Liesl & Po (12 page)

“Yes, yes,” the old woman murmured soothingly, while drawing back a few inches and wondering whether there was a policeman onboard. “I see. That box must be heavy. You look very tired.”

“I am,” Liesl said. “Very tired. We had to walk a long way.”

“We?”

“Me and Po.” Liesl pointed to the empty air beside her. “And Bundle, too. Though they don’t get tired. Not like I do, anyway. Ghosts don’t, I suppose.”

“Ghosts, right,”

the woman said faintly. “No, no, I wouldn’t imagine they do get tired.” She forced her lips into a tight smile, thin as a strip of lemon rind. “I’m going to go get you a muffin, dearie, from the man with the snack cart. Would you like that? A nice potato muffin?”

Liesl had not realized just how hungry she was until that moment, when she imagined a steaming hot potato muffin. “Oh.” She could barely swallow, her mouth was suddenly watering so much. “Oh, yes. I’d like that very much.”

“Now you just wait here.” The old woman stood up. “Sit tight. Don’t twitch a muscle. I’ll be back in a flash.”

“Thank you,” Liesl said, truly grateful.

As soon as the woman had swished down the aisle to the next train car, Po said, “I don’t trust her.”

“What are you talking about?” Liesl was tired, and starving, and irritated by Po’s know-it-all attitude. “She’s going to get me a muffin.” She added, pettily, “You’re just jealous you can’t taste things anymore.”

Po did not respond to this. “Wait here,” the ghost said. It folded itself away and was gone. As soon as Po left, she was sorry she had said the thing about taste. That brief, empty pocket of air had reminded her of how alone she was without Po—so very, very alone. She had nobody at all, really.

Then she felt a shivery velvet sensation. Bundle was nuzzling her lap, inasmuch as ghosts could nuzzle. She felt a little better.

Po was back almost instantaneously. “Quickly,” the ghost said. “She has gone to find a policeman. They are coming this way.” Po added, because it thought the fact was relevant, “The man is big, and has badness in his Essence.”

Liesl didn’t know anything about Essence, but she did know about large police officers, and shiny handcuffs, and jail cells, and the fact that it was a crime to be riding a train without having paid to do so. She went very pale; almost as pale as the ghosts in books (books that don’t know how ghosts really look).

“What should I do?” she asked. She was already picturing a tiny stone cell buried underground, which would be worse, so much worse, than the attic. And what would become of her father’s ashes then? She picked up the wooden box and clutched it protectively to her chest. Next to her heart, through the wood, magic shimmered and swirled, though she could not feel it. Her heart was beating too loudly.

“We must hide,” Po said.

Bundle jumped and evaporated temporarily into the air with a small, excited
mwark!

Liesl inched out of her seat, clutching the wooden box to her chest. The train lurched and bumped. She tightened her grip, swaying a little as she moved into the aisle. At the far end of the car she saw the old woman, coming toward her, the sharp metal tip at the end of her cane making a horrible
clack-clack-clack
noise with every step. Behind her was, as Po said, a very large and very mean-looking police officer wearing a bright blue uniform. To Liesl’s horror, he already had a pair of handcuffs out, hanging loosely in his massive fist.

“There she is,” Liesl heard the old woman say, in her high, lilting voice. “Quite off her rocker.”

“Come on,” Po said. The ghost was silent for a minute, and then it said, “Bundle will distract them.” And then Bundle was twirling past them, back toward the old woman and the cop.

Although Liesl was so terrified she thought she might faint, she got the sense that Bundle and Po had just had a conversation without words, and in the midst of her terror she thought very clearly,
How strange. How strange and nice. To be able to always say what you mean without having to say anything.

“Follow me,” Po said, and began floating toward the back of the train.

Liesl moved quickly and carefully, desperate not to drop the wooden box, focusing on staying on her feet despite the jerky movements of the train. She did not dare look behind her, but she could feel the old woman and the cop bearing down on her, hear the
clack-clack-clack
of the steel-tipped cane moving ever closer. She imagined the cold feel of metal around her wrists, and she said a brief prayer in her mind to no one in particular:
Please
.

Just then the
clack-clack-clack
-ing stopped. Liesl heard the old woman let out a little cry of surprise, but she did not pause or look over her shoulder.

“Through here,” Po said. Liesl reached out and heaved open the doors that separated her car from the next one—hearing for one brief moment the deafening, clattering roar of the wheels on the track, feeling the whipping cold wind and watching the ground zoom by in the space between the two cars—and then stepped through.

The old woman and the cop had, in that time, recovered from the startling and curious sensation that had overwhelmed them all at once: a kind of velvet feeling that had wrapped itself around their throats, not frightening but totally unfamiliar, and had made them both think, separately and for no apparent reason, of pets they had had in their childhood.

Bundle, feeling quite pleased with itself, thought itself back to Po’s side.

The lady and the policeman looked up.

