Trudchen
January 15, 1909—Oregon
After stealing through my window, Od slept with me in the bed we used to share in our days of schoolbooks and childhood chores, of folktale collecting and sky-high dreams. We now lay on a mattress composed of coiled springs and cushioned coverings instead of one made of cloth and straw and the occasional wriggling mouse, but the bed stretched no wider or longer than before, and we had to sleep with our knees knocking against each other. I drifted off while wondering if the little creature in my teacup had somehow predicted Od's return—if any smidgens of truth percolated in the thick stew of her outlandish stories.
In the morning, I awoke to the warmth of sunlight brightening my face and the sight of my sister and her rumpled brown hair lying next to me. On the back of her neck gleamed the little clasp of the gold chain that held the key to the mystery box she'd spoken of the night before—the box that contained a story of some sort.
How my fingers itched to reach out and unfasten that clasp, to unlock the box.
Od stirred.
I propped myself up on my left elbow and said, "Stay here with us."
She emitted a confused-sounding murmur and peeked over her shoulder at me with eyes barely cracked open. "I beg your pardon?"
"I'm going to talk Aunt Viktoria into letting you stay with us. We need your help here, and I think you need us."
Od sighed in the direction of the ceiling, rustling a lock of her hair that wobbled against her forehead. "I can't stay in this house, Tru. And neither can you." She tossed the blankets off her legs. "Let's get you packed so we can leave."
"Wait! I never said I would go."
"I don't even want to see Aunt Vik while I'm here. We shall sneak out the window." She climbed over my legs and tripped over her own brown shoes, left next to the bed with the toes pointed toward the door to keep away the Alps that used to worry her as a child. After regaining her balance, she threw open the doors of the wardrobe.
Behind her, the bedroom door squeaked open, and, lo and behold, there stood our aunt.
Od paled.
Aunt Viktoria stiffened and squeezed her lips together until they lost all shape and color. "What are you doing here, Odette?"
Od withdrew from the wardrobe and hid her hands behind her back, even though she didn't hold anything in them. "Are you still so angry with me after the past two years, Aunt Viktoria," she asked, "that the first words out of your mouth must sound like an accusation?"
Auntie's hand remained clamped around the knob. "You weren't to return."
Od stood up straight. "I'm tired of living without my sister. I'm taking her with me."
"Taking her where?"
"Away. She's languishing here."
Auntie didn't move a muscle. She didn't blink. "There are medical bills to consider, Odette, accommodations for Tru's leg ..."
"I've put aside money this past year. I want to save her."
"Save her from what?"
"From you." Od lifted her chin. "And other monsters."
Auntie's hand dropped away from the doorknob. "Leave this house."
"Not without Tru."
Auntie pointed out the doorway. "Leave!"
"Don't fight, please," I said, reaching for my leg brace on the floor. "Od arrived at my window last night, desperate to see me, and I want her here, terribly. Please, allow her to stay for breakfast—that's all I ask. Allow me to at least share one meal with my sister. She didn't mean what she just said. Did you, Od?"
My sister and aunt remained locked eye to eye in a wordless battle that raised my pulse.
"Please!" I said again.
Auntie's gaze dropped to Od's pile of belongings, and a flash of recognition—of tenderness—softened her face for the breadth of a second. "Why is your mother's old coat here?"
"You made it for her, years ago, didn't you?" asked Od. "You chose purple because of the color's protective powers, because she was attracting trouble—because she'd turned fifteen."
Auntie swallowed and hardened back into the stoic version of herself. "Your mother drew the attention of unfavorable young men after she turned fifteen years old, if that's what you mean. She still does. I hope you don't think you're taking Trudchen anywhere near her."
Od stepped forward. "I know you weren't always this way, Aunt Viktoria. I know you used to believe in the marvelous and magic. Uncle Magnus told me all about the girl you once were."
"Magnus was always as full of hogwash as you are. Don't believe a word my brother said."
Od glowered at our aunt and readjusted her stance. "Why do you hang amulets around the house, Aunt Vik, if you don't believe anything exists beyond the ordinary? Why are you so damn superstitious?"
"Mind how you speak, Odette!"
"Why do you hang them?"
