Now my sigh became a groan. “Thanks for telling me that, Lukas. But the soldiers ahead of us—”
“No, this story is about Rue and the snake! We’re not thinking of the soldiers right now. You see, although Rue understood the danger of fighting against a snake, she also knew that she had all the advantages. The snake is confined to the ground, able to see only the smallest piece of its world. But Rue can stand taller and higher, and she can see more than the snake even knows exists. She can see how much better her land might be if she could rid it of the snake. The snake has no hands for working, no feet for walking and running, but Rue does. All she needs is a plan.”
I looked down at my father’s satchel, thinking of the recipe I’d found inside his notebook. I needed a plan too.
“We should get some sleep while we can.” Lukas finished sealing the lid on his barrel and reached for my load of books, but I pulled them away.
“Maybe later. Perhaps while I’m waiting to sleep, I can read, just a little.”
It wasn’t just a little. I chose a book of fairy tales, stories not so different from those of Rue and the snake, with words I wouldn’t have been able to read at all a few months ago.Now I flew through them. That night, I devoured one story after another, of heroism, bravery, and nobility, often finding myself looking through the eyes of the characters as if I were the warrior, or the princess, or the trickster. I read until I couldn’t force my eyes to stay open any longer, until they ached from all they were absorbing. Even then, I shook my head, hoping for one more line, one more page.
I loved the feel of the paper between my fingers, the smell of the ink. Every word was a symphony, singing to me of other lands, of other people, of places where new ideas were encouraged, not made illegal.
Not here.
I shook my head again and forced myself to continue reading. Hopefully something in one of these books would tell me what to do when I was about to cross a border so dangerous that it very well might cost me
my life.
We only slept until midafternoon, and when I awoke, Lukas bought us some sausages to eat while we made the trek back to the border, hauling the barrels in our arms. My shoulders already ached from the effort, but we couldn’t drag them. They’d leave tracks.
“How often do you do border crossings?” I asked Lukas.
“Twice.”
My eyes narrowed. “Twice a week, or twice a month?”
“No, twice—this is my second time. I crossed for the first time last month.”
I nearly dropped the barrel I was carrying. “You’ve only done this once before now?”
“That’s what ‘this is my second time’ means, Audra.”
“You don’t know the safe places, the border guards to avoid or who can be bribed. I thought I was going with someone who’d done this enough to teach me what to do, not someone who was making up everything as he went along!”
Clearly irritated, with a huff he stopped walking and stared at me. “Every smuggling job is making things up. What works the first time might get you arrested the second time. So here’s what I can teach you: The safe place is where the border guards aren’t. Avoid all of them, attempt bribery as a last resort to being shot. And whatever you can do to get those books into the hands of other Lithuanians and stay alive in the process is the right thing! And, I should remind you, Ben wanted you left behind. I was supposed to be making this return trip alone!”
He was right about that, and probably right about everything else too. I mumbled an apology and while he took a breath to calm himself down, I said, “So we’ll keep going, yes?”
A beat passed. Then, “Yes.”
“Are these books expensive?” I’d seen how little Milda charged for the books that left her place, often nothing at all. But someone had to be paying for the printing.
“The church helps as much as it can,” Lukas said as he munched on one end of his sausage. “And there are Lithuanians here in Prussia who are living in exile. They donate a great deal of money to aid in our work.”
He walked at my side for several minutes more before he said, “I’m not as good at smuggling as I used to be.”
I stopped again. “What? Lukas, you’re very good at it!”
“No, not since I was whipped for it. The choices I make now are too safe, which makes them too predictable. That’s why I wanted to do this border crossing, to prove to myself that I still can. But the truth is, I wanted you to come back with me. I’m sure I’ll need your help.”
After all he’d done for me, I was more than eager to return the favor. I had plenty to prove to myself too. “How can I help?”
“You’re good at this because you think differently than the rest of us. If the logical thing is to turn right, you turn left and then suddenly it makes sense. I’m not here to teach you, Audra. You need to teach me.”
I held his words in my mind until we entered the woods on the Prussian side of the border and found our place to enter the river. From here, we could see the border guards on the other side already gathering for the night, just as Lukas had said. At least until it got darker, they were close enough to see one another and certainly they could hear one another.
Lukas was wrong about the way I made decisions—it wasn’t that I had a different logic than everyone else. It was that I had a different motive. From what I could tell, the object of most smugglers was to avoid, deny, and hide.