“What? What’s that? You want me to keep pinching you?”
“No! Stop! No!” Sticky was backing up the hill, swatting at his sister’s hands, as she continued to try and pinch and pull and tug at his earlobes, cheeks, and elbows.
“It’s opposite day! No means yes!”
“Then yes! Yes—please keep pinching me!”
“Oh? You want more? More pinching?”
The two siblings were drawing farther and farther up the hill, hopping and twisting and slapping each other. From a distance they looked like two large, overgrown crickets performing a bizarre dance. When they reached the top of the hill, Sticky reached out and tugged sharply on the Lady Premiere’s bun. She screeched, and made a lunge for him as he scrabbled over the stone wall.
Then they disappeared from view. It can be assumed that they spent the rest of their lives bullying and badgering, and teasing and tormenting, and irritating and insulting each other, until the end of their days; and furthermore, that they made each other quite as miserable as they both deserved to be.
For a moment there was silence, as Mo, Will, Liesl, and the old woman considered all they had seen. Then the old woman sniffed loudly.
“Harrumph. That’s that, I suppose.” She nodded once, sharply, then stalked rapidly up the hill, staking her cane in the ground in front of her.
Only Mo, Will, and Liesl were left.
“Well,” Liesl said, feeling shy again.
“Well,” Will said, shifting his weight uncomfortably.
“Well,” Mo said cheerfully, looking from Will to Liesl, and back to Will. “Warm out, isn’t it?” He removed his hat.
Will and Liesl nodded. They were feeling too timid to speak.
“I suppose it’s too warm for hot chocolate,” Mo said thoughtfully. A new idea had worked itself into his brain.
Those kids look like they could use some taking care of. Yes. Two lost children, about the same age as Bella was when she disappeared. A nice hot meal; a change of clothes; a place to lie down. Out loud he said, “But maybe some chocolate milk. Yes, I think chocolate milk would be nice. Don’t you?”
Will and Liesl looked at each other and smiled. They bobbed their heads vigorously.
“Good. Very good.” Just like that, Mo’s already enormous heart expanded even more, enough to enclose the two children and hold them safely there forever.
(And this, really, is the story-within-the-story, because if you do not believe that hearts can bloom suddenly bigger, and that love can open like a flower out of even the hardest places, then I am afraid that for you the road will be long and brown and barren, and you will have trouble finding the light.
But if you do believe, then you already know all about magic.)
“Come on, then,” Mo said, and called for Lefty, who shot a last, regretful look at the very clever butterfly and came trotting back to Mo, to be settled in her sling.
Will and Liesl walked very close together, with their fingers barely touching. Mo placed a hand on Will’s shoulder, kindly.
“Why do you call her Lefty?” Will asked as they walked up the hill: Mo, Lefty, Will, and Liesl.
“That’s a good question,” Mo said, “and it’s a funny story. I never was any good at leaving people to their own business, you know. Mrs. Elkins—that’s my landlady, you’ll meet her soon enough—is always telling me to mind my beeswax. . . .”
And so Mo spoke, and Will and Liesl listened, and Lefty purred, and the sun shone.
They passed the place where Liesl’s house had once been. Out of the ash, she knew, flowers would grow.
She spelled the word ineffable in her head, just once.
Author’s Note
I wrote Liesl & Po during a concentrated two-month period. It was different from anything else I had ever written; I didn’t know what it would be, or whether it would be anything. I certainly didn’t think it would be publishable.
I knew only that I needed to write it. At the time, I was dealing with the sudden death of my best friend. The lasting impact of this loss reverberated through the months, and it made my world gray and murky, much like the world Liesl inhabits at the start of the story. The idea for the book came from a fantasy I entertained during those months: I dreamed about unearthing my friend’s ashes from the decorative wall in which they’d been interred and scattering them over the water, the only place he’d ever felt truly at peace.
And so my fantasies were transformed into the figure of a little girl who embarks on a journey not just to restore the ashes of a loved one to a peaceful place but to restore color and life to a world that has turned dim and gray.