Words on Fire

I forced myself to smile, though it surely looked stiff and unnatural … and suspicious. My heart was pounding so loud in my ears it was all I could hear—could he hear it too? So I spoke even louder to cover up my terror. “I’m a girl who can do magic. So I propose a game. Tell me where I’ve hidden the coin beneath these three cups and I’ll answer all your questions far better than the old woman inside.”

He shifted his rifle into h

is other hand, making sure I saw it. “I have better ways to make you answer my questions, girl.”

I swallowed that threat down with another smile. “So you think I can outsmart you with a simple magic trick?”

The second officer ducked his head outside. “What’s this?”

The first man pointed to me. “She’s offering to trade information for a bit of magic.”

The second officer grinned. “I have a daughter about your age who once saw a magician perform on the streets of Kaunas. She’s been fascinated with magic ever since.”

She had almost certainly seen my father. I hoped he would be proud of me now. Not my courage, for if he knew how badly my legs were shaking, he’d know I had none. But perhaps of my skills as a magician.

In my left hand, I raised a coin. “Watch this carefully and tell me where it is when I’m finished.” Then I set it on the railing of the fence and covered it with the center cup. With my eyes on the men, I began switching the places of the cups. The railing was narrow enough that sometimes almost half of the cup crossed past the edge of the beam, which worked out well for me. I knew the soldiers were watching for the coin to drop to the ground, but it wouldn’t. I felt when the coin dropped and immediately caught on my father’s magic ring—my father’s magnetic ring. I folded it inside my palm and continued stirring the cups around.

When I’d finished, I said, “Guess correctly the first time and I’ll answer every question you have. Guess correctly the second time and I’ll answer three questions. But if you don’t guess it, I will leave without answering any questions, agreed?”

They grunted, certain they would guess the correct cup. The first officer pointed to the center cup. I lifted it, and naturally the coin wasn’t there.

“Idiot!” his companion said, then pointed to the cup last in line. I lifted it, too, and now came the trickiest part—replacing the coin in my palm to make it look as if it had been there all along.

I said, “Thank you for playing, but the coin is here.”

I lifted the third cup with all the fingers of my right hand, dropping the coin to the railing as I did, and there it was when the soldiers saw it.

But the first man said, “You’ll still answer our questions, girl.”

Which I’d expected would happen. So I backed up. “One more trick first. Watch what happens when I lift this.”

I raised the disappearing cloth. The idea was to replace one person with another while the cloth was lifted, but I didn’t have that luxury. Instead, I hooked the bar over the top of the branch of an overhanging tree, then immediately turned to run. I figured it’d give me only a few seconds’ start, but that would have to be enough.

Except that the instant I turned, I bumped directly into a third soldier who’d come up behind me.

Rusakov.

He grabbed my arm and, without a word, dragged me with him through the cloth, then up the stairs into Milda’s home, dropping me on the wood floor near her fireplace. The other two officers had run in ahead of us and now looked at each other, silently asking where Milda was. Then I saw the expression exchanged between them, an unspoken agreement to say nothing to Rusakov about how an old woman escaped while they were distracted by a magic trick.

If they would say nothing, neither would I. But I did have to defend myself.

“It was only a little fun,” I began. “Just a few tricks.”

“No trick can save you now.” Rusakov crouched low and said, “Everything that has happened tonight is your fault, a consequence of your crimes. Yet one question remains. Will you at least save yourself?”

I lowered my eyes. He was right: That was the only question that mattered now. Milda was gone, Lukas was emptying out the books from beneath this very room. But would I do what was necessary to save myself?

I was told to stand again, and when I did, Officer Rusakov walked a full circle around me. “Two days,” he said. “Were you not told to meet me in two days?”

“Only if I had names for you,” I said, my fists clenched tight in hopes that would give me courage. “Which I didn’t.”

Rusakov wasn’t impressed. “We both know that is a lie, and a poorly told lie at that. I can see in your face that you know a great many names. Those who hide illegal books, those who teach from them. Those who smuggle them. Aside from your own name, of course … Miss Zikaris.”

He saw my burned arm and clutched it with his hand, then squeezed until tears flowed down my cheeks. “How will you carry books with a terrible burn like that?”

I remained silent. I wanted to say that it didn’t matter how I carried them, only that I would continue to do so as long as I had any strength for it.

But I didn’t say that, because it would almost certainly prompt Rusakov to guarantee I was no longer able to carry books, and I didn’t want to know what that would mean for me. Besides that, I barely could speak with the way he was twisting my burned arm.