A Time of Miracles by Anne-Laure Bondoux Read Free Book Online Page A

Koumaïl,” she answers. “Walk straight ahead toward new horizons.”
    “OK, but we’ll go with the Betovs, right?”
    “Who knows? There are so many ways to get lost. Especially in the Caucasus!”
    I study the maps again and I see the dotted lines of borders that get entangled from one valley to the other. I see Georgia, Abkhazia, Armenia, Chechnya, North Ossetia and South Ossetia, Ingushetia, Dagestan.…
    Gloria shakes her head. “Too many countries,” she says. “Too many people! Borderlines move and names change constantly. At the end of the day, only ruins and unhappy people are left. It’s useless to try to understand the Caucasus, Monsieur Blaise. Leave it alone. It’s not your concern, little French guy, OK?”
    “OK.”
    I turn the pages. My fingers slide west, following winding paths, until I land in France, as usual. No war. No militia. Things are much simpler over there, thanks to the republic.
    “What would be nice,” I say, “is for all of us to go there. Even Vassili, Zemzem, your brothers, Emil and Baksa. And my father, too, if we can find him. That would be a good surprise for my mother. We could organize a big reunion!”
    I get overexcited: we could even go farther, per page 17, up to England! Gloria bends over my shoulder to study theroute with me. We jump over the mountains, the dotted lines, the rivers, and my finger reaches France, where there is a town named Calais.
    “We’ll take a boat because there’s no bridge,” I say.
    “No need. Even better, there’s a tunnel,” Gloria explains to me. “Engineers spent a lot of time studying the best way to dig it. It was finished last year.”
    “A tunnel under the sea?”
    “Exactly!” Gloria says. “A tunnel with a train.”
    I can hardly believe this. My finger stays on this part of the world where people were digging under the sea. “I want to cross the English Channel through the tunnel,” I say. “The two of us.”
    “OK,” she says.
    Gloria never discourages my dreams. But she tells me that in the meantime I have to go to sleep because it’s late. I ask her to tell me my story, with every detail, like always. As I lie half-asleep, the trains get jumbled and I see the express train catch on fire as it cuts through waves and shoves aside bewildered fish.

chapter fifteen
    WINTER returns to Souma-Soula, and a rumor circulates from shed to shed that a curse has fallen over the dwellers of the lake area. It seems that several women have given birth to monstrous children.
    “The first one didn’t have a head!” Suki tells me.
    “The second one had two of them!” Maya says with a grimace.
    “Who told you that?” I ask.
    “Chief! He saw them!” they both say.
    After further investigation it turns out that Chief didn’t see anything, but that he knows an older Russian man whose sister-in-law gave birth to a child with three arms.
    “Ugh!” the girls cry out. “Three arms!”
    The grown-ups refuse to believe us until Gloria meets a special convoy on the road to the factory.
    “Men in armored cars,” she tells me. “They were wearing coveralls, glasses, and masks over their mouths.”
    “Like astronauts?”
    “Exactly! And they were going straight to the lake. It must be serious!”
    Shortly after that we learn that fishing is forbidden and that all access to the lake has been cordoned off. The men in coveralls have set up tents. According to Mr. Betov, they are scientists sent by the government to analyze the water, the soil, and even the innards of the fish. It seems likely that the lake has been spoiled by toxic waste coming from the former lightbulb factory. This would explain the birth of monstrous children. But how, exactly? Nobody knows! Everyone is fearful. Several families have already left the area, and others are beginning to pack up.
    As a result, Mr. Betov gives me sideways glances, as if I were headless or had a third arm growing out of my back. Suddenly I feel ill at ease.
    “Sorry, Koumaïl, but