“I’m hurrying,” Liesl whispered back. She slung the small sack she had packed earlier—containing a change of clothes, her drawing supplies, and a few odds and ends from the attic—over her shoulder, and moved carefully to the door. A feeling of fear and wonder swept over her. It had been ever so long since she’d been out of the attic. She was almost afraid to leave it behind. She could no longer remember clearly what was on the other side of the door; what it felt like to stand outside, in the open air. She did not know how she would manage with no money and no clear idea of where she was going, and for a moment she thought of saying to Po, I’ve changed my mind.
But then she thought of her father, and the willow tree, and the soft moss that grew over her mother’s grave, and instead she said, “Good-bye, attic,” and followed the ghost’s dark shape out of the door and down the stairs.
And while Karen was babbling to Milly in the kitchen, and Milly was fussing and murmuring, “Calm down, calm down, I can’t understand a word of what you’re saying” and wondering, privately, why every single servant had to be either a drunk or completely off her rocker, a little girl and her ghostly friend and a small ghostly animal were taking from the mantel in the living room a wooden box containing the most powerful magic in the world, and afterward stealing with it out into the street.
Part II
Narrow Escapes & Excitable Sparrows
Chapter Eleven
WHEN LIESL FIRST STEPPED OUT OF THE HOUSE, she drew a sharp breath, and Po had to urge her forward.
“Come,” the ghost said. “Before we are discovered.”
So Liesl followed the two shadows—the larger, person-shaped shadow and the smaller, animal-shaped shadow—down the path and through the iron gates and out onto the street. But there again she had to stop, overwhelmed.
She said, “It’s so big. Bigger than it looks from the attic. I had forgotten.” She didn’t mean just the street, of course. She meant the world—roads, intersections, lefts and rights, twists and turns, choices.
Over the months Liesl had watched several baby sparrows hatch and grow in the little nest just outside of the attic window. She had always been particularly fascinated by the birds’ first teetering steps to the edge of the roof: awkward, ungainly, and childlike, they looked like toddling children. And then suddenly the baby sparrows would launch into the air as their parents twittered their approval.
She had always wondered at the bravery of it. The sparrows jumped before they knew how to fly, and they learned to fly only because they had jumped.
Liesl felt a bit like a baby sparrow, standing in the cold, dark, empty street, with the city spread all around her and the world spread all around the city: as though she was perched in the bright, empty air with nothing to hold her.
“Where to?” Po asked Liesl.
They needed to find the train station, Liesl knew, because trains led out of the city of Dirge, to places of willow trees and lakes. Her head was full of birds. She pictured the men she had often watched from her window, striding toward the city center, their greatcoats flapping behind them like crow wings. Important men going important places, carried back and forth by great, chugging trains. She imagined them in her head; she mentally retraced their footsteps.
“This way,” she said to Po, and pointed.
Bundle led the way, followed by Po. When the two ghosts had already crossed the street and melted into the shadows on the other side, Liesl found that her legs still wouldn’t move. She thought, Forward! She thought, Jump! But nothing happened.
Po, noticing that Liesl was still standing there, frozen, returned to her.
“What are you waiting for?” the ghost asked.
“I—” At the last second, Liesl could not tell Po she was scared. “I forgot to say thank you,” she said finally.
Po flickered. “Thank you?” it repeated. “What is that?”
Liesl thought. “It means, You were wonderful,” she said. “It means, I couldn’t have done it without you.”
“Okay,” Po said, and began skimming away again.
“Wait!” Liesl reached out to take the ghost’s hand and felt her fingers close on empty air. She giggled a little. “Oops.”
“What is it now?” The ghost was barely controlling its temper.
Liesl let out another snorting laugh and covered her mouth to stifle the sound. “I wanted your help crossing the street,” she said. “I keep forgetting you aren’t real.”
“I’m real,” Po said, bristling. “I’m as real as you are.”
“Don’t be mad,” Liesl pleaded, and as Po floated off, she put one foot in front of the other without even noticing it. Step, step, step. “You know what I mean.”
“I just don’t have a body. Neither does wind or lightning, but they’re real.”
“It’s only an expression, Po.” Liesl had crossed the street. “Sheesh.”
“Light doesn’t have a body,” Po continued, and up ahead, Bundle yipped and skipped and turned full circles in the air. “Music doesn’t have a body, but that’s real. . . .”
“For someone with no body, you’re very touchy, you know.”
A lone guard, returning from a long, cold shift at the residence of the Lady Premiere, heard voices and, pausing at the entrance to his building, saw a pretty girl carrying a knapsack and a wooden box, babbling happily to herself while beside her shadows shifted and swayed.