Chapter 3
Into Winter, and then Spring, 1945
Gassmann-Bunke homestead
On one of those pleasant fall days, three or so months after the accident, Ethel pushed Lina out into the yard and then went back to preparing meat for that supper’s stew. After a bit, she walked over to the kitchen window to see whether Lina had begun her rounds yet. But Ethel couldn’t see her from this vantage point. So, she stepped out onto the porch, expecting to see Lina by the garden or the goat pen. But her daughter was nowhere to be seen. Not anywhere in the yard. Where could she be? This worried Ethel. Nothing of this sort had ever happened before. When Ethel reported Lina’s absence to Renate, Lina’s grandmother wiped her strong hands on her apron. Then she and Ethel hurried out to the road, shading their eyes with their hands as they looked in both directions. That’s when they saw her, about a quarter mile down the road in the direction of Bockhorn: Her arms were moving in a whir as she pushed herself quickly along. The two older women chased her down and, over Lina’s loud remonstrations, Renate herself rolled the wheelchair and her granddaughter back to the safety of the homestead. Had Lina been a toddler, she would have loved being pushed at such great speed, as if on a fair ride, but now, sixteen years old, and captive, she was angry.
“But I was fine, Mama,” Lina burst out, once she was sitting at the kitchen table, where Ethel was serving her tea and a roll. “I just felt restless.”
“Restless?” Ethel countered, although it wasn’t clear to anyone what she meant by this. She began stirring sugar into Lina’s tea, but Lina grabbed the spoon from her hand.
“Yes, restless! And I’m capable of stirring my own sugar in, Mama. I’m not a complete invalid!” Her voice had risen as she’d spoken and, in spite of herself, she burst into tears. Renate, misinterpreting this display of emotion, immediately came over from where she’d been standing at the stove, bent down, and wrapped her arms around her granddaughter’s shoulders.
“Lina, dear, I’m so sorry you’re trapped in this chair. I know you’re sad about it –“
“I’m not sad!” Lina replied sharply, suddenly releasing her hold on the braid she held in her right hand. “I’m angry! Don’t you understand that?” She brought the bowl of the spoon down hard against the wooden table. Some mind readers the two of you are.
Both Renate and Ethel pulled back at her outburst, and exchanged glances. Renate stood up straight, in an effort to seem taller and more imposing. Ethel, by contrast, softened her shoulders and let her arms float gently alongside her.
“Angry at us?” Ethel asked quietly.
“Well, yes,” Lina said, calmer now, as if she’d let off the steam that had been building up all day. For months, even. With her left index finger, she began tracing a design on the wooden table top.
“But why?” Renate asked, her tone of voice showing that she was genuinely bewildered. “We’re doing everything we can to keep you quiet and comfortable, so that you don’t have to do a thing.” She looked searchingly into Lina’s gray eyes that reminded her of Ulrich’s.
Lina began nodding energetically. “Yes! That’s exactly it! That’s what’s so hard for me!”
Her mother and grandmother were both as if paralyzed themselves, now, unsure what to say. So they just waited. After a moment, Lina took a deep breath in, then let it out. She was looking not at them, but at her finger as it moved along the tabletop, as if doing so would help her summon her will – the will to say what she wanted to express, without being distracted or dissuaded by their glances.
“I don’t want to be kept quiet and comfortable,” she said finally. “I don’t want not to have to do a thing.” Now she looked up, first at Renate, and then at Ethel, who watched Lina’s hands close into fists, one of them clutching the teaspoon.
“I have to be able to do something.” Lina was actually banging her fists against the table now. Her jaw was clenched so tightly it seemed impossible that she should even be able to speak.
“Mama. Grandma. I have to be able to help.” She pounded the spoon against the table to punctuate her words.
“Now, Lina,” Renate began, and she made the mistake of laying her hand on Lina’s shoulder, trying to calm her. Lina reached up with the fist that was holding the spoon and roughly pushed her grandmother’s hand away.
“Lina, really!” Ethel began, but then Lina turned a fierce gaze on her, and she fell silent.
“No, Grandma! You don’t understand!” Lina looked at Renate now, that same, and never-before-seen ferocity in her gaze. The older woman took a step back. She has Ulrich’s eyes, all right. But Ulrich never looked at me like that. Or talked to me like that, either.
Lina was breathing hard, and she began trying to wheel herself back from the table, but her skirt became tangled in the wheel. In her frustration, she began to tug at it. It was only when she heard the sound of ripping fabric and saw where the skirt had torn, that she seemed to realize what she had done. Looking back and forth now between her mother and grandmother, she was overcome by tears. She slumped forward in her chair, then rested her elbows on the table, her head in her hands. Now she readily accepted the comforting hugs and caresses that Renate and Ethel immediately offered.