"Out of habit. Out of tradition. Now please—"
"You even affixed a crucifix to Tru's cane." Od grabbed up my cane from the side of the bed.
"That's a T, Od, not a crucifix," I said, and I shifted toward our aunt. "Isn't it?"
Auntie snatched the cane from Od and handed it back to me. "You may stay for breakfast, for Tru's sake. But I'm driving you to the depot afterward and putting you on the afternoon train. You're still obviously nothing but trouble."
Od snorted. "A train to where? Where have you expected me to go all this time?"
"You chose to follow in your mother's footsteps, and you may continue to do so if you please, but don't bring your sister into this. She's a good girl. An honest girl. I intend to keep her that way." Aunt Viktoria turned and slammed the bedroom door shut behind her.
"She's a prisoner is what she is!" Od called after her, and she smacked a fist against the door. "You're keeping her trapped out here, just like our father did to our mother. Danger still sniffs you out, even when you're hiding—even when you don't know it's coming for you."
"Od, please stop quarreling with her," I said. "I'm not sure I have the strength to go anywhere with you, or the courage, for that matter."
My sister slumped against the door. "If you stay here without me, you're going to need to learn how to fight."
"But ..."
"If she won't allow you to leave, then at least let me teach you how to prepare for what's coming. I'm not taking one step outside of this house until I know you're ready."
What's coming, she had said, a phrase that hardened my stomach into a lump of stone. I eyed the orchard outside the window, and beyond it the woods with its Douglas firs that scraped the bleak winter sky.
I nodded, for agreeing seemed simpler than arguing at the moment. "All right, then. Teach me how to fight."
After enduring the most silent and uncomfortable breakfast in the history of all breakfasts, Od and I buried ourselves in mittens, scarves, hats, and boots for our journey out of doors.
Naturally, Aunt Viktoria knew nothing of the true intention of our excursion. She believed Od was taking me out for a breath of fresh air in my wheelchair.
Auntie called after us from the doorway, "Wear your hat and coat at all times, Tru. It's cold out there. Odette, bring her straight back home in an hour. Not a second later or I'm coming after you!"
Od didn't reply.
The MarViLUs case hid beneath a crocheted blanket that my sister had draped across my lap in the wicker wheelchair, and upon the case wobbled the hand mirror. Od insisted we wear the old, protective Hexenspiegel necklaces our mother had looped over our heads when we were little, and at my side in the chair rested my hickory cane, the tip propped against the footrest.
Od pushed the wheelchair over the frozen ground of the path that led through our rows of filberts. The trees reached toward the sky with a tangle of spiraling branches thick with moss and lichen. I rocked about in the chair with the leather case jostling on my legs, while the two pairs of wheels—large ones in back and smaller ones in front—whined from the cold.
We passed the last row of trees in the orchard, and Od suddenly called out, "Onward!"
She picked up her pace and broke into a jog. Now more than ever she seemed a young Don Quixote de La Mancha, guiding her steed, Rocinante, toward windmills she mistook for belligerent giants. That made me, I supposed, her reluctant squire, Sancho Panza.
I tried to remember whether Sancho Panza ever actually believed in the giants. I feared I myself was straying into my family's realm of quixotic madness for placing stock in the wisdom of teacups.
We neared the forest of evergreens that rose beyond the orchard. Fog drifted over the Coast Range, brewed in the air that blew down from Alaska and across the Pacific Ocean, and the woods appeared darker, more cloistered and ominous than usual. Od and I wore our calf-length coats of purple wool, hers that rich plum color, mine the bright iris, both creations of Aunt Viktoria, or so I had just learned. Below the cane's handle, the silver T—or crucifix—caught in one of the loops of yarn in the thumb of my left glove.
Od broke into a full-fledged run, now hurtling me toward the forest, shaking me about in the seat.
"Must you go so fast?" I asked, gripping the armrests.
"Our hour is slipping away." She sprinted as though something chased us. "We mustn't waste a second."
Moments later, firs engulfed us. The chair's wheels wobbled and screeched, and Od panted near my ear from all that running and pushing, and yet no other sounds—no twittering birds, no chattering squirrels—met my ears. The stillness of the gray winter air unsettled me. It hinted that animals knew better than to venture through those woods. My breath chilled into mist before my eyes and blurred my view of the firs ahead.
