The Klipfish Code (9 page)

"Marit!" Aunt Ingeborg called up. "Are you going to take all day to show me how it fits?"

Embarrassed, Marit hurried down the stairs.

Aunt Ingeborg nodded. "Now turn around. It suits you and fits well, with plenty of room for you to grow. Now you'll have it to wear for your confirmation and for special events."

Though Marit knew she could never wear the
bunad
in public, she twirled again, too happy to contain herself. If Bestefar had been home, she wouldn't have dared to try it on, but he had left early and was fishing already, despite the pale rising sun of winter.

"Pack it away, Marit, in the chest in your room. Hide it at the bottom, underneath everything else, just to be safe."

Marit started up the stairs, then turned back and threw her arms around her aunt's neck. "
Tusen takk,
Aunt Ingeborg!"

That night by the radio, Aunt Ingeborg and Marit exchanged glances, sharing their own secret. Bestefar didn't
need to know that the
bunad
was done. Let him worry about something else. When Aunt Ingeborg finished correcting assignments, she took skeins of undyed wool. "Lars, you need a bigger sweater. Dyes are impossible to get these days, but at least sheep are still in abundance on the island."

The radio crackled. Marit wondered why Bestefar listened so closely if he didn't believe in standing up to the Germans. These days, he spoke less and less.

The king's voice came in clearly for a moment. "All for Norway," she heard, but his words faded in and out. How long could Norway stay strong without their king, without more help from the Allies? Many German warships had been bombed by the Resistance when they entered Norwegian harbors, but the Nazis were always quick to react—sometimes burning whole villages in response. Hanna had complained that just that week Nazis had visited their house in the middle of the night without so much as a knock. They slammed open the door with the butts of their rifles. "I don't know what they were looking for," she said. "But when they took the one good piece of soap that my mama had hidden in a drawer, she couldn't stop crying for a long time."

On March 20, a ray of sun fell perfectly on Miss Halversen, backlighting her golden hair. But this afternoon, her forehead was etched with lines, her mouth tight and strained, and her skin pale. "We have been informed," she announced to all the students, "that schools across Norway are to shut down for one month due to a 'fuel shortage.'" She moved her lips, as if to say more or to explain this strange statement to them. Instead, her eyes flitted to the back of the church.

Marit turned and her heart caught. She elbowed Hanna. "Look!"

The officer who had tried to win their teacher's affection hadn't been around for a year. Now at the back of
the church, he towered in his uniform. She hadn't heard him arrive. The sun glinted off the eagle pin on his jacket and shot needle rays around the church. At his heels waited two younger soldiers, both armed.

"
Fräulein
Halversen," the officer said from the back of the church, as if he didn't dare get too close to her. "Come with us."

"You must all be brave," Miss Halversen blurted, rushing headlong with her words as the soldiers marched toward her. "Remember, you are Norwegians. You must be brave—and wise."

Within seconds, the two soldiers grabbed Miss Halversen by her arms. "I'm capable of walking on my own," she said. They released their hold, and walked on either side of her.

Whispers fluttered around the room. The soldiers looked neither left nor right, but straight ahead to the foyer, and Miss Halversen walked with them. Marit felt the blood drain from her whole body. She wanted to shout out, to tell them to stop. They couldn't take her aunt away! But along with everyone else, fear tethered her to her seat and sealed her lips. The moment they stepped out of the church, Marit jumped from her pew toward the open door, and the rest of the students followed her lead, pressing in around her.

She stared. The soldiers pointed to the back of an empty army truck, their breaths forming white clouds as
they spoke. Without allowing her to take a hat or winter
jakke,
Miss Halversen—her own aunt—climbed in and sat on a bench.

The officer slipped into the back of the other vehicle, a sleek four-door car. Through the window, Marit watched him nod to the driver. The car gunned gravel, and the truck careened after it down the sloping road toward the harbor. From the rear of the covered truck, Miss Halversen stared back at the school, lifting her pale hand in silent farewell.

"
Nei! Nei! Nei!
" Marit wailed, her legs threatening to buckle beneath her. "They can't take her! They can't! That's my aunt Ingeborg! They can't!" But the truck was already gone.

