Anna and the Swallow Man by Gavriel Savit

Author:Gavriel Savit
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Random House Children's Books
Published: 2016-01-25T16:00:00+00:00

Anna was woken by the sound of something very close to her head. It squeaked and clicked, like an ungreased device of metal, and before she even opened her eyes, her entire body tensed. The Swallow Man had taught her the danger of mechanical noises, and even if he was gone, she still believed with a full heart in the truth of all his teachings. The sound of a machine where it was not expected could well be relied upon to belong to a machine for making deaths.

But then, in the precise position from which the clicking sound had come, Anna heard a bright whistling and a brush of wings, and when she opened her eyes, it was to the sight of a lone starling flitting off across the bright spring green.

It was not this sight, though, that brought her such racking joy.

There, lying in front of her, curled up close in the precise spot from which he had been gone in the night, was her tall, wise, beautiful, terrifying Swallow Man. A shuddering sigh escaped from her lips.

And then she saw: sprawled out beyond the Swallow Man, barely a sixth of him still beneath the hedge, mouth open, left boot hanging from his toes and clarinet clutched in close, was beautiful, happy, bright, loudly snoring Reb Hirschl.

Where last night she had shaken her body so hard with sobbing that she’d thought she would fly apart, now Anna treasured her tears, as if they were a butterfly of deep blue at flight in the small, sunlit jar of her chest.

When finally she turned her head away from the sight of the Jew, she found the Swallow Man awake and watching her. This did not surprise her—she had long since come to the conclusion that every moment of her life would be subject to his observation—but she could scarcely catch hold of enough breath to speak.

“Why?” she almost didn’t say.

The Swallow Man pulled himself lithely out from beneath the hedge and arranged himself in a seated position. “Because,” he said. “Just as it is impossible to say ‘I was going toward the Jew’ without saying ‘I was going away from you,’ so, too, is it impossible to say ‘riverbank’ without saying ‘river.’ ”

Anna nodded.

“I had lost sight,” said the Swallow Man, “of the fact that survival in and of itself is not sufficient to support every life equally.”

Anna thought he might have been preparing to apologize, but just then Reb Hirschl choked deafeningly on a noseful of snore and shifted in his sleep.

“God help us,” muttered the Swallow Man.

“Thank you,” said Anna. “Thank you.” It was only her aching cheeks that finally made Anna aware that she was smiling.

The Swallow Man did not answer, but set about preparing himself to depart. He was fully assembled for the day’s walking when, almost as an afterthought, he held out the heel of bread. Anna could see where her clutching fingers had dented its flesh in the night.

“Here,” he said. “He insisted that you have it.

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