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Too many lack the strength for kindness. Too few are brave enough for empathy. And yet the weakness of anger leads to where the Iron Crosses grow.

Decoration , by Frederick William the Third

Anne

While Yute walked the length of Weber’s shelves, tutting quietly to himself, Anne spoke to Herman and Carl.

“You think we’ll have trouble tonight?” She thought of the policeman. If a broken window was the worst she got she’d be lucky—that’s what he said.

Herman nodded. His gaze flitted back and forth between Kerrol and Yute.

“Did…did you tell the authorities?” Anne nodded at the window. The worst had been cleaned up, but shards stood like teeth in the frame and small fragments glittered on the floor.

“Who do you think hit Carl in the face?” Herman seemed too frightened for outrage or sarcasm, and since on a good day he was the most sarcastic person Anne had ever met, it worried her more than the window.

A shadow came up to the door, then retreated rapidly, presumably seeing Kerrol’s height at the last moment through the rippled glass.

“I’m losing you customers.” Kerrol stepped back. “Is it normal to carry a stick with you here?”

“A walking stick?” Anne asked.

“I don’t think so.”

Yute came from the shelves with a book in hand. “Remarkable!” He lifted it up. “This is a book about flying machines! Do you have one?”

Herman and Carl exchanged glances. “Another book?”

“An aeroplane,” Yute read the word carefully from the page.

“Uh.” Herman shook his head. “I wish I could afford one and had somewhere to fly away to.”

“Oh.” Yute looked a little disappointed. “How large is this city? How many people live here?”

“The town has ten thousand people, sir,” Herman spoke carefully now. “About that number.”

Anne wondered, like Herman must be, if Yute were a spy. The talk these days was always of war, of the many enemies the Fatherland had. Be vigilant, the newspapers exhorted. But surely even the least competent of enemies wouldn’t send as the agent of their espionage an albino and a giant, to ask such blatant questions.

“Three bookshops in such a place.” Yute gazed at the open book in his hands, still fascinated by the diagram of an old biplane from the World War.

“Five.” Anne couldn’t stop herself. “There were five.”

“Five!” Yute looked up. “And how far away is the library?”

“The local library is on Aspen Street, just on the other side of the bridge,” Herman said.

Yute’s white eyebrows elevated. “I mean the library. The big one.”

“Which one, sir?” Herman mirrored Yute’s confusion. “There’s the scientific library at Regensburg. There’s the state library in Nuremburg, but that’s forty miles…”

Yute shook his head and set the aviation book on the counter. He rolled his neck as if preparing for some feat of strength then placed the tips of his fingers and thumbs together and raised his hands so that he could stare down in the cradle they made. For several long seconds he studied the empty space there, pink eyes burning with intensity.

“It’s not there,” Yute breathed, astonished. “I can’t find it. Remarkable!” He approached Kerrol at the door. “I believe we’re in an original cycle. A first-cycle world, Kerrol, think of it! All these wonders dragged from the dirt by force of will. They’re populating the library for the first time without any help at all.”

Kerrol studied the smaller man speculatively, his curiously blue eyes flicking to Anne and the two men behind the counter. For her part Anne was wondering if Yute were touched in the head, or perhaps a mystic of some kind, and that maybe there really was a travelling show nearby.

“Ah.” Yute shook himself as if suddenly remembering his audience. “My apologies. Sometimes my mind wanders. I really would like to see the third bookshop you mentioned. What we’re looking for must be there.”

Anne frowned. “It’s on the main street. You’re more likely to find trouble there.”

“Even so.” Yute fished out the map she’d drawn him. “I feel we must call in on”—he squinted at Anne’s handwriting—“Madame Orlova. Kerrol and I will find our own way. We don’t want to lead you into any danger, Anne, you’ve been more than helpful.”

Anne knew she should really let them go this time. If the pair didn’t fall foul of a larger group of townsfolk or a band of stormtroopers, they would certainly be in trouble with the police soon enough. But she couldn’t. It wasn’t charity. She would like to claim it was, but this was curiosity, plain and simple. With winter looming, the dark days of autumn had been full of a fear both sharp and dull. Anne had been overtaken by the conviction that whilst her life should have been on the final climb towards womanhood, filled with new possibilities, she was in fact, along with her whole world, on an ever-steepening decline, and that somewhere ahead, not so distant that she couldn’t sense its hunger, an abyss waited for her.

“I want to come.” The words burst out of her, surprisingly emphatic. She did want to. Yute and Kerrol were the first strangeness in her life—the first good strangeness—in forever. The first thing that didn’t feel as though it were rolling down that sensed but unseen slope. She couldn’t just let them walk out of her knowledge, any more than she could just let them walk out of her grandfather’s shop. They were still searching for something—but it felt as if she had already found a thing that she hadn’t known she was looking for.

Madame Orlova’s bookshop sat on the high street amid a score or more establishments, uniformed by the broad green and white stripes of their awnings. The legend above her shop read simply: Journeys . Perhaps anyone coming to the door in the hope of booking passage to some foreign shore might be disappointed, or perhaps, being of a less literal mind, they would recognise the sign-painter’s truth.

Anne was aware of a great many eyes upon her companions as she led them at a brisk walk towards their destination. The comments that passed between those shoppers braving the November wind were neither whispered nor spoken behind hands, but Anne was happy to find they weren’t being shouted at them or replaced with heavier projectiles than words.

She had thought they would make it to the shop without challenge. But within yards of Madame Orlova’s door, a policeman emerged from Weiner’s tobacconist’s, almost colliding with Yute. Both Yute and Kerrol stepped neatly past the officer and continued towards Anne.

“Papers!” A single word, snapped at their retreating backs, cracking the air like a pistol shot and potentially just as deadly.