Beautiful Blue World Read online

  “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.”

  I LIKE BLUE.

  I like blue.

  I like blue.

  I carried the sentence with me through the rest of the day and the evening, turned it in my head as I lay in bed that night.

  It was still there in the morning, when I woke to pull back my black curtains and saw that the sky was mostly gray, but there was a thin blueness to it anyway, that kind that comes with a chilly morning.

  I like blue.

  —

  After breakfast, I let myself into Rainer’s room and sat down.

  I watched him sitting.

  We didn’t acknowledge each other.

  I pulled my knees to my chest and wrapped my arms around them.

  After a few minutes, I said, “My father…”

  I paused, to see if he was listening.

  I figured that he was.

  “Father works at the post office. He has a beard that’s starting to turn gray, and eyes the blue of the sky when the blue is thin, like just after the sun comes up on a cold morning. He calls me Big, because I am the oldest. I used to help him at work in the afternoons. I could sort the letters or go on deliveries with him. But they made new rules about post office security because of the…” I looked at him. We both knew. “Because of the war.”

  I told him about Mother.

  And Kammi and Tye.

  I did not say But I’m worried you have killed them.

  I told him about school.

  And Megs.

  I did not say It’s your fault I do not go to school anymore. It’s your fault I’m not with my family and Megs.

  I did not say I had folded them all up like tiny pieces of paper and stowed them in a little box, deep inside me, so I didn’t have to think of them and hurt.

  I kept all the angry thoughts stuck in my chest, even though they stewed all the while.

  Even though they were also true.

  I told him about the woods that I loved.

  The summer.

  The raspberry-glazed buns.

  —

  I fell silent. Silent like snow falling: gentle, but building.

  Would he answer eventually, like with the colors?

  He wiggled his toes—he had no shoes on, just socks, though his laceless boots lay in the corner, but he wasn’t going anywhere anyway—and watched his feet.

  He looked angry.

  As if listening to me had hurt somehow.

  But it shouldn’t have.

  I’d held back all the things I thought would hurt.

  I hadn’t said anything mean.

  Maybe he’d answer me later.

  Like with the colors.

  I let go of my knees, getting up to leave.

  “Those are all things that you have stolen from Tyssia.”

  His words fell through my mind slowly, like stones plopping into a stream: I heard them one at a time.

  —

  “What?”

  —

  “All those things—the raspberries, the woods, the stream, the mushrooms—those belong to Tyssians.”

  A hot pit grew in my stomach.

  What should I say?

  It was my job to talk to him. And he was finally ready. I couldn’t leave now.

  Remain calm. See what he needs to say.

  See what I could learn.

  I took a deep breath and spoke slowly.

  “My home is in Sofarende. All those things are within Sofarende. Why would you say they belong to you?”

  “You took them from us.”

  —

  He was crazy.

  —

  “Of course we didn’t.”

  “You did. Where you live is the ancestral home of Tyssians.”

  “But we’ve been here for hundreds of years.”

  “But
half of your land was home to Tyssians. You have not been Sofarende for hundreds of years. Less than one hundred years. On stolen land.”

  Each province had voted to become one country called Sofarende. The Sofarers, Tyssians, Eileans, and Nor’landers…everyone had blended together to be modern Sofarenders.

  We hadn’t kept track of who was who.

  We hadn’t seen a reason to.

  We had been proud to be mixed.

  I could have been part Tyssian by blood; I lived in southern Sofarende, where it was more likely. And I looked like Rainer.

  It had never mattered before. Never even entered a discussion.

  My skin crawled.

  “They voted,” I said. “The Tyssians in those areas wanted to become part of Sofarende.”

  “There must have been someone threatening them to do so.”

  “I don’t remember learning about any threats.”

  “You wouldn’t. Why would they have taught you that at school? If you’ve even been to school. You seem to just sit around all day.”

  “For someone who hasn’t wanted to talk for days, you sure have a lot to say.” I glared at him.

  “For someone who tried to get me to talk for days, you should be glad I am telling you what I know.”

  “The only things stolen are the things you’ve taken from us since this war began—including the lives of the innocent people you’ve bombed in their sleep.”

  “I didn’t bomb anyone.”

  “And what about the Skaven lands? They don’t have Tyssian ancestors. How did you justify taking them?”

  Rainer’s eyes went glazed and empty. He turned away.

  No amount of questioning was going to get anything else out of him today.

  Not that it mattered.

  He was a liar.

  “YES, WE’D HEARD FROM people on the ground that they’d been saying that.” The Examiner folded her hands in front of her on her desk.

  “You have—people—on the ground? You mean, inside Tyssia?”

  “Of course we do.”

  “Then what do you need me for?”

  “You are angry?”

  “No, I just—I just—I don’t understand.”

  “We have lots of people who work for us, who help us. What else did he have to say?”

  “That we threatened the Tyssians who voted to be part of Sofarende a hundred years ago. That’s not—that’s not true, is it?”

  “How did you feel, when you heard that?”

  I clenched my jaw; that was probably answer enough. “Is it true?”