While the World Is Still Asleep (The Century Trilogy Book 1) Read online

  Adele furrowed her brow.

  A murmur ran through the group of young women—rarely did anyone argue with Adele, and to defy her as Josephine just had was unheard of.

  Jo sneered. She was not scared. Not only was she a head taller than Adele, she was also athletic and fit. Thanks to the many hours she had spent in the blacksmith’s shop, she had broad shoulders, strong legs, and sinewy, muscular arms. Her training, too, had helped. She marched off, confident in the knowledge that she was physically superior to Adele and the others.

  “Don’t think you’re getting off so lightly! You’ll pay for that,” Adele shouted halfheartedly behind her.

  Josephine had just lain down on a new bed when she noticed that Adele and her entourage had turned their attention to the other newcomer.

  “No, please don’t take it. That hair clip belonged to my sister, who died. It’s all I’ve still got of her,” cried the girl. She was about fourteen and her mussed red hair made her look like some sort of wild creature. She let out a loud howl.

  Jo closed her eyes.

  “What else have you got?” one of the other girls asked.

  “Nothing, I’m telling you.” The redhead’s voice sounded panicked.

  “No such thing as nothing. Your undies. And your socks. Hand ’em over!”

  Jo stood up, her exhaustion suddenly extinguished, and marched over to Adele and her gang.

  There may have been plenty of things wrong with her, but being a coward wasn’t one of them. She had resisted her tyrannical father’s temper for years as he had tried to break her will. She had formed a hard shell as a result and wasn’t about to let a beast like Adele get the upper hand on her first day. Adele could claim that her word was law until she was blue in the face, but Josephine would not let her attack the weak.

  Josephine’s eyes flashed with anger as she grabbed Adele by the arm and took the hair clip away from her. Without turning her eyes from her rival, she handed the bent piece of tin back to the red-haired girl.

  “Leave her in peace, or you’ll have to deal with me.” Her voice was low and controlled, but all the firmer for that.

  Adele’s punch came without warning. Jo had no time to defend herself. The pain was so intense that she lost her breath for a moment. Then blows started raining down on her from all sides. Wailing, Josephine doubled over like a pocketknife and fell to the stone floor. A warm satisfaction spread among the other young women, who stepped back, murmuring and giggling.

  The red-haired girl was beside her instantly. Her face was filled with fright and horror as she stroked Josephine’s hair out of her face. “You’re crazy. No one stands up to someone like that . . .” She whispered in Josephine’s ear, fearfully keeping one eye on Adele.

  “If you two aren’t clear on who calls the shots around here, we can repeat this lesson anytime you like,” Adele hissed, posturing victoriously.

  Josephine groaned. One of the last punches had caught her in the middle of her ribcage and still hurt. With the last of her strength, she pushed past the red-haired girl. She caught Adele’s left ankle just before Adele could pull it clear and sent her sprawling on the floor.

  Jo pulled herself up and dropped down with all her weight onto Adele’s chest. She pinned Adele’s arms to the floor. Breathing hard, she glared down at Adele and said, “Before today, I would never have attacked someone weaker than me, not in my wildest dreams. But you’ve just shown me how it’s done!” She pressed her right knee hard into Adele’s chest until she cried out in pain. Jo smiled. “Don’t like the taste of your own medicine? If you don’t want any more of it, then leave the girl alone. And me, too!” Then she released Adele’s arms and, with a final sniff of contempt, stood and turned away.

  Chapter Two

  The door of the barn creaks as the boy pulls it closed behind him. He is enveloped by darkness and the familiar odors of leather, hoof trimmings, and ashes. He listens, alert for the slightest sound, but no one and nothing is in sight on this sunny Sunday afternoon. Not even a mouse peeps out from under the bales of hay stacked in the rear of the barn. His parents are away visiting relatives, and he has driven off his annoying sister, Josephine. He is in the smithy where his father works every weekday from eight in the morning to eight in the evening, and he is thrilled to have it to himself. He can hardly believe that he’s actually managed to steal the key! He will make sure he puts it back in its drawer before his parents return.

