The Baker's Secret(70)

She returned to street level with care, holding her splinted arm out for balance, and pulled her wagon toward the village green, and Odette’s café.

When Emma wheeled onto that street, however, she noticed something else first: Uncle Ezra’s bakery. A continent of time had passed since she’d last stepped inside. Now the door was broken open, all the windows smashed, and as she saw the shelves tipped against one another, the walls stained with mold, the giant mixer on its side, Emma felt a thousand years old. Her body hurt, Thalheim would shoot her at the first opportunity, the invasion had come too late. An armored truck rattled down the side road, its gun pointed ahead, its smokestack billowing black. Emma considered sitting down right there, accepting whatever might come, inviting the eternal rest that she suspected was not a great distance away.

But then she heard singing. Not a graceful melody or fine voice, but a high piping, somewhere between infant and bird. It was the most innocent sound to enter Emma’s ears in as long as she could remember, so she slipped out of her straps and followed it. The singsong came from Odette’s café.

Finding the front door open a crack, Emma pushed it wider with her splint. There, at a table for two, doodling with her finger on the tablecloth, sat Fleur.

“I went for water,” she sang, almost in a whisper. “I only went for water.”

“Is Odette here?” Emma asked.

The girl needed a moment to answer, bringing herself out of reverie and squinting at Emma as if she did not recognize her.

“She told me to come here if something went wrong.” Fleur spoke as if she were still singing.

Emma came to the table and sat across from the girl. “Did something go wrong?”

“Only the last part. The last little part.”

Emma looked the girl over. “Are you all right? What happened?”

“I went for water,” Fleur answered. “That was when the bomb fell into the house. All I did was go for water.”

“Oh my dear. And your mother—”

“It’s not my fault. She asked me to.”

Emma nodded. “I see. I’m very sorry. But truly it’s not your fault at all. You had no way of knowing—”

“This was only the last little part anyway.”

“What do you mean?”

Fleur made a face. “My mother died halfway when they shot my father. Then almost halfway more, after what the soldiers did to her. Today was the last little part. I have been waiting for it.”

The girl rose and went to the door, which opened onto the village green. Once, this had been a place old men played boules at noon, young men sang during a night of drink, Odette both served and ruled, and now it was deserted. Fleur stuffed her hands into her frock’s deep pockets.

Emma sat there, ruminating that the girl might be the most beautiful creature she had ever seen. And now another orphan of the war. She came and stood beside Fleur. “What do you have in your pockets, that you must be fiddling with it all the time?”

The girl shrugged and lifted one hand. It held gardening shears, metal ones with yellow rubber grips on the handles.

Emma took the thick scissors in her good hand. “You’ve been cutting flowers? How sweet.” But then she opened the shears, and saw that the blades were rutted and gouged. “Or what have you been cutting?”

The girl grinned, but it was a naughty smile. “Wires.”

“What do you mean, wires?”

“Any wires. My father showed me how.”

Emma ran her thumb along the blades. They were ruined. “I don’t understand.”

“We villagers have no use for wires. But the soldiers, they need wires for everything. Whenever there is no one around, I snip them. My father said it was good to do this, so I cut some wires almost every day. And now I have no family, which is when Odette said I should come here.”

“Don’t cry,” Emma said. “It will be all right.”

Fleur drew her head back, as if from a bad smell. “I am not crying. My father and mother are together. And anyway, do you know how hard it is to feed a ghost?”

Lost for an answer, Emma gaped a moment at the shears, then held them out to Fleur. The girl tucked them in her pocket, sidled to the table, and began doodling with her finger again.

“I went for water,” she sang, as if no one else were there. “I only went for water.”



The radio had gone insane. Thalheim listened with disbelief to reports from all sectors. In one place, hundreds of invading men had assaulted a cliff directly into machine-gun fire, the soldiers continuing to climb despite dozens of their fellows tumbling past them to the ground below. In another location, enemy ships had towed long barges which they scuttled in a semicircle around a village, creating an instant harbor. In yet another place, invading troops had landed accompanied by a corps of bagpipers, the instruments wailing louder than cannon fire as soldiers poured out onto the beach.

Marksmen of the occupying army had thwarted the landing craft, emptying their guns to prevent attackers from reaching dry ground. Some strafed from side angles, too, littering the sand with invaders’ bodies. In a few places, the exits from the beach had seen such massive assaults, so many invaders flinging themselves forward, soldiers of the occupying army had abandoned their battle stations in fear. However, commanding officers stood at the pillbox doorways, as ordered, and used their pistols to execute these traitors on the spot. Preparation was prevailing. Discipline was winning.