The room was silent except for the noise of pen nibs on rough paper and Fräulein Langefeld’s sensible shoes clopping slowly across the floorboards as she prowled among the desks.
Sarah looked at her still-blank sheet. A letter home. She tried to imagine what her ink-stained hands might possibly write.
Nausea threatened to overcome her.
Take me away. Get me out of here. Take me to a clean kitchen with warm bread and cold sausage, fresh sheets and a safe room with no windows…
Sarah bit her tongue and drove the weakness away.
The next time I go running I could disappear into the woods and never be found.
If I had somewhere to go, yes.
Anywhere but here.
I have a job to do. There’s no home, no safety, nothing to run away to, until it’s done.
The job? And what’s the plan? Defeat the Ice Queen? Save the Mouse? Lead the chosen people out of Egypt?
Go to class. Blend in. Make friends. Wait for an opportunity. Survive.
Make enemies, more like.
Maybe. Just commit to the movement.
And if I fall?
Then you break and you burn.
The Mouse was scribbling furiously. What was she saying? Was she detailing the wickedness? How could her father leave her in this place? If she was spying for him, why had nothing changed?
“Haller! What are you doing?” Langefeld’s voice cut the air in two.
“Nothing,” Sarah called, and concentrated on her blank sheet. Langefeld slapped her stick across the desk. It missed Sarah’s hands, but the impact sloshed the contents of her inkwell onto the desk.
“That much I can see. What is so interesting about Mauser?”
“I’m sorry, I’ll concentrate.” Make it better, make it go away.
“No, there must be something. Why would you be so transfixed?” Langefeld strode towards the Mouse, who shrank away from her. Sarah quailed as the teacher tore the letter from her desk. “Mauser! This is illegible. What is it supposed to say?”
“It’s – just a few—” the Mouse stammered.
“You’re hopeless. A waste of skin. What are you?” Langefeld leaned into the Mouse’s face.
“A waste…” the Mouse said softly.
“Speak up, I can’t hear you,” Langefeld snarled, little flecks of spittle flying from her mouth.
“I’m a waste of skin!” shrieked the Mouse.
“Stand up.”
“Oh no, please, don’t, I’m sorry.” Tears were already running down the Mouse’s face.
“Hands out.”
Sarah watched the woman tensing up and raising her stick, her eyes alight with cruelty.
“No…”
Sarah began to write. She added each word deliberately and slowly, as the slaps and the stifled cries began.
“Sarahchen…Sarahchen. Where are you?”
Sarah crawled out from under the table, noting that the stove had gone out again. “Mutti, I’m coming.”
“Sarah…” Her mother’s voice was weak and rasping but had lost none of its needle-like effect on Sarah. To resist it would have cut her in two. She stretched as she ran to the bedroom.
Her mother had walked into this room when they moved to the top-floor flat and had never left it. It wasn’t the SA driving them from their apartment in Giselhergasse that had pushed her over the edge. It had been selling the piano to a predatory neighbour for a knock-down rate. The instrument that had propped her in a seated position for three years, physically and emotionally, had gone. She and Sarah had shared the bed at first, but the scent of alcohol had grown overpowering. When her mother wet the bed the first time, Sarah slept in the kitchen, beginning an ongoing campaign against Vienna’s most insistent cockroaches.
They had been lucky to escape to Austria, but then Germany had followed them, swallowing its neighbouring country in the Anschluss, the Joining. And it had all started again, only worse.
Sarah pushed the bedroom door open, hit once again by the smell of whisky and urine. Her mother was bolt upright in bed, hair escaping its clips, eyes red and glistening in the muted, curtained light.
“Mutti, what’s wrong?”
“Sarahchen, my medicine has gone.”
There was an empty bottle and a cracked tumbler on the nightstand.
“Mutti, that was full yesterday. Surely it hasn’t all been drunk?” Sarah wailed. That bottle had cost a teapot and, most painfully of all, half a loaf of bread. “The last of the piano money has gone. We don’t have anything left.”
“You’re a clever girl, you’ll think of something. All this time you’ve run the house while Mutti’s been sick.”
“What about the car, Mutti? It’s worth—”
“Don’t be ridiculous. We’ll need the car when we leave.” Her mother’s voice was dismissive.
