As White as Snow Page 10

  Death in a sinner’s cell. Lumikki had no intention of letting that happen.

  She pressed her back hard against the wall, feeling its solid, unrelenting surface. The wall would be her friend now as it supported her. Lumikki focused on getting her bound legs up against the opposite wall. She knew the slow climb up would be difficult and exhausting. She would probably only be able to do it once, so she had to succeed on the first try.

  A jump. Lumikki was in the air, her body bridging the two walls. She found her balance and took a deep breath through her nose. She needed as much oxygen in her blood as possible.

  Inch by inch. She had to keep the pressure even between her back and the wall and her feet and the wall. Once her feet were high enough that her center of gravity threatened to tip too far toward her shoulders and neck, Lumikki started jerking her back upward. That part was significantly harder than moving her feet. One inch. Two inches.

  Lumikki continued the slow, painful movements. The musty taste of the rag only seemed to intensify in her mouth.

  A few more inches and her head would be at the level of the backpack. She could knock it off the nail. In the backpack, she had a pocketknife she could use to cut through the ropes.

  Just then, she heard steps on the garden path leading to the hut. They stopped at the door. Lumikki inched her feet up too fast, losing her balance and crashing to the floor.

  Panic gripped Lumikki as she heard someone turning the key in the lock.

  The best and most reliable hit man in Prague repeated the instructions he had received.

  He would go to the house. Near the back stairs, he would find the key to the hut. He would grab the girl, who would be tied up and helpless, and make it look like she had escaped on her own.

  Simple enough. No chance of error or failure.

  The target had managed to elude him once already. That wasn’t going to happen again.

  Lumikki watched as the door opened with painful slowness. She tried to clear her thoughts. Was there some way to trick whoever was coming? What if she pretended to faint? That might give her the element of surprise. It wasn’t much, but she had to try something. She had never given up in a fight, and she wasn’t about to now.

  Lumikki closed her eyes and went limp on the floor.

  Someone stepped into the tiny room.

  The person placed a hand on Lumikki’s head and stroked her hair.

  “Lumikki,” a voice whispered.

  Lumikki opened her eyes. Lenka.

  Quickly, Lenka untied the knots on Lumikki’s ropes and pulled the rag from her mouth. Lumikki had to cough quietly for a while before she could draw fresh air into her lungs. It tasted unbelievably good.

  “You have to go. Right now. There isn’t much time.” Lenka’s voice was agitated and full of fear.

  Lumikki grabbed her backpack off the nail. “Not without you,” she said.

  Lenka blinked. She seemed to consider her options. Then she glanced over her shoulder toward the house.

  “I don’t have time to argue. The others are in the prayer room, but I don’t know how long they’ll be there. Adam gave me permission to pray in my bedroom, and I knew he kept the extra key for the sinner’s cell in the fireplace. I have to put it back before he notices.”

  “But you’ll get caught. Adam will punish you.”

  “No, I won’t. I’ll make it look like you escaped. Go already. Run!” Lenka looked hopeless. Her arms and legs trembled.

  Lumikki ached to start running. But she was terrified at the thought of leaving her sister at the mercy of these lunatics. If she left now, would she ever see Lenka again?

  “It’s dangerous here. Lenka, you don’t know . . . I think we don’t know the whole truth about Adam,” Lumikki tried.

  Lenka reeled back. In an instant, she was far away.

  “Yes I do. He’s good to me.”

  “Why are you helping me escape then?”

  “Because he can be cruel to those who don’t see the Truth and I don’t want you to suffer.”

  Lumikki felt like screaming at Lenka for being so illogical. She felt her slipping farther and farther away, beyond the reach of Lumikki’s words. There was a wall between them.

  “But the truth is—” Lumikki tried again.

  “Everyone will soon see the Truth and it will burn their eyes. I wish you weren’t an outsider, sister, but it looks like your heart isn’t open enough after all. Go.”

