Defy the Night by Heather Munn

Author:Heather Munn [Munn, Heather; Munn, Lydia]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-8254-7975-5
Publisher: Kregel Publications
Published: 2014-12-08T16:00:00+00:00

LUCY WAS right. On the way to Rivesaltes, Paquerette told me to be careful.

She asked me questions. First about the police in Valence, then the soldiers. I wasn’t supposed to notice I was being interrogated, I guess. Then she took a deep breath, and I braced.

“Magali,” she asked, looking in my eyes, “were you afraid of these men?”

I blinked. I had absolutely no idea what to say.

“I … I guess so. At first. I don’t know, I mostly thought about what to do. Like keeping Marek away from them. He was drawing way too much attention to himself. He’s got to learn not to be so scared, it puts him in more danger.”

“Mm.” Paquerette looked out the train window. We were deep in the south by then, riding past lavender fields, line after line of deep purple. It was hot. “Fear isn’t a bad thing, though, Magali. In right measure.”

My heart sank. I’d given her the wrong answer.

“Marek, for instance. I would guess he has excellent reasons to be afraid of German soldiers. Our convalescents here may have no intention in the world of doing us harm, but that doesn’t mean we can afford to treat them as safe. I’d say Marek is just as afraid of them as he needs to be. But he does need to learn to hide rather than run.”

I nodded. “Yes, I see.”

She turned to me. “You know, people are always saying, ‘Don’t be afraid.’ That may have been good advice once, but not now. When there’s really something to fear it’s foolish not to. I don’t stifle my fear, Magali. It makes me think of all the possibilities, before I make a decision.”

I turned and looked at her. Her eyes were dark.

“I’m afraid all the time, Magali,” she said in a lower voice. “I’m afraid every time I walk into a camp, and more when I walk out with the children. I am afraid of being arrested. I am afraid of being shot. I am horribly, deathly afraid of one of the children under my care being arrested and taken back. Or deported. Or worse.”

Neither of us spoke. The train went clack-clack over its rails. Clack-clack, clack-clack. The fields ran by outside the window: purple, green, green, purple, gold. The gold was colza in bloom; they grow it for oil. I thought of the oil bottle at home, of pouring a little into the frying pan and chopping up an onion—one more weary day, one more meal for my family, in the exhausted days before the spring had come. I thought of what people don’t know about each other. How easy it is to think someone’s a child, when you haven’t seen their real life. I thought about how I was sitting on a train listening to Paquerette praise fear. After standing at the foot of the l’Espoir stairs listening to Nina do the exact same thing.

So they were going to make me prove myself a second time. Fine. I gritted my teeth, and looked out at the fields, and vowed to be a quiet, gray little mouse.

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