Beautiful Blue World (12 page)

IN THE MORNING,
when all the kids were receiving their updates and tasks, I headed over to Gunnar.

“Lykkelig's okay,” he said. “Holtzberg got hit.”

His town. His home.

“I'm sorry,” I said, trying to hide my relief that my family and Megs were okay for another day.

The Examiner appeared beside us.

“Gunnar,” she said, “it might interest you to know that only the northwest area of Holtzberg got hit?”

Gunnar flushed pink, trying not to look too relieved in front of the other boys. He nodded his thanks, and turned to the map with the others.

“Mathilde?” the Examiner said. “Come to my office.”

I hurried to follow.

“Shut the door,” she said once we were inside.

I did and, in response to her nod, took the chair in front of her desk. I waited, heart thudding.

She'd heard about me talking to the man at the shop. Or trying to write home.

After a moment's silence, she said, “We've acquired a prisoner of war.”

“What?”

“We're holding a Tyssian soldier.”

She studied me until I couldn't wait anymore.

“Why are you telling me?”

“I'm giving you an assignment.”

I stared at her.

“Part of your daily work will now include talking to him.”

“You want me to…
talk
to him?”

The other children all had tasks that were puzzles.

She nodded.

“Haven't you already questioned him?”

“I want
you
to.”

“Every day?”

“There are things you can't learn in one day.”

I nodded slowly. “What do you want me to learn?”

She continued as if I hadn't asked the question. “You will talk to him alone, but you will be perfectly safe. I will check in with you every day.”

“Okay.” I still didn't know what I was meant to learn, but I knew I couldn't ask her again. She would have answered my question if she'd wanted to.

“You'll start this morning. Ready?”

I stared at the Examiner as she started to get up. I didn't move.

“Now?”

“Yes, now.”

“Does he speak Sofarender?”

“He should. If that's not working, your Eilian is better than your Tyssian, according to the translations on your test, so try that next.”

“What—” I searched for a way to rephrase my questions. “What do you want me to ask him about?”

“Nothing in particular. Just talk.”

“Just…talk?”

“Just talk.”

Just talk.

And report what I'd learned.

“What am I supposed to say to him?”

“Anything you like except about our work here.”

She wasn't giving me a goal. How could I possibly succeed?

“Ready?” she asked again.

I nodded.

I wasn't allowed to say no.

She led me to an upstairs corridor of offices. Grown-ups glanced at me through their open doors as I passed; none looked twice, so I figured they weren't bothered to see me in their hallway. They were all dressed like the Examiner and doing what seemed to be paperwork. They were very quiet.

So adults worked downstairs
and
upstairs.

A lot of different things went on in this building.

Each thing secret from the others?

The Examiner paused at a door. She unlocked it and handed me a key.

“Your key will work on either side of this door. I'm going to lock you in.”

Locked in.

Alone with a Tyssian soldier.

I shivered.

Be brave, be brave.

I wouldn't really be locked in. I'd have the key.

I took a deep breath, accepted the key, and stepped into the room.

I stood in a narrow passage along the side of the room. A metal fence went from ceiling to floor; beyond that was a second metal fence, also from ceiling to floor, so there would always be at least three feet of space between us.

On the other side of the fencing was another door. It had no doorknob. A metal plate extended from the door to cover what would have been the gap between the wall and the door.

There was a cot with blankets; a pitcher with water and a basin; an empty plate, presumably from breakfast; and a bucket with a lid.

And there he was, sitting, knees drawn to his chest.

My enemy had been aerials in the sky.

Bombs.

Hunger.

Loved ones taken away.

I had never pictured a Tyssian before.

He wasn't even old. Only a few years older than Tommy, maybe eighteen. He wore drab beige clothes. His hair was blond, like mine.

He looked up as I entered and I saw his eyes were blue, like mine.

If I had bothered to picture a Tyssian, I wouldn't have pictured him to be so much like me. My skin itched, and something heavy settled in my stomach.

He turned even paler as he stared at me. Like maybe I was a ghost.

What could I say to him?

I walked over to the fence.

Was it rude to stare when it was the enemy, when he was in a cage?

Father took me and Kammi to the zoo once.

There had been a tiger.

We couldn't get enough of looking at the tiger.

This tiger stared back at me, still waiting.

How was I supposed to begin this conversation that was to happen every day?

Standing up taller than him didn't seem to be right, so I backed up to my wall and slid down, sitting with crossed legs.

I looked at him, and started the only way I knew how:

“I'm Mathilde.”

HAD HE UNDERSTOOD ME?
Even if he had, me telling him my name and sitting down as if to stay awhile seemed to puzzle him.

Finally, he said, in Tyssian, “You have a message for me?”

