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Authors: Donna Jo Napoli

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BOOK: Breath (9781439132227)
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“There are smaller battles all the time,” says Bertram. “Wars against the heathen Prussians.”

“That's way in the east,” says Father, chewing large. “Nobody's threatening Saxony. We don't need to squirrel away behind walls.”

Bertram takes the chair across from Father. Melis and Ludolf sit now too. I place wooden spoons in front of everyone, and at the spots for Großmutter and me too.

Bertram grabs the cheese off the board and picks
at a blue spot that Großmutter's failing eyes missed. “Even the cheese mold is on our side.”

Father holds his spoon by its throat and rubs his thumb inside its smooth bowl. “How do you figure that?”

“It keeps raining. Mold's growing on everything,” says Bertram. “I can't remember the last time it was sunny. Melis is right: This is a strange year.”

Clouds cover us more days than not, year-round—but it's true this spring has been rainier and chillier than usual. Still, I remember the last time it was sunny, and it wasn't that long ago—just a couple of weeks. It was the day I met the stranger in the forest—the piper who was headed for Hannover. It was so warm he had his shirt off to rest, his red, red shirt.

“Ack!” Großmutter jumps back from the bread bin.

Two rats go skittering across the kitchen floor to an upright. They climb the timber fast and disappear into the flooring of the upstairs bedrooms.

Großmutter presses her lips together in a determined line. She cuts the gnaw marks off the bread and puts the rest of the loaf on the table. “Rats,” she says with a little shiver. I can feel her
disgust. She always says animals have no place in the house.

I'm glad I left Kröte upstairs in his earthen pot, on a nice bed of wool, with a piece of milk-soaked bread beside him. Even my harmless Kröte annoys Großmutter. This is a new Kröte—I name all my toads Kröte, and I never keep them for more than a couple of days at a time. Longer than that is cruel. Tomorrow I'll set this one free.

“See?” says Bertram. “The rats are coming in out of the rain this year. When's the last time that happened? You can't make any decisions based on an odd spring like this, Father. In most years life would be better in town. A lot better.”

“Help me, Salz,” calls Großmutter.

I use my smock to protect my hands from the heat and lift the pan out of the oven onto the bricked area in front of it. The rest of our floor is wood and can't take such heat. Großmutter squats beside me with a stack of wooden bowls. I make sure Father gets four birds, my older brothers get three each, Großmutter and I get two each. Three consecutive numbers again. And going down again. One lone bird remains in the pan. Bertram will eat it later, when Father's not watching. I wish I had a way of knowing ahead of time which portion of the
food would be left over for Bertram. If I did, I'd sweat on it and make it too salty for him to enjoy I'd get back for all the times he's mean to me.

We eat without talking, crunching small beaks and bones in our molars, spitting out larger ones. Except Großmutter. She picks out the bones with her fingers. She has too many molars missing for those that remain to be of any use.

She goes to the windowsill and comes back with a copper bowl of wild strawberries, chilled by the storm. She hands it to Father and sits again. He takes a handful and passes it. I know she'll pour the beer soon enough—that's the daily beverage, mug after mug of beer. Then she'll cut us hunks of the bread. This is how our meals always go: hot, cold, wet, dry. The right sequence restores the balance of the four humors in the body. Großmutter is careful about such things.

“Tell him the real reason you want to move to town,” she says, picking between her front teeth with a bird bone. So she was listening after all.

“The real reason?” asks Father, looking at Bertram.

“A man needs a family of his own,” says Bertram quietly.

“You like that Johannah, is that it? Well, that's no
problem. We can add another house to the farmyard.”

“And what about when Ludolf takes a wife? And then Melis?”

Bertram doesn't say “Salz.”

“There's plenty of room here.”

“Wives want to see their friends,” says Bertram. “They want to stand in the marketplace and walk through the shops.” He pushes his empty bowl toward the center of the table and sets his elbows firm in its place. “They want town life. They won't leave it to go live on an isolated farmstead.”

“If the girl talks like that,” says Father, “she gives herself airs. Your Johannah is nothing but a servant racing through town on errands others give her.”

