The Vanishing Sky by L. Annette Binder

Author:L. Annette Binder [Binder, L. Annette]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

14

Old Frau Focht pulled a file from her pocket and worked the hatchet head, starting at the cutting edge and moving inward, taking out the burrs. She worked the metal like his father worked his wood, with an easy hand. It was warmer in the barn but the light there was no good, and so she worked outside instead.

“The heads are coming loose,” she said. “I’ve been soaking them in buckets, but the wood won’t swell.” She gave up squatting and knelt in the dirt. Sharpening was hard work and called for leather gloves, but she had only mittens and she didn’t wear them while she worked. The skin on her knuckles was cracked, and her eyes watered, but she didn’t complain, and when she was done with the file, she looked up. “Go get me the whetstone.”

The wind was starting up, and Georg walked fast, setting his hands deep inside his pockets. She was impatient when he came back. She took the stone and didn’t thank him. She moved it in circles against the blade, sharpening first one side and then the other. He offered to help, but she didn’t trust him with her hatchet heads. He’d make them uneven. He didn’t have gentle hands, and if the heads cracked there’d be no fixing them.

“Don’t just stand there,” she said. “Tell me more about that fat captain.”

He’d told her so many of the stories already, but he started again with one of his favorites. There were these scorpions. They glowed at night just like fireflies do. They had poison in their stingers and they were quick the way they hopped, and Münchhausen whacked their tails with the axe he carried. He chopped them all to bits, and even then the stingers were still moving and stuck fast to his boots. She shook her head. “That can’t be right,” she said. “Bugs don’t glow,” but she smiled anyway as she sharpened the heads. He was her radio. She shook her head when he talked about generals or the places where the fighting was. She didn’t know those names, but she knew the spaceship Sannah and all the men and women on its crew and where they went and the creatures they found.

“Tell me another,” she said when he stopped. “Tell me one I haven’t heard,” and he stomped his feet to keep warm and set the collar up on his jacket.

How easy it would be to stay with her and to work her fields when spring came. She’d cook for him, and he’d wear the clothes her husband had worn, and there’d be no fighting and no soldiers and no border police in their green uniforms. They’d be alone as shipwrecked sailors. They’d plant potatoes and carrots and fat red beets, and he wouldn’t go to school anymore or listen to the radio. There’d be no books in the house except for the Bible she kept inside a drawer with her spare blankets. She’d shown it to him once, that old leather book, and inside there was a photograph taken years before.

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