Under the Same Stars by Libba Bray(91)
“Oh, yeah!” She blinks up at the ceiling. “It was about these two girls. People thought they were witches because they liked to go off into the forest a lot. And then, one night, they went into the forest and never came back. Just vanished. That I remember.”
The electric feeling is back. “Did they disappear on the night of the winter solstice?”
Mama D’s eyes widen. “Oh my God … yes.”
“Did she tell you the girls’ names?”
“Sophie and Hanna.”
Miles grapples for his pen and throws open his notebook to a new page. “Ma, I need you to tell me anything and everything you can remember about Frau Hermann and this story.”
“Miles, what’s going on?”
“I’ll explain later. Can you just…?” He gestures with his pen.
“Okay. Uh … she said they were the best of friends, really close. And they were from a town that got bombed during the war, something with a K?”
“Kleinwald?”
“Holy … yes,” Mama D says.
Miles can barely write for his excitement. “Did she ever mention someone named Oskar Gerber?”
“No. She did say that she had a sister who died in the war. And there was an artist from Berlin, Egon—”
“Wagner?”
“Didn’t get a last name. He was an outsider. She said that some people thought he might be a double agent.”
“Is the treatment center still there?”
“It’s a fancy gym now.”
“Yay, progress,” Miles snarks. “Hermann was her name? One n?”
“Two n’s. It was her married name. At least, that’s what she told me. In the end, I wasn’t even sure about that.”
“You think she took on a new identity?”
Mama D shrugs. “Possible. She was pretty tight about her backstory. One time I was there and I saw that she had written vergib mir on a sheet of paper, over and over. That means ‘forgive me.’”
“Yeah, I know,” Miles says. He did not know this.
“The last thing she ever said to me was ‘It was all my fault.’ At the time, I thought she meant about telling Lena the story and upsetting her. But…” Mama D shrugs. “Like I said, everything about her existence felt more like a fairy tale than something real. It felt like she was trying to communicate to me symbolically, something shared between this lonely, sad middle-aged woman and this messed-up, insecure teenager. I’m sure she knew I was gay and twisted up about it. Later, I thought the story was her way of warning me about Lena. About not being so naive.” Mama D lets out a loud breath. “Anyway. I got into some serious trouble that summer, as you are aware, and we never spoke again. She left me a letter, though. With an acorn in it, which she told me was from the Bridegroom’s Oak, but again, who knows what’s true?”
This whole conversation has left Miles both excited and uneasy. “Do you still have the letter?” It’s a ridiculous question. Mama D is so sentimental she can’t part with anything and she’s disorganized enough to border on hoarder territory.
“All that crap from Berlin is in a box in the basement,” Mama D says, sipping her tea. “Good luck. Actually, if you find anything good, let me know. There might be some photos for this exhibition. The Kreuzberg punk years.”
“Will do.” He looks over his notes to make sure he’s covered everything. “Did she ever mention a Rudolf Jaeger?”
Mama D shakes her head slowly. “Not that I recall.”
“Okay. Thanks.”
“Who was he?”
“An SS officer. A scary dude, um, genocidal maniac.”
“She did mention an officer, yeah. Apt name.”
“Whaddya mean?”
“Jaeger,” she says, like he should know. “You’ve taken three years of German, right?”
“You and Chloe should hang out more.”
“What?”
“Nothing. What about Jaeger?”
“Jaeger. In German. It means ‘hunter.’”
* * *
Miles can’t text Chloe fast enough. Call me. Urgent.
“Hey! What is it?” Chloe says. “I was just about to go for a walk in the park with Denbele. Joyce said it’s okay as long we stay six feet—”
Miles trips over his words. “The-the-the tapes! Your Mormor’s story! The hare and deer—and the hunter! I know who the hunter is!”
“Miles. Miles. Slow down!”
He takes a calming breath. “Chloe. Mormor’s story. It’s not a fairy tale. I think it’s a code.”
* * *
They stay up all night listening to Mormor’s tapes, trying to construct a real-life narrative hiding beneath the fiction. Chloe pulls out a whiteboard and makes a chart. Saga and Freya = Sophie and Hanna.
“Saga and Freya are weaving messages—the forged documents that Josef Keller was talking about?”
“Seems reasonable.”
She writes it on the whiteboard.
“Maybe Oskar is the rooster and Jaeger is the hunter?” Miles says.
“Or Oskar is the hunter—remember, he was a top marksman.”