A firm hand grasped her shoulder and tugged her backward. "Marit, Marit, come. Children, children. Inside now," ordered Mrs. Hammer. "Come, sit down."

A blizzard of thoughts and feelings left her numb as Marit walked blindly to her seat. Mrs. Hammer shored her up with an arm around her waist, steering her toward the pews at the front of the church. Marit slumped into the pew as Mrs. Hammer stood before the altar. "Quickly now. The rest of you—take your seats."

When everyone was seated, she explained. "This
is
terrible. I'm frightened and upset, too. We heard rumors that
one in ten
teachers would be rounded up across Norway and sent to concentration camps in our country. Now we know it's true. The Nazis want to scare us into obeying. They want us to bend to their ways." Her voice broke. "Now, go home and pray. Pray every single day for Miss Halversen and for teachers across Norway."

As other students gathered their things to leave school, Marit grabbed her
jakke
and rucksack and raced out to find Bestefar. Lars would have to catch up with her. Bestefar had to find some way to get Aunt Ingeborg back! She had to tell him what had happened.

Breathless, she arrived at his boathouse. But he wasn't there. And his fishing trawler was gone from the bay.

When Lars caught up with her on the road, Marit couldn't speak. In the past two years, with constant worries about the war, Marit had leaned on Aunt Ingeborg. Her kindness.
Her being there.
She'd become more than an aunt. She was like her second mother. Hot tears ran down her cold face. She wiped her nose on the sleeve of her
jakke.
Everyone she loved was being taken from her.

"Marit," Lars said, his voice wavery. Marit noticed his mittens were clumped with snow. "Aunt Ingeborg will come back," he said, patting her arm. "You'll see."

***

That night, when Bestefar stepped into the farmhouse, he went right past the thin soup on the stove that Marit had made and turned on the radio.

"I heard what happened," he said, spinning the knob until the BBC came in fairly clearly.

Marit listened intently to learn about the Nazi roundup of teachers across the country. The news went from bad to horrible. Not only were teachers sent to concentration camps for "reeducation" but also, to set an example, five hundred of the one thousand arrested teachers were crammed into the hold of a boat and sent from Trondheim up the frigid northern coast.

Bestefar raked his hand through his hair. "The
Skjaer-stad
is a small coastal steamer—meant to carry one hundred fifty or so passengers—not five hundred!" His eyes were rimmed red and Marit was sure he'd been crying. "Ingeborg! How could they take her from us? What's becoming of the world when good teachers like my Ingeborg can be treated like livestock?" Head bowed, he said, "God protect her."

***

That night, before bed, Marit stopped at the threshold of her aunt's upstairs bedroom. It was tidy. Her sheepskin slippers were lined up neatly under her bathrobe, which hung from a peg beside the door. On her pine dresser, her pewter set—hand mirror, comb, and hairbrush—waited for her return. Marit considered sleeping in her aunt's bed. She wouldn't have to share with Lars.
But she couldn't. That would be the same as saying her aunt would never come back. Besides, only a large sheet of paper draped her aunt's mattress. After the requisitioning of all blankets, the only warm covering in the house was the
dyne
that she and Lars slept under every night. Before bedtime, they always pulled it out from under their mattress, shook it hard to fluff up its feathers, then hid it again in the morning. Marit turned away from the doorway. Without Aunt Ingeborg, the house felt cold and hollow.

After that day, Bestefar fell into a rock-hard silence. The cooking and cleaning fell to Marit. Lars tried to help, but he was better at tending the goats and chickens. When he tried to cook, he made more of a mess than it was worth.

Over and over Marit replayed the image of her aunt being taken away, trying to imagine if there was something she could have done to stop the soldiers. With dread, she thought of Aunt Ingeborg being tortured. Or being crammed with other teachers like slaves into a crowded boat. Marit couldn't help but scan the sea, wondering if brave teachers were out there, floating through mine-laden waters. Though the hours of daylight were lengthening, the darkness over Norway seemed only to deepen. Bestefar said he would try to find out what he could about Aunt Ingeborg, but as no news of her whereabouts came, the week passed like a year.

