“It’s going to snow,” said Ingrid, sensing my evaluation.
“You can feel it?” I asked.
“Sometimes.” She nodded, adjusting her grip on the rope tied to the back of the cart. “Tell me about them,” said Ingrid. “The boy and the Polish girl. I have an idea. I want to know if I’m right.”
It was fascinating that Ingrid could feel what people looked like. She told me that she could sense a person’s build, demeanor, sometimes even hair color. But it was the internal qualities that came to her first.
“The girl was fearful,” said Ingrid. “Her motions were taut and full of panic. Her breathing was pinched, almost panting. The boy was the opposite. His movement was smooth and lithe, like he was accustomed to moving silently.”
For days he had been moving with shrapnel the size of a bottle cap inside of him. I thought about his wound and wondered if he still had a fever.
“What was her name? The frightened girl,” asked Ingrid.
“Emilia.”
“Yes, that matches,” said Ingrid.
She tripped over a rock in her path and nearly fell. She clung to the rope and scrambled to regain her balance.
I set my hand on her shoulder. This trek was difficult enough for someone with sight. Two weeks ago, amidst mad chaos at a train station, Ingrid became separated from her aunt. The train departed. Ingrid was not on it. She stood alone on the platform for two straight days, shivering, waiting for her aunt to return. The aunt never came back. On the third day Ingrid asked people for help. They ignored her. Her luggage was stolen. A young girl finally noticed Ingrid and brought her to my attention.
“Don’t feel sorry for me,” said Ingrid. “I am able to see things. Just not the same things you see. So, the girl, she’s blond?”
“Yes, Emilia’s fair-haired with braids, blue eyes, and a round face. The young man is fairly tall, has broad shoulders and brown hair that falls in waves. His hair is a bit long. I don’t know his name or what city he’s from.”
“And his eyes?” asked Ingrid. “What color are they?”
“I don’t remember. Maybe brown?”
“I don’t think so. I think they’re gray,” said Ingrid.
“Gray? No, people don’t really have gray eyes.”
“The thief does,” said Ingrid.
I turned to her. “You think he’s a thief?”
Ingrid said nothing.
The temperature dropped and the exposed parts of my face began to sting. We had been walking for over six hours. Eva complained incessantly. She hated the trek, she hated the cold, she hated the Russians, she hated the war. The shoe poet had promised that today we would find the manor house he had known. I doubted him and warned that he shouldn’t get people’s hopes up, especially the little one. The wandering boy’s spirits were already so low.
“Ah, but if I am right,” said Poet, “you will massage my feet by the fire.”
I wasn’t sure I wanted to accept that wager.
emilia
I busied myself on the walk. I looked at the trees and thought of the big stork’s nest I had seen on top of the barn. It made me think of Mama. I thought of the warm sunny days when she would take me to pick mushrooms in the forest. In the forest near Lwów was a beautiful old oak tree with a hollow large enough to sit in. We’d take our baskets to the tree and I’d scramble into the cavity. Mama would sit with her back against the trunk, legs crossed at the ankles beneath her skirt.
“You love stories, Emilia. Well, the trees hold hundreds of years of stories,” she’d tell me, touching the bark. “Think of it, everything these trees have seen and felt. All of the secrets are inside of them.”
“Do you think the trees remember each and every stork?” I’d ask from inside the cool hollow.
“Of course the trees remember. Like I said, they remember everything.”
Just as trees were Mama’s favorite, storks were mine. I had them six months of the year. At the end of each summer the storks would leave and fly to Africa, where they’d live in warmth along the Nile for the winter. In March they would return to Poland to the nests they had left. To invite a stork to nest, families would nail a wagon wheel to the top of a tall pole. We had one in our yard. Every March we would celebrate when our stork returned to the nest. As August faded, the departure of the storks symbolized summer’s end.
Six years ago, the day our stork left, Mama left too. She died giving birth to what would have been my younger brother.
? ? ?
My throat tightened. I swallowed, reminding myself she wasn’t really gone. I felt Mama among the trees. I could feel her touch and hear her laughter in the leaves. So I talked to the trees as I walked, hoping their branches would carry messages up to Mama and let her know what I had done, and most of all, that I would try to be brave.
joana