Sarah pushed her nails into her palms. She tried again – had to try again – but knew inside where the trail would lead.
“Mutti, when are we leaving? They check papers now crossing the bridges, going to the shops. Soon they won’t let us leave at all.”
“We wait for your father, he’ll come, he’ll help us…” Her mother’s attention was seeping away.
“When? We haven’t seen him for eight years.” Sarah’s frustration at the hopeless fairy tale spilled over. “Mutti, he’s never coming back…”
“Schnauze, dumme Schlampe!” her mother screamed at her. “You know nothing, nothing, nothing—”
Sarah raised her head to see the resentment and loathing in her mother’s bloodshot green eyes. She waited for it to melt, for the words and spite to ebb away.
For all the hate to gurgle away like dishwater. Waiting…
In her nightmares, she waited for ever.
Her mother’s chin began to tremble and the top lip joined it. Her eyebrows rose and the face emptied of viciousness, to be replaced by sadness and regret. Arms reached out for absolution – Sarah could provide that. Would always provide that.
She just had to wait.
Sarah knew her mother loved her.
Sarah knew her mother needed her.
“We just have to wait a little longer, that’s all. We can move to a bigger place and get a new piano and…”
Sarah stopped listening and just nodded.
Once her mother had smelled of musky perfumes and expensive soaps. It was the smell of safety and love. Now her pores released nothing but sweat and liquor, so Sarah remembered instead. She closed her eyes and imagined the house in Elsengrund and the apartment in Berlin, the thick warmth and full belly, velvet and shiny surfaces, tuned pianos and clean windows.
Her mother had said something.
“Sorry, Mutti, what was that?”
“You’ll find me some medicine?” she asked again in Czech.
“Yes, Máma. Of course I will,” Sarah replied with a perfect Prague accent.
“That’s my girl. My clever, clever girl.”
It was bitterly cold to be out in athletic gear. Each time the wind blew, it stole tears from Sarah’s eyes and brought an audible cry from the waiting girls, quickly lost in the roar of the river. Sarah’s hands were so chilled that she found she couldn’t touch her thumb to her little finger, a sure sign back in Vienna that she needed to steal more firewood.
The clearing in the woods was a trap that Sarah felt closing around her. Each class stood, awaiting selection by the Final Year girls. The staff stood behind, prison guards unaware of their role.
Dumme Schlampe. You still don’t have a plan, do you?
Shut up and let me think.
“Where are we, Mouse?” This day had arrived too quickly. The information she had gathered was too vague. She needed to know what the enemy knew and more. She needed secrets. She needed more time.
Too late now.
Shush.
“About two kilometres from the school, I think. The bridge we came over just now is the only way over the river for three kilometres in either direction. It’s deep and wide and fast-moving this time of year, so no shortcuts, no cheating.”
“You do notice things, don’t you?” Sarah smiled at the Mouse, who lit up.
“Shut your mouths, you two,” ordered Liebrich.
“Shut up yourself,” answered Sarah with vehemence.
Sarah watched the Ice Queen and her retinue drift from class to class, selecting runners. Fast? Slow? It didn’t matter. The exercise in power was everything. The staff didn’t need to terrorize the students, not if they could leave it up to the Schulsprecherin and her friends.
O, it is excellent to have a giant’s strength, thought Sarah in English, but it is tyrannous to use it like a giant.
Clear your head, dumme Schlampe. You need to think.
Elsa Schäfer was at the back of the group. She did look small compared to the others, but that was illusory. The Ice Queen’s courtiers were giants and the rest of the girls were peons, miniature people. To talk to her, to befriend her was ridiculous. Sarah might as well have been on the moon.
The Ice Queen looked like she might pass the Third Year class altogether, causing a quiver of hope in Sarah’s stomach. That was, of course, her intention.
“Schlafsaalführerin,” the Ice Queen shouted.
Liebrich stepped forward. “Meine Schulsprecherin,” the girl barked enthusiastically in response.
“Who is the quickest in this class?”
“I am, meine Schulsprecherin.”
“A fat little thing like you? No, surely the Reich doesn’t have to rely on your swift heels?” The Ice Queen smiled at her entourage. They dutifully laughed and some thoughtless Third Year girls giggled too. “No. Not you, but then who?” She made an act of looking around and over the heads of the smaller girls.