  The boy grins, then bars the door. He knows he is forbidden to be in there alone. His mother, father, and sisters all know how much he loves his father’s tools. They have told him countless times that the tools are dangerous. But the grown-ups have no idea. The sharp knives his father uses to trim the hooves, the large rasps for filing them smooth, the clinch cutter, and the nails—all kinds of exciting toys.

  But today the boy does not even glance at the tools. Instead, he goes straight to the forge, where his father heats the horseshoes until the iron glows and they can be beaten on the anvil.

  The boy loves fire. The red and gold flames, the heat, the crackle and snap—all of it so thrilling. Lighting a fire is also forbidden, of course. Or rather, FORBIDDEN—in all capital letters!

  When you burn newspaper, the art is in keeping a single page alight as long as possible. This can be done in a number of ways. You can wad the paper up in a special way, or poke it around with a small stick and slowly break it up into small pieces while it burns. It is also fun to wrap horseshoe nails in the paper first, and thin hoof trimmings wrapped in newspaper burn really well. The boy is still undecided about exactly which method is the best, but he plans to conduct several experiments today to find out. In his own fireplace. In the center of the barn, on the stone floor.

  He opens the drawer where his father keeps the boxes of matches.

  Forbidden. All forbidden.

  “Felix? Felix, where are you? You rascal, where are you hiding?”

  The boy’s face tenses. Why does Josephine have to come looking for him just now?

  All he needs is a few minutes to finish his tests for the day. He grabs a match and darts to the back door of the barn and bars that, too. All right. Now his dear sister can scream her head off!

  He smiles.

  He will sweep all the ashes together and open the door when he is done. “What’s the matter?” he’ll ask, meek as a lamb, and show Josephine his wooden horse. “I was just playing in the hay.”

  To reinforce the credibility of his excuse later on, he pulls out one of the bales of hay that is normally used to feed skittish horses as they are being shod. He pushes it into the center of the barn, where he has set up his fireplace on the cold stone slabs. He prefers to think of it as his laboratory. Mr. Günthner, his teacher, has said that there are scientists toiling away in laboratories all over the empire, all hoping to make new discoveries. He hopes to be among them. Filled with scientific fervor, the boy crouches down.

  He burns a twisted up sheet of newspaper and counts to twenty before the last ember goes out. A sheet loaded up with nails will hold the heat—and therefore the embers—until a count of twenty-three. The other trials have yielded worse results.

  This time, the boy sets fire to a new sheet of paper, then takes two long, thin sticks, one in each hand, and carefully pulls the paper apart until he has two burning pieces. Good! How many pieces will he be able to separate the burning sheet into? And how long will they burn?

  As he always does when he is concentrating, he pushes his bottom lip up and over the upper one. Four pieces, five . . . How annoying. The small ones burn up very quickly. A flake of ash sails into his nose, tickling him, and he snorts. The small draft causes one of the bigger burning scraps to fly up. It comes to rest at the base of the hay bale.

  The boy jumps back in fright. A shudder rocks his twelve-year-old body. Hay burns like tinder! Every child knows that! It isn’t for nothing that his father always stacks the bales as far from the forge as he can, around the outer walls. While the boy is still se
arching for something to extinguish it, the burning scrap of paper wafts up again and flattens itself like gold leaf against the hay bale. A few glowing yellow tongues of flame lick at the hay. The smell is pleasant, but fear enters the boy’s eyes.

  Father’s leather apron! The heavy leather will put the fire out! The boy runs and yanks the apron from the wall, together with its hook. But when he returns with his heavy load to the bale, he finds it burning brightly. Small black fragments leap through the air like fleas.

  He hears hysterical screaming from the entrance. “Felix! What’s going on in there? Open up, now!” Josephine. She just won’t let go.

  “I’ll be there in a minute!” the boy calls back and begins beating frantically at the bale. Then he feels a wave of heat on his back. The other scraps of paper! With all his thrashing about, a couple of them have floated up and landed on the woodpile where he found the sticks. In the blink of an eye, the bone-dry wood is ablaze. The billowing dark-gray smoke obscures the boy’s vision and disorients him. He lurches back, trying to gather his senses in the growing heat.

