Under the Same Stars by Libba Bray(13)

“Sophie! Let it go!” Hanna called.

“I’ve almost got it!”

She stooped to retrieve the crown just as the metal teeth of an armored car crested the top of the hill, going airborne with speed.

“Sophie!” Hanna screamed.

The Kommandeurwagen was going far too fast to stop. Sophie looked up, frozen with fear and awe. Hanna yanked Sophie to the side seconds before the car swept past so close that a breeze rippled through the white blouse of her uniform. The Kommandeurwagen growled to a stop and reversed. It idled beside the girls, engine purring. From the cool dark of the back seat, an officer’s face appeared at the open window. He was a young man, perhaps thirty, in a crisp gray uniform glinting with brass. He might have been handsome except for his eyes. They were the palest blue, nearly opalescent. His gaze was keen. Sophie felt marked by them.

“Guten Abend, Fr?uleins. Are you all right?” His voice was steady. Calm. As if he were used to asking questions and waiting for responses.

“Guten Abend. Ja, Herr Kommandant,” the girls mumbled back.

“Our enemies are all around us. It is up to every good German to be aware.” There was a deceptive ease to the commandant’s casual delivery, like a lullaby skipping across the edge of a razor.

“Yes. We will. Thank you, Herr Kommandant,” Hanna said.

The commandant raised his arm. It cast a shadow upon the sunny road. “Heil Hitler.”

“Heil Hitler.”

The commandant gave the slightest nod, then leaned back against the seat and was swallowed in shadow once more. “Fortfahren,” he said. The vehicle juddered forward, followed shortly by a convoy of eight Kübelwagens filled with soldiers. As the last truck roared down the road, one of them called out, “Don’t play in the road, Liebchen! It’s a lot more dangerous than the enemy will ever be!” The soldiers’ laughter lingered on the warm breeze.

Hanna swiped road dust from her blue skirt. “I saved your life. You would’ve been ground into flour under those wheels!”

“I, Sophie, Queen of the Forest, Priestess of the Norn, am in your debt.” She bowed low. The crown tumbled from her head once more.

Hanna plunked it onto Sophie’s head. “Hold on to it, eh? I’m not saving you twice!”





* * *



At the edge of town, the girls hopped off their bicycles and walked the rest of the way. They passed the mechanics shop owned by Oskar’s family. Hanna’s older brother, Karl, worked a wrench around the wheel of a motorbike. Over the summer, he had grown taller and broader in the shoulders. His days spent hiking with the Hitler Youth had left his skin browned, his hair bleached by sun.

He looked up and Sophie caught her breath. His eyes were the same stormy gray as Hanna’s. “Did you get into a fight with a pasture?”

“What?” Sophie said.

He pointed to her head. Embarrassed, she removed the flower crown.

Oskar laughed with more gusto than was necessary. “Ha! A fight with a pasture! Good joke, Karl!”

“Hush, Oskar!” Hanna scolded.

“Is the Norn priestess going to curse me?” Oskar teased. “Oooh! I’d better be careful!”

“The Norn don’t curse people. They only decide fate,” Leon said, pushing his glasses up onto the bridge of his nose, where, like a deserting army, they refused to stay. Leon was Karl’s best friend and, as he was quick to tell anyone, “a serious scholar.” He sat on a stool in the corner of the shop reading a book on chemistry, a subject he hoped to study along with poetry at university come fall. For now, though, he worked for a dry cleaner, where they were always scolding him for reading poetry when he should’ve been working. Leon’s mouth stretched into a sly smile. “So, how is it going with the Bridegroom’s Oak, ladies? Any luck?”

Klara, the gossip. Hanna shot Sophie a look that said, You see?

“I don’t know what you mean,” Hanna said with a tone that dared anyone to defy her.

“It would have to be forest magic for Sophie to find a boy,” Oskar sneered. “She’s skinny and her father was a communist.”

“Pacifist,” Leon corrected him.

Sophie looked down at her shoes, silent.

“Shut up, Oskar!” Hanna shot back. “Your mother still draws your bath at night.”

Oskar’s cheeks reddened. “What of it? She loves me.”

Karl waved the wrench. “Oskar, the bike? Ja?”

“Bikes are less trouble than girls,” Oskar mumbled, and bent to tighten a lug nut.

“Good luck with the Bridegroom’s Oak, ladies. Let us know if you get a proposal, eh?” Leon teased, making Oskar and Karl chortle.

“Why do you let them treat you that way?” Hanna chided as she and Sophie walked their bicycles through town toward home. “I can’t always fight your battles for you. You have to stand up for yourself.”

“I never know what to say,” Sophie said glumly.

“You? You always have the words. What about all of those stories you make up?”

“That’s different. In the forest, I’m different.” In the forest, under the open arms of the Bridegroom’s Oak, Sophie felt brave.

“You’re going to have to take the magic out of the forest, Sophie. Be strong.”