The morning the "donation" truck pulled up to the barn, Marit watched from the window, hiding behind the curtains. The soldier read something to Bestefar from a piece of paper, and then left with his milk and eggs.

Stepping inside, Bestefar brushed white flecks of snow from the shoulders of his wool jacket and sat down heavily at the table.

Marit stopped sweeping. "What is it this time?"

He rubbed his forehead with the back of his hand until his skin turned red as crab legs. "All radios must be turned in by the end of the day. This evening, they will do a house-to-house search. Anyone caught with a radio will face a firing squad."

Lars sat cross-legged on the living room floor holding Tekopp. He looked up, his eyes blank, then returned to playing with his cat. Without the radio, they would not hear any news from Britain. No news about teachers or other efforts by Norwegians—like Mama and Papa. Bestefar's radio was their lifeline to the outside world. It meant hope. He simply couldn't give it up.

"Bestefar, what will we do?" Marit asked. "Hide it?"

He circled his hands around an empty coffee cup and answered in a faraway voice. "I must turn it in. The price is too high."

The broom she'd been clenching dropped from her hands and clattered on the floor. Her eyes filled with
tears. She could never know for sure what her own Mama and Papa were doing. But she believed they had sent their own children away so that they might work actively against the Nazi occupation. Her own aunt Ingeborg, her own teacher, had stood up and refused to do as the Nazis commanded and instruct students in Nazi propaganda. She'd risked her life on it—and now she was somewhere, probably in a reeducation camp. Yet Bestefar sat there, playing it safe, unwilling to take a chance on a hidden radio.

She yanked on her boots and tore her
jakke
and hat from the wooden peg by the door. She couldn't stand to be in the same room as her grandfather. Without thought as to where she would head, she stomped out and turned northeast.

Past several narrow farms and along a footpath that wove up the hills, Marit ran and ran. The top of Godøy Mountain called to her, and maybe she was angry enough to keep going until she had reached the top. The past month had brought rains and snow, leaving a thin crust of snow-covered ice over the path. She stomped through it, gulping the damp air as she slowed to a walk. It wasn't safe to be alone, a girl in the woods. But she didn't care. Nothing was safe anymore. School wasn't safe. Not even Aunt Ingeborg had been safe.

The path was familiar and brought back memories. Once at Lake Alnesvatnet on the top of the mountain,
she'd caught her first trout, its scales iridescent as it flip-flopped on the shore.

An irritable cawing sounded overhead. Two ravens sat in the top branches of snow-laced cedars. Marit passed beneath them, ignoring their squawking complaints and fluffing of feathers.

At the next clearing, she stopped and looked back. Godøy and the surrounding islands rose like humpback whales from the sparkling sea. Sun glinted off distant peaks and melted the snow into icy waterfalls and streams that emptied into the ocean. So much had remained the same. The same sea, the same deeply carved fjords, the same towering mountains beyond. Nearly two years had passed since she'd last returned home from skiing in the mountains with her family—two long years since bombs fell and her world collapsed.

Marit pushed on, keeping the coast in sight. At the base of a low-sweeping cedar, something red caught her eye. She stopped. At first she thought it was a pine grosbeak with its fluff of rosy-red feathers, but a shiver went through her. It wasn't a bird at all, but a spot of blood.

Had a rabbit or squirrel been caught by a predator? An owl or wolverine or lynx? Stepping closer to investigate, she saw no signs of a struggle. No paw prints from a preying animal. No feathering of wings in the snow from a hawk or owl. Fresh snow from last night covered everything.

She inhaled sharply, looked closer, and saw that the blood extended under the thick branches. Her stomach lurched. She tripped backwards, away from the tree and whatever might be lying in its shadows. Suddenly the distance between this lonely place and the farmhouse seemed enormous.

Through the cedar's low branches, a man whispered, "Don't move."

Run,
her instincts told her, but she froze. If this were a Nazi commanding her to stop, the price of fleeing would be death. Yet something about the voice ... This man's Norwegian was perfect, not the broken Norwegian of a German soldier.

"Please," he said, a desperate plea rather than his earlier command. She couldn't see movement beneath the tree's branches. The man was well concealed. She expected to see the barrel of a gun pointed toward her.