Shards and Ashes

Feelings she couldn’t describe swept upward, making her feel out of kilter. She stared at the handwriting, then at the picture. Her heart tugged.

“This was . . . before,” she said.

“Ja,” he said.

They stood shoulder to shoulder, looking down at the Delaney that had been. Stuffed animals and Disneyland—those had been her hopes and dreams. She felt the heat of his skin and wondered what his life had been like with the Cohens. Jets and flying lessons?

“From what I can tell, your aunt was only here for a couple of weeks before everything went crazy,” he said.

There were some burned fragments of lined paper. She put down the picture and carefully sorted through them. She looked at a piece of paper.

things to do

learn german

On another, she read, I think something’s going on downstairs. Something wrong.

She turned another page of the book, to see photographs of other people dressed like Meg Zecherle. They looked like riot police.

“Those were her teammates,” Alex said. “They were some kind of security guards. They patrolled along a place called the Pale.”

“What’s that?” she asked.

“A border. They had to keep something out. I think it got in.”

She looked at the massive volumes. “All this, and that’s all you’ve got?”

“Most of this is written in Latin. I think. I think some is very old German.” He opened a book at random. “Here or there I found something I could read. Spells.” He looked abashed. “Imagine if you came here. Would you know what to do?”

They shared a grim smile. “There’s nothing more about . . . us?” she asked, not sure which “us” she meant.

“Maybe you can find something,” he said. “There is something,” he went on, reaching for another book. Bound in maroon leather, it was enormous.

He opened it to the first page. There was a black-and-white woodblock print of a man in a three-cornered hat on a horse, with a small child clasped against his chest. The horse was cantering through the night. Clouds billowed in the background, and in the largest of them, a shadowy face smiled wickedly down at the riders.

Alex pointed to lines of text beneath the picture. It was organized in stanzas like a poem, and he began to read aloud, in German. She listened to his voice.

“It’s ‘Der Erlkonig,’” he said. “‘The Erl King.’ Do you know it? ‘Who rides so late, through night and wind’?” When she shook her head, he said, “I keep coming back to this picture. I keep reading the poem. I don’t know why.”

“What is it about?”

“The child is sick. The father is riding with him through the forest, and the Erl King wants him. The boy can see him. The father can’t. He begs his father to save him from the Erl King. But he doesn’t.”

“Cheery,” she said.

The despair tugged at her again, almost like someone pulling on her hand. Anger skittered ratlike up her spine, and she stepped away from the table.

“Delaney?” he asked.

Freaked, she looked around the room. “Is this place haunted?”

“I don’t know.” His expression told her he had come to a decision. “The town’s deserted. We can look for a place—”

A sharp stab of light replaced his face. She saw a circular stone stairway. Saw herself walking down it behind Alex.

She brushed past him and went into the hall. Her thought was to go back out the front door, but instead, she turned in the opposite direction, into the pitch-blackness.

Light flared behind her. She heard the thudding of his boots, and then he was beside her. He had a flashlight. He said something to her in German, gave his head an impatient shake.

“English, English,” he said to himself. “What is happening?” he asked her.

“There’s something down there,” she said, halting before a hole in the floor at the end of the hall. “I saw it. It’s a cage.”

He was quiet for a moment. Then he said, “There are a lot of cages down there. But you wanted to leave, and I think we should. We can come back.”

She nodded. He was right.

But then it happened again: the flash of light. The cage.

And the horrible, horrible despair. Cold, miserable, alone. Dying.

Pleading.

“I think I have to go down there,” she said hesitantly.

“Okay, here,” he said, turning and aiming the flashlight at a curved stone wall, then downward at a circular flight of stone stairs. “I’ll go first.”

He started down, taking the flashlight beam with him. She followed for a couple of steps, but then she froze. There was no banister, and she pushed herself against the wall, afraid she’d fall off the edge of the staircase and never stop falling. She was no Alice, and this was no Wonderland. Grief wafted up from the depths below and twisted around her, like people drowning on the Titanic. She recoiled and crossed her arms.

She headed back up.

Then suddenly, rage poured right in, crashing over her head.

Just go down and kick him. Kick him hard, and he’ll fall down the stairs and break his neck. It was as if someone else inside her was whispering commands. Raging because he was the enemy, and the end of the world was his fault.

“Alex,” she said, swallowing hard.

Oblivious, he kept going.

She took another step up.

Kill him. They lied. They told us we were doing a great thing. But we were not.

She teetered on the step and went back down. The rage ebbed. Another step down. It faded.

Another.

It was gone.

“Alex, wait,” she said. “There’s something bad. Really bad.”

He was standing at the bottom of the stairs. She got to him, and to her surprise, he put his arm around her protectively.

“There’s something that’s angry. It told me to . . . ,” she began. And then realized that she didn’t really know this guy, and she had watched him charm his way into her home.

“To what?” he asked.

What the hell am I doing? she thought. She felt as if she were waking up after a long, strange dream.

“It told me to leave,” she lied. “And I think—”

And then she felt the sorrow and the terror. It was longing and keening and fear. She thought she heard a moan and caught her breath. Was someone down here? Someone alive?

“I think we should hurry,” she said.

“You’re okay, though?” he asked.

“Does it matter?” she snapped, because she was afraid of him. “Why don’t you just zap me so I’ll do your