  “Josephine . . . Help!” The boy beats desperately at the burning wood with the leather apron, but instead of extinguishing the fire, all he does is send the embers flying. Small fires merge into larger fires and the crackling of the burning hay grows louder. The doors have been blocked by the fire. Paralyzed with fear, the boy stares at the flaming inferno, in the heart of which is a solitary black place: his father’s forge, stone clad in steel. If he manages to get in there, he can simply wait until the fire burns itself out. Half-blinded by smoke, the boy feels his way toward the forge. One step. No, not that way! He slaps at his sleeve, which has almost caught fire. Another step. There, he is almost there. The unbearable heat. Don’t think about it. Almost . . . almost . . .

  The boy feels his knees give way. A few feet from the shelter of the stones, he collapses to the floor . . .

  Josephine screamed and sat bolt upright in her bed. She looked around, perplexed. “Felix?”

  “What was it? Bad dream?” someone beside her murmured.

  Josephine blinked in confusion. The red-haired girl. Barnim Road Women’s Prison.

  Sweating and shaking, she sank back on her mattress. From farther back came the sound of snoring and someone moaning softly in her sleep, but otherwise the dormitory was silent. Beyond the barred windows, dawn was breaking. An owl or some other animal let out a shrill cry, reminding Jo of freedom and better days.

  She had always been the first to wake in the morning. “While the world is still asleep . . .” Words she had said so many times! At that hour, the world was hers, and only hers. She was free. She had looked forward to every new day.

  Now, though, she sought desperately to go back to sleep. But she could not push aside her memories of her younger brother.

  In the first weeks after Felix’s death, she had dreamed of him regularly. Strange, obscure dreams in which she sometimes saw the world through her own eyes, sometimes through his, as in the dream she had just woken from. The guilt had followed her into her sleep back then. But eventually, the dreams had grown less frequent and she became absorbed in her own life again.

  Her brother had died in the spring of 1889, on a beautiful and unseasonably warm Sunday. More than two years ago now. After church, her father, known to all as Schmied-the-Smith, told Josephine that he and her mother wanted to pay his sister a visit. Josephine was to keep an eye on Felix at home. She had been furious. When she was Felix’s age, no one had cared a jot about her. She would have liked to go visit her aunt, too!

  She had watched listlessly while her little brother occupied himself with various activities. Then she had gone to visit her friend Clara, four houses down.

  Clara was sick, and Josephine found her propped up among her lily-white embroidered sheets like a queen on her throne. She was surrounded by magazines, a glass of some deep-red juice, and a plate of pastries from the Ratsmann bakery. In the Berg family, being ill was always cause for celebration, like a birthday or christening. Ever since Clara had nearly died at the age of seven from an inflamed appendix, her mother, Sophie, would have liked nothing more than to keep her daughter packed in tissue paper. Josephine had always envied her a little. At home, it was always, “Hurry up and get better, the work won’t get done if you’re lazing around in bed.”

  They had looked through the magazines, and Clara had fallen in love with one dress in particular. Jo found it hard to believe that Clara and her mother would make a special trip all the way to Kurfürstendamm Boulevard to purchase it. The clothes that Josephine and her sisters wore—purchased at Reutter’s Emporium, down on the corner—paled in comparison to Clara’s stylish wardrobe.

  When they’d grown bored with browsing through the magazines, Josephine suggested that they pay a visit to Frieda, an older neighbor who would surely offer them some lemonade and let them sit in her garden. Besides, a visit to Frieda was always interesting. The old widow lived a life they could only dream about. No tiresome rules or duties, no dull daily routine. Ever since her husband had died, Frieda did whatever she liked, and Josephine admired her tremendously for that.

  But Clara shook her head. “I’m sick. Besides, Mother doesn’t like my visiting Frieda so often. Just yesterday she said Frieda is the kind of woman who’ll put ideas into your head before you can say boo.”