In true Gassmann fashion, once Lina calmed down, Renate and Ethel turned their attention back to the chores they’d abandoned in favor of their desperate search for her. Renate, broad and short, stood with her back to Lina, energetically chopping something in a motion that set her skirts swaying. Ethel’s skirts moved in rhythm with her movements, too. Lina could see from their stiff body movements that both women were considering how to proceed: Will this upset blow over? Will we have to actually talk with her about it? Both were hoping against hope that it would be the former. Renate remembered the scenes Ulrich’s step-mother used to make, and how Renate had finally had to put her foot down about that. She was wondering whether Lina might have inherited the other woman’s volatility, and how best to deal with that… Then a thought occurred to her: Wait, Claudia was Ulrich’s step-mother, not his mother. Lina couldn’t have inherited anything from her. Meanwhile, Ethel was wondering whether the difficult years leading up to the war, and the discord over Viktor’s politics had somehow seeped into Lina and turned her angry. But I haven’t seen any sign of that before now… As mother and grandmother reflected inwardly on what could have caused this outburst, Lina also remained silent, drinking her tea and nibbling on her roll. Once she’d finished eating it, she spoke.
“Grandma, Mama,” she began, “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have yelled. I’m so sorry.”
Visibly relieved that the storm seemed to have passed, Renate wiped her hands on a dishtowel and came to sit next to her granddaughter. Ethel came over, too, leaving the stew to simmer on the stove.
“Well, Lina, dear,” Renate told her, “Of course, things are difficult. But we’ll get through it all. You just concentrate on getting better, and leave the rest to us.”
But Lina, her mouth open, looked at Ethel, incredulous. Did she not hear me at all? she seemed to be asking her mother.
“But Mama,” Ethel began, cautiously and quietly, “Lina has said that she wants to help out.”
“I know,” Renate replied, running a hand over her freckled cheek. “I heard what she said. What you said,” she added, turning to Lina now. “But I also know what the doctor said – that you need rest and calm.”
Lina sat up straight in her chair. She felt anxiety rising in her once more, although it wasn’t as intense as what she’d felt when they’d first wheeled her back into the kitchen after her morning “escape”.
“Why do you automatically accept what the doctor said?” she asked, consciously keeping her voice calm. “Why does he know what I need? Why not ask me what I need?”
Before Renate could answer, Ethel jumped in.
“What do you think you need?” she asked.
Renate was shocked that Ethel had posed this question. That’s not the way we do things! she thought, in horror. But she said nothing.
Lina took a breath and let it out. Move! she heard inside her. Then she spoke.
“I think that if I have to sit here for one more day without being able to help with anything, I’ll just go out of my mind. I’m already half out of it.” Here she managed a thin smile. This was a good thing: It put Renate and Ethel a bit more at ease.
The two older women exchanged glances, and Ethel gave Renate the floor. This was what Renate preferred, of course – having the floor – but Ethel hadn’t ceded it to her without putting her in a difficult position.
Renate smoothed the folds in her apron with her hands. “It sounds like you feel very strongly about it.“ Renate hoped this noncommittal response would buy her some time. She didn’t like having to make decisions this way, under everyone’s gaze, spontaneously.
“I do, Grandma. I feel like I’m about to explode!” Lina said, gripping the wheelchair’s arm rests and leaning forward, her whole upper body tensed.
Renate nodded. “Yes, dear, I can see that.” A back and forth conversation was playing out inside Renate’s head now: One side of her was asserting the need for order to be kept, by which she meant that she made the decisions, after consulting in private with Ulrich and, sometimes Ethel. This same side of her felt that the doctor’s orders needed to be adhered to, too. This was her “queen of the household” side. Her other side was her grandmother side, where she was so strongly connected to Lina through her love for her. The grandmother in her wanted to indulge her granddaughter. That’s the way it seemed to Renate – that letting Lina decide about this would be indulging her. And this made her nervous, because she hadn’t come up with the idea herself.
“So, if you were to do things differently, what would you want to do?” Renate asked. She hoped her tone expressed an “I’ll take it under advisement, but it’s my decision” approach, but when she saw the smile on Lina’s face, she sensed her grandmother’s side gaining the upper hand.
“I just need to be able to do a share of the work around here,” Lina said. Then she laughed. “To tell you the truth, I hadn’t gotten so far as to think about what, exactly.”
Ethel laughed, too, and her hazel eyes danced. This is a big day for us Gassmann-Bunkes, she thought. The day a youngster had a say. She smiled at that thought.
Renate took a deep breath to fight the anxiety she was now feeling, which manifested as a tightness in her chest and throat. Time to make it seem like it was my idea all along, she decided.
“You know, I’ve been thinking that it would be good if you could pick up some of the slack,” she said seriously. No need to get mushy about it. Even though all she really wanted to do was to throw her arms around Lina and rock her, take care of her. “I didn’t want to push you. But now, it seems you’re ready.”
Lina smiled a small, closed-lipped smile, so as not to burst out laughing, and cast a sidelong glance at her mother. Ethel, too, was dumbstruck by Renate’s shift in position. But with a slight nod of her head in Lina’s direction, she confirmed what Lina had already concluded: Don’t point out Grandma’s inconsistency. Just be grateful for this. It’s a miracle.
“That’s a wonderful idea,” Lina said simply, smiling with a feeling that she recognized as happiness.
Ethel voiced her enthusiastic approval, too, and that was that: The matter was settled.
“Excellent,” Renate said, tapping the table like a judge rapping a gavel on his bench. “I’ll tell everyone about this decision tonight. In the meantime, this afternoon, the three of us can work out the details.”