  Lenka’s words pierced Lumikki’s heart like an ice pick. She could have hugged Lenka and said how truly she feared she was in danger. And how much she already cared about her. She could have done that, but she didn’t. Shyness or fear or habit kept her where she was.

  Don’t ever run after anyone. Don’t ever beg for love, friendship, or trust.

  So Lumikki just quickly touched Lenka’s hand in thanks, ran to the back fence, and climbed over it, taking great care not to get caught on the spikes. Only once she had run so far that turning back would have been crazy, she cursed her stupid principles. Because of them, she might lose her connection to her sister. Because of them, she might lose her sister altogether.

  Lumikki stopped to catch her breath and pulled out of her backpack a piece of paper on which Lenka had drawn her stunted family tree.

  Since she wasn’t having much luck with the living, it was time to go have a chat with the dead.

  Lenka shielded her face with one arm and smashed the crucifix against the window with all her might. The glass shattered. The sound would have carried to the house, so she didn’t have long. Fortunately, the prayer room was on the other side of the house, so no one could see into the backyard. The window of the sinner’s cell was small and the hole she’d made in it was even smaller, but it was just within the realm of possibility that Lumikki could have fit through. The ropes were lying on the floor, and Lenka dropped the crucifix next to them. Jesus seemed to look up at her in disappointment.

  Forgive me for all my sins, Lenka pleaded silently.

  Locking the door from the outside as her heart pounded, Lenka suppressed her constant desire to look behind her. That would have eaten up precious time. Her hands were shaking uncontrollably, but she managed to lock the door. Then she raced around to the other side of the house, hearing the sound of the others rushing toward the yard.

  Lenka prayed no one would think to check her room. She knew that wasn’t the sort of thing she was supposed to ask for, but right now she didn’t care.

  Excited conversation came from the backyard. Lenka begged for strength for her trembling legs and climbed up the fire escape to her room. Carefully, she peeked inside her room. No one. The door was closed. Good. And even more importantly, the window she’d left unlatched was still open. Lenka slid inside and only then did she notice that a shard of glass had left a long red scratch along the back of her hand. She pressed her mouth to the scratch and licked away the blood. The taste nauseated her, but now was not a time to be weak. More red droplets erupted from the scratch. Lenka shoved her hand under her blanket and pressed the wound against the bottom sheet. If someone asked about the blood, she could claim her period had started unexpectedly during the night.

  The blood flow slowed. Lenka opened the door and ran downstairs.

  The fireplace. She had to reach the fireplace. She had to get rid of the extra key as quickly as possible, before Adam or anyone else could suspect her.

  Lenka stole a glance out the living room window into the backyard. The others were still there. Adam had opened the sinner’s cell door, and Lenka could make out enough of what everyone was saying to tell they were trying to figure out how Lumikki could have escaped. Lenka reached her arm into the fireplace, felt around for the secret nook, and replaced the key.

  Just then, Adam called for her. Lenka ran to the back door to meet him.

  “That so-called sister of yours is missing,” Adam said.

  “What?”

  Lenka tried to inject her voice with the necessary amount of confusion, indignatio
n, and fear. Adam looked her straight in the eyes, and for the first time in her life, Lenka bore his gaze unflinchingly. Adam frowned, but Lenka kept her expression sincere and innocent.

  “Come see for yourself if you don’t believe me,” Adam suggested.

  When he turned his back and started walking ahead of her, Lenka shoved her hand in her pocket. There, both the scratch and her sooty fingertips would be safely hidden.

  As she followed, Lenka marveled at how disconcertingly easy lying really was.

  His cell phone announced an incoming text. The hit man checked the screen. He was just arriving at the house. The message was from the client: “Good work.”

  He blinked. But he hadn’t done the job yet. When he realized what a humiliating phone call he would now have to make, he swore to himself. It ate him up inside that some girl had managed to get away from him. Again.