“No.”

We continued to stare at each other.

“What's your name?” I asked in Sofarender.

He paused and thought a moment; then he said, “Rainer.”

We sat.

I would report that on my first day I learned his name and that was it?

They probably already knew his name. It would have been on his tags, if he still had them.

I sighed and put my head on my knees.

“You have come just to stare at me?”

“No.”

“They think that I can get out of here and they have sent a tiny guard to watch me?”

“I'm not a guard.”

“Then what?”

“I just came to talk to you.”

He stared at me for a moment before saying “Have fun” in Tyssian, and turned to look at the wall.

As he turned, I could see that the front and back of his beige coverall was marked with big, red, fabric Xs.

Rainer was a target.

“You're quiet,” Brid said to me at lunch.

“Where were you?” Caelyn asked.

The full truth caught in my throat. I hadn't been told
not
to tell the others. Maybe it was because I didn't know how they would feel about a Tyssian soldier living upstairs.

How did
I
feel about it?

“I had an assignment.”

That satisfied them both. They were used to secret assignments, and not asking too many questions. To not knowing any more than they needed to.

I went to the art room, but it wasn't empty. “Oh! Hi, Tommy.”

He looked up from his project.

In the time since we'd been back from our outing, he'd managed to fashion his own model aerial. He seemed to be trying to create a propeller.

“That looks good,” I said. “Will it fly?”

“It coasts fine. But I thought if I could get a propeller to turn, maybe it would stay up longer. Maybe I can get propellers on both wings.”

I didn't want to bother him, so I got my own art supplies and picked another table.

Tommy was never on his own for long. Soon Annevi was there, and Hamlin, and Gunnar. Annevi and Hamlin sat with Tommy, Hamlin spouting facts about how big the propellers should be based on the size of the aerial.

But Gunnar took the seat across from me.

“We think it'll be Lykkelig tonight.”

I looked over at the wall, where my feasting family hung.

My stomach squirmed.

“Oh,” I managed to say.

Gunnar had followed my eyes to the painting.

“And Holtzberg again?” I asked.

“They got a lot of factories last night. We don't think they'll repeat. Maybe, but we recommended sending the defenses to other towns.”

Did the Examiner recruit especially in cities that were being bombed? Were targeted places just more populated? Or were the parents more willing to send their children away?

“I'm sorry,” I said. “But I'm glad it sounded like your family was okay last night.”

The pencil shook in my hand and eventually I lowered it to rest on the table.

“How do you not just tell them to send the defenses to your own town, every night?”

Gunnar slid the paper I'd gotten over to his side of the table. He gently took the pencil from my hand. He sketched. A rectangle, set in a row of others: a building, on a block. Smaller rectangles: windows. Circles: faces, in the windows.

His home? His family?

Could have been any home, any family.

He looked back up at me.

“Because other people matter, too.”

IN THE MORNING, I
let myself into Rainer's room.

He looked up.

“You're back,” he said in Sofarender, sounding surprised.

“I'll come back every day.” I sat down.

After a few minutes, he said, “You do not have school? Sofarenders do not go to school?”

“We go to school.” I couldn't say why
I
didn't go to school, because I couldn't explain where we were.

He looked at me suspiciously.

“It is morning-time,” he said, nodding up toward the small window high in the wall that let him see the sky. No black curtain. He didn't have a candle or flashlight, so he couldn't make any light that would need to be blacked out. He spent every night in the dark. Hours and hours of it.

“Morning-time is when little children go to school, no?”

I shrugged.

He thought I was just a little child.

We were done talking.

Lunch seemed oddly quiet. I looked around. “Where's Tommy?”

“He got moved,” Caelyn said.

“Moved?” To a different house? Were there other houses like Faetre?

“Downstairs. He turned fifteen. And he's brilliant.”

“Wow,” I managed. He would do such a good job. And he wouldn't be sent to the front lines. He would get to stay here, under steel and concrete, safe.

But I pictured him running and playing outside; the grown-ups didn't have playtime.

Annevi twisted her fork around on her plate instead of eating.

Which I realized was what I had been doing. I took a few bites of our beans on toast.

Some of the boys seemed almost cheerful. Maybe they liked knowing that they'd be able to move downstairs later. Maybe some of them were hoping to become the top kid, like Tommy had been.

A few seemed down, but not like Annevi.

After lunch, I didn't go back to the soldier. I didn't see the point. I milled about the living room with everyone else, watching Fredericka read and Gunnar determine whether his family might be bombed, Brid and Caelyn find their patterns and Hamlin pace between the tables giving orders as Tommy had been doing only yesterday, and Annevi shift her ships more slowly than usual.