Od shoved the chair over the roots and stones that riddled the deer trail we followed. "Tru," she said, out of breath, "no matter what Aunt Vik says, come with me this afternoon. You must."
"What do you expect me to do," I asked with a laugh, "spring out of my chair and jump into the train before Aunt Viktoria can tug me back out?"
"Precisely."
I squeezed my hands around the armrests. "I can't spring or jump. You know that."
"Then I'll grab you by the wrists and hoist you into the train. I've worked so hard to return to you." She slowed the chair to a stop in a clearing thick with ferns. "Don't let her trap you here."
I rubbed at my right hip beneath the blanket.
"Did you hear me?" she asked.
"Yes."
"We're meant to be together."
"I'm scared to leave."
She kneeled down in front of me. "There's absolutely no need to be frightened."
"Yes, there is! No matter how brave or confident you try to make me feel, no matter how much money you have at this moment, I know I can't survive out there."
"Yes, you can, Tru."
"I can't, Od. I'm a cripple."
"Don't use that word."
"But it's what I am. I'm deformed."
Od recoiled, and her eyes turned moist and bloodshot. She angled her face away from me, toward the trees to the south, and I heard my words echo across the woods.
"I'm sorry." I gulped down a lump in my throat. "But I'm not like you. I can't simply run off."
She sniffed. I lowered my head. For a solid minute neither of us said a word, and I worried she regretted her return. Down in the footrest of the wheelchair, my left leg felt as though it were lengthening, stretching longer and longer and longer, until the sole of the high-button boot at the end of it crunched against the wicker. The raised black shoe at the end of my short leg, however, disappeared beneath the hem of my skirt, stuck at an angle.
"Maybe you should take me back to the house now," I said.
Od raised her face. "This seems a good spot for your training."
I blinked, not expecting that particular response.
"Here's what you need to do." She slid the crocheted blanket off our cache of supplies that teetered on my lap. "Grip the hand mirror with all your might and close your eyes. I'm going to hide behind one of the trees and then lunge at you when you least expect it. Your job will be to react as swiftly as possible. Raise the mirror the second you detect me and shout at the top of your lungs, 'Be gone!'"
I sat there with my lips sealed shut, unsure whether I should go along with the game.
She stared down at me with pleading brown eyes. I thought again of her long absence, of the years she'd spent shielding me from hardships, bolstering me up, filling me with so much love, I no longer hurt from the loss of the missing members of our family.
I drew a sharp breath. "Must I really shout that?"
"Yes," she said, a smile forming on her lips. "You'll stun your attacker."
I glanced around, worried that a neighbor might catch me waving a hand mirror about and shouting like a ninny.
"And what about the leather case?" I asked with a lift of the handle.
"We'll get to that later. That's mainly with us right now so Aunt Vik won't see I have it." She backed away, toward the towering evergreens behind her. "For now, concentrate on using the mirror."
I nodded, with some reluctance. "All right."
"Close your eyes."
I did as she asked and heard her feet swishing through piles of decomposed leaves, rustling behind the trees—then silence. My arms and neck bristled with gooseflesh. My spine tingled. I shifted about to get more comfortable in my chair, and the wicker crackled like flames.
Od didn't lunge at me straightaway. She left me sitting there in agonizing suspense. I kept my eyes closed, for I felt her watching me. Or ... at least, something watched me from behind the trees. The weight of a steady gaze pressed upon me, making my chest feel tight.
A twig snapped.
I gasped and raised the mirror, and for a moment, I saw a figure leaping at me from the trees.
"Be gone!" I shouted. "Be gone!"
"Well done!" said Od, and my mind settled enough to transform the ferocious shadow into a girl in a purple overcoat.
"Od!" I sank back in the chair. "You genuinely frightened me."
"Good," she said, kicking aside a pinecone. "You need to learn to react when fear threatens to overtake you. Let's try it again."
"Let's not."
She batted away my sour attitude with a wave of a hand. "Close your eyes."
"Od ..."
"Close your eyes, Trudchen Maria."
I sighed, lowering my lids during the exhale.
Again I waited, and again she burst forth when I least expected her.
"Be gone!" I cried, the mirror raised like a sword. Od's skirts and coat billowed behind her as she pounced through the branches with the intensity of a fiend blasted out of hell.