  The angel rested her head heavily in her hand. A large piece of her left wing had broken off, and her eyes looked like she’d been weeping giant black tears for centuries. A guardian angel bitterly reproaching herself for failing at her task. Ivy encircled her feet like chains. The angel would never fly to heaven again with those broken wings. She was eternally condemned to the earth, crying black tears and suffering for the sin of her failure.

  Lumikki looked at the angel’s sad, discouraged posture. She felt the same way. Just as hopeless. Just as defeated. What had she thought would happen? Vinohrady Cemetery was one of Prague’s largest. Finding a needle in a haystack was child’s play compared to this.

  Lenka had mentioned to Lumikki that her grandparents were buried in this cemetery. She’d never visited their graves, though. According to Adam, you shouldn’t focus on the dead, but on those who were still alive. Lumikki thought it sounded like the leader of their cult just didn’t want anyone digging into their ancestries too much. That’s why Lumikki had decided to come see what she could learn from these gravestones.

  If she found a hole in Adam’s story, she might be able to convince Lenka that she shouldn’t stay with the sect. If she could prove that Adam had lied about one thing, Lenka might stop believing his other “Truths.” Lumikki knew it was a long shot, but right now she couldn’t think of anything else to do.

  She had to get her sister out from under the influence of the White Family and Adam Havel.

  Lumikki had walked all the way to the cemetery from the main metro station downtown, which she now realized had been a mistake. This time, she had taken the precaution of putting on running shoes in the morning, but now it felt like sandals would have been a better choice. Her feet had started sweating through her socks, her heels were chafed, and her toes were boiled mush. She had emptied her water bottle half an hour earlier. She was sure she had perspired more liquid than she had taken in during her walk. Her head would start hurting soon.

  Her distress wasn’t helped by the fact that finding Lenka’s grandparents’ grave seemed impossible. Besides the cemetery being enormous and Lumikki seeing no order to the arrangement of the graves, even in the middle of a bright summer day, the place was like something out of a grim Gothic fantasy. Old trees reached into the sky, creating strange shadows on the headstones. The greedy teeth of time had gnawed at the stones, crosses, statues, and bits of wall. Pieces had fallen off of them, and some of the statues looked downright grotesque—angels missing a hand, sometimes two, sometimes even their head. The inscriptions on the stones were worn and difficult to read. In many places, ivy covered the ground, the trunks of the trees, and the gravestones in a thick, soft mat of dark green.

  Lumikki had found any number of Franzes and Marias and even more Havels and even several Franz Havels and Maria Havlovás. But the dates didn’t match. People who lived in the 1700s weren’t any help now. She felt the dehydration headache start moving from the back of her head to her temples. Soon it would reach her frontal lobe and run the risk of turning into a full-blown migraine. The Sunday dinner she had eaten with Lenka’s “family” was still churning in her stomach even though she had managed to get the worst of the dust rag’s taste rinsed out of her mouth. Lumikki didn’t want to vomit in a cemetery. The dead wouldn’t care, but it was disrespectful to the living who came to visit the resting places of their loved ones.

  Sitting down on a bench in the shade of the trees, she took some deep, even breaths. Staying here and continuing her search would be a waste of time. She should go to the nearest store, buy herself something cold to drink, and ask Jiři later whether he had any information on Lenka’s grandparents. Jiři had studied the church records already.

  Coming to the cemetery had been a fool’s errand. Lumikki decided to take this as a lesson and a reminder. Don’t make hasty plans. Research things in advance.

  Just then, Lumikki’s phone rang. Pappa. Lumikki would have preferred not to answer right now, but she knew that wouldn’t be wise. If she didn’t pick up, her mom and dad would just start worrying for no reason.

  “You talked to Kaisa earlier today and apparently you got cut off. Were you calling to talk to me?” her father asked.

  “Yeah. Um . . . I just wanted to ask what Prague was like for you,” Lumikki replied.