  Josephine had stayed on a little longer out of sympathy, but, enveloped by the intense smell of lavender and the bright floral wallpaper, she felt unable to last much longer. She stood up abruptly, crossed to the window, and threw it open.

  Luisenstadt, always so bustling during the week, had looked utterly lifeless that day. Everything the residents of the district needed was within an easy walk: Just down from Clara’s house, on the corner, was the large Reutter’s Emporium. Then there were bakeries, butchers, grocery stores, Clara’s father’s pharmacy, and Schmied-the-Smith’s forge. A few narrow apartment buildings were across the road from the pharmacy, and among those was a single, tiny, freestanding house where old Frieda lived. The lower end of the street was taken up entirely by Moritz Herrenhus’s clothing factory, which extended almost as far as the park known as Schlesischer Busch. But the area had been going through a transformation of late: more and more skilled craftsmen were moving to the outskirts of the city where they could produce their goods more quickly and cheaply.

  “Let ’em go,” Schmied-the-Smith was often heard to say. “It may well be the end of the line for an old ropemaker’s shop in the city, but horses will always need shoeing. I won’t run out of work anytime soon.”

  Her father shod eight to ten horses every day, and it was often ten in the evening before Josephine was finished clearing and cleaning up the smithy. No one expected Felix to lend a hand. He was the little prince, after all. While she was no more than the maid. And he was the reason she had to miss out on visiting her aunt . . .

  Work, work, work, from morning till night—that was all Josephine ever did! She had stared morosely out Clara’s window and wished herself very far away.

  Sophie Berg had appeared in Clara’s room, interrupting Josephine’s peevish thoughts. “There’s smoke coming from your father’s forge and on a Sunday at that—what do you think it could mean?” she had asked with a furrowed brow—

  Josephine closed her eyes. She didn’t want to remember. Not here, not now. But her thoughts would not stop. They rampaged through her head like wild horses.

  The barn door had been latched shut from the inside. She could smell the stink of the fire and burning hoof trimmings as she shouted Felix’s name. The little villain! How many times had her parents forbidden him from touching the matches? If they found out that he had been playing with fire again, they would blame her. She had hammered on the door with her right fist so hard that it hurt, her fury and fear growing with every passing second. “Open up!” Again, nothing happened. But she thought she heard a quiet laugh.

  “Just wait!” Gathering her skirt, she had run into the
toolshed in search of something large and heavy to break down the door. She grabbed the ax, ran back to the barn, and swung it with such force at the barn door that it fell out of her hands. The door did not open, but she managed to dislodge two of its boards with the force of the blow. Heat surged out through the gap, and the fire flared up a bright yellow, fueled by the fresh air.

  Josephine’s wrists burned and splinters drove into her flesh as she tore out the boards with her bare hands.

  Dear God, watch over my brother. He is just a child. He doesn’t know what he’s doing. Dear God, take what you want from me, but watch over my brother.

  She had prayed to God as she had never prayed in her life. But God was not there on that Sunday. The fire extinguished her prayers, as surely as it did Felix’s life.

  “Felix! Where are you?” Her voice sounded muffled, as if she were trying to speak through a heavy cloth rag. She squinted into the scorching sea of fire, and a stabbing pain throbbed in her ears as she groped her way forward into the inferno.

  She was too late. Her brother had already perished in the flames.

  Chapter Three

  Breakfast was a scant affair that took place under the eyes of two surly guards in a cold, gloomy hall. The narrow windows were positioned in the upper third of the walls, and little light found its way through them. It’s like eating in a basement, thought Jo, as she sat down at one of the outer tables. Could it be that the rooms that made up the juvenile section of the prison were actually underground? When she’d been brought in, she had paid no attention to things like stairways, but now, after a single night, she felt as if she’d been buried alive inside a tomb. She wanted more than anything to stand up and leave.

  She felt Adele’s venomous glare on her as she chewed on a dry roll and sipped at the weak tea. The leader of the gang was whispering with the girls sitting around her and pointed repeatedly in Josephine’s direction. Once, twice, their eyes met. Jo knew she had better be on guard.