We repeated that horrifying exercise at least seven times in a row, and each time she assailed me, she emerged from a different direction, making me flinch in my chair so hard, I would roll a foot backward. My arms ached from swinging the mirror about with my fear-fueled muscles, and my heart pounded as though I were the one dashing about in the trees. I craved an end to the whole rigmarole and realized the best way to bring it about.
"Od," I called out to her when she turned to hide for the ninth time. "I'll trade you a secret for a secret."
She stopped and glanced over her shoulder at me. "You have a secret?"
"I do." I leaned my elbows on the leather case in my lap.
She tucked her hands inside her coat pockets and strolled my way with an air of caution. "What type of secret would you be asking for in return?"
"I have a question about our father. A simple question that would require a mere yes or no answer."
She shifted her weight between her legs. "I don't know ..."
"Mine's an enormous secret."
She stood up taller.
"I believe," I said, "I may be able to foretell the future."
Her hands slipped out of her pockets. Her lips parted, but she couldn't seem to speak.
I gulped. "And now to my question ..."
"No, no, no—you need to elaborate." She braced her hands against my armrests and leaned down toward me. "How do you foretell the future?"
Another gulp. "I've followed your guide to reading tea leaves."
"You have?"
I nodded. "At first I did it for a lark ... and sometimes small coincidences occurred. A sign in my cup would match an insignificant moment in my life, and I'd smile and then forget all about it. But ... during this past week ..." I cleared my throat and fidgeted in the chair.
"Go on," said Od. "Please, what's happened this week?"
"Well ... things have taken a peculiar turn."
She let go of my chair. "How so?"
"I saw train tracks, which I interpreted to mean a journey of some sort."
"A journey?" Her eyes bulged. "You ... you mean to say that you predicted my return ... and our expedition?"
"I know you're counting on me being something extraordinary, but really, I'm just a girl who's placing an awfully high importance on the ability of tea leaves to gum together."
"What else have you seen?"
To that, I looked away and twirled the mirror between my fingers.
"Tru?" She clutched my chair again, rocking me backward. "What else have you viewed in the leaves?"
I spun the mirror all the faster.
"Trudchen?"
"I'm worried if I tell you, it'll only encourage you to keep on with these monster tales."
She drew back. "Did you see something monstrous in the leaves?"
I dropped the mirror against the case. "I'm not entirely sure what it is I'm seeing. It ... it strikes me as being some sort of demon. It has wings and hoofed feet and a head shaped like a loaf of bread. Its name might be Phil."
Her forehead creased. "Phil?"
"Either that or he lives in Philadelphia. A bell persists in appearing with him, too."
"What are you saying?" Od stepped backward two feet. "You've seen this 'Phil the Demon' multiple times?"
I scooted myself up to a more comfortable position in the wheelchair and tried to remember if she had ever mentioned anyone named Philip. Before she was sent away, she once spoke of a boy named Cy, whose name I first thought to have been spelled "Sigh," for that's what she did when she talked about the fellow: sighed with a dreamy, lovesick sound.
"Do you know any Phils?" I asked.
"No, not one. How many times have you seen him?"
I shrugged. "I've lost track. Five times. Maybe six."
"Six?" She grabbed her temples. "Holy smoke, Tru!"
"I might simply be bored. I might be making more out of the smudges than what's actually there."
"Six times!" she said, and she paced the dirt in front of me. "Are you meant to go to Philadelphia, do you think? Our mother's family lived there, before they came to Oregon, after Germany ..."
"We can't go running across the country because of tea leaves. Do you realize how ridiculous that sounds?"
Od dropped her hands to her sides. "When did you last see the shape of the demon in your cup?"
"Well ..." I cleared my throat. "Yesterday evening, after supper. Not long before you arrived."
She put her hands on her hips and gaped. "Trudchen! You foretold an encounter with a monster just hours before I arrived and told you my plan?"
"The truth of the matter is, even if I could hunt down monsters, I wouldn't want to. If you ask me, it sounds like a terrible job. And if turning fifteen means I'll lure vicious creatures to me"—I plunked the leather case down on the ground beside me—"then I don't want to be fifteen, either. That sort of 'talent' would be a horrifying inheritance I'd gladly decline. No, thank you."
