The Lake

The Window had gone missing. This had made Boy frantic, and he'd searched for it the night Alba went missing as Frau Holda lit candles for the windows to help Alba home. After a few days Boy realized he needed to make a new plan... Something without the window.

Boy took a photo for Alba. He said she'd want it to remember, because the errand would take years.

He had made a lunch.

Actually Frau Holda made it, but Boy would tell you differently because of the level of care he had to take in instructing her what exactly must be in the sandwich, and how, carefully, it should be assembled and packed with some fruit.

Boy took it with him down to the side of the lake.
He spent an hour there, telling the lady where it was she needed to be waiting, and explaining when she must be there. It was very serious. Then he took the half of the sandwich he hadn't eaten and threw it into the lake. That's when he took out the camera, just before she left on her errand. Boy would say the splash in the water was when she waved. Boy walked back to the house.

Holda asked him why he kept throwing his sandwiches in the lake.
Boy told her the lady was his friend, but even so it was right that he should offer tribute when he asked her for favors... that's just how it was done.
“What did you ask for?” Holda asked him.

“I asked her to help Alba.” Boy said.

Holda's expression changed. She put an arm around him and hugged him, “My brother Japhy used to make sandwiches for Alba's mother when they went on trips.”
Holda smiled, “She liked them the same way you do.”

Boy nodded, “She still does.”

.

Through the Looking Window

Alba really woke up halfway through the window.
It started simply enough... as these things will. She half-rolled out of bed expecting to find the floor, and then presumably the wash room. She'd just gone down to rest her eyes. She'd had a strange dream... there were voices somewhere that she couldn't quite hear, and a train. A very horrible train headed into a fire, and there was a rainbow of milk and castles made of ice.

Boy had been playing with Olaf's window again, which Jacob had found in the remains of the burned out barn as they got ready to rebuild it.
“It's magic, like the lady on the front of the Argo,” Boy had told her when she wondered aloud why it wasn't burnt like everything else. Boy had been reading a lot lately. He was allowed to read these books because he was so much older than Alba he told her, having been planted before she was born. Alba asked what he thought of Homer and the rest, and he told her, “I don't know... I'm only seven.”

She didn't think the window would be talking to her anytime soon, and she said as much.
“I do,” he responded. That made her stop. He was cut from a tree, and he talked to her... but is that what he'd meant? She was glad his arm was grafting – it was amazing what Ethel and Frau Holda had been able to do... his new hand looked so much like his first. Each time they changed the burlap tied around it he seemed to be able to use it more.

Alba tucked the window away when he was distracted. She didn't get cross with him for playing with it like she did before... she just, she didn't want him getting into anything.

Alba asked him if he wanted to play a game. Irenka had brought over one that was new. It was a money game, and you tried to buy real estate and then charge other people rent. Boy said he didn't enjoy it much. “If things happen over and over, I'd rather live it then pretend it. That's more fun,” he shrugged. “Besides,” he said wistfully, “You can change when you live.”

Alba took the window and headed upstairs.

“You should close it first,” Boy warned her very seriously, “...before your nap.”

Alba trudged up the stairs and into her room. “She never listens, Cadejo” Boy said, “And I don't like where she's going. I hope she's ok.” Cadejo whined, flipping the bone he'd been trying to gnaw on to one side and laying his chin on it, yawning.

Alba wasn't taking a nap. She just dropped the window frame against the bed, and then looked at her pillow and decided maybe it wasn't such a bad idea after all... Just to close her eyes for a second. Her foot knocked the square wooden frame, but she let it hit the ground as she fell onto cool sheets and a goose feathered oblivion.

Her eyelids fluttered and she was in a fog. It was cold, and she pulled her blanket up around herself. It looked like a bright red overcoat. It was night and the stars were out, but it was really early afternoon, she knew that. She heard water, something calling to her. She felt something watching her.

“Be careful, Alba,” her father told her.
“I will, dad,” She promised him sleepily as she got up to go to the wash room. That's when it happened - Alba saw the floor of her room rush up and pass her. Wind caught her hair. Her feet kicked through a nothingness that was bright, sunny and blue.
Alba landed none too comfortably in an empty field of grass with sun in her eyes. Above her she could see a square in the sky that looked like a patch of her ceiling.

She had no idea where she was.

Things We Lost in the Fire

Alba had gone out.

She went to the Houselands, looking through the sticks for Olaf. She didn't feel comfortable around some of the new neighbors. Some distant relatives, but mostly strangers were coming over from the Old Country more and more frequently. Most of them were average, really. To tell the truth it was just Mrs. Pithiviers. Everyone liked her but she made Alba feel like she was being cut up into little nasty bits every time Mrs. Pithiviers looked at her with that smile full of teeth.