  For a moment, she let her gaze rest on the headstone opposite her, which was almost entirely covered in ivy. She couldn’t totally regret having taken this fruitless trip to the cemetery. The mood of the place was incredible, like something out of a nightmare or a dream. That by itself made the visit worthwhile.

  “How did you know I’ve been to Prague?” Her father’s voice was demanding, almost unfriendly.

  Lumikki thought for a moment. She didn’t want to reveal everything to her father at once. Not yet.

  “A mutual acquaintance. Someone from the past who remembers you.”

  “I’m surprised anyone would remember me there after so many years—”

  Lumikki didn’t let her father go any further before getting to the point:

  “Why didn’t you tell me you’d been here?”

  The silence on the other end of the line was so deep and so long that Lumikki started to wonder if the call had failed.

  “To tell you the truth, I was in such a bad place back then that I prefer not to think about it. And I really don’t remember much,” her father finally said in a choked voice.

  Don’t you even remember fathering your eldest daughter? Lumikki felt like screaming into the phone.

  “So . . . that’s why I didn’t tell you. There was nothing to tell.”

  Exasperated, Lumikki stared into the middle distance. Nothing to tell, huh? My only sister, but nothing to tell. No big deal.

  “Well, that’s why I called earlier,” Lumikki said. “That was all.”

  “Is everything good there? You have enough money? Is the hostel okay?”

  Her father had shifted back into his concerned, slightly distant paternal voice.

  “Yeah. Everything’s fine. I’ll be home in a few days.”

  Maybe with a sister in tow, Lumikki added silently. Then her dad would get to rethink what fell into the category of “nothing to tell.”

  Lumikki had often thought that her family actually just acted out roles. Mom played the mom, Dad played the dad, and Lumikki played the daughter. They all acted as if they were moving around a set, as if they were always on camera. At first, she thought all families were like that, but sometime around her tenth birthday, she started watching other families and what they did at the store or the park or a big family gathering. They acted different than hers. They fought and they laughed. They were present. They were real. In Lumikki’s family, they didn’t say what they thought, they said what they thought was in the script.

  That made for a strange atmosphere at home and rendered any real conversation almost impossible. In theory, her businessman father and library-information-specialist mother played their roles perfectly. But they still always seemed to be speaking words someone else had written. They weren’t whole and living. They were silhouettes. Lumikki didn’t know how s
he could ever reach the real people behind the shadows.

  Through the green, trilobed leaves, Lumikki noticed that the headstone opposite her bench had a name starting with “F.” Lumikki decided to check this one last grave. Just this one.

  Standing up, Lumikki walked to the headstone and started pulling the tenacious plant away from the letters. “Franz.” Franz Havel. And another name. “Maria Havlová.” Lumikki’s heart started pounding. The dates matched.

  “Well, call if anything happens,” her father said.

  “Okay, I will. Bye!”

  Lumikki knew she’d ended the call like a petulant teenager, but right now she needed to focus on the stone in front of her. There was a third name. Lumikki’s hands trembled as she tore at the ivy.

  “Klaus Havel. Born 1940. Died 1952.”

  Lumikki stared at the numbers for a few seconds before her aching brain agreed to tell her what was strange about the years.

  Klaus Havel had died when he was twelve. It was very, very unlikely that he was Adam Havel’s father. Not impossible, but the improbability was so great that Lumikki would have been willing to bet anything Adam had lied to Lenka. Lumikki pulled out her phone and snapped a picture of the stone. She would show it to Lenka. Maybe then she would believe that “the family” and especially their “father” weren’t as innocent as she believed.

  As Lumikki put her phone back in her pocket, her nostrils picked up a smell that threatened to trigger the migraine she’d been fearing. The acrid stench of sweat and aftershave. The same one she’d smelled the previous night.

  Lumikki didn’t waste an instant looking around. She just exploded into a run. And not a split second too soon. Pounding footfalls followed her.