“What does that matter? It's decent work. And her masters treat her well.” Bertram stands now. I'm shocked at the way his tone has changed so fast. He's challenged Father often this past year, but never belligerently. “A wife who's had that experience can't be ripped from it.”

“Sit down, sit down,” says Father, flapping his hand.

Bertram drops into his seat, but his body is stiff. He's ready to jump to his feet again in an instant.

“Girls.” Father shakes his head. “It's a good thing we don't have any.”

I suck in my breath in pain. From nowhere come the words that piper in the woods spoke:
Some people dont deserve children
.

Father leans back. “Where's my beer?”

I look to Bertram. Has the discussion really ended?

Großmutter sets mugs of beer on the table and sits.

No one moves.

Father lifts his mug and drinks long.

Tonight's show is over. Despite myself, I feel sorry for Bertram. He has loved Johannah for two years now. I like her. She's the most interesting girl I know.

But then, I know hardly any other girls. We've kept pretty much to ourselves since Mother died.

That's another reason I feel sorry for Bertram now: Mother. Father's words were about the girls—but any mention of girls brings the memory of Mother, too. So these words must have hurt Bertram as much as they hurt me. He was Mother's favorite. He still leaves when anyone mentions her—and I bet he does it so we won't see him tear up.

In silence we eat bread and drink beer, all but me, that is. Children seven years of age drink beer—but
not me. Großmutter won't have it. She says beer presses on the lungs, and I'm not strong enough to breathe through that. Instead, I drink a cool tea of mint and juniper berries. It isn't bad. And it smells sweeter than beer.

Großmutter hands out oat straws to everyone, even me. This way I avoid the leaves and berries in the tea, just like they avoid most of the grain hulls in the beer. But mainly she lets me do it so I won't feel too left out. Straws are fun. When we have enough used ones in a pile, Großmutter and I weave them into pentagrams—goblin crosses—that hang over the door to ward off evil. I smile at her now, small and quick. Her eyes crinkle and the corners of her mouth lift just a bit. But it's enough. None of the others notice our exchange. It's like a secret.

I suck on the straw, then gnaw on the bread.

Ludolf stops eating first. He puts the end of his bread on top of the half bird that remains in his bowl, pushes his mug away, and leans back. Bertram doesn't miss a beat: He pulls the bowl and mug over and finishes them off.

Father looks around, and the very sight of my face makes him remember. “Go kill those rats, Salz.” He takes his boots off and walks into the common room to sit by the warming oven.

My brothers rise as well. They pull off their boots and stand talking by the fire. Everyone can easily see Father from here, but no one seems to want to go be in his company. Melis and Ludolf close in on Bertram from each side, like the hard shell wings of a beetle protecting the soft middle.

Großmutter sits a moment, staring at the center of the table, at the empty strawberry bowl.

I think again of what Father said. “Do you miss the girls?” I whisper. I reach out and gently tap the white lumps of her knuckles. “Do you miss my sisters?”

She draws back as though I've uttered profanity. “Children are a nuisance. I'm glad your father sold them while he could. I couldn't be bothered raising another brood.”

Großmutter is holding the empty bowl like a chalice, fingers spread to cradle it well. Her hands belie her words; she used to hold little Hilde constantly.

I had two sisters—Eike and Hildegard. I was eight when Mother died—one year too old to be sold into slavery, though surely no one would have bought a child as sick as I was. Eike was six. Hilde was three—barely weaned. They went together with a traveling merchant to Magdeburg, where
they work in the castle. That's what I've been told, at least. If I do go to the Magdeburg town school next year, I'll find them again. And when I get a job, I'll buy them back. They're my blood, after all.

It's strange thinking about them. I usually try not to. There's no point thinking about what you can't do anything about. And it hurts to think like that.

I peek through the opening in the shutters. It's pouring. I strip.

“What are you doing?” Großmutter gets up from the table groggily. It's the effect of the beer, for she drank extra tonight. I saw.

“No point in getting my clothes wet,” I say, and I dash out the door, out from under the wide roof overhang, into the downpour. It takes almost no time to grab a couple of stones. When I run back in, she's waiting, holding a blanket one of my brothers has cast off. She clucks angrily.