“I don't like her,” the New Boy had agreed.

Alba suspected he was just saying it out of solidarity, but then he said, “Her house isn't really candy, no matter what she tells them, and she knows that. She is bad.”

So Alba had gone out... She'd invited the New Boy, even invited him to Mr Schonberg's store for ices, but he said he had something important to do that day. Lately that meant elaborate constructions of bed frame parts, tin cans and pillows attached together with colored yarn in the basement.

So Alba had gone out.

She wished she hadn't. She cried when she thought about it that night in the basement. But she had, and she couldn't change that, and there it was.

When she came back there was screaming.

You could see the smoke for miles... Frau Holda and Kacper were struggling with something, dragging it away from the barn on the far side and beating a fire out with blankets. Jacob was yelling orders to everyone, directing buckets of water to the barn. Irenka and the children were helping to carry water. The Cats were everywhere, jumping underfoot and looking scared, lost. One had lost some hair.

Alba ran up to the barn but the heat was too intense and she fell back... “Where is Muselon?” she yelled to Jacob, but he didn't know.

Someone was running across the yard with a full bucket of water and their foot kicked a wooden toy car. Alba froze...

“Where is Boy?” she said, mostly to herself. Alba turned around looking for him but couldn't see him and she screamed it again. Ethel, the nice lady from down the road was there with a sudden hand on her shoulder. She pointed and Alba followed her gesture to Kacper, as Alba realized with horror what he and Holda had been dragging from the barn.

She ran up to them and at first Boy seemed right... he was talking, but he was covered in soot and his skin looked dry as kindling.

“I saved Cadejo for you,” Boy said, talking about a bundle of rags he clutched against himself. As Alba knelt down, something wriggled out of the rags and barked. It was a dog, and it licked Alba's face.

“Where did this come from?” she asked.

The Boy looked at her with something like relief ... maybe a little pride, “You can really see him?”

“Don't talk, just rest” Kacper told him, still propping him up as he lay in the grass and making sure he was getting enough sun.

“What happened?” She asked Holda.

“She did it,” Boy tried to point to the barn but the hand which had held Cadejo was burnt black. As he raised his hand it snapped off at the wrist and the arm split, groaning, cracking. Ethel screamed, Cadejo barked, Holda whispered to her dead mother and Alba stared in shock. Kacper pulled him up, wrapping a rag tightly around the arm. He said they needed to get inside the house. Alba saw him step on the hand, crushing it into cinder and ash in the grass. She screamed insensibly for him to stop. She tried to gather the parts together but as she touched each piece it burst into ashes, staining her fingers black with soot.

“No, dear...” said Holda, taking her shoulders, “It's all right.” her voice was uncertain, as if talking through her thoughts, “He's not a real boy yet. We have some of the cedar left... It could be fresh enough, we can make him another hand...”

“Yes,” Ethel nodded in appraisal, “His craft is old, but I should be able to help... I may have something back at the house.” She left to get supplies.
Mrs. Pithiviers was in the distance, talking through her grief in circles to Jacob, something about filling her lantern oil. No one was really listening. Alba locked gaze with her red, tear-stained eyes and saw the concern fall away like a mask, “...if only someone had been watching him... maybe then...” She was an image of piety and sorrow as she put a hand back to Jacob's shoulder and commanded his attention anew.

"She hates me because I know it's not candy,” Boy said as they carried him in a blanket.
“Shush” Holda told him, “no one hates you.” He said he was thirsty.

Holda and Ethel worked on him into the night. Jacob brought some tools from the shed after the barn was put out. They never did find Muselon or any part of her. “She went through the window, ” Boy had said, but he had been in and out of consciousness since the sun went down. Alba went down into the basement with Cadejo, and discovered Boy had taken the legs from her old brass baby bed, making it into a dog bed. Cans of food were attached by bits of colored yarn. A note read, “Blue is for Tuesdays.”

“Oh! I want a lobster claw!” she heard Boy holler upstairs. The others alternated between telling him he was being very brave and listing things that a five fingered hand could do better than a claw.

Alba had checked on him, but couldn't bring herself to stay up there right now. She sat down, fed Cadejo, and cried a little while brushing soot from her dress.

The Ardennes

Alba had found the New Boy playing with Olaf's window a few times after she'd brought it back.
She was very stern with him, and told him that it belonged to a friend of hers, and it wasn't a toy, while hiding it as best she could in a variety of places.

"I know that," the New Boy said. He was busy with something very important, and besides it was his window too. She corrected him and resolutely declared that she would hear nothing else on the topic.

