Under the Same Stars by Libba Bray(88)

“Letters are private things.”

“It means ‘forgive me,’ doesn’t it? What did you need forgiveness for?”

Jenny has never spoken this way to an adult who is not her mother. Frau Hermann’s earlier excitement drains away, leaving her face haunted. “It was all my fault. What happened. I’m sorry.”

Jenny doesn’t want to hear another word. “I have to go home now.”

Frau Hermann’s voice carries up through the hollow of the long, winding stairs. “Be careful, Liebchen. Frightened people can be dangerous.”



* * *



Jenny lies on her bed for hours. She can’t stop replaying the day. She wishes she could rewind time. It feels like she’s ruined everything.

The phone rings dully from down the hall. A moment later, Jenny’s mom is at her bedroom door. “Honey, there’s a call for you. Someone named Nina Hagen?”

Jenny bolts past her mother and grabs the phone, winding the long cord around the corner into the study, where she shuts the door around its bulk as best she can. The room is hush quiet, cushioned by the rows of books no one ever reads.

“Hello?” she says, sliding down the wall.

“I’m sorry I was so mean, Dallas,” Lena says.

“No. It’s me. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean … I’m…” Jenny blinks back tears. Vergib mir.

“That woman you saw is one of the bakery owners. They are opening one on Bernauer Strasse.”

A new bakery. Not open yet. Jenny feels so stupid. “I swear I wasn’t trying to spy on you.”

“I know. Let’s make up. Can you stay over Friday night?”

“Yeah. Yes!” She will figure out a way. She’ll sneak out if she has to.

“Rad,” Lena says in a surfer accent. “I’m sorry I wasn’t very nice about your friend. Tell her I’m sorry.”

“No. I think you were right about her. I think she’s a liar and she made that whole story up just to keep me coming around.”

“Another fairy tale, eh? Like that song she was singing.”

“Is that why you made that face? Is it dirty?” Jenny giggles. She wants to keep Lena on the phone for as long as possible.

Lena laughs back. It’s the best sound. “Nein. Just sentimental. An old German folk song. ‘Der Hase und der Hirsch.’ The hare and the deer.”

“That sounds ominous.”

“Ja. The hare and the deer play in the forest. They do not realize that a hunter is advancing. It’s very German.”

“Meaning?”

“The hunter always wins.”





THE TALE OF THE HARE AND THE DEER



Once upon a time there was a peaceable kingdom.

Perhaps. Or is that one more fairy tale we like to tell ourselves?

There was a mad king whose heart was a wizened lump inside his chest. The king was a tyrant. But he was only one man. And one man, even a king, can only do so much without others. Sometimes we imagine that we are powerless and that the machinery of the world is a monster we cannot stop. But no one is ever truly powerless. There is the life that happens to us. That we cannot control. But there is also life in how we respond to what happens to us.

Do you understand?

You will. In time.

Saga and Freya took refuge in the heart of the forest. They did not feel separate from the trees, the grass, the acorns, the fish and birds and tiny spiders. They knew themselves to be under the same stars as every other living thing on earth, no less, no greater than any other. A perfect symbiosis. All of their atoms connected in a state of perfect synchronism, of transcendence. Sometimes they quarreled. That is the nature of sisters. But in truth, they would die for each other.

Kill for each other.

One day, a little boy wandered close to the edge of the forest. So thin and pale he was like a piece of cellophane. The sisters recognized him as the son of a farmer they had once known, a boy called Josef. The farmer and his wife had been accused of being enemies of the state by the king. When the soldiers arrived to arrest them, the boy’s parents hid him behind a panel in a cupboard and told him not to come out until all was quiet. Such terrible things the little boy heard until he could bear it no more and he fell asleep beneath the coats. When he woke, it was quiet. He found he was alone. When Saga and Freya heard the boy’s story, they knew he would be killed if the king’s soldiers ever found him. They thought of what the tree had said to them about what is done to us and what we can do. They spirited the boy into the forest and begged the Bridegroom’s Oak to transform him.

“If I do this, I may not have enough magic to hide you for the entire day,” the tree groaned. “Your animal disguises will thin. Someone may see you in your true form.”

“Nevertheless, we must do it,” said Saga. She and Freya were changing every day. Yes, into the hare and the deer, to be sure, but also on the inside; they were becoming bolder. More attuned to pain and joy. One could argue that this bold compassion was their true form, the true form of every human when allowed to flourish. Did you know that there is a sound that is said to be the vibration of the universe? A sacred sound holding every one of us—sinners and saints and everything in between—within the palm of all creation.

I’m sorry. I forget what it is.