Words on Fire

We reached Tilsit shortly after dawn, and though I looked forward to sleeping, I was also eager to see the printer again and put in the order for books. To our surprise, he merely glanced at the titles and said, “You carriers are providing me a fine living. Are you sure this is all you want for today?”

I smiled at him. “Lower your prices and we’ll order more titles.”

He chuckled. “Maybe I’ll raise my prices. Where else will you go for books?” He laughed at himself and said, “I am a fair man, and my prices are generous because I wish to see Russia as far from my doorstep as possible. It would be worth it to me to never earn another ruble again if those soldiers were gone. But I warn you, some of these titles will make the tsar angrier with you than usual.”

Lukas smiled. “I hope so. When will these books be ready?”

The printer looked over his list again. “I’ll need a week. That should give you time to figure out how you’re going to bring all of these back with you.”

“Where should we stay in the meantime?” I wondered aloud.

“That reminds me,” the printer said. “I have a note for you.” He passed a paper over to me, something that might have seemed a small thing for anyone else, but I received it with a swell of pride. Only a few months ago, I wouldn’t have been able to read this paper, but he’d given it to me assuming I could read it, and now I could.

I unfolded it and immediately said to Lukas, “It’s from Milda! How did she—”

“She gave me that only yesterday, when she came in with a book order of her own,” the printer said.

Summarizing the note, I said, “Ben sent her over here, too, only she intends to stay. She’s found a little place to live a few streets away from here and has asked us to come.”

That was a relief, especially since I hadn’t had a decent bite to eat in days and we both knew Milda was sure to have food ready for us. When we arrived, she was just pulling out some potato pancakes, as if she’d been expecting us. I never did understand Milda’s instincts for knowing when guests were coming to eat, but her timing was almost always perfect.

“After you’re finished, I’ll show you around,” Milda said. “I’ve only arrived two days ago myself, so I’ve hardly had time to settle in, but this place was available immediately, so I took it. Perhaps you’ve already noticed the extra coffins in the back room.”

Lukas’s head popped up and our eyes met, not sure whether to be amused or horrified. He said, “Milda, is this an—”

“Undertaker’s home, or it was, before the undertaker himself died. There was no one to take over his business.”

A shiver crawled up my spine. “Is he still … here?”

“His body, or his soul?” Milda asked the question like either possibility could be true. But before I could reply, she said, “He had a proper burial, so let’s hope his soul went with him. The other coffins are empty. Don’t worry, I checked.”

Of course she did.

She continued to describe the home to us, saying, “I’d like to convert the parlor into some sort of shop. I’ll begin by selling off those extra coffins. Everyone needs one eventually! Or I could remake them into beds. Do you suppose …”

She puttered about, telling us her plans to expand the little home and make it a place of rest for smugglers—before their deaths and not after, she was careful to point out—and to use the shop to raise funds to purchase more books for those in Lithuania who could not afford them.

But my mind was already elsewhere, on how to get all the books we had ordered back into the country. We had twice the number of books to carry as we’d brought across the border before, and the river water was so icy cold by now, I dreaded having to cross that way.

There had to be an answer.

And while Milda pulled out the ingredients to bake bread, I remembered the second issue on my mind. I reached into the shoulder bag for my father’s journal and opened it to the last page of notes he’d made, the page with the recipe. I said, “Milda, do you think you could help me get a few things?”

She glanced up, midway through sifting a cup of flour. “Such as?”

“Two of them are the same cooking items you have there, sugar and baking soda. And I need some cotton fabric, if you can spare any. The final item is harder: saltpeter.”

Milda arched a brow. “Saltpeter?”

“Surely some of the farmers in this area will have it. Maybe if we ask nicely.”

“Saltpeter?” she repeated, more suspicious than before. “What are you making?”

“My father’s final trick before he was arrested. Milda, if this works, it could save our lives one day.”

“Well, I’m in favor of that.” Milda sighed. “All right, then I will find you some saltpeter.”

It took her three days, but finally she located a farmer who made saltpeter from his cow’s manure and sold it as a powder to blacksmiths for creating gunpowder. Milda clearly hadn’t known that was the use for saltpeter when I’d first asked her for it.