipe cooled, he shoved the bomb in. His hands were dusted with gunpowder. This was it, the moment they had planned for.

The captain was pulling down her dress. He kissed her roughly as he ran his hands over her. He had her now, she belonged to him, but she didn’t feel any of it. She thought about the doctor’s guest room, where everything was in its proper place. A comb and brush on the bureau, a glass of water on the night table, a silk rug on the floor. She thought of his kindness when he leaned down to speak to his patients, the way he stood at the door and looked into the dark, the way he kissed her, as if she were precious, as if she might break.

“Wait,” Ettie told the captain. She smiled of course, as she’d been taught to do. “I have to get ready.” She wanted to step out to relieve herself. He told her to hurry, and she said she would. She wished she could stay and look into his eyes as he was dying, but that wasn’t the plan.

“I will,” she promised.

She got out and didn’t look back. She raced through the dark. Victor was gesturing to her to be faster; a police car had gone by, and he had a funny feeling when it slowed down after passing. Unused to the high heels, Ettie tripped as she ran. She fell, then got back on her feet, kicking off the shoes. She knew this was her fate, she was running into a field of grass, she was half-bird half-girl, flying.