And that’s exactly what happened: In a remarkable show of collaboration, Renate and Ethel and Lina sat down that before the evening meal and discussed – actually discussed! – what Lina could take on.
The menfolk were none the wiser when Renate informed them of the change that evening. Renate presented the changes as her own decision, and Ethel and Lina didn’t give her away. So, to Ulrich and Peter, it all seemed like business as usual in the Gassmann-Bunke household, while to Ethel and Lina, it felt like an earthquake of global proportions. A new world order, even. Lina went to bed that night feeling happier than she’d felt since before her accident, full of excitement about once again participating more fully in the life of the homestead. She even noticed, to her surprise, that the disturbing thoughts seemed to have taken the night off. So had Move! Her enthusiasm was contagious: Ethel, too, was buoyant and light-hearted all evening. Ulrich and Peter noticed that the atmosphere had lightened in the household, but they couldn’t for the life of them figure out why, given that Lina was now going to be put to work. What is this all about? Ulrich wondered. Did Renate make the right decision? Even Renate was smiling more than usual that night, and Ulrich saw her face bright with love as she gazed at Lina across the table. She even took his hand with particular warmth that evening as they headed to bed. Renate’s grandmother’s side had won out. It feels good to let it out, she decided. Once in a while, anyway…
* * *
As “Renate’s” new plan was put into action, everyone’s mood began to lighten: Lina took on certain chores and tasks, just like everyone else, and this lessened her profound feeling that she had nothing to offer her family. Now, even if it was just peeling potatoes or sewing, or rolling out dough, this still meant less work for Renate and Ethel, and Lina could tell the two of them greatly appreciated this. This new sense of purpose carried her through the cold, dreary days of winter, when she was forced to linger indoors more than she would have liked: The snow on the ground made it much harder for her to push herself forward in the wheelchair, even along the paths that had been cleared, because ridges and ruts from the packed snow thwarted her movements. True, her outdoor “strolls” had steadily begun to feel less and less necessary, once she’d taken up her various household chores. The troublesome thoughts had also begun leaving her in peace for longer and longer periods of time. She slept well at night, only rarely awakening in terror, convinced that she was once again lying beneath the mountain of firewood. Long about April, she noticed that this nightmare had come to her only once in the previous month.
Even so, Lina missed spending as much time outdoors as she’d been accustomed to doing before her accident. It was a partly a matter of missing the smell and feel of the trees surrounding her. Sitting outside in the yard, or being pushed down the road alongside the forest helped, but it couldn’t replace the experience of standing on the soft forest floor and sensing the divine energy flowing up from the ground through the trees, to each other, to her. She missed that so much. Oh, to stand on her own two feet amongst the aspens and birches! Or to climb up the rope ladder of the tree house in the old beech and sit with her back against its comforting trunk, the way she and her brothers had done, and as her mother and father had done before them, and her mother and Uncle Hans before that.
It’s the tree house that Lina would picture in her mind’s eye on those early spring mornings or afternoons when she’d sit at the edge of the forest. She’d peer into the groves of trees, all the while knowing that her gaze could never penetrate all the way into the depths of the forest, where the old beech stood. Peter, who knew how his sister felt about the treehouse, glimpsed her sitting quietly near the entrance to the forest path one day, and guessed where her thoughts had taken her. He came up alongside her and laid his hand gently on her shoulder.
“I’d carry you there if I could, you know,” he said softly.
Lina rested her hand on his and nodded. “Dear Peter, I know you would,” she told him with a slight, but heartfelt, smile. She motioned to her own legs and then to his. “We’ve got only one good leg between the two of us!”
Peter had to lean over and look at his sister’s face to be able to tell whether it was all appropriate for him to laugh. He saw that it was, and he did.
“If only your left leg was working,” he mused, “we could tie our middle legs together and hobble in there. The way we did those three-legged races when we were little.”
Lina smiled. “Oh, that was fun, wasn’t it?” She turned to look up at him, and he saw a bit of lightness in her eyes that told him her smile was genuine.
He nodded. “We had so much fun when we were little, didn’t we?”
“At least when Marcus was off somewhere else,” Lina noted wryly.
Peter tipped his head in agreement and noticed his stomach muscles tightening.
“You and I seem more like siblings than Marcus and me,” he said. “Don’t know why that is.”
“It’s true, though,” Lina said. “All our little in jokes that he didn’t get?”
“Yeah,” Peter replied. He was silent for a moment and then asked, animatedly, “Remember when we sat in the tree house – where was he that day, anyway?? – and carved little symbols into those tiny rounds of wood with our pen knives –“
“And then we told him they were runes the fairies had carved and left up there for us to find.” Lina was showing with her hands the size of the small fairy gifts.
“Yes, yes! Now, what was it we said the symbols meant? Do you remember?”
Lina thought for a moment, her jaw set to one side as she searched in her mind.
“No. I just remember that Marcus said we were wrong.”
Peter burst out laughing at that, shaking his head. “Of course he did! Here we come with our home-made fairy runes, and he says he’s the only one who can read them.”
