The Magician's Elephant by Kate DiCamillo

Author:Kate DiCamillo
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, azw3
ISBN: 9780763649418
Publisher: Candlewick Press
Published: 2009-12-19T17:00:00+00:00

“And what of it? What if she did cry? That she cried does not mean that she lived — not at all, not at all. If every babe who cried were still alive, well, then, the world would be a very crowded place, indeed.”

“Where is she?” said Peter.

Vilna Lutz let out a small sob.

“Where?” said Peter again.

“I do not know,” said the old soldier. “The midwife took her away. She said that she was too small, that she could not possibly put something so delicate into the hands of one such as me.”

“You said she died. Time and again, you told me that she was dead. You lied.”

“Do not call it a lie. Call it scientific conjecture. Babes without their mothers often will not live. And she was so small.”

“You lied to me.”

“No, no, Private Duchene. I lied for you, to protect you. What could you have done if you had known? It would only have hurt your heart to know. I cared for you — you, who would and could become a soldier like your father, a man I admired. I did not take your sister, because the midwife would not let me; she was so small, so impossibly small. What do I know of infants and their needs? I know of soldiering, not mothering.”

Peter got up from the floor. He walked to the window and stood looking out at the cathedral spire, the birds wheeling in the air.

“I am done talking now, sir,” said Peter. “Tomorrow I will go to the elephant and then I will find my sister and I will be done with you. I am done, too, with being a soldier, because soldiering is a useless and pointless thing.”

“Do not say something so terrible,” said Vilna Lutz. “Think of your father.”

“I am thinking of my father,” said Peter.

And he was.

He was thinking of his father in the garden.

And he was thinking of him on the battlefield, bleeding to death.

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