"I see. Well ..." She crossed her arms over her chest. "I suppose I could understand why it might sound intimidating."
"Yes, it 'might.'" I rubbed my gloved hands together, for the temperature had dropped in the past few minutes. "And now to my question about our father ..."
She frowned.
"I want to know," I said before she could object to my asking, "if what you said is true. If our uncle made him ... disappear."
"Yes," said Od without hesitation, still frowning.
"Do you mean"—I leaned forward with a creak of the chair—"'disappear' disappear, or are you saying, in a delicate manner, that our uncle was a murderer?"
She met my eye. "You said you would ask a simple yes or no question."
"Od, please tell me."
She sidled behind my chair and rotated me counterclockwise, back toward the path out of the woods. "We'll need to be discreet"—she pushed me forward—"about the way we pack your belongings. I'll squeeze your clothing inside my bag."
"Was it murder, then?" I craned my neck so I could better see her behind me. "If you don't tell me, I'm going to assume it's murder."
"That's a story for another day. For now, let's discuss the packing."
"I can't go, Od. It's impossible."
"You'll find the strength to leave when we arrive at the station." She pushed onward, guiding me up and over a tree root thicker than me. "We're going on a quest foretold not only by you and your marvelous tea leaves, but also by a tarot card, years ago. We're meant to be together, and I'm not going to let any obstacles block us."
Aunt Viktoria remained steadfast in her insistence that we whisk my sister straight off to the depot to catch the afternoon train to Portland, where Od could either choose to stay in the city and find an honest job or board a train bound for destinations unknown. I sat in my wheelchair by the fire, the case and the hand mirror buried back beneath the blanket in my lap, and I pondered, What to do? What to do? What to do?
Od lugged her Gladstone out of my bedroom and shot our aunt a poisonous glare. "You may have been unbothered to part ways with your brother and sister when you were my age, Aunt Viktoria, but I am not so heartless."
"Don't assume the worst of people, Odette." Aunt Viktoria fitted her wool gloves over her freckled hands. "Sending your mother and uncle to California broke my heart, but I agreed to stay behind and sort out matters with our parents' farm, just as your mother agreed to save Magnus. I was left with responsibilities and anguish, but we were forced to do what we could—grow up before we were ready—in order to survive."
"Did anything else at your farm cause our mother and uncle to leave?" I asked, thinking of Od's claim about the "terrifying things beyond normal animal and human categorization" that "fought to get into the house late at night."
Auntie struggled with the left glove, as though she couldn't quite squeeze her longest fingers into their proper compartments. "A brother gasping for air in the middle of the night was reason enough," she said in a voice that quavered. "Why do you ask?"
My face warmed. "Never mind."
Aunt Viktoria lifted an envelope off the table. "I've written a letter vouching for your character, Odette, so that you may find work in a factory. Inside this envelope you'll also find your mother's latest address, should you decide to seek her assistance. She might understand you better than I. That's the best I can offer."
Od gripped her luggage in her right hand. "You could forgive me," she said. "Family should stand by family."
Aunt Viktoria shook her head. "No, Odette. I made my rules quite clear when I first hired you out to work at the Leedses' two years ago. You chose to leave this house for good by breaking those rules. You have nothing and no one but yourself to blame."
Huddled in my chair by the fireplace, I listened to the sternness and guilt-laden bitterness spewing from our aunt's thin lips, and I trembled with rage.
Family should stand by family was all Od had said—a statement with which I agreed wholeheartedly. And yet my aunt had essentially answered, No, they shouldn't. Family has every right to abandon family, even when a loved one is desperately needed.
The steam engine bound for Portland arrived all too soon. Auntie could have put Od on one of the electric interurban streetcars that now linked Carnation to Forest Grove to the north, then to Portland to the east, but she distrusted anything that carried the "threat of electrocution." I supposed her decision meant she cared at least a tad about my sister's safety.
Od watched the arrival of the train from beside my wheel-chair, her big iron-bottom bag in hand. She pressed her lips together and stood absolutely still while the train's bell clanged and the smokestack billowed. She already looked as if she were alone, even though Auntie and I both flanked her.