Lina was laughing now, too, and Peter was so happy to hear her clear, bell-like laugh. He felt like he hadn’t heard it at all since the accident.
“Yes, that was pure Marcus. Always the expert,” Lina noted in a not-unaffectionate tone, still smiling. But both of them felt the faint undercurrent of sadness that still clung to this memory, even many years had elapsed since the event they were recalling.
“I wonder what happened to those rune disks,” Peter mused.
“What!” Lina cried, feigning horror, and dramatically placing her hand over her heart. “You mean you don’t have yours anymore?”
Now it was Peter’s turn to look at her in shock. “No. You do?”
“Of course!” Lina said. “It’s in the bureau, with all my other valuable keepsakes.”
“Really?” Peter didn’t quite know whether to believe his or not. He had clearly not inherited the Gassmann mind-reading gift.
“Oh, yes, absolutely! I’ll show it to you tomorrow.”
That night, after Peter had gone to his room for the night, he found it hard to get to sleep. Why did Lina keep her rune and I didn’t keep mine? he wondered. It had happened so long ago, but once he and Lina had started talking about it earlier that day, it had been bugging him. He’d been so proud of those runes…
Peter had been the one to do the carving, of course: Lina had been only five years old to his nine, and she wasn’t allowed to handle those sharp tools. But the two of them had packed everything they’d need in a little bag and took it along when they went to the treehouse that day: a little saw and an awl, a carpenter’s pencil, the pen knife that was Peter’s own, and a piece of thick paper. As for the lettering on the runes, that had been Lina’s creation. She didn’t know how to write yet, but neither of them cared, since the runes were to have fairy language on them!
They put “Operation Fairy” – as they referred to it between themselves, in whispers – into action one summer afternoon when Peter was looking after Lina. Who knows where Marcus was that day, probably off with one of his rough and tumble friends. Peter and Lina made the most of his absence and took themselves off to the treehouse. They scampered up the rope ladder, Lina going first, so that Peter could catch her if she happened to slip. Lina got right to work. Retrieving the paper and pencil from the cloth bag, she plopped down onto her stomach, her little girl legs stretched out along the thin but sturdy logs that formed the treehouse floor. Wrapping her small hand around the large pencil, she began meticulously drawing out her designs. She paused now and then to hold the paper out at arm’s length in front of her to study the effect, her chin resting on the arm she’d bent to support it.
Meanwhile, Peter knelt down a ways away from Lina and began sawing small disks off the end of the fallen branch they’d selected together. He’d rested this branch atop another, thicker branch he’d brought up into the tree house with him, so that the saw would have room to move back and forth. This wasn’t ideal, though, and it took him several tries to get two suitable disks: On his first few attempts, either the rounds he cut started out thick and then grew thin, or some of the bark flaked off. Finally, he managed to produce two uniform disks, each about half an inch thick and an inch in diameter. Plenty of room for carving Lina’s fairy runes. At least he hoped there would be…
Lina was delighted, with both the disks and her completed designs. She held her drawings out proudly to her brother.
“How beautiful!” Peter told her, as he studied the paper. It occurred to him then that he should have cut the disks first and then traced around them on the paper, to give Lina a limited space for her runes. What she’d drawn would never fit on the disks full size. Too late now, he thought.
“These are perfect human size,” he said to Lina, pointing to what she’d drawn. “Since these,” he told her, pointing to the disks, “are fairy size, though, I’ll just carve the designs smaller than you drew them.”
By now Lina had sat up and was sitting across from him, cross-legged. “Why, of course!” she replied merrily. “No fairy could carry a rune disk this big!” She showed with her hands how large it would have to be in order to contain her designs full size.
They both laughed. Then Peter leaned back against the beech tree’s trunk that ran up through the middle of the treehouse and put his left knee up to support his left hand, which held the disks as he carved.
Peter was already skilled with a pen knife back then. Seeing he designs he’d created on the small stools he’d already made under his father’s supervision, his mother, Ethel, said that he had surely inherited Viktor’s gift for wood carving. So, even though the fairy runes required him to carve on a smaller scale than he’d ever attempted before, Peter felt he was up to the challenge. Lina certainly believed in him completely, and that was half the battle. Indeed, once he completed his efforts, it seemed to the two of them as they studied completed disks, that no finer fairy runes had ever existed.
Now, sitting in his room, twenty years old, instead of nine, Peter remembered the glee with which he and Lina had packed up their tools and returned to the house to present their “find” to the family. He smiled. A good memory. He’d had few enough of those these past few years, so he held on to this one as he turned onto his left side – so that his scarred right leg would not be compressed – and scrunched up the pillow beneath his head. No need to dig around in the past and find something upsetting.
* * *
The next day, when Lina, true to her word, did show her rune to Peter, he was still feeling connected to the pleasure of the memory he’d explored the night before. Lina could see how delighted he was to behold this physical reminder of that moment of shared happiness from their childhood.
“Now, what was it we told everyone this meant?” Peter asked, as he scrutinized the scratchings on one of its smooth sides.
“Somehow,” Lina said, “all I can remember is Marcus shouting us down and saying it said ‘idiots’.” Her smile faded, and she sighed.