A few mornings later she had been milking Muselon, and was getting ready to take a bucket of milk inside before tending to the chickens for the Egg Money.
The New Boy burst into the barn, which was strange enough, yelling, "It's time! It's time - Hurry! You have to help him!"

Alba stared at him.
The New Boy was frantic. Hardly rational. He ran up to her grabbing her wrist, "I'll help, hurry! Time is different there..." The Boy plunged her hand into the bucket.

Alba gasped. The bottom of the bucket was freezing cold and dry -maybe even windy. She felt something. "Grab him!" The New Boy yelled at her.
Alba's hand came back up pulling a rough green fabric attached to something heavy. There was the sound of an explosion and she screamed, knocking the pail over.

The milk drained into the hay... The New Boy said, "That's ok. I think it's ok." He looked up at her and said it was nearly lunchtime, asking if they could make some sandwiches.
The bucket was empty.

Alba changed her clothes and they ate at the stump, and she asked him about everything but he pretended not to know what she was talking about. "We didn't have any water," he said, "but I think it was ok."

**********

Years later when Alba was married, while sitting on their porch and watching their children play with Azeban in the yard, Mitch would turn to her and ask if he had ever told her that story about Belgium. He wouldn't have. He'd mention how this one time, under fire, he'd found himself crouching over a bit of melted snow near what had been the cooking fire before shells started falling. He'd tell her a little about the war, about ghost stories, about being sure he'd seen guys from his battalion with some woman looking back at him. He'd say he found out later that they'd all already been hit. He'd have a strange expression and mention the archer's bow he thought she'd been aiming at him.
He'd tell her he got distracted. That he heard, well he thought he heard, Alba's voice, and for just a moment he thought a hand came up out of that puddle, soft and smooth, pulling him down into it - which was crazy. He'd say how he was pretty sore at getting his jacket wet in the cold, how he must have slipped, been delusional from lack of sleep and stress and the chaos. He'd mention being mad until he'd noticed a chunk of shrapnel which had punched a hole in his helmet the size of a quarter and knocked it off his head at probably just about the same time. He'd imagine that was the closest shave he'd had.

In her lifetime, Alba would never really put the two together.

Persiphone Calls

194X

Alba and Thalia had the Sunday off from the factory and had some pictures taken. It was nice to have a day out... A day without the set, center, bang.

Thalia took it upon herself to look after Alba because she hadn't been eating much. She said she was worried about Mitch, of course, "being over there," as she put it. Thalia never pressed her, it's not like there was much conversation over the noise of the line... Anyway they both had their reasons for hard work.

She made sure Alba got some breakfast in her today. Then they went shopping. Thalia noticed Alba was looking at some dresses.
"You'll be shopping for something white soon, I know it," Thalia smiled.
Alba smiled back and flipped a dress sleeve at her, "It's not fair... I can't do it with you, you look like a movie star!"
"Oh, can it sister," Thalia snorted, "You'll be positively glowing when he walks off that boat. Why I bet you'll vibrate right out of your skin!"
Mitch would finish his tour. Mitch would come home with a ring in his pocket and a promise in his heart. Mitch would live. Alba told herself that.
Right now he was somewhere her parents would have known. There may be bullets and mortar fire... there may not. Did they kill differently on Sundays? She wondered.

If she knew where he was she could just go there. She could see him, touch his hand or face. She would know he was right, good... alive. He wasn't allowed to say where he was, and besides he'd be packed and marched before that letter even crossed a censor's desk. She'd promised him she wouldn't come because of the danger, of course that was why she wanted to go so badly. She could be there and back in a second.... She could do it as fast as think it.
He was so far away. Everything seemed so far away. She thought of Bérénice and what she was doing. She thought of the letters, and how they'd gotten shorter, had dwindled and then finally stopped... How it had all happened... How she couldn't change it when it happened again.

She thought of how very much she wanted to be doing something. Something bigger. Alba had already been there in a way, she reminded herself... and she wasn't Bérénice.
So she was stuck, waiting. Riveting on the assembly, because the Secretary Pool didn't let you feel the vengeance in your hands. That's what she'd named her rivet gun, "The Vengeance."

Thalia didn't know everything, of course.
Alba never had much use for hate. What good had it ever brought her? None. Set, center, bang. She worked the line for Mitch, sure, and for the other boys - just like all the other girls. She thought about the other-other girls working for the other-other boys, but that certainly felt different.
Sometimes when she drifted away she thought about falling through windows. Set.
She thought about Olaf. About fire and snow. She felt sweat trickle down an arm. Center.
She thought about the wolves... Bang.

