The World That We Knew(79)

“And what were you born to do?” she asked her maker.

Ettie grimaced. She knew the truth about herself. “I was born to fight.”

They sat in the wooden chairs where the doctor’s wife had spent early mornings in the last weeks of her life in order to watch the sun rise. Azriel had often kept Sarah Girard company; he had appreciated the long view through the trees, across to the mountains, and now he had returned to sit at Ettie’s feet. He could unleash flames and fire if he wished to do so, he could open the earth to send a plague of snakes and frogs. Instead, he leaned against Ettie’s legs, so that she thought a breeze had come up.

“If you fight,” Ava told her, “you will die.” She could glimpse the future, not for herself, but certainly for her maker. She saw a field and she knew that Ettie wished she had never let go of her sister’s hand.

“We all die,” Ettie responded. “Except for you. Until the girl gets rid of you.”

Lea was in the house, asleep, or sleeping as best she could. She had bad dreams of bees and of those she had lost, dreams that had turned her hair white.

“We had no right to make you and she has no right to unmake you,” Ettie said.

Ava saw Azriel’s eyes flicker over her maker. “If I don’t stop you, you will die.”

She was strong enough, she could do so if she wished.

Ettie nodded. “And if I don’t stop you, you will.”

They exchanged a gaze, aware that they would leave each other to their own fates.

“You have fulfilled your part of the bargain,” Ettie assured her creation. “A mother could not ask for more. As soon as the girl is safe, don’t think twice. Run away.”

But the vow Ava had made was no longer a burden. It was a choice. She might have run if the bees had not changed her fate, but now she would stay. She had been wrong to try to gain more time on earth. That was not why she had been made, but perhaps the first human trait a creature such as herself would acquire was to be selfish. She was renouncing that now. She sat with her maker and they both wept because they would not see each other again. What had been created was alive. Ettie did not see clay before her, but rather a woman who had been made by women, brought to life by their blood and needs and desires.

Later, as the sun was breaking, after Ettie had gone inside, Ava made her way through the woods until she reached the bare reeds. The river was only a trickle now, splashing over the rocks. The fish were singing with their silver voices. It was a perfect summer day, despite the cruelty of the world. When the heron came, Ava bowed to him, then asked for one last favor.

Find him if you can.





CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE


THE BEAST




HAUTE-LOIRE, AUGUST 1944

ETTIE SLEPT MORE FITFULLY AS the day drew closer. It was hard to sleep after you had heard a prophecy, harder still when you believed it. Once Victor came for her, time moved in a rush, as if they had stepped inside a rocket ship that was rattling through the Milky Way, a journey that, once begun, could not be undone. She would be lingering on the road when the captain drove to a café, as he did every Friday. She was to convince him to let her into the car. Victor would be waiting for her, and if anyone could quickly get them away from the scene it was he. She knew what might happen with the captain. Victor had mentioned how she might hold the captain’s attention while the bomb was set in place in the tailpipe of his car, not quite able to meet her eyes as he spoke. She was then to escape from the car and run back to where Victor was parked.

Ettie brushed her glossy red hair, then chose the doctor’s wife’s black dress and slipped on the lucky red shoes. She hadn’t said goodbye to him. It was better this way. Instead she went to stand near a clutch of snowy white phlox Sarah Girard had planted in the last year of her life that were scattered beneath the trees. They had become a field of light. She closed her eyes and recited a section of the Amidah.

We hope all evil will be lost on earth.

The dusk was falling in ashy waves and the white flowers were turning blue when Ava came to stand beside her.

“You should leave,” Ettie told her. “You don’t have to be anyone’s slave.” She took Ava’s hand and shook her head. “You should listen to me, but you won’t.”

“You should listen to me,” Ava responded sadly.

They both knew that when Ettie left she would never return to this place. But she was not really here anyway, she was in the field with her sister.

She’d been there all along.



Victor dropped her off on the road and she stood there in the gloaming. They’d both had a case of nerves on the ride, which was not a bad thing, even though Ettie’s stomach was lurching so violently she had to stop so she could get out and be sick in a nearby jumble of marshy weeds. All the same, their nerves would serve to make them cautious, so fewer mistakes would be made.

Victor felt a stab of guilt once he’d let Ettie out on the road. He waited in the field, parked in the tall grass, ready to follow once the Milice captain had picked her up. Everyone had doubt at a moment like this, everyone had a stab of fear, but by then the captain’s car was headed toward the village and Ettie was standing in the road waving and there was no time for doubt. The car, a Delage sports car, with black and red paint and red leather seats, had belonged to the previous owner of the house. It pulled over and idled. To Victor, from the darkness of the field where he crouched behind the wheel of his stolen car, the sports car looked like a lizard. Ettie went over to talk to the driver. She was shaky on the high heels, but she quickly regained her balance. She walked around to the passenger seat and then it began. Victor’s hands were sweating as he followed the speeding car. He had a rifle and more explosives in the backseat and the detonator on his lap, wrapped in a cloth so nothing would jog it before it was time.