How Huge the Night Read Online Free Page B

you so many stories, if you’ll hear them. I want to tell you the stories of Tanieux. The story of how it started. Of Manu and how he built the chapel by the stream—have you seen it? Four hundred years old, that chapel is. Listen. Winter’s coming. That’s when we tell each other stories here. By the fire, when the burle is blowing outside. Come winter, I’ll tell you the stories of Tanieux. If you’re willing.”
    “Yeah,” said Julien slowly. “That sounds good.”
     
     

    Julien walked home slowly, watching the sun sink over Lizieux behind long bars of white and gold. Thinking of how Grandpa had called the mountain she. Of his people, whoever they were, fleeing north on the old road past the mountains.
    Julien had fallen behind the others as he climbed the hill; halfway up, he passed a farmhouse, old stone with a slate roof and a broad orchard in back. A wall around the farmyard. And, leaning on the wrought iron gate, one of the guys who had stared at him in town.
    Julien gave him a nod; the ice blue eyes looked right through him as if he wasn’t there. It didn’t matter whose people had come up the Régordane road; this road, on this hill, was someone else’s ground. That guy’s ground.
    Julien gave the cold look back and walked on past with his head high. He’d see him at school tomorrow.
    And he would show him.

Chapter 4
     

Go
     
     
    Death came for Father in the night.
    That was how she thought of it—could not help thinking of it—that something had come and taken him. She hadn’t known. He’d been the same as ever when she went to bed. But this morning—She could feel the stillness of his body even from the doorway, even in the dark, and her throat tightened. She tried to keep her hand from shaking as she laid it on his heart to feel for the pulse; his flesh was cold, and for a moment, raw terror touched her.
    Death has come, the stranger. Death, the thief.
    But as the words rose in her mind, she was already turning away from him and into action. There was only one way to love him now. Promise you’ll do everything I said.
    I want you to leave the instant I die. Take my eiderdown. Unlock the drawer. Take the tickets and the money, put my will and the first letter on the kitchen table. Mail the second letter. Uncle Yakov will get it within the day and come. He’ll bury me. Let the dead bury the dead. But you—get out of Austria while you still can. Go to the station, and get on that train.
    She had the eiderdown off him and rolled up and the papers out of the drawer, and she was down the stairs before she had time to think, to tell her mind in so many words what had happened. Then she was shaking Gustav, whispering. “Gustav. Gustav. It’s time.”
    She couldn’t go up to him again. She knew she should go up with Gustav, kiss Father on the forehead, say goodbye; but she could not. If she let herself do that—if she let herself cry—no. She had to do everything he’d said. Check through the packs, put in the money, the tickets, the letter; put the will on the table with her books and her mother’s painting—the only thing she had from her … Please give these things to Heide Müller at my school, and tell her to keep them for me. Do not worry about us. God will take care of us . She hadn’t written that to please Uncle Yakov. It was true.
    “There is no God, most likely,” Father had told her once, when he was healthy and strong. “And if there is—” He’d stopped, his eyes very sad, and hadn’t finished the sentence, even when she asked. But she couldn’t believe like him, she couldn’t help it. Somehow there just had to be a God. Especially now. Especially—she turned sharply from the letter, to the window; no sign of dawn in the sky. Oh Gustav, come down . She began to check through the packs again.
    He came down. His eyes were huge in the darkness, looking at her. She held out his pack to him, and he took it. “Are you ready?”
    He nodded.
    They crept down the