The Book Thief (48 page)

Authors: Markus Zusak

Tags: #Fiction, #death, #Storytelling, #General, #Europe, #Historical, #Juvenile Fiction, #Holocaust, #Children: Young Adult (Gr. 7-9), #Religious, #Books and reading, #Historical - Holocaust, #Social Issues, #Jewish, #Books & Libraries, #Military & Wars, #Books and reading/ Fiction, #Storytelling/ Fiction, #Historical Fiction (Young Adult), #Death & Dying, #Death/ Fiction, #Juvenile Fiction / Historical / Holocaust

Next, they were
fitted with their symbols, and everyone was happy.

Soon, the demand
for the lovely ugly words and symbols increased to such a point that as the
forests grew, many people were needed to maintain them. Some were employed to
climb the trees and throw the words down to those below. They were then fed
directly into the remainder of the Führer’s people, not to mention those who
came back for more.

The people who
climbed the trees were called word shakers.

THE BEST word
shakers were the ones who understood the true power of words. They were the
ones who could climb the highest. One such word shaker was a small, skinny
girl. She was renowned as the best word shaker of her region because she Knew
how powerless a person could be WITHOUT words.

That’s why she
could climb higher than anyone else. She had desire. She was hungry for them.

One day,
however, she met a man who was despised by her homeland, even though he was
born in it. They became good friends, and when the man was sick, the word
shaker allowed a single teardrop to fall on his face. The tear was made of
friendship—a single word—and it dried and became a seed, and when next the girl
was in the forest, she planted that seed among the other trees. She watered it
every day.

At first, there
was nothing, but one afternoon, when she checked it after a day of
word-shaking, a small sprout had shot up. She stared at it for a long time.

The tree grew
every day, faster than everything else, till it was the tallest tree in the
forest. Everyone came to look at it. They all whispered about it, and they
waited . . . for the Fuhrer. Incensed, he immediately ordered the tree to be
cut down. That was when the word shaker made her way through the crowd. She
fell to her hands and Knees. “Please,” she cried, “you can’t cut it down.”

The Führer,
however, was unmoved. He could not afford to make exceptions. As the word
shaker was dragged away, he turned to his right-hand man and made a request.
“Ax, please.”

AT THAT moment,
the word shaker twisted free. She ran. She boarded the tree, and even as the
Führer hammered at the trunk with his ax, she climbed until she reached the
highest of the branches. The voices and ax beats continued faintly on. Clouds
walked by—like white monsters with gray hearts. Afraid but stubborn, the word
shaker remained. She waited for the tree to fall.

But the tree
would not move.

Many hours
passed, and still, the Führer’s ax could not take a single bite out of the
trunk. In a state nearing collapse, he ordered another man to continue.

Days passed.

Weeks took over.

A hundred and
ninety-six soldiers could not make any impact on the word shaker’s tree.

“But how does
she eat?” the people asked. “How does she sleep?”

What they didn’t
Know was that other word shakers threw supplies across, and the girl climbed
down to the lower branches to collect them.

IT SNOWED. It
rained. Seasons came and went. The word shaker remained.

When the last
axman gave up, he called up to her. “Word shaker! You can come down now! There
is no one who can defeat this tree!”

The word shaker,
who could only just make out the man’s sentences, replied with a whisper. She
handed it down through the branches. “No thank you,” she said, for she Knew
that it was only herself who was holding the tree upright.

NO ONE Knew how
long it had taken, but one afternoon, a new axman walked into town. His bag
looked too heavy for him. His eyes dragged. His feet drooped with exhaustion.
“The tree,” he asked the people. “Where is the tree?”

An audience
followed him, and when he arrived, clouds had covered the highest regions of
the branches. The word shaker could hear the people calling out that a new
axman had come to put an end to her vigil.

“She will not
come down,” the people said, “for anyone.”

They did not
Know who the axman was, and they did not Know that he was undeterred.

He opened his
bag and pulled out something much smaller than an ax.

The people
laughed. They said, “You can’t chop a tree down with an old hammer!”

The young man
did not listen to them. He only looked through his bag for some nails. He
placed three of them in his mouth and attempted to hammer a fourth one into the
tree. The first branches were now extremely high and he estimated that he
needed four nails to use as footholds to reach them.

“Look at this
idiot,” roared one of the watching men. “No one else could chop it down with an
ax, and this fool thinks he can do it with—”

The man fell
silent.

THE FIRST nail
entered the tree and was held steady after five blows. Then the second went in,
and the young man started to climb.

By the fourth
nail, he was up in the arms and continued on his way. He was tempted to call
out as he did so, but he decided against it.

The climb seemed
to last for miles. It took many hours for him to reach the final branches, and
when he did, he found the word shaker asleep in her blankets and the clouds.

He watched her
for many minutes. The warmth of the sun heated the cloudy rooftop. He reached
down, touching her arm, and the word shaker woke up. She rubbed her eyes, and
after a long study of his face, she spoke.

“Is it really
you?”

Is it from your
cheek, she thought, that I took the seed?

The man nodded.

His heart
wobbled and he held tighter to the branches. “It is.”