“How far underground are we?” Nicholas asked, eyeing the pale lights running along the ceiling.
“Very far,” Etta said, hoping the words were more reassuring than they felt. The pounding hadn’t stopped; it was only muffled. The world flickered around them as the electricity was tested by the bombing. Sweat poured down her back, and Etta couldn’t stop shaking, even as they broke off from some of the others and headed for the eastern track, as Alice had instructed.
Some part of Etta had hoped that they would be able to just walk to the very end of the platform, jump down onto the track, and slip away into the tunnel. No hassle, no fuss, no questions. But as they came down the last steps and rounded the corner, she could see they had a problem.
That problem being the hundreds of others who had already beaten them down there. Londoners had spread out across the platform, even nestling down on the track. The press of humanity filled the air with a damp, sticky warmth. Many of the men and women had taken off their coats and jackets and hung them up along the walls. Someone had even engineered a kind of clothesline at the entrance to the actual track tunnel.
They couldn’t spend the night here—they couldn’t lose that bit of time when the old man’s deadline was edging closer by the second.
Nicholas’s arm tightened around her again as they were gently pushed forward by the people behind them.
“Damn,” he swore softly. “Which way did we need to go?”
She pointed to the other end of the track, where rows upon rows of people were curled up on blankets or gathered in circles of friends and families. Many were talking quietly, or trying to entertain the few little kids she saw with toys or books, but most remained close to silent, their faces stoic.
Etta had to hand it to them; they were calm. They seemed almost resigned to this, like it was one great bother, instead of a terrible way to die.
“All right, we’ll wait. We can be patient.” If Nicholas was aware of the eyes that were tracking their progress along the platform, he didn’t show it. They navigated through the crowd until they found an empty space near the end of the platform, under a sign advertising the Paramount Theatre’s showing of something called I Was an Adventuress staring someone named Zorina.
Nicholas took off the bag and his jacket as Etta lowered herself down onto the patch of concrete, leaning back against the curved wall. She drew her legs up to her chest and hugged them there, hard enough for her knees to crack.
Calm down, she thought, calm down.
But the bombing hadn’t stopped, and Etta could almost see how, if one was dropped in just the wrong place overhead, it would mean game over. Not just for her and Nicholas, but for the hundreds of people packed around them like sleeves of wafers.
Nicholas rummaged through the bag, producing their lone apple. Etta wasn’t hungry, though she hadn’t eaten since they’d left New York. Her stomach had turned to stone, throbbing in time with the muscles that still burned from the run.
Nicholas glanced at her, concern dragging down the corners of his mouth. “I should have found us water. I’m sorry, Etta.”
“We’ll be fine,” she whispered. They’d find some once they went through the next passage.
“I have to say,” he muttered, leaning back, “I am harboring some incredible ill will toward this mother of yours.”
Etta wasn’t feeling so fond of her at that precise moment either, even as she was terrified for her; her mind was constantly looping back to that photograph, the way she’d been tied up, the kind of men that were holding her.
“Well,” Etta said weakly, “she’s always told me a good challenge builds character.”
“Then we’ll have an excess of it,” he said dryly.
Conditions on the platform were so tight that they sat shoulder to shoulder, hip to hip, leg to leg. Etta was glad for the solid presence of him, that she could lean into him, now that her nerves seemed poised to sweep her into a full-blown panic attack. She crossed her legs, letting the cool cement press into the exposed skin. None of Oskar’s breathing tricks seemed to be working, not when all hell was raining down on the street above. The woman to her right quietly prayed.
How many hours would they have to sit down here, hoping? It was the twenty-second of September. That only left them with eight more days to find the astrolabe and get back, and they still had no idea how to decipher the other clues.
Her breath hitched as panic began to creep into her system. How was Nicholas so calm—so steady, like he’d been through this all before?
Maybe he had, in a way. The bombing didn’t sound all that different than the pounding cannonade from the ships, the small explosions of each gun. She wanted to ask him, but she couldn’t speak, afraid that admitting anything might open the floodgates in her. Everyone was holding it together. She could, too.
I wish I could play.
Etta craved the distraction, the absolute focus of playing. If she couldn’t feel the weight of the instrument in her hands, then she could at least imagine; she closed her eyes and called the music to her. The phantom press of strings against her fingers filled her, for the first time since Alice had died, with a sense of familiar joy—not the disgust and humiliation she’d felt when she thought about her performance, or the shattering anger and grief at wondering what had happened to Alice’s body—if she and her mother would even make it in time for the funeral.
For lack of anything better to use, she took her left forearm into her right hand, closing her eyes. She could pretend, just for a few seconds, that her wrist was the neck, her veins the strings. She imagined the bow gliding across her skin, focused on the movement of it.
Bach. Bach demanded her concentration. Bach would take her out of this moment.
“What are you doing?” Nicholas asked.
“Playing,” she said, not caring how ridiculous it must look and sound to him. “Distracting myself.”
A man, stretched out on his stomach in front of them, lifted his face up out of his book and glanced their way curiously.
It was perfectly strange timing that a high, clear note broke the odd spell of calm in the station just then. Down toward the center of the platform, an older man had brought out a violin and was working the instrument in slow, mellow song. She recognized it—it wasn’t a classical composition but something that had come scratching out of Oskar’s old record player.
The sound bloomed around them, like a flower unfurling one petal at a time, carrying across the walls of white tiles with their patterns of black crosses. A passing police officer tilted his hat toward the man. Etta sat up, straining to see him over the heads between them.
She had, however, no trouble seeing the young couple that was dancing in their few feet of allotted space. The man’s arm was locked around her waist, and he took her hand in his. The woman laughed, looking around them nervously, but followed his slow, rocking movements, resting her head against his shoulder.
Nicholas watched them, entranced. Etta thought for sure he’d say something about how scandalous it was for them to be dancing so close together.
“That’s beautiful,” she said.
He turned to her. “Would you like me to go take that violin for you? I’d gladly fight whatever angry mob rises up if it might make you smile.”
Her heart just about burst at that.
Be brave. “I would only want to play for you.”
He turned slowly, as if taking the time to assemble some sort of expression or response. But she didn’t want there to be any mistake, any way for him to dismiss or misunderstand her words. If she was wrong, and he wanted nothing more between them, she would pull back. But now…now she just wanted to be brave. Her hand came to rest on top of his, and despite all of his obvious strength, the shields he threw up to protect the privacy of his mind, she felt his fingers slide through hers.