A Faraway Island by Annika Thor Read Free Book Online Page B

trees, lindens and chestnuts. Almost a park. Not at all like here.”
    “Will we have a dog there?” Nellie asks.
    Stephie remembers Mimi, the china dog wrapped in a handkerchief in the bottom of her dresser drawer. Auntie Alma must have noticed the dog is missing. With every passing day it becomes increasingly difficult to put Mimi back.
    “Yes, of course we will,” Stephie answers simply.
    “And a piano,” Nellie adds. “We
will
have a piano in America, won’t we?”
    When they have had enough of sitting and talking they wander the narrow streets of the village. Not that there’s much to see. Houses and yards, mounds of rock. The post office, the shop, the schoolhouse. A little chapel on a rise hovers above the other buildings. At the edge of the village, not far from Auntie Alma’s, is a big red building people call the Pentecostal Church, though it doesn’t look much like a church at all. And near the harbor there’s another, the Mission Covenant Church.
    Down at the harbor there’s always something happening.Boats coming and going. Fishermen cleaning out their nets and repairing their boats. Above each boathouse is a name. Stephie reads them: JUNO, INEZ, SWEDEN, MATILDA, NORTH SEA … Now she knows that the hanging triangular shapes she once thought were bats are splayed fish drying on long wooden racks.
    There are always some older men on the benches of the boathouses, talking and smoking their pipes. One of them offers the girls a piece of candy from his bag whenever they pass by. These are hard candies, dark red, sweet and pungent.
    One day a freighter has pulled in. Two of the crew members are working on deck.
    “I’ll bet they’re headed for Hamburg,” Stephie says. “Or Amsterdam.”
    “Amsterdam!” Nellie exclaims. “Isn’t that where we’ll be going, too?”
    “Right.”
    Nellie walks over to the edge of the dock. “Can we come along?” she asks one of the sailors. “We want to get to Amsterdam.”
    The man responds in Swedish, then goes back to what he was doing.
    “I don’t think he understood what I meant,” Nellie says to Stephie. “Why don’t you try?”
    Stephie knows their parents are still in Vienna. They can’t leave until they have their entry visas for America. Still, she, too, feels they’d be closer to each other if she and Nellie were in Amsterdam.
    “Oh, please,” Stephie appeals to the sailor. “Won’t you take us along? We’re going to Amsterdam.”
    The sailor looks down at her, shaking his head with a smile.
    Boat tickets cost money. That must be why he won’t take the girls.
    Stephie turns her dress pockets inside out to show they don’t have any money.
    “Gypsy kids,” one man says to the other. “How do you think they ended up here?”
    He forages in his own pocket, then throws something to Stephie. She catches it in her hand: it’s a small, shiny coin.
    The crew members are done with their work. One of them starts untying the mooring ropes.
    “Please!” Stephie shouts. “Please don’t leave without us!”
    The boat pulls away from the dock. Slowly it glides out toward the harbor entrance. Stephie begins to run along the dock and out onto the breakwater. Nellie is close on her heels.
    “Take us with you! Take us with you!” the two of them cry.
    The freighter rounds the breakwater and is on the open sea. The men wave to the girls.
    “We’re shipwrecked,” says Stephie. “Alone on a desert island. A ship passed, but it didn’t see our smoke signals. We’ll have to wait for the next one.”
    “Will anybody save us?” Nellie asks.
    “Oh, yes,” says Stephie. “We’ll be rescued next time around.”
    They stand, watching from the breakwater, until the freighter disappears against the horizon. Then, slowly, they make their way toward the village.
    On the dock is a big, awkward-looking boy in clothes that are too small for him. Stephie recognizes him. He spends almost every afternoon down at the harbor, helping clean the nets and bail