Words on Fire

“Sir …” one of the officers in the room murmured.

Rusakov released my arm but pointed outside. “I was told you’d arrested a smuggler in this home, an old woman? Perhaps one of you should go find her before I ask how this girl beside me was able to trick you both?”

The more senior of the Cossacks immediately trotted out the door, probably hoping Rusakov would target the other man left behind for having made such a critical error.

Or that he would target me instead.

I clutched my arm to my chest, somehow able to breathe again, though my tears continued to fall.

“Do you know why this was necessary?” he asked. “To punish this town as we have?”

“Because you’re cruel and take pleasure in our pain?” That’s what I wanted to say, but I didn’t. Just as I rarely said anything that I really wanted to say, and never spoke if silence was enough. I merely held the words inside me, to protect them from what others might do or think.

I wondered if my failure to speak was like an unread book, full of ideas that ought to be read, but living out its life in silence. The book had no control over who read its pages, but I did have control of myself. I had to speak up for what I believed in.

“The people here are innocent,” I whispered.

“No, they’re not. You are a smuggler, child, so surely you know how extensive the crime is. A few of you carry the illegal books over the borders, others hide them, others teach from them. One crime is the same as the other, and all must be shut down.” He crouched in front of me, piercing me with his cruel eyes. I fully expected to begin wilting in the heat of his stare and looked away in hopes of preserving the little courage I had left.

He sniffed. “You probably think that this has been a bad night, but that once morning comes, things will look brighter, and then your smuggling can continue as before. If so, then you are wrong, Miss Zikaris. Before we leave this town, we will have destroyed every illegal word and action here. And then we will move to the next town, and the next. Everywhere you smugglers go, I will follow, and I will bring fire and punishment with me. Do you believe me?”

I didn’t answer, I couldn’t.

“Look at me!” he demanded. I forced myself to obey him, and he repeated, “Do you believe me?”

Slowly I nodded, and I meant it. Books were important—I understood that now. Words were important and they had power and force, but not enough to overcome the Russian Empire or the size of their armies. We were attempting to stop a raging river with a thin barrier of ink and paper. We never had any chance of winning.

Rusakov stood again, hovering over me. As before, I felt his eyes looking down on me the way I’d feel the heat of the sun on my head. But I didn’t look up. I didn’t want him to see how afraid I was.

Rusakov grunted. “Your criminal parents clearly failed to teach you proper manners, Miss Zikaris. Do you not respect my authority? Do you not respect the law?”

“The law is wrong,” I said. The words had forced themselves out, unable to be contained any longer. And once unleashed, they continued to erupt from me, angry and determined. “What you’ve done here tonight is wrong, and I will not pretend to respect it.”

He smirked at me, obviously amused by my boldness, but not by my message. “You are the reason for tonight’s demonstration here. I know you are the one who brought the book to that wedding tonight. Did you get it from this home?”

“No.” I got it from a secret hiding place beneath this home, which in my mind was an entirely different place.

“Then where did it come from?”

“You searched this entire village for books tonight. I know how many you found, how many you burned. Why do you care about a single book given as a gift? Shut down one source and a dozen more will pop up in its place with fifty more book carriers determined to do their job.”

He nodded. “If that is true, then we must put our boots down on the people with greater harshness than we have already done. If you refuse to tell me the source for the book you carried as a gift tonight, I may have to continue burning this village. I cannot take the chance of having missed a source.”

I looked Rusakov in the eyes and steadied my voice enough to say, “Please don’t do that. The people here are good and are just trying to make a life for themselves.”

“Then let them live. Where did you get that book?”

If he thought I was incapable of telling a good lie, then he was mistaken. What else had my father devoted his life to but telling a good lie, whether as a street magician or a carrier, or even with the lies he had told me, to make me believe his life was as simple as he pretended it was? I had learned well.

“I brought it directly over the border from Prussia,” I said to Rusakov. “I’ve hidden my stash in the forest, above the village square. The woman who lives in this home gave me a blanket to deliver to the wedding as a gift, only a blanket. I added one of my own smuggled books to the gift. She didn’t know.”

“Go and find those books,” Rusakov ordered the Cossack who still remained in the home, then turned back to me.

“And you’d better hope they find some. Otherwise I’ll know you are lying, and we’ll start again with the questions. I will not be so merciful to you the next time.”

I sent out a silent prayer that Lukas had left the books where I’d last seen them, and more important, that he’d be far away from them before the officers arrived. I desperately hoped he would be. Because if not, they’d see the scars from where he’d been whipped and realize he’d been caught smuggling before. And this time, his punishment wouldn’t end with a simple whipping.

Nor would mine. Rusakov took my arm and led me outside, handing me over to a soldier guarding a prison wagon. “Put her inside,” he said. “We’re not finished with her yet.” I started to move forward, but he grabbed my father’s bag and lifted it from my shoulder. “And this is surely illegal too. Put it on the burn pile.”