The Woman with the Blue Star, Pam Jenoff [highly recommended books txt] 📗

started back. A bit farther along, I reached the sewer grate once more. Sunlight shone through the slats, creating bars of light on the wet sewer ground. They reminded me of days by the stream with Papa not so many years ago. We would always climb Krakus Mound, the high hill outside the city, on Sundays at dusk. First he carried me on his shoulders, and later when I was older and my legs strong enough, we walked hand in hand. The red rooftops of the city seemed to shimmer amidst the pale gray domes and spires. In autumn the falling leaves turned the hill to copper and we would try to pile the leaves to jump in before the rains or street sweepers took them.

I tried more than once since coming to the sewer to share my memories with Mama, but she stopped me. “We’re the only family we have now,” Mama would say, drawing me close to the roundness of her stomach. “We must concentrate on surviving and staying together, not on the past.” It was as if the thoughts were too painful for her to bear.

Feeling as if I might drown in the memories as easily as the sewer water, I forced the images from my mind and looked up at the grate, picturing the street. I often pretended that when we’d fled to the sewers, time above had stopped. But I felt it now, the way the people still stopped and cooked and ate, children still went to school and played. The whole city had carried on without us, not seeming to notice that we were gone. The people above passed by me heedlessly. They could not possibly imagine that beneath their feet, we breathed and ate and slept. I couldn’t blame them; I certainly hadn’t given the world below a second thought when I lived above. I wondered now if there might be other unseen worlds, in the earth or the walls or the sky, that I hadn’t considered either.

I knew I should stay out of sight. Still, I stood on my tiptoes, wanting to see more of the world above. The grate opened up into a side street or alley. Beyond the edge, I could make out the high stone wall of a church. Although the bit directly above the grate was not the main market, I could still hear people above, bartering and trading.

A trickle of water came down through the sewer grate. I moved closer, curious. It was different than the water we siphoned off the pipe, warmer and smelling of soap. I peered above the grate. There was a laundry nearby, I guessed, the water running off from the wash. I had dreamed of bathing these many months. But in my dream, the waters always turned brown and threatened to take me away. Now the warm, soapy water beckoned. Impulsively, I took off my shirt and moved to stand under the trickle of water. It felt so good to wash the filth from my skin.

A close noise above startled me. Someone was coming. I pulled my shirt back on hurriedly, not wanting to be caught half-naked. The noise came again, the plink of something small falling through the grate and hitting the sewer floor. Curious, I moved closer to the grate, though I knew that I should not. I saw a young woman, close to my own age, a year older maybe, standing alone. My heart rose with excitement. The girl looked so fancy and clean she could not possibly be real. Beneath her tam hat, she had hair a color I had never seen, bright red, brushed until it was luminous and secured in the back by a single bow with perfect ringlets flowing in a ponytail beneath. I bowed my head slightly, feeling the knotting of my own hair despite Mama’s care and remembering when it wasn’t tangled and filthy. The girl wore a crisp light blue coat. What I envied most was the coat’s sash, white as snow. I hadn’t known that such pureness existed anymore.

I noticed that the girl held something in her right hand. Flowers. She had been buying flowers at market, red chrysanthemums, the kind the sellers always seemed to have, even though they were not in season. Envy shot through me. Down here we barely managed to eat and stay alive. Yet there was still a place in the world where beautiful things like flowers existed and other girls could have them. What was wrong with me that I didn’t deserve the same?

For a second, I thought the girl looked familiar. She reminded me a bit of my friend Stefania, I realized with a pang, except Stefania had dark, not red hair. I had never seen this girl before in my life, though. She was just a girl. Yet I desperately wanted to know her.

A hand touched my shoulder. I leapt, startled. I turned, expecting to see Saul again. This time, it was Mama. “What are you doing here?” I asked. She almost never left the chamber anymore.

“You were gone long. I was worried.” She had gotten up from her resting place with effort and was supporting her back with one hand, reaching for me with the other. I expected her to scold me for standing in the open beneath the sewer grate and risking detection. But she stood beside me, hidden in the shadows, not moving. Her eyes traveled to the girl above.

“Someday,” Mama whispered, “there will be flowers.”

I wanted to ask how she could say that. The idea of a life outside the sewer with nice, normal things sometimes felt like a nearly forgotten dream. But she had already started her slow amble back toward the chamber. I started to follow her. She stopped and turned me around firmly by the shoulders. “You stay there and feel the sun on your face,” she instructed, seeming to know what I needed more than I did. “Just keep out of sight.” She disappeared into