“We can’t let Marcus have the last word, Lina,” Peter told her, his voice stern. “They’re our runes, after all. We have to remember what they really mean.”
The two of them took turns holding wooden disk, waiting to remember.
“Hope!” Peter cried suddenly. “Wasn’t that it?”
Lina took it in her hand and brought it up close to her face, as if this would help her decipher the symbols’ meaning. “Hope,” she repeated softly. Then she pointed to one of the marks carved into the surface of the disk. “Absolutely. Anyone could see that this is what that one says in the fairy language.” A soft smile spread across her lips and all the way to up her cheeks to her eyes.
“Hope, then,” Peter confirmed, and he reached down and closed her fingers around the disk. But Lina took his hand and placed the disk into it.
“Here, you keep it now. You lost yours.” She paused. “I still can’t believe you lost it!” she chided him playfully, taking his hand in hers.
Peter shrugged. “Who knew it would be so important someday? But maybe…” he asked her, a bit haltingly. “Maybe you should keep it?”
Lina understood his awkwardness. “Because I need hope more now?”
He nodded.
“I want you to have it, Peter. You keep it, and you hope for me, too.”
“But what about you? It’s yours, after all.”
“Who knows…” Lina told him, sliding her hands beneath her apron so that her brother couldn’t slip the disk back into her hand. “Maybe the fairies will make another one for me.”
Chapter 4
Spring, 1945
Gassmann-Bunke homestead
By May, spring was in full bloom, and as the days grew longer and the sun stronger, a brighter light had begun to shine in Lina’s eyes, too. The days grew warm enough for her to sit outside and work on her sewing near the garden’s edge. Once the mud dried up enough that she could push herself or be wheeled by Peter or her mother to the edge of the path into the forest, she’d stay there for hours, taking in the scents and sights of the awakening trees, grasses, and flowers, and the calls of the birds as they sought out their mates.
For the first time in eight months, Lina felt a bit of life flowing within her, too, here on the edge of the revitalized natural world. This was a great relief to her. It was only as she sensed the new life force around and inside her, that she could admit to herself how much despair she had felt a few months earlier. She could see now that in the depths of the winter, cut off from her beloved woods, she had felt close to death – not so much physically, as emotionally and spiritually.
Now, as she sat, delighting in the sight of the buds bursting forth on the trees, Lina recalled the many nights when her mind had been perpetually invaded by the words – “useless” and “euthanasia” – and the question – “Why don’t they just kill me?” Only now did she realize that the question that had actually been hovering beneath her conscious awareness was different: “Why don’t I just kill myself?” It must have penetrated only ever so slightly into her mind, but clearly this mind of hers – which had seemed so unreliable and uncontrollable to her all these months – had somehow protected her from consciously thinking this thought, and had transformed it: Instead of pondering how she could end her own life, she had been, without realizing it consciously, begging God to just take her from the earth. That way, she could be spared what she viewed as the indignity and pain and uselessness of her current life, and her whole family could, as she saw it, be freed of the burden of caring for her. What had not occurred to Lina, in these most difficult months, was to pray to God to help her in another way: She could have prayed for healing. But Lina’s despair at that point was so great that this tiny, quiet thought had no chance of making it through the clouds of her pain and grief and into her clouded mind that was striving so hard to keep everything out. We can note, however, that while this quiet thought hadn’t come into Lina’s conscious awareness in words she would have recognized as a prayer for healing, the essence of this quiet thought had nonetheless come to her in a single, persistent word: Move! That word had had the strength to make its way into Lina’s mind – and to stay put.
Then came the newness of spring and, as we’ve mentioned, Lina began to see things in a more positive light, as nature came back to life around her. Maybe, it occurred to her one early May afternoon, Maybe God did help me. By not taking me home to Him. With this thought, a bit of hope began to creep in. A new version of Move!, perhaps?
On the particular early spring morning that concerns us now, Ulrich had already taken the Poles with him into the forest to stack and chain some spruce logs for the horses to pull back out. Peter was about to head off to Varel on an errand. Lina asked him to wheel her outdoors before he left, which he was happy to do. She picked up her knitting bag from the kitchen table and placed it on her lap.
“How do you like this pattern?” she asked her brother, holding her knitting needles aloft for him to see as he pushed her out of the house and across the yard. “Socks for you.”
“Warm and no holes?” he asked, leaning over to inspect the beginnings of the cuff.
Lina laughed. “Yes!”
“Lucky for me, that’s my favorite pattern!”
“Lucky for you, indeed!” Lina told him. She reached up to pat his hand, which was wrapped around the wheelchair handle behind her shoulder. As she did so, she felt him slip something into her hand.
“What’s this?” she asked, peering at the tiny bundle of folded-over cloth he’d given her. Whatever was inside was very light. She barely felt it in her palm.
Peter gestured at the package impatiently, a smile on his face. “Stop asking questions and just open it!”
Lina obeyed, looking up at her brother with a curious expression as she methodically unfolded the fabric covering and flattened out each layer. Each time she did this, Peter would frown playfully and point back at the package.
“All right, all right,” Lina mumbled as she kept turning and unfolding.