The little girl with the imaginary friends and the large wooden box was gone.

Will had hidden in the bathroom until he was sure the ticket collector had already come through. Then he had settled comfortably in a little window seat in one of the last passenger cars, and was quite enjoying the landscape streaming by his window: flat brown meadows and high, purple mountains, capped with snow. He had never been out of the city before. The only mountains he knew were mountains of brick, and he had never seen so much open space. And bare and brown and dead as it was (things had long ago stopped growing), all he could think of was the freedom of it, and how fun it would be to spread his arms and run, run, run in all that open space.

He was so absorbed by the view that he did not notice the girl from the attic hurry past him holding a wooden box—the very wooden box that had started all his troubles, in fact, though he would surely not have recognized it, plain as it was.

He was busy staring at the mountains.

Chapter Fifteen

THE FIRST FREIGHT CAR WAS FULL OF THE SHARP,
unpleasant smell of animal droppings, and packed with cages. On one side there were rows and rows of chickens; on the opposite side were dogs and cats, some in fancy carrying-cases with leather tags, some in bare little cages. The dogs swiped at the cats, the cats hissed at the chickens, and the whole car was filled with howling.

“Let’s keep going,” Liesl said.

The second freight car was dark and very cold and smelled like dust. It was crowded with boxes, trunks, crates, and suitcases, which were stacked every which way, in high, teetering towers that shook and swayed as the train rattled along. Liesl’s breath escaped in clouds when she exhaled. But at least it was quiet, and she would not be bothered by the woman with the cane, or the police officer, or the ticket collector.

She scrunched down in the small space between two gigantic wooden trunks and brought her knees to her chest, placing the wooden box carefully on the ground just behind her feet. Po folded itself into the narrow space next to her, and Bundle hovered on top of a suitcase nearby, becoming a long black haze as it stretched out.

Liesl yawned.

“You must be tired,” Po said. It had only just occurred to the ghost that Liesl had barely slept at all.

Liesl nodded. “Very,” she said, and rested her chin on her knees.

The train rattled forward, and the ghost and the girl sat in silence for a few minutes. There was a single, high window above them. It let in a trickle of gray and murky light, and flashes of cloud-covered sky.

“How will we know when we are where we need to be?” Po asked.

Liesl thought. “I remember a city made of smoke and fire,” she said finally. “That’s where we must get off. From there, we take a long road out of the city. It goes west into the hills. Beyond the hills we’ll find the house, and the pond, and the willow tree.”

“A city of smoke and fire?” Po’s edges flickered. “That sounds like a place on the Other Side.”

Liesl tilted her head in Po’s direction. “Do you have cities on the Other Side?”

“Great cities. Bigger than any here. Cities of water and dust; and cities made from flame; and cold, dark cities at the very heart of the planets, built into old stone.”

Liesl considered this. “What is it like to be on the Other Side?”

Po thought about saying,
It is like being everything all at once, and holding the universe inside of you and being held inside of the universe
. But it did not think Liesl would understand, so the ghost said, “It is hard to explain. Perhaps one day you will know.”

Liesl chipped at the trunk in front of her knees with a fingernail. “Perhaps,” she said. She wasn’t sure if the idea excited or frightened her. “Do you miss being here, though? Do you miss the Living Side?”

She could tell immediately that she had offended Po. Its outlines became much clearer in the dark, temporarily surrounded by a sharp white glow.

“Of course not,” Po said. “It isn’t like that. It’s a different way of being, that’s all.”

“But one is alive,” Liesl pointed out gently. “And one is not alive.” She knew Po must be lying, at least a little. Po was the one who had told her that ghosts who were not attached to the Living Side—at least a very little—went Beyond.

Po swirled upward from where it had been sitting, and floated over to the window. “When you go swimming and you put your head under the water,” Po said, “and everything is strange and underwater-sounding, and strange and underwater-looking, you don’t miss the air, do you? You don’t miss the above-water sounds and the above-water look. It’s just different.”

“True.” Liesl was quiet for a moment. Then she added, “But I bet you’d miss it if you were drowning. I bet you’d really miss the air then.”

Po was silent for a bit. It flitted restlessly back and forth in the freight car: a flicker of dark here; a shadow on the ceiling there. Liesl was very sorry she had upset her friend and wished she could say something to make up for it, but her brain was fuzzy and sleep pressed at her eyelids and she couldn’t think.

Then Po was next to her again.

“Did you bring your drawing paper, as I asked you to?” Po asked.

Liesl nodded.

“Show me,” Po said. Its voice sounded strange to Liesl. Closer and also more alive, somehow, than it usually did.
Feeling
, Liesl thought. Po’s voice was full of feeling.

She reached into her canvas bag and removed her sketch pad, and pencils, and the two drawings she had made for Po.

Po was quiet for another few beats, staring down at the drawings and the blank page in Liesl’s lap.