Words on Fire

Just as Lukas had done back in the forest, I fell to my knees and finally gave in to the sobs that burst from inside me.

I wasn’t sure how long I sat there, staring at the remains of my home, the blackened shadow of what had been my innocent childhood, but it must have been a long time, for when I bothered to look, the sun had noticeably shifted in the sky.

Even then, I was so absorbed in my thoughts, in my pain, that I failed to hear the shuffling footsteps behind me at first. When I did, I turned to see Lukas walking up beside me, dragging his sack of books at his side. He looked at me, then at my home, then sat beside me, putting his arm around my shoulder.

It shouldn’t have been this way. I should’ve been comforting him. My heart hurt, it was true, but Lukas was so much worse. He couldn’t move a whisper in any direction, nor suck in a breath from the pain his back caused him.

Finally, I nodded at our barn in the distance. The word itself was perhaps too grand for the small shed it really was, but it was large enough to house some winter feed for our cow, or the cow itself on the coldest winter nights.

“We can rest in there.”

Lukas agreed, though he needed my help to get up again, and I carried both our sacks of books with me, one on my back and the other in my arms. Inside the barn, I patted down some hay to make a sort of bed for him, and once he lay on it, he was almost instantly asleep.

I sat with my back against one wall of the barn, staring at his stack of books, a jumble of thoughts in my mind at what he had just suffered for them, of what my parents had sacrificed for books like these.

And what would likely happen to me one day if I continued to smuggle.

I already had some idea. Tomorrow morning I was supposed to meet Officer Rusakov. He’d expect me to betray Lukas and probably wouldn’t let me go until I’d betrayed Ben and Milda too.

But I would not be there. As awful as it was to have ever considered Rusakov’s offer, after seeing what the Cossacks had done to Lukas, I knew now that I could never turn Lukas over to them.

Sometime tomorrow, Rusakov would figure out that I wasn’t coming, and he’d order my parents aboard the train to Siberia.

They were gone for good.

Tears welled in my eyes, even though I knew I’d made the right decision. It had to be, for how could I ever explain that I’d traded away the lives of my friends in exchange for their return? How could I ever face them again?

But of course, that was the point. I never would face them again. I never would see them again. Books had taken my family away and were keeping me from bringing them home.

The pain of such thoughts swelled inside my heart, so much that I knew I’d either burst with sadness, or begin running and not stop until I either reached Siberia or collapsed of exhaustion somewhere along the way. These were my last thoughts as I fell into a restless sleep.

And my first thoughts when I awoke. It was barely past dawn, I could tell that from the angle of the light seeping in through the cracks in our barn roof. Nearby, Lukas was still asleep, and I hoped he’d remain that way as long as possible. But until he awoke, I need some way of diffusing the deep sadness within me.

If Papa used distraction to create magic, then I needed a little of that magic to heal my heart too. Which meant I needed to distract myself. Anything. Just anything but having to sit here thinking of all that I had lost because of books.

Which, ironically, were the only things available for a distraction. Life was full of ironies lately.

In the sack, beneath those foul-smelling flowers, was the simple alphabet book.

Lukas mumbled something in his sleep, tried to roll over, then grimaced and remained where he was. I wondered what books were in Lukas’s pack, what he had taken a whipping for. Curious, I reached inside it to find out.

A thick book on top seemed to be a religious text of some sort, and two or three other ones seemed to be prayer books that the priest likely would have urged me to read for the sake of my soul. I figured that risking my life to bring these books to my countrymen had to be better for my soul than simply reading about good things. So I opened another book, but this one confused me. The words were arranged in short lines running down the side of the page like the letters themselves were art. It might take me time to read it, but Lukas was asleep, and I wasn’t going anywhere without him. I had plenty of time.

I wasn’t sure how many minutes it took simply to read the title of the book, but I finally deciphered the letters enough to understand that it was about a forest, such as the one where we’d just come from. I thought about the thick lush trees there, and the brilliant green foliage and grasses. I could imagine the forest as if I were still there, its crisp smell of pine, the spongy dirt beneath my feet. This was a waste of time. Why should I struggle to decode the words when I saw these images so clearly in my mind?

“I know that poem.” I looked over and saw Lukas was awake, though his face was twisted with the pain he must have been feeling. “That’s called a poem, Audra.”

“Oh.” I stared down at the book for a moment. “What is it about?”

Lukas reached for the book, and when I handed it to him, he described a forest that had once been thick and green, but now the tall trees had been cut to their stumps and the grasses were gone, leaving black, barren soil behind; life had abandoned it. “What do you suppose happened to this forest?” Lukas asked. When I couldn’t answer, Lukas read the words of the poe

m, “Long since destroyed, though no one knows wherefore.”

“Destroyed?”

Lukas closed the book and gave it back to me. “We’ve transported many copies of that poem, and for a reason. It’s about a forest, but it’s not about a forest. Do you understand?”

How was I supposed to understand that? Either it was about a forest or it wasn’t. Then my eyes brightened as the deeper meaning I’d been searching for took shape in my mind. “The tree stumps, bare slopes …” I lifted a page, feeling the crisp paper between my fingers and turning it over to a new page. “They’ve destroyed our country, like this barren forest.”