Alba and Thalia went to a matinee. She finally saw it in the newsreels, and recognized it for what it was. She recognized she'd missed it. For all the checking, the waiting, the fear... she had missed it.
Sitting in that dark theater, popcorn dangling from her open, frozen lip, Alba understood better how it must have been for Olaf. It happened years ago for her and left her expecting it to happen every day, and here she was seeing it and yet in her mind it was impossible - it couldn't have happened yet. Not yet. The newsreel was - what? A month old? When was her last trip? Five weeks? Six? Had she missed him by days or by hours? With years to prepare, how was she too late? When she got back the first time, Olaf had called it done... history.
Alba thought about the wolves.
On the line the next day, Alba welcomed the numbness in her hands and the pull and the spasm of the gun as it wrenched her shoulders. She thought about the wolves. Bang. She knew that every rivet she drove, she drove deep into their hearts.

Pyrois, Aeos, Aethon, and Phlegon

Alba was looking for a telescope.
She knew that the things she'd been seeing made little sense. She'd been squinting all afternoon at the sun, asking The New Boy what it was she couldn't see in it.

"You're sure you can't look at the sun?" he asked.
"Yes."
"But that's silly. Why not? It's right there," he'd say, pointing to it. Sometimes he didn't understand her or the way she thought at all.
"I can't look at things like you can."
"My hair likes it. My fingernails too." he told her. "Maybe if you just try harder?"
"I tried hard this morning."
"...what happened?" he asked.
"It made me see things. Weird things."
The New Boy asked her what kind of things, and also why that should be surprising in the first place considering that was the entire point of looking.
"Colors. First there is a mountain, and then there is no mountain, and then there is." She told him.
"Yeah, that sounds familiar." Boy looked and just saw the big bright dot he always did. It made him happy. He waved to it.
"I see things that aren't always there sometimes too," he told her.
"I know. Dogs and new neighbors and who knows what else... Oh, and there was that thing by the lake last week."
"She's nice, she's my friend."
"You told me that, yeah." Alba had looked through every box in the shed and couldn't find a telescope.
"Why do you want a telescope?" he asked.
"So when the sun goes down I can look at the stars."
"You can't look at stars either?" The Boy was shocked.
"No - I can, but I want to see them better," she said.
"You might find a relative up there," he said, "if you do would they have to answer your questions, like what's behind the sun and things, or is that just for leprechauns?"
Alba knew The New Boy was a little insane... but she had to admit the idea of things she couldn't see sure rubbed her the wrong way. It was a problem looking for a solution.
"I think if you could see the trains from farther away you'd get a better head start." The New Boy offered, "Maybe you'd win a race with a telescope."
Alba stopped rummaging and thought about it... "Boy, you know - that's actually not a bad idea at all! Help me look in the barn."
She marched for the big wooden building before she remembered Boy's phobia. Alba turned to see him standing where she left him. "Oh come on... Please? It won't be that bad... and I can't get in the boxes by myself..."

"No." Boy said.

Alba didn't know what it was about the barn... it wasn't things made from wood - she'd already established that... "Just for a little bit? You can say hello to Muselon... I know you like her."
"No," Boy said. She may have heard him whisper something else, she wasn't sure. The look on his face though...
"Ok! Hey... we don't have to." She said quick as she could, "I know - let's go to Mr Schonberg's and see if he has any Italian ice? Ok? I'd really like some!"
The New Boy nodded. He took a step toward her, then wagged his head from side to side as if chiding himself while he turned back to get his toy car.

When he caught up with her The New Boy reached up and took her hand.
"Fire is dangerous," he said.
"Yes," she said not understanding him at all, "Yes it is."

Khepri's Eternal Embrace

Irenka Nowakowski had left her laundry hanging to check in on the baking. She was gone for just a moment.

That's how these things always start, she thought to herself, even as she and Jacob from down the way were forcing open the Frost baby's mouth. Jacob said something inappropriately appropriate as he wedged his hands between emerging baby teeth the size of walnuts.

Both had come at the sound of Sorina giving a horrible screech. The source of her screaming seemed to be the sight of her brother's head wedged inside the Frost baby's jaw. Irenka had suspected something of this nature might happen for several weeks. Brimir had been almost fixated on the boy's head for some time. No one knew if it was the shape, the texture, the soft whispy hair and pliant flesh surrounding a hard target... In any event Brimir had decided on a favorite chew toy. Lucky for everyone Nicolae came from a sturdy people.

Kacper immediately commissioned a wooden "Teether Nicolae" to be carved. It was common in Brimir's native Niflheim to give small logs or tree trunks to teething babies to gnaw on. Mr. Nowakowski suggested that perhaps the local wood had some analgesic effect. Mrs. Nowakowski suggested that maybe logs were simply in front of them and easy to reach in a hurry.