But Axel didn't believe it. None of them ever did.
I stepped closer. "Axel, it's a gift. From my brother."
He hesitated. Just for a breath. Then he turned and limped away, shoulders hunched tight. Something stung behind my eyes. Not anger, just that deep, endless sadness this city had carved into us all.
"Stay away from them," I told Klaus softly as the other boys laughed. "They're desperate. Desperation can be dangerous."
But watching them, boys and girls with dirt-smudged faces, torn coats, and no parents to hold them steady, I felt sorry for them too. There were so many. Too many. I had no idea how any of them kept breathing.
Klaus tugged on my sleeve. "Do you think the pilot will wiggle his wings today?"
I swallowed hard.Gideon.His smile flickered in my mind, just a flash from the doorway of Die Ecke, the heat in his eyes when he looked at me.
I told myself I didn't care.
A low hum rolled across the sky. The kids jerked their heads up all at once, like a flock hearing a signal. Then came another hum—deeper, louder—the familiar thrum of engines hauling hope. The plane dipped low over the rooftops, and then—wiggle, wiggle.
The courtyard erupted.
The children exploded forward like someone had cut a string. Even the wary ones. Even Axel, hobbling at the edge. And Klaus turned toward me, eyes bright as coins.
"Go ahead," I told him. "But stay where I can see you."
I watched him sprint with the others, heart hammering. The world beyond the courtyard was treacherous, more treacherous than he understood. Several Trümmerfrauen—rubble women—shoveling bricks stopped what they were doing and watched the kids. Their faces were streaked gray from the dust, but a smile lit all their tired faces as they watched the children fly over broken glass that glittered between loose stones.
Whole slabs of concrete shifted underfoot like they were tired of carrying the weight. And farther out, beyond the intact blocks, were the places that scared me most, collapsed cellars, their floors hollowed like animal traps, bomb craters that collected debris and hid deadly drops, the occasional unexploded bomb, half-buried and forgotten, and stairwells that led nowhere, their iron rails rusted through.
Every week, you heard one of the duds go off. A single muffled boom somewhere in the ruins, followed by silence. Someone stepped wrong. Someone ventured too far.
"Klaus," I whispered under my breath, "look where you're going."
But he was already gone with the tide of children, chasing the possibility of chocolate falling from the sky.
I started after him, picking my way over the rubble. The air stank of old smoke and wet stone. Somewhere beyond the next block, a woman was calling a name over and over. Somewhere else, a hammer struck metal, repairing something that would probably break again tomorrow.
The kids streamed toward the open lot near the collapsed tram depot. It had once been a street, but now it was a maze of broken walls and mangled tracks, danger disguised as a playground.
Klaus slowed at the edge of a jagged break in the pavement.
"Careful!" I called. "That's one of the old cellars, don't go near it."
He waved as if he'd heard me, but his eyes were on the sky, not the ground. A gust of wind pushed warm dust through the ruins. The plane circled, lining up for another pass, and all the children surged forward at once toward the safer part of the courtyard where the ground was mostly solid and the rubble had been cleared by hand over the last months.
Still, my heart lodged in my throat.
You didn't relax in Berlin.
Not even for a second.
A ripple of sound rolled through the kids. "Look!" one of them shouted. "Look, look!"
Tiny parachutes—made from scraps of tissue, handkerchiefs, maybe even old ration wrappers—floated down from the sky like little ghosts dancing on the wind. The courtyard erupted.
Whoops, squeals, shrill laughter, the real kind, the kind that hit me straight in the chest. For a moment, I forgot how to breathe. How long had it been since I heard kids laughing without fear?
My heart soared with them.
Klaus came running toward me, holding a parachute above his head like a trophy. A Hershey bar swung from the string in triumph.
