The Silent Hours by Cesca Major Read Free Book Online Page A

Papa told me to stop talking about it. I have slept a little but my legs are so cramped now and stupid Eléonore has stretched right out so that she has practically shoved Dimitri into me. Luc woke up a while ago, his blond hair all sticking up so I laughed at him, but then he started to cry so Maman had to shush him and ended up telling us all a story that we used to love to listen to about a merman and his adventures in an underwater kingdom. But she started crying in the middle of it and Papa stopped the car and they hugged. She sniffed and apologized and said she was being silly, but the whole thing made me angry and I wanted to kick the stupid car and run outside and go back home to Paris.
    It is past dawn now and Papa says we are going to stop soon and eat a sort of dinner and look for somewhere to sleep. I’m not sure you can call it dinner if you’ve missed all the meals before it but I am not about to point that fact out to Papa.
    People outside are squinting up into the sky. I can’t see anything they’re looking for, perhaps some swallows someway off in the distance, but that’s all. No, wait. We have been transported into a moving picture. There is an enormous plane in the distance. Its lights are bright, two big circles of light. We are saved! It’s going to bomb the enemy! It’s going to bomb the stupid Hun!
    But it’s coming this way. I make a noise and Papa looks up and notices it too and he shouts and brakes and we all lurch forward. It swoops right down low and passes our car but up ahead we see the people scattering in its path and it is firing at them, firing on the people who are walking.
    I can’t believe it: it can’t be happening. It is firing actual bullets and people haven’t time to take cover. They are carrying bags and children and there was no warning. I see the boy with the neat hair standing right in the middle of the road looking straight at the plane; he is frozen, mouth open, as others rush around him, his younger brother isn’t there. I lose sight of him as people rush past, and the lights of the plane pass over. I can’t see him standing there any more, I don’t know where he’s gone.
    Papa tells us not to look and he drives the car right off the road and stops by a tree. He tells Maman to stay with us and runs off to help the people who were shot at. I can hear him taking control, like when he ran into the middle of our hockey game once when a boy at school got hit in the middle of his face with a stick and everyone was screaming at all the blood. Maman repeats that we keep our heads down so we all lean completely over ourselves, not wanting to look, and praying, praying, praying that the aeroplane doesn’t come back.
    Papa comes back and drives us back up onto the road. He steers us through the spot where the people were shot at. There are still things on the road and I moan when the wheels run over a doll, a book, a shoe. I see the face of that boy even though my eyes are closed now. I wonder if he found cover.
    I don’t think he did.

ISABELLE
    My thighs protest as I climb, the muscles in my legs not used to walking this far. Keeping my head down I push on into the wind. I feel my ankle almost turn, the shoes I am wearing narrow and slippery on this surface. All around me the weather roars and I feel tinier the further I clamber. Behind me is the village, the shop and the world we live in, impossibly small from this distance.
    Standing at the top of the ridge I feel my lungs empty, my breath snatched away by the wind which picks up my hair, whips it across my face, strands cutting across my view as I steady myself, lean into it. The thrill of the air fills my head and I feel everything else pushed out: all my worries for Paul, my sadness for our parents waiting, Maman’s nervous worrying leaking into every room.
    Something nudges against the noise: Sebastien’s face, his laughter, his hand hesitating for a second before taking mine, and then my head is full again, of