When she’d made the last turn and finally revealed what lay inside, she caught her breath. She squeezed the contents inside her palm along with the fabric and pressed the whole bundle to her chest, holding it with both hands. Then, impatient to study it, she brought it up to her eyes so that she could see each detail of the carving.
“When did you….” she began, turning now to gaze almost in disbelief at Peter, who had knelt down beside her.
“Find it?” he asked, his eyes bright, his smile mischievous.
“Yes,” Lina replied, playing along.
“Oh, about a week ago,” Peter told her. “I happened to be walking in the woods –“
“Let me guess,” Lina burst in, “somewhere over by the tree house?”
“Why yes, as a matter of fact!” He was not succeeding at keeping a straight face.
“And?”
“I happened to look down, and this caught my eye, right at the base of the old beech. On a bed of moss.”
Lina’s face had lit up with a smile as she listened to his explanation. Now she went back to studying the object in her palm. It was a small wooden disk, and carved onto one surface of it was the image of a bird, its wings poised to fly. She took in each detail of the design and then, looking over at Peter, she said wryly, “I think the fairies’ carving skills have improved over these past ten years!”
“I should hope so!” he replied with a laugh.
“What do you think they mean by this image?” Lina asked, tracing the carving with her index finger.
Peter shrugged. “It’s their gift to you. I think you should decide.”
“Not Marcus?” Lina asked, and they both laughed.
“No,” Peter said. “He may be an expert on the fairy language, but this is more like a hieroglyph. What does it mean?”
Lina grew serious now. She wrapped her fingers around the disk and pressed her hand to her heart, eyes closed. After a bit, she opened her eyes and looked at her brother.
“Hope,” she told him. “I think this one means ‘hope’, too.”
“So do I,” Peter told her softly. He leaned over and kissed Lina’s head, then took her free hand in his.
* * *
Lina lost track of time as she sat in her wheelchair the rest of that morning, alternately knitting and examining her fairy disk. She felt such a feeling of calm. Joy, even. She was so touched by Peter’s gift. The fairies’ gift. How had he made his way to the beech tree, with that leg of his? That alone was enough to give Lina hope. She felt so much love in that light, wooden disk, Peter’s love for her. She could feel that the wood contained the energy of apology, too, his regret for – as he saw it – having caused her to be in this position in the first place. But she didn’t allow her mind to dwell on that part of the energy that filled this piece of wood. Besides, the love in it was far stronger, both Peter’s love for her and that special divine love that ran through all the trees in the forest before her. It’s so perfect, she thought. He brought me a piece of the divine when I couldn’t get to it on my own.
She turned back to her knitting, and then, amidst her happiness, a quiet voice seemed to speak to her from deep insider heart. At first she thought she must have imagined it. Maybe it was the breeze. Or a bird far off in the woods. It wasn’t Mama or Grandma. They’re in the house, getting some things ready for supper. Of course, they’ll be coming outside before long, to take down the laundry they hung out earlier. It’s dried quickly, thanks to the warm, breezy day.
Still not giving any real attention to what she was feeling inside, Lina looked up from the sock cuff she was knitting, to give her eyes a break, and found herself gazing into the forest, as far into the trees as she could see. As she did nearly every day now, she took in the way the oaks and aspens and spruces looked, noted how their appearance changed, depending on the brightness of the sun and the time of day. She imagined walking among them and laying her hands on each of their trunks, feeling its roughness or smoothness, and examining the lichens that had made their home atop the bark, or the mushrooms growing nearby on the ground, some peeking out around or from beneath fallen leaves.
As she imagined all of this, Lina felt a wish form within her, a powerful desire to be right there with her grandfather, helping him with this work she just knew God wanted her to do, too. Then she noticed the small voice in her heart again, and it spoke so that a small thought entered her mind, so softly that she barely heard it: “Then get up and go to him.” At first she ignored it, once again concluding that she’d imagined it. But it came again. “Then get up!” Is it coming from inside my head, my heart? Or from outside me? Lina turned in her wheelchair to look behind her, toward the house, and then toward the barn, but no one else was outside. I must have thought it, then, she concluded. The thought made her happy inside, at the first instant, so happy, in fact, that she had another: Yes, why not get up and go to Grandfather? This second thought made her smile. She made up her mind to try it.
Taking another quick glance around to make sure there was no one there to see her try, Lina tucked her knitting inside the cloth bag she used to store it when she wasn’t knitting, and tucked the bag down beside her in the chair. She placed the carved disk Peter had given her back inside the fabric layers and tucked it inside her bodice, next to her heart, for inspiration. Then, after placing one hand on each arm of the wheelchair for support, she began to lift herself up out of her chair, while willing her legs to move forward off the little step they were resting on. She leaned forward and whispered, Let’s go, legs! She could feel her bottom rising off the wheelchair seat. She was convinced that her right foot was just about to move to the ground… But then she found herself tumbling forward. In the next moment, she was on the ground. After the initial shock, she took stock of her position: Her legs lay bent beneath her, motionless and numb as ever. They hadn’t moved a single inch on their own. As she raised her torso up and supported herself on her arms, she heard herself beginning to howl in sorrow and frustration and anger. Am I the one howling? she wondered, since it felt like she was looking down at herself from somewhere up above.
