Ghost Boy by Iain Lawrence Page B

big, blond soldiers, very white. Ach, so pale and white. My father, he says, ‘The dogs have come!’ My mother tells me to hide myself, to hide under the caravan, in the space where the water barrel goes.”
    Harold clung to his seat as the truck leaned around the corner, as the trailer crept back across the windshield. The numbers on the Gypsy Magda’s arm were square and squat and ugly.
    â€œThe soldiers have black coats, big black boots. White hands and white faces, and all the rest is black. They take the men, the boys, and put them on this side, the women on the other. And then I hear a terrible sound: The guns are fed with bullets.”
    She took her arm down and shook the scarves across the numbers. “I see them shot,” she said. “My father first, my brothers in a row. My mother—I still hear her screaming when they carry her off.” The Gypsy sighed. A stone bounced with a clatter from the truck. “A soldier takes a stick from the fire; he comes down the wagons and sets them alight. They are canvas and wood, they burn very fast, orange and roaring. I fall from my place and my dress, she is burning. There are men crying, horses shrieking. But the Nazis, they laugh to see a Gypsy burn.”
    For a long time she was silent. “What happened then?” asked Harold.
    â€œI don’t remember after that. I’m put in a camp, the dreadful place. The smoke of burning bodies comes black from the furnace. I see graves where bodies swim in mud. I see dead people sitting, talking. I will never forget what I see.”
    Her bracelets rang as she covered her cheek with her hand.
    â€œKilling is a game the Nazis play, but the Gypsies they keep alive. We dance for them; we play the tambourine. And somehow we are happy in the horror and the dying. We are Gypsies, after all.” She touched her throat, the scarves around her neck. “But one morning the smoke is thick, the fires burning orange in the winter. The Roma, they are gone. And I am the last Gypsy; only I am left, I don’t know why. They march us through the snow, through the winter, and the guns we hear behind us. In rags we march, dead we go. And at last I see the passage of the souls. It’s small and dark, and I crawl inside and wait there for the ones who will come to take me on my way.”
    â€œAnd the soldiers found you?” Harold asked.
    â€œYou!” she shouted suddenly, glaring across the truck. “What happens to you is nothing. Nothing!”
    Her anger was so sudden, so unexpected, that Harold cringed. He sank into the corner of the seat, looking up like a small, white animal.
    â€œI would like so much to be you. Young, smart, free. You have everything, and still you don’t know how lucky you are. You don’t even imagine.”
    â€œYou said you were proud of me.”

Chapter
    16
    J ust before dawn they stopped at a schoolyard overgrown by long grass. Swings with planks for seats hung on tangled chains beside an old teeter-totter and a little wooden roundabout. A flock of crows perched on the moss-covered beam that held the swings.
    The Gypsy Magda spread a blanket on the grass, and she slept—they all did—until the wind woke them at noon. It hushed through the grass and set the swings creaking. The roundabout revolved slowly on its hub, and the crows came down to ride it.
    Harold, in a grassy nest, watched the clouds rolling past the stalks above him. They were storm clouds, which didn’t surprise him; the Gypsy Magda had long ago sensed the coming of a storm.
    Of the death ahead, she had told him no more. He had peppered her with questions: “
Who
is going to die?
When
will it happen?
Where
? Can’t you tell me
that
?” And she’d answered mysteriously, “It is better that you never think of it.”
    He lay on his back, his little round glasses reflecting the sky, his helmet pulled close to his eyes. Hours he’d spent like that,