Words on Fire

I didn’t dare walk in the daytime. If it wasn’t dangerous enough to be a smuggler, I was now an official fugitive of the Russian Empire. Unless there was no other choice, I wouldn’t risk showing my face in daylight.

Instead, I traveled by dark, guided only by the moonlight, or the stars if the moon had yet to rise. The autumn weather was rapidly becoming colder and the nights were much too quiet, but it was safer this way. I might trip over a fallen branch or accidentally step into a pond—and I did both several times—but that was better than being spotted by a patrol of Cossacks, all of whom I assumed had been told to watch out for me.

The first night was the worst, an echo of the beginning of summer just after my parents’ arrest, how terrified I’d been, how certain I was that my next step would surely be my last. I’d known nothing of the larger world, nothing even about the package I’d been carrying in my arms.

I vaguely wondered what had happened to that book. I couldn’t imagine that Milda had given it to anyone. Considering that it was still locked, who would want it?

And I had the key for it now, I was sure of it. But the key without the book was no more good to me than the locked book without a key. The one needed the other.

By the second night of walking, the burn on my arm had begun to fade, though the memories of how I got the burn never would. I had plenty to drink from the river that accompanied my trek but little to eat other than the occasional wild berry patch or evening primrose that my mother used to find in the forests for salads. Hunger became my constant companion.

And with every step, I longed to know if Milda was safe, to know what had become of Venska following the night of burning, as I would always think of it. And to see if any of her books had survived that night. Those were the questions that made me put one foot in front of the other hour after hour.

By the third night, I felt half-starved and beyond exhausted, for I never slept well while hiding in the daytime. To keep myself awake, I began thinking of Lukas’s stories, of the snake and bear, of Rue and her father, and the boy. By now, I understood who all of them were.

Rue was me, but she was also all Lithuanians.

The snake was meant to represent the Russians, who wanted our land for themselves and who would trick us, threaten us, or even injure us to obtain it.

I was fairly sure that the bear was the smugglers, or maybe it was simply Ben, and Lukas was obviously the boy. The boy who had told his truth to a talking frog and no one else.

A frog that didn’t exist.

Which probably meant that Lukas had never told anyone the truth about where he had come from. I wondered if his parents had been book smugglers, like mine. Or maybe they were simply smugglers. If so, it was no wonder he had been sensitive about being called a thief.

I decided that when the time was right, I’d ask him more about his life. Maybe it wouldn’t be the same as confessing to a nonexistent talking frog, but I hoped he’d talk to me.

When it became light enough that I had to hide, between naps and small forages for food, I read from my father’s notebook, or pulled out the paper and pencil that had been in the shoulder bag and worked on my story, writing my ideas for what Rue might do to help the boy and the bear drive the snake out of the land. For in his retelling, Lukas seemed to have forgotten the reason why he began telling me the story in the first place. It was because Rue was a girl who could do magic.

And so would I.

Late the following night, I stepped back into the village of Venska, Milda’s town. It was eerily quiet here. I’d arrived too early for the farmers or the bakers, and in the stillness of the air, I could easily catch the bitter smell of the fires that had torn through here. I didn’t go down any of the side roads to see the damage for myself, but it appeared that the townsfolk had begun rebuilding the homes of those in need.

The homes would repair easily enough, but it was the people here I worried about. Safely inside their newly repaired homes, would they want their books back? Surely not. Surely the Russians had proven that the price for owning a book was too high to pay a second time.

Which meant as far as this village was concerned, book smuggling had probably been ended for good. It infuriated me to think that Rusakov might have won here.

Milda’s home had been burned too. Not all of it, but too much to ever be reclaimed. Her wood roof was entirely gone, and all of her store and its contents. The walls of her home were made of brick, so they had survived, but from where I stood, there didn’t appear to be anything inside worth saving.

I was too tired and hungry to cry for all that she had lost, but my heart hurt as much as if I had. Milda had been punished for something that should never have been a crime. I hoped she was all right. Desperate to see her again, I leaned against a tree near the front of her home to wait for the town to awaken.

Or, more hopefully, to watch for any sign of Milda. Surely she was still here, somewhere, watching for me to return.

But when the sun began to rise, her house remained as dark as ever. Gradually, the town came to life again, but Milda’s home did not. She wasn’t there.

She must have been captured. Of course she would have been. Milda didn’t move fast and she wasn’t used to evading soldiers. Even if she had escaped, she wouldn’t be here watching for me to return, for she likely didn’t believe I ever would.

I finally took a chance and entered Milda’s home. I didn’t dare call her name, or rather, I was terrified to call her name and have the silence answer me.

Indeed, at the front of the home, there was nothing but ash and a few items recognizable to me only because I’d seen them so often before. I wouldn’t have known what they were otherwise.

The fire must have cooled as it went to the back of her house. Surprisingly, a storage trunk remained there, and a traveling cloak, though its bright colors had been dimmed by smoke and ash. The hidden staircase was scorched but not burned through. Was it possible it had survived? If so, that must be where Milda was!

I lifted the lowest stair, then peered down below, wishing it weren’t so dark. But I needed to look. I lit a candle, then descended the ladder, and my heart sank when I saw Milda’s shelves. As I’d feared, they were completely bare, including the locked book I’d brought here from my parents. I hoped the shelves were empty because Lukas had successfully rescued all the books, but I worried that the soldiers had gotten here first.

I explored the rest of the secret storeroom, searching for anything to offer me hope, though I couldn’t begin to imagine what that could po

ssibly be. How could I ever find hope in such an empty place, knowing what had been here once, what these rooms had meant to so many people?