Kris (16 page)

Josef pulled me close to him. His hands were thin and weak, and his skin resembled yellowed and torn parchment. Then he whispered to me and shared his final words.

I closed his eyelids, pulled the blankets over him, and retreated to the carpentry, overwhelmed with sadness. I collected Josef's engraving tools
and laid them out on a fold of cloth. I wrapped them carefully, quietly in thought.

As I began gathering additional tools, knives, and many of the special rigs Josef had created to shape and carve delicate wood, Markus returned to the carpentry. He watched me for a moment as I categorized the tools, and he began adding chisels, mallets and other useful items to my collection. We worked together in silence, for it was clear it was my mission to assemble all of the important tools and prepare them for travel.

“He was good to me,” Markus said sadly. And his eyes began to water.

“He knew how you felt about him,” I said.

We continued to pack and wrap the tools securely, placing them in large satchels that I would carry with me in the sleigh.

As we finished, I walked through the carpentry, looking for any useful items I might have left behind. The carpentry seemed hollow and empty now, except for the piles of wood stacked in bins and on the floor. So many finely crafted works had been created here. So many delicate pieces of richly grained wood had been transformed into masterful furnishings, long-lasting benches and cabinets, and other functional devices and products. It was no surprise to me that Josef's works would last beyond his lifetime, or mine. They were made with so much care, so much skill, so much passion. They were extensions of Josef himself, representative of everything he was, everything he shared, and the goodness in his life.

“Gabriella told me you spoke with him,” Markus said. “What did he say to you?”

And I thought back to the painful image of Josef dying in his bed, and his final words to me as he prepared to leave.

“Burn us down.”

Markus stood beside me as the light of the flames reflected on our faces and as the night began to glow with raging fire. I could feel the intensity of the heat and knew the wood and scraps piled throughout the carpentry would fuel this inferno, which would burn long into the night.

I had maneuvered Josef's horses and the wagon into position away from the carpentry, tying Gerda to the rear. Markus helped load the satchels of tools and supplies and stowed them securely. I assisted Gabriella as she climbed into the sleigh with her eyes somberly diverted from the house and from Josef's room. I am sure she was occupied by the lifetime of memories that flooded her thoughts and the relentless pain that tore at her heart.

The blaze burned so fiercely that it cast a glow up into the sky, and I imagined it might be seen for great distances. This was a fire that was as powerful and as passionate as Josef had been in his life, and it radiated nearly as brightly as he had for so many who had known him and benefited from his goodness.

“You put yourself in danger,” I said to Markus.

“No direct contact,” he replied. And he loaded the remaining tools and supplies into the wagon as I thanked him and climbed on board.

“It's good it was us and not the others,” Markus said.

His words took me by surprise. “The others?” I asked with apprehension.

Markus paled as he looked at me. “Then you have not heard?” he asked.

“Heard what?” I said impatiently as worry began to sweep over me.

“It was the baker's wife who first fell victim to the plague. Josef caught it there when he went to be of service to the family.”

“What?” I shouted. “Why didn't you tell me this before?”

“I thought you already knew,” Markus said weakly. “Many frightened villagers are gathered there demanding the bakery be destroyed.”

“What of Sarah?” I asked intensely.

Markus looked at me, as if his mouth had lost the ability to speak.

“What of Sarah!”

I snapped the reins before he could answer and drove the wagon forward with Gerda pulled behind. Markus stumbled in the wake left by the surging cart.

The wagon threatened to tear apart as I pushed it and the horses beyond their proper usage. When I at last approached the bakery and Sarah's home, the outlying buildings were already in flames. A mob of people had surrounded the bakery and its living quarters and had boarded the doors and windows shut from the outside in an effort to trap those remaining within. Enraged villagers threw rocks at the bakery and yelled insults and curses at its occupants.

I reined the horses in hard and pulled the wagon scraping and jumping to a stop. I was horrified by the scene before me. I saw Noel standing in the crowd near his father, who was lighting the ends of a wet rag hanging from the mouth of a large bottle. He tried to force Noel to take the bottle and instructed him to throw it at the bakery.

“No, Papa, no,” Noel said, shaking his head in response. But his father was wild-eyed and caught up in the excitement of the crowd that continued to shout curses and work itself up into a rage.

Noel's father grabbed him by the back of the neck and screamed, “Boy! I won't have weakness.” His father shoved the bottle into Noel's hands and made him hold it while he instructed him again. “Now, do it!” he yelled.

I tried to stop Noel by shouting over the crowd, “Noel!” But he did not respond to me, so I continued to scream at him, “Noel, don't do this!”

Noel jerked his head in my direction and looked me in the eye. His hesitation vanished when he saw me, and his anguish was replaced with a cruel smirk as he took delight that I would see what he was about to do. The crowd continued to shout and jeer and encourage him to take action, and Noel lobbed the burning bottle onto the roof of the house, where it shattered and exploded into flames on impact.

I vaulted from the sleigh and went for Noel and his father swinging. If I could get through the crowd I might make the bakery before it became consumed by the hunger of the fire spreading across the roof. Villagers who got in the way or tried to block me were slugged aside in my fury. Noel continued taunting me as I ran toward him. His father tried to stop me as I rushed forward, but I quickly knocked him to the ground and turned on Noel, whose expression had changed from gloating to fear. I drove my fist into Noel's face, and he crumpled before me. As others reached out to stop me, I lashed out at them and struck whoever might be so bold as to interfere, and I broke through the crowd with a clear view of the cabin ahead. A hand reached out to grab my shoulder, and I turned quickly to push away a man I did not recognize who was intent upon stopping me. Just then the flat of a shovel hit me in the face, and I fell.