My brothers are laughing.

“Don't encourage him,” she spits at them. “The rain will be the death of him if he doesn't watch out.” She pinches my ear till I beg for mercy. “That's from your mother's spirit.”

I climb the stairs quietly, with a stone in each hand, at the ready. The rats are gnawing at something. Something near my bed. A steady gnaw. I
peer through the shadows, and now I see them. Blood makes their whiskers shine. They've killed Kröte! Idiot rats. They'd die of the poison in his skin if I didn't kill them first.

My Kröte, my familiar.

I throw hard and kill them both. Swiftly. I've never had a stomach for pain. But I wish I did. They deserved as painful a death as they gave.

Scattered bits of Kröte's bone shard and glistening flesh and one intact hind leg—strong, long muscles, useless.

Oh, yes, I should have let those rats die in misery. They probably ate Kröte alive—rats do that. Did he see his own innards?

And I'm sweating and dizzy and coughing, coughing, coughing.

“On your hands, boy,” shouts Großmutter, clomping up the stairs. “Stand on your hands. Fast.”

But I'm already upside down, and now she's pounding my back. Hack and pound, hack and pound.

Arabs

The barge has a flat surface, easy to balance on. I could stand if I were allowed. But I'm sitting on a stack of crates, to help keep them steady. This way I earn my passage. It's only drizzling, not a storm. But the rain has been so frequent of late that the deck is slick, almost slimy. I heard the crew swear it's no fault of theirs—they scrubbed the wood when they stopped at Hameln town. They say they'll scrub it again at Höxter. The weather is a formidable foe.

I'm warm, despite the cool air. The hot stink of fowl surrounds me; it comes from the box of hens that rests across my shoulders and the back of my neck. Every now and then a peck will penetrate between the slats and I'll jump. Then I shake the box to warn them to behave, and a few tiny black feathers poof out and down past my face.

The hen box can't touch the deck planks or anything on the deck except me—that's the rule—otherwise our coven will have to pay the cargo fee. These hens are a gift to the good coven of Höxter—new familiars to replace old. They are pullets, the chicks of Großmutter's familiar.

I've been without a familiar since the rats ate my last Kröte. The very idea of familiars makes me anxious now. I don't want my powers tied to an animal that can get killed so easily by creatures as lowly as rats. Großmutter says I'm being foolish and I should simply catch another. After all, I've had so many toads, and any one of them might have been swallowed by a snake two seconds after I freed it—I wouldn't know. So what does it matter if I saw this Kröte dead? But it does matter. I want a strong familiar.

And I've acquired a queasiness toward rats. I liked my Kröte, even if each Kröte is different. They all have a calm, flat way about them that suits me. And Kröte was my responsibility. I hate that he died because I stupidly put him in harm's way. I imagine him hearing the rats coming, his feet scrabbling futilely on the smooth sides of the
earthen pot. Rats are hideous. Mores the pity, because those two I killed were just the beginning of the invasion. I kill at least one a day now.

In any case, I'm grateful to these hens. They are the only reason Großmutter permits me to go for my lessons today, for they keep the rain off my head. Without them, she'd have locked me indoors, dry but miserable.

Großmutter says this rain can come to no good. The forest berries are too swollen with water to make for good eating; they turn into mash as we pick them. So she's been cooking them and making spreads for our bread. She's worried about everything rotting, even the plants growing in the field—even me, it seems. She rubs my hair dry every time I come inside, muttering, always muttering.

I like the rain, though, at least when it comes slow and thin, like now. It's true that my breath moves heavier when the air itself soaks me. But there's a peaceful quiet to this rain. And I haven't had a coughing fit since the night Kröte died.

It was dawn when I got on this barge at Hameln town, and we haven't arrived yet, though the morning is already full. That's because the river goes faster after so much rain, and we're paddling against the current. But it can't be too much farther
now; we passed the rock cliffs that mark the halfway point long ago. The shore on both sides is wild with mixed oaks, hornbeams, hawthorn shrubs, brambles. The hills hold tall sycamores and shiny copper beeches.

BOOK: Breath (9781439132227)
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