As soon as we got outside, Tyssia Tag started up. Annevi ran with the others, but she didn't try to tackle anyone. I stayed behind her, so she couldn't see me.

And then I ran at her, launching myself up onto her shoulders and throwing her all the way to the ground, landing on top of her. I untied and stole her sea-colored armband.

The breath knocked out of her, she rolled over to see who had brought her down.

She looked surprised to see me. She saw her stolen armband, dangling before her eyes, and took in the tiger stripes on my own arm.

Would she get angry?

Or would she play along?

She let out a shriek and pushed me off of her. She scrambled to her feet and launched herself at me as I ran away.

She would play.

The next day I went back to the cell.

A prison cell for a prisoner.

With a small section for me.

I was a prisoner, too.

After three days, I really should have had something to tell to the Examiner. She'd pulled me aside, but I'd had nothing to say.

Mostly I was tired of sitting in someone's presence, not talking.

On the fourth day of sitting and staring at the wall, boredom was about to drive me crazy.

At least I got to leave the terrible little room. Rainer had to stay there all the time.

But…the bombed streets back home, that terrible wailing…he deserved it.

He could sit here forever and rot, as far as I was concerned.

Staring at him, with his cold, unfeeling manner, I didn't blame Annevi for not minding if they blew up the ships she found.

But still, the silence wore on me, and I couldn't understand why it wasn't bothering him, too.

I asked, “Where do you come from?”

I asked, “How old are you?”

“Do you have a family?”

“Did you go to school?”

“What do you eat, where you're from?”

“Is it cold there?”

“What's your favorite season?”

“What's your favorite color?”

Nothing.

At Tyssia Tag, Hamlin tackled me and stole my armband.

The next day, Annevi snatched my armband without even needing to tackle me.

The day after that, Fredericka, who never plays, got my band.

Whichever side I was on, was guaranteed to lose.

“How is it going?” the Examiner asked for the tenth time.

Her office was another place I wished I spent less time, though it was really only a few minutes a day.

I wanted to say “Fine,” but I couldn't. “Nothing's happening.”

“That's all right. Just try again tomorrow.”

But what would be different?

“How—how did we get Rainer?” I had figured out that Rainer must have been brought here on the day of our outing.

The Examiner paused, deciding whether to tell me. Eventually, she said, “Rainer was captured in the mountains on our side of the border. Nine others were with him.”

“Where are the others?”

“They didn't make it.”

“Oh.”

Even if it sounded like you were lucky, it felt awful to be the only one to make it. Like it hurt Caelyn to have been the only one to get better from the flu. And it hurt me to be the only one to leave Lykkelig. “Does Rainer know?”

“He does.”

“So…we killed the rest of them?”

“Not necessarily. The Tyssians don't view it as honorable to be captured. They would rather die than be prisoners, than risk talking about their country's secrets.”

“I can't get him to tell me anything.” I didn't want to say she'd made a mistake again. But she seemed to be waiting for me to talk. I took a deep breath. “Father said to help end the war and come home. Everyone else is helping. They find ships and defend cities. I can't do anything at all. Maybe that's why you gave me this job. You didn't want to waste anybody else on something impossible.”

I sat stiffly in the chair in front of her desk, but she seemed at ease on the other side. After a few silent moments, she spoke.

“Tell me, what did Annevi bring from home?”

“I— What?”

“What did Annevi bring from home?”

“She never told me.”

“Think. You each brought something special from home. What would you guess Annevi brought?”

I thought about Annevi's competitiveness, how she wanted to move right on to the next assignment after finishing one, how much she concentrated, how she usually played tag as if it was as serious as her job.

“Maybe…maybe a little medal for something she did well at? Like a little prize from school?”

“And Caelyn, what do you think she brought?”

Caelyn, whose parents and brothers were gone. Who wondered if there were untold reasons she had been sent away.

“A photo of her family, if she had one.”

“What did our prisoner bring from home?”

“Nothing. He wasn't allowed to keep anything.”

“Wrong. Find out what he brought from home.”

I must have looked puzzled, because she said, “I think it will go best if you just be yourself.”

What did she mean? I'd already asked him everything I could think of.

“How about Gunnar? What did Gunnar bring from home?”

My answer stuck in my throat, because I was about to say that Gunnar brought his heart from home.

The Examiner smiled at me. “You're dismissed. For today.”

On the next day of silence, when I stood to leave, I paused before exiting. Despite being so angry at him, for what his country had done, for remaining silent while I sat with him day after day, I thought about how it felt to be the only one. To be left behind. I thought about how I'd helped Annevi by showing her that I could play, too, Gunnar by admitting I worried, too. By offering myself.

I said, “I like green.”

And then on the day after that, when I got up to leave, I heard behind me, “I like blue.”