When Renate and Ethel heard her cries and rushed out to find her sprawled out on the dirt at the beginning of the path, they first comforted her and asked whether she was all right.
“Mama,” Lina replied in an angry voice, “how could I be all right? My legs don’t work!”
Flustered, Ethel put her arms around her daughter and pulled her close. Lina’s whole upper body was tense and rigid. “Yes, of course, Lina. Of course. I’m sorry.”
“But do you think you’re hurt?” Renate asked. She was feeling Lina’s legs to check for obvious injuries, but found none.
Lina shook her head, her lips tightly compressed, and just stared at the ground, at her still legs.
“Lina, dear,” Ethel asked, pulling back to look at her again, “What happened?”
Lina didn’t reply immediately. She looked from her mother to her grandmother. “I dropped my knitting,” she said finally. “It fell on the ground, and when I leaned over to pick it up… I fell, too.”
Renate and Ethel nodded. As the two of them lifted Lina up and brushed the dirt off her skirt, Ethel began to speak, reminding Lina that this was exactly the kind of situation when she should call for one of them to help her, that she shouldn’t try to do these things alone. But as she and Renate were easing Lina back into the wheelchair, Ethel stopped talking: She’d caught sight of Lina’s knitting bag – not on the ground, but on the seat of the wheelchair. Renate had seen it, too, but neither woman asked about it. Instead, Renate simply picked the bag up and, once Lina had been settled back into the chair, she silently placed it on her granddaughter’s lap. Lina made no reply. She was staring straight ahead and only nodded when Ethel asked whether she’d like them to take her back into the house now. She could feel that the little wooden disk had somehow slipped out of its fabric covering when she fell and had come to rest at the level of her waist, no longer safely tucked against her breast.
Renate summoned the doctor to examine Lina, just in case some injury had gone unnoticed.
“As I told you before,” the doctor said, “Lina needs calm and quiet as she goes through her healing process.”
“My healing process?” Lina asked sharply, surprising everyone around her: She rarely spoke up during these examinations. “What healing progress?” she went on, glaring at the doctor, Renate, and Ethel. “What does that even mean?”
After directing a meaningful glance at Renate and Ethel, the doctor turned to Ethel and addressed her with the unnaturally tranquil tone one would use with a child.
“Lina,” he began, “it’s very important for you to remain calm.”
“Or else what?” Lina challenged, looking him straight in the eye.
“Or else… or else your healing process is unlikely to … proceed,” he answered, clearly wary of saying too much.
“But it hasn’t been proceeding at all as it is, has it?” Lina continued.
The doctor opened his mouth, looked to Renate, and remained silent.
“Doctor, please,” Lina said forcefully. “Please tell me. Am I healing?”
The doctor tipped his head this way and that. His gaze moved across the wall behind Lina. He paused before finally speaking once more. “You see, Lina, I had hoped that as the bones and tissues healed, you would eventually be able to walk again.”
Lina continued to look him in the eye. “Even though I don’t feel anything in my legs?”
He nodded. “Well, I had hoped that as all the swelling went down, the sensation would come back in your legs. We couldn’t tell whether the nerves in your legs had been damaged, but…”
“But you were hoping for the best? Is that it?” Lina snapped. “For better ‘healing progress’?”
“Lina, please,” Ethel chided her softly. “There’s no need to be rude to the doctor.”
“Mama, I’m not being rude. I’m just asking him to tell me what no one has told me the past eight months. Will I ever walk again?”
Renate and Ethel looked at each other and then at the doctor, who was awaiting some sign from them. Renate nodded at him curtly.
“It seems…” the doctor began.
Lina interrupted him. “Will I walk?”
He let out a sigh. “At this point, your bones and tissues seem to have healed satisfactorily, but you still feel no sensation in your legs, which points to nerve damage…”
“If my nerves were damaged, will they heal, if I just give them more time?” Lina’s tone had softened a bit now, as hope came into her voice. She brought her hand up to her chest, searching for the fairy disk, but she couldn’t feel it. A quick glance at her mother and grandmother told her everything. They both looked down at the floor.
“I’m afraid nerves don’t regenerate, Lina.” He paused a moment to let this sink in, then continued. “If the nerves are damaged, as it seems they are, there’s nothing more we can do. I wish there were, but there isn’t.”
“So, you’re saying…” Lina began, as stinging tears began coming to her eyes, “that this is where I’ll spend the rest of my life?” She patted the arms of the wheelchair softly, in a gesture of defeat.
The doctor wouldn’t even make eye contact with her now. He looked at Renate and Ethel instead.
“You’d all better get used to living like this, because this is the way it’s going to be.”
And thus, the day which had, for one moment, held out so much hope – with Peter’s gift from the fairies, and the tiny voice inside, and Lina sitting poised to rise from her wheelchair and walk – had ended with two defeats: Lina’s fall, followed by the doctor’s pronouncement that condemned her to a life in a wheelchair.
* * *
Lina didn’t reveal to Renate and Ethel how she had really ended up lying on the ground that day. Why bother? she thought, since her hopes had twice been dashed within the space of two hours. When Ethel came in to get her ready for bed that night and found her sobbing in her wheelchair, Lina blamed her tears on the doctor’s prognosis.
