Ghost Boy by Iain Lawrence Page A

forward. The Gypsy Magda followed him, hurling herself at the gearshift, tromping on the pedals.
    Her headlights glared from the back of the Airstream, and she let it pull ahead a hundred yards, then fell in line so perfectly that a cable might have joined them.
    â€œI grew up like this,” she said. “On the road I was born, in a caravan pulled by horses. On the road, I think, I’ll die.”
    She never really sat. She leaned on the edge of her seat as she stood on the pedals, her bells and bracelets jangling as the truck went throbbing to the west. The black scarves were slipping slowly down her arms, and in the pale green light of the instrument lamps Harold saw that her wrists were as bony as a skeleton’s.
    â€œI had a little cradle that my father made me. When the wagon moved, it rocked. Wagon stops, I cry.” She slid her hand to the top of the wheel and, flinging herself sideways, shifted gears on a slope. “I remember this, my little cradle. Hung all about with pretty things and shining stars of metal my father cut from tin. Ach, the noise! I think it drives my mother mad.”
    The headlights lit the Airstream trailer. It hovered in the windshield, growing slowly larger.
    â€œWe traveled through the mountains and traveled through the forests. Every night we build a fire with big and leaping flames. The Roma—the Gypsies, you call them—they like the dancing; they sing and dance and circle round the fire. My young eyes, they see the fire dancing too, the flames dancing with the Gypsies.”
    She swayed on the pedals. The trailer seemed to slide across the windshield and back again to the middle.
    â€œI had seven brothers. They are big and handsome boys. From my mother they learn to laugh; from my father they learn to work. We go all across the land.” She was silent then, her face like stone in the trailer’s silver light. “Ach, it’s long ago.”
    â€œDo you ever see them?” asked Harold.
    â€œSometimes, yes. In the mountains. When the wind is high and the rain, it is splooshing in the windows, I see them standing by the road. All battered; torn and battered. They look like buzzards.”
    Harold frowned.
    â€œThey’re dead,” said the Gypsy Magda. “My brothers, my parents. All that I knew.”
    The trailer suddenly filled the windshield. The Gypsy Magda tromped on the brake. A hand shot out to brace against the roof, and the scarves tumbled down to her shoulder. And in the silver glare of the Airstream, Harold saw numbers tattooed along her arm.
    â€œThe Nazis,” said the Gypsy Magda. “You know them?”
    â€œYes.” It was the Nazis his father had gone to fight in Europe. It was the Nazis who had killed him.
    â€œThey were so powerful, so many. But they were scared of Gypsies. We were dark and wild and free. They made it a crime to be a Gypsy, and they hounded us all across the country. We went west, the way all souls will go, toward the falling of the sun.”
    Harold sat sideways on the seat.
    â€œWe went to the mountains,” said the Gypsy Magda. “We went high in the mountains where the lovely Danube rises. We made a camp, and the wolves were calling in the night.”
    She spoke slowly as the truck threaded through the darkened hills, close behind the Airstream trailer. The light glaring back made gruesome shadows on her face.
    â€œMy father, my poor old father, he said we were close to the passage to the underworld. He said the wolves were dogs, the nine white dogs that guard that path of souls.”
    She shifted gears; they turned a corner. The headlights flashed across the truck ahead, and Harold wished that he was in it.
    â€œWe were happy there,” said the Gypsy Magda. “We dance and sing. We live the old ways and let this war go past.”
    The trailer slid far across the windshield.
    â€œThen comes the night, the dreaded time. Nine soldiers come to our camp. They are