Down the platform, I noticed a boy who buried his face deep in a book—a crimson, clothbound beauty with a cover illustrated with a fanged and bat-eared gargoyle. The title looked to have been Marvelous and Monstrous, but I wondered if my jangled nerves were blurring reality and causing Od's tales to invade my brain.
"Aboard!" shouted the conductor.
From within the depot behind me, the TAP-TAP-tap, TAP-TAP-TAP of arriving telegraphs urged my legs, RUN-RUN-run, RUN-RUN-RUN.
Aunt Viktoria cleared her throat. "Well, then ... I wish you the best of luck, Odette."
Odette gripped my left arm and bent her lips next to my ear. "Are you sure you won't come?"
Other travelers climbed aboard the train. My gaze darted between my sister and the green train car swallowing up the passengers' dark coats and hats.
TAP-TAP, tap-TAP, tap-TAP-tap.
"Let me at least stand up to properly hug you," I said, and I passed her the MarViLUs case and the mirror, which I'd brought along for her to keep.
"What is that case doing here?" asked Aunt Viktoria from the other side of my sister. "Odette, what ... Have you ... have you seen your uncle Magnus recently?"
Using my cane for support, I rose out of the wheelchair and wrapped my free arm around my sister. "I don't know what to do," I whispered in her ear.
"I packed some of your clothing."
Tap-tap-tap-TAP, tap-tap, tap-TAP-tap-tap.
"What about Aunt Viktoria?" I asked. "She needs me."
"We wouldn't have to leave her forever. We could come back and visit. We'll send her money."
"Odette," said Auntie, "I asked, have you seen your uncle?"
Tap-tap-TAP, tap-tap-tap.
"Odette?" Desperation squeaked through Auntie's voice. "Did you hear me? The train is starting to move. Answer me."
Od pulled me close enough for me to feel her heart pounding against my chest. I couldn't let her go. I feared she might die if I didn't watch over her.
"All right," I told her with a nod. "I'll go."
"Hurry over to the train as best as you can. I'll distract Aunt Vik." She collected her luggage and the case and turned toward our aunt. "Thank you for your hospitality, Aunt Viktoria. I appreciate the time you allowed me to spend with my sister this morning. It was awfully kind of you to cook that lovely breakfast, but because you refuse to forgive me my errors, I refuse to say a word about Uncle Magnus, whom I've heard you also rejected from your life when you learned he played piano in brothels down in San Diego."
While Od horrified Auntie with words like brothel—a word I didn't quite understand—I lumbered toward the railcar at the briskest pace I could muster. The train lurched forward. Wheels creaked and groaned, and steam gusted from the smokestack with exasperated hisses. The sole of my left shoe smacked against the platform, while my right leg—suddenly nothing but dead weight—dragged behind. I felt as though my cane were an oar I was using to row through a sea of concrete.
"Tru?" called Auntie. "Where on earth are you going?"
I broke into my best semblance of a run, more of a hop—a desperate hop that made my left hip click and pop.
A porter at the top of the steps reached out a gloved hand and asked, "May I help you aboard, miss?"
"Yes, please." I extended my right arm and clasped his fingers.
He yanked me up to the first step with a mighty strength.
"Trudchen Maria!" screamed Auntie. "Do not get on that train!"
The porter's forehead wrinkled in confusion. His grip loosened. Shouts from both my sister and aunt cracked through the air behind me, but I didn't look back—I couldn't; I'd lose my nerve. I staggered up the next step, swaying, fearful of falling backward.
"Keep climbing, Tru!" called Od, now directly behind me. She pushed against my backside and boosted me up to the third step, and before long I was on that train, and down below on the platform, Od was running to keep up, then jumping inside, tearing up the steps behind me with the mirror, the Gladstone bag, the leather case, and the broadest smile I had ever witnessed on a person, her eyes as luminescent as the sun stealing through the clouds behind her. Back on the platform, Aunt Viktoria screamed my name, a hand to her chest, the abandoned wheelchair parked behind her, but the shrill cry of the train's whistle muffled her voice. All I saw out the window was her mouth frozen into the shape of an O.
The train chugged down the tracks, gaining speed, rushing off into worlds unfamiliar and terrifyingly new.
"Let the quest begin," said Od, and she took my hand and steered me to a seat.