“Lina, darling,” Ethel began, pulling a wooden chair over, so that she could sit next to her daughter, “I know it must have been awful to hear what the doctor said.”
Lina nodded. “You can’t even imagine, Mama,” she began. “I – I’d always thought that if I just waited long enough, my legs would finally work again.”
“That’s what we’ve all been hoping and praying for.” Ethel took one of Lina’s hands in her own and with the other, she smoothed Lina’s curls back out of her eyes.
“But you and Grandma…” Lina said, looking over at her now. “Did you know, before today? I mean, what the doctor said today. Did you already know that’s what he thought?”
Ethel avoided Lina’s gaze, concentrating instead on her daughter’s hair. Picking up the hairbrush from the bed stand, she began slowly brushing Lina’s long, blond, wavy hair.
“Mama? Did you?”
“Well, he told us as much a couple of months ago,” Ethel admitted with a sigh.
“And you didn’t tell me? Why not?”
“Lina, I can’t brush your hair if you’re moving around like this. Look forward, please.”
“No, Mama. I want to know. Why didn’t you tell me?”
“We wanted you to…”
“To keep on hoping? When there was no hope?” Lina’s tears had stopped now, and a note of anger had crept into her voice. Now she knew what they’d all been talking about behind her back these past months.
“We thought, maybe there was hope.” Ethel laid the brush in her lap and took Lina’s hand in both of hers. “We just didn’t know, and we didn’t want you to give up if there was hope.”
“Well, now we know, and so now we can all just completely give up.” Her tone had grown cold and flat.
“Lina –“
“What other choice do we have? You heard him. There’s nothing he can do for me. ‘You’d better get used to living like this.’ That’s what he said. What a cruel-hearted man.”
“Lina, please…“
“What, do you think he really cares? Why can’t he do more? Why can’t someone do more, Mama?”
“I don’t know, Sweetheart,” Ethel said softly. She was running her hand lightly over the bristles of the upturned brush.
Lina began crying again and brought her free hand down hard on the arm of the wheelchair. “What kind of life is this?” she shouted, loudly enough that everyone in the house heard her. “Mama, I’m only sixteen!” She looked at her mother with such a combination of despair and anger that Ethel began crying, too, letting her own feeling of hopelessness out, just this once. She leaned forward and wrapped her arms around her daughter. The brush fell to the floor with a thud, unnoticed by mother and daughter.
Out in the main room, Peter sat at the kitchen table, studying sketches for a furniture order he was working on. But he was unable to concentrate. His gaze drifted to the floor, and he noticed something small lying beneath the table. Leaning over, he saw that it was the fairy disk he’d given Lina that morning. He picked it up and slipped it into his pants pocket. She’s lost hope.
Later that night, he sat on the edge of his bed, with Lina’s original fairy disk in his right hand, and the new one in his left. Comparing them, he noted that his carving really had grown more skillful over the years. He had to admit that the bird on the new disk had come out beautifully. But something about Lina’s original design captivated him, drew him in to its lines and squiggles. It’s the mystery of it, he decided. Looking at it more closely, he tried to discern what about the image made it seem both as if it was proclaiming Hope and also telling him that the path to that hope was not obvious. Hope was written in the language of… Fairies? That’s what he and Lina had claimed, of course. But, he wondered now, What is the real language of hope? What do you have to know before you can decipher the letters of the word itself? Before you can comprehend the message it offers to those who manage to penetrate the unfamiliar tongue?
As Peter contemplated this, he realized that he’d always assumed that Hope was the final message itself, the destination. Now it occurred to him that Hope was the first step, and that if you had hope, it could lead you to something else. How to acquire that hope, though? He understood then, that he and Lina had skipped some key first step back in the treehouse, when they’d fashioned their own runes and declared – just like that! – that what was written on them was the word Hope. It seemed to him, at this moment, that they had falsely claimed to possess certain mysterious knowledge. Spiritual imposters, Peter said to himself. That’s what we were. We claimed we had hope – as if we knew what it was. He looked down at the two disks again. But now… Now that we need hope more than ever…Why don’t we have it any more?
This question arose because he’d become aware, just then, that he himself had lost hope, too: hope of ever being able to walk easily again, without pain. No, that’s wrong, he thought, shaking his head. I never had hope in the first place. He knew what the doctor had told Lina that afternoon, and it made his blood run cold to think about it, because his own doctor had dashed his hopes equally firmly. He’d suggested that Peter might be able to use his leg normally, in time, but now it had been more than a year, and he, like Lina, seemed not much better off than before. Certainly, he could, at least, walk, albeit with some residual pain. Lina, though… Peter looked down at the two disks lying in his palms, and closed his fingers tightly around them. He brought his two hands up to his heart, the way Lina had done that morning when he’d given her the new disk. Dear God, he began, although he had never prayed sincerely in all his life, Please help us. Please show us the way to Hope. He opened his left hand and looked at the bird he’d carved a few days earlier, then held it close to his heart once more. So we can fly.
Sue Downing 