Words on Fire

Ashamed, I lowered my head and nodded again. Milda only pretended to be mad, to keep the soldiers away. But in admitting this, I was sure she would think I was truly as unbalanced as she pretended to be. And maybe I was.

I knew the characters who spoke in my head weren’t real, of course. But thinking of them kept me company at night before I fell asleep, and sometimes they would whisper the words they wanted me to put into their stories. Sometimes I’d wake up in the night and search my alphabet book for the way to write those words. And then the characters would whisper even more.

Milda seemed to understand that. “You are a writer, Audra. You are meant to create with words, not simply absorb them.”

I shook my head. “I’m not very good.”

“You are good enough to have characters come alive in your mind, and that is no small thing,” Milda said. “I wonder how you must feel to know that these characters belong to you, and to you only. How it must be when they visit your imagination in hopes that you might bring them to life for the rest of the world.”

I glanced up. “By writing them on paper?”

“Yes.” Milda handed me my story. “You brought these characters alive for me, and now they are my friends too. But until I read your words, they never existed. You were born for books, Audra. To read them, to create them, and to save them.”

A short silence followed while I stared at my papers and thought of all that Milda had said. I didn’t know if she was right, that I was born for books, but I certainly was coming to love them. Perhaps one day I would create a Lithuanian book that could be shared all over the country, a story that would do for others what Milda’s books had done for me.

Until then, I had other work to do.

“I want to deliver books again,” I said. “Please, Milda.”

Now her smile faded. “It’s not safe. There has been a greater Cossack presence in town this month. I cannot stop those who come into my shop to buy them, but to deliver one …”

“If people are going to get the books anyway, let’s do it the safest way possible for everyone. Let me deliver them.”

She sighed. “All right. Get your father’s bag. No one should pay any attention to that. Perhaps it’s time to start again.”

I couldn’t have raced up the ladder fast enough.

At first, she let me take only one or two at a time, simple deliveries around the village, and never to anyone’s home. Instead, I’d leave the books at prearranged drop sites, at the base of an overgrown gravestone or behind a loose rock in a stone wall, or inside the hollow of a tree. I never knew who came to pick up the books and I never asked. I didn’t want to know, just as I didn’t want them to know my name.

But we were still left with the problem of a diminishing supply of books. Milda’s collection was half what it had been when I first met her.

“Is there no word from Ben or Lukas?” I asked.

“None,” Milda said. “Let’s hope it means they’ve been busy.”

“Then why aren’t they asking for my help? Autumn is passing fast and soon it will be too cold for smuggling.”

“We hope so!” Milda saw my surprised reaction and added, “We want ice on the soldiers’ noses if they go out, deep snow they must trudge through on their patrols. We want freezing rain that makes them so miserable that they stay in their barracks, or near the public fires in the villages.”

“But if we smuggle, then there’s ice on our noses, or freezing rain on our clothes!”

Milda grinned. “Aren’t we lucky to be stronger than the soldiers?”

“We can’t wait for winter. Another month and your books will be gone!” Almost without thinking, I added, “If Ben won’t bring the books, I’ll go to Prussia and get them myself.”

Milda drew back, her eyes wide with alarm. “You have no idea how dangerous a border crossing can be, Audra. The soldiers know where our books come from, so they watch the Prussian border with the eyes of an eagle, always listening carefully for the smuggler’s footsteps or following his tracks. No one may ever have the talent for it that your father did, not even Ben. Let’s be patient awhile longer. More books will come.” Milda set her hands on her lap and let out a sigh. “I do have one more request. It was for a prayer book, the one with the green fabric binding. There is one last copy below. Will you get it?”

Of course I would. I lifted the hidden stairs and raced down the ladder to find the book. I didn’t need Milda to describe it for me any longer. I could read the titles well enough now to know what I was grabbing. I held up a candle and passed it from book to book, looking for a match for the letters forming inside my head.

Except I didn’t find it. Or rather, before I found it, I came across the book I had delivered to Milda after my parents’ arrest, the one with the aged black leather binding and the lock on the end. I pulled it off the shelf and sat down on the stool, using the candle to better examine the lock.

When I’d given it to Milda, she’d asked for the key to the book, and Lukas had even shaken out the bedsheet to be sure it hadn’t fallen inside. There was no key. But the package had traveled some distance in my arms, being used as a pillow, breaking my fall when I’d jumped into the ravine, and nearly toppling with me into the river. If there had been a key, I easily could have lost it. And I’d never find it again. Which meant this book would never be opened, not unless I broke the lock, and I couldn’t stand the thought of doing that.

I turned it to its side, but if there had ever been a title, it had worn away. I couldn’t even tell what the book was about.

“What’s taking so long?” Milda called.

I replaced the book on the shelf and then continued to examine the other titles until I found the one Milda had requested. When I brought it back up the ladder, I found her waiting with a crocheted quilt and some ribbon.