Sarah stared ahead and didn’t move. Oh, get on with it.
“Haller! Come here.”
Sarah waited an insubordinate length of time before stepping forward.
The Ice Queen came very close and spoke quietly. “So, here we are. Now is the moment. Remember, this is for the betterment of the Reich. I’ll ensure that you can continue to contribute. You do have a keen brain.” She paused. Despite the jaunty tone, Von Scharnhorst’s blue eyes were infinitely cold and oppressively perfect. “But you don’t need your legs for that,” she whispered before wheeling round and addressing the whole school.
“Girls! Not only has Haller volunteered for the River Run, but she thinks she might win it!” The Ice Queen waved her hands in the air theatrically. There was a smattering of laughter. “The Führer loves confidence, but when does that become hubris – pride and a fall? This race is dangerous, Haller. Anything could happen. Anything at all…”
Sarah listened to the river. “If I cross the finish line first, then this is over,” she called softly, so only the Ice Queen could hear. “No more tests, no more trials.”
The older girl turned on her heel. Her mask dropped.
“You will not win,” she growled.
“I will cross the line first,” Sarah shouted, so everyone could hear. “I do this for the good of the Reich and for the Führer!”
There was a flash of recognition on the Ice Queen’s face.
“Well played, Haller, well played,” she said, close to Sarah’s face. “Again, I wonder why we’ve been forced into this position, when you have so much potential. But there is no winning. Not for either of us. Shame.” She threw her head back and cried, “Haller is dedicating her run to the Führer. Win…or lose, this is noble. Heil Hitler.”
The girls cheered. They broke ranks and crowded around the runners. Sarah couldn’t hear the questions or feel the back pats over her own desperation.
Whatever the Ice Queen had planned, it didn’t sound like Sarah would still be at the school afterwards and that would end the mission. Meeting Elsa on a level footing meant penetrating that inner circle and that meant proving herself somehow. She didn’t really know what the Ice Queen would do if Sarah did win, but survival and any chance of completing the mission? They were now the same thing. To lose meant losing twice over. Being broken.
So what’s your plan, dumme Schlampe?
I’m going to cross the line first, that’s what.
Always with the great plans.
The girls in the crowd were herded towards the starting line and began to gather on either side of the cinder path that marked the start of the course. Here Sarah got a look at the competition.
There were six other runners, all bigger than Sarah, but three were too insubstantial to present a problem. One was possessed of a large bosom and had probably been chosen to supply comic relief. Of the other two, the Final Year girl, Kohlmeyer, who was one of the Ice Queen’s train, was clearly the born athlete. Sarah watched her stretch and flex her muscles, saw the strength in the shoulders beneath her shirt and knew the impossibility of the task. Kohlmeyer was die Eiskönigin’s insurance against anything Sarah could muster.
“Good luck, Haller,” exclaimed the Mouse, her reedy voice almost lost in the clamour. One of her classmates repeated the phrase and then to Sarah’s horror, several others began to chant her name.
“HAL-LER!”
Stop it, for the love of God, stop.
“HAL-LER!”
The Ice Queen is right. I am a threat.
Sarah wondered momentarily whether she could lose, be injured, fail and disappear into the background. It was so tempting to just surrender, to let go, to drown in the circumstance. Forget the mission, run away.
Then she saw the Ice Queen across the clearing, her piercing blue eyes so alive with intelligence and disapproval. Sarah did not want to lose.
Sarah remembered a story from the Brothers Grimm collection, Kinder- und Hausmärchen:
Tired of his arrogance and bullying, the hedgehog raced the hare. The slower beast with little crooked legs used his failings – his small size and the fact that all hedgehogs look alike – and turned them to his advantage.
He placed his wife at the finish line at the end of a plough furrow, so no matter how many times the hare ran the course, the hedgehog was always waiting for him.
Finally, a blood vessel in the hare’s neck ruptured and he bled out into the soil without ever knowing the hedgehog’s secret.
Sarah would use her size and turn it to her advantage. Sarah would cheat. The Ice Queen was going to bleed and bleed and bleed.
“HAL-LER!
“HAL-LER!
“HAL-LER!”