I had no recollection of where I was when I awoke from the darkness with my head split and my vision blurry. Soot-covered fingers reached out and grabbed me by my coat, and I looked up to see Sarah pulling at me, trying desperately to drag me back away from the mob and her burning home and toward my wagon.

“It's the child,” somebody yelled.

“It's Sarah!” shouted another. “She has it too!”

“We've got no choice,” pled yet another desperate voice.

“She has the sickness,” shouted an ugly woman from within the mob.

As one the mob surged forward, threatening to take us.

“Stay back!” I heard yelled from the direction of the crowd. And a long torch swung the length of the compressing mob, scattering them in an arc out and away from the wagon. Marcus stood with brand in hand, holding the mob at bay like some hero of old might have held off a starving pack of wolves.

“You are her neighbors!” he screamed at them.

“You have no right to judge us,” others replied. “We won't die from her sickness!”

“They're unclean,” screamed a man from the crowd.

“You are the filth!” Marcus yelled in response. “These people called you friends.” The crowd hesitated in their approach as they seemed to dread the truth of his accusation.

“What do you want of us? Shall we give up our children for theirs?”

“I pray I do have it. So I can give it to each one of you,” Sarah screamed, spitting at them through her tears. The throng pulled back in fear.

“Hurry, girl!” Gabriella shouted. “Hurry! We must leave quickly before they kill us all.”

Sarah again fought, with Gabriella's help, to lift me into the wagon. With whatever faculties I could muster, I assisted in pulling myself up and throwing a leg over the side, and with one last grunt and a mighty shove, Sarah and Gabriella boosted me onto the wagon.

Just then Marcus's father rode up with a group of men on horse.

“You'd best be going,” he said quickly. “We can keep them from following, but we can't protect you for long here. And there are others worse off than the likes of you. Godspeed.”

Then they rode to confront the mob, and I watched Marcus leap onto the back of a roan his father pulled alongside.

Sarah jumped up beside me while Gabriella climbed up and onto the rear bench. Sarah took control of the reins, gave them a powerful snap, and launched us safely into the night.

We could hear the fire raging and feel its heat as we left the bakery compound. Villagers yelled after us to defend the hateful sins they were committing. Thankfully there were men of sound enough mind and strong enough will to bring logic and order to bear.

With Sarah's snap of the reins, we had moved beyond that world. We became like ghosts among the living, passing unseen through the most northerly towns and villages and beyond. With little protection and less knowledge, we ventured to a place unknown.

T
errain shifted and changed under the legs of our tired
horses. Each night I would remove them from harness and rub their sore bodies down so as not to repeat the negligent injuries that, as a child, I had allowed to befall Gerda. We covered so much distance that many days had passed into night and back.

As we moved north, we experienced a cold never before imagined. Our pace became more labored as we searched for a gentle place of
opportunity where we would attempt to make our home. The wind howled ceaselessly, and we began to doubt the choice we had made to pass this far north. Still the horses' hooves continued to crunch their way through veneers of ice and snow, leading us forward.

I sat in lead of the wagon now, and Sarah and Gabriella huddled together on the rear bench in an effort to stay warm. As I looked back to judge their condition and their determination to continue, I could see their lips were chapped, and their cheeks burned red from the bitter cold wind that whipped at us. I began to seek any place of shelter, for we could not continue exposed as we were to the elements without fresh food and warmth to return us to a reasonable strength.

The endless forest surrounding us was nearly silent, except for the wind still whistling through the trees. Its somber song lulled me in my weariness and declining energy.

I imagined other sounds carried on the wind, the song of birds, or the muffled laughter of children lost in the dense forest. But then there it was again, the giggling or gaggling of cooing birds. I looked through the trees on either side of the clearing through which we rode, trying to find some source for the sounds. After a moment or two I decided my tired ears must have deceived me due to the enchantment of the wind's unwavering melody.

Movement caught my eye as a glimpsed shadow leapt though the trees. And I heard it again, but this time distinctly and unmistakably: the laughter of children. I picked up our pace to match the moving of the shadows as I squinted to look about to see what I might find. With careful study I was able to capture fleeting glimpses of some powerful, stocky, furry deer with mighty antlers that ran silhouetted within the surrounding woods. Once again came the unmistakable laughter of
children. And then the silhouettes in the forest became the movement of a child darting behind a tree. And then another. And another. Children leaping and laughing and playing through the trees. But as I looked to be sure they were not merely my imaginings, the images emerged again from behind the trees as those strange, stocky, majestic deer. I was caught between some fantasy or childhood anxiousness as my mind imagined these wild deer children as a kind of mysterious changeling.

Quick motion caught my eye from beyond the wagon as dozens of those deer began to lope from the trees and across the snowy earth, kicking up a spray of snow that flew around their hooves to encase them like a low-lying fog. As I watched them leap and sail across the powdery snow, their graceful movements added to the illusion that they were skimming across the surface of the earth or flying.

We had accomplished some speed as I strove to keep pace with these phantasms. Then, in a rush, a herd of children broke through the trees, more than twenty, running directly in front of the wagon. I fought to bring the wagon and horses to a stop as the children ran by laughing, unaware of the danger. It was then I saw the magnificent antlered deer running through, around, and with them. There was a sharp sound behind me, like the pounding of a drum, and I quickly looked back but could not determine its source. Gerda whinnied, as if to signal me.