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P A R T I : THE STRANGE

" Normality is a paved road: it's comfortable to walk, but no flowers grow. "

— VINCENT VAN GOGH

B E F O R E

( prologue )

AMSTERDAM, 1943

In an alley hidden away from the bustling of the main street, the night was just like any other night since Hitler barged through the doors of Netherlands.

At townhouse number thirty-one, an old couple were slow dancing along a jazz number playing from the gramophone they purchased on 1925. The young mother of townhouse number thirty-five lulled her baby to sleep, praying their rations will be enough for tomorrow. At townhouse number thirty-nine, ten men discussed their next move in a dimly lit room. Hushed angers, fear masked in determination, and hope lingered in the air.

At townhouse number forty, a child of the house, a sixteen-years-old girl, no longer hoped.

"Nonsens," the girl said to the dark. She was sitting on the edge of her little brother's bed, gazing at the falling snow from the window.

It's been almost six months since they received that telegram. She remembered it so clearly like it just happened yesterday. The man saying "I'm sorry," and gave her mother that letter with a sympathetic look that she despised so much. Her mother reading that cold, black letters with shaking hands; that there was no hope for her father, who got hit by a missing-bullet when photographing a raging battle. Her mother fainting for two weeks. She and her little brother in black, attending the funeral. Her mother waking up and started mumbling gibberish of a certain doom, confining herself in the dark.

The girl glanced back at her little brother. He was sleeping soundly next to her, but she felt the heat from his fever. The bed was wet with his sweat. He had been like that for a month, and she didn't quite know what to do. Even the doctors didn't know. She bought him every medicine she can find, but the poor boy still laying helpless in his bed.

Then came that she found nothing left on their bank account. So she tried. She queued everyday at 4 a.m. on the dead of winter for rations. She painted until her last canvas, to the last drop of paint, not for her satisfaction but to sell or trade it for food and anything useful to survive. She contacted their relatives, who live in rural Belgium. Nothing had come in reply.

The girl stroked her brother's burning forehead. Of course, it was too late for it now. The war took everything from her.

The girl glanced back for a few second to the window, seeing the silhouette of the dancing old couple in the window across her. They were so peaceful and careless, she thought. She almost faintly hear the peaceful tune.

The girl carefully fixed the blanket of her brother, whispered "I'll be back". She left his bedroom and went downstairs. When she opened the door, cold air immediately hit her like a brick. Came to her mind that she might catch sickness from the cold, as she did not wear thick layers of clothing. But then she realized that she didn't care.

She picked the lock of her neighbor's bicycle with her hair pin. She sold her own bike last week. With it, she paddled through dark alleys and tight turns, her pants echoed in the deserted street. Her pace made her hair fluttered. There were no particular destination to reach. She tried to think of a reason, to justify her bike-riding after the curfew began, leaving her sick mother and brother. To trade for more food? To the Resistance hideout? To become a moffenhoer? To leave Amsterdam? Nothing fits.

She kept paddling, only halted for a moment to hide from patrolling German soldiers. When her feet finally gave in to the pain and her lungs felt frozen, she found herself in a part of the town that she did not know well. Not even a any fear that she felt, and that brought shivers down her spine more than the temperature. She's surely become braver, or her mind had really lost a reason to exist.

The girl found an empty bench to sit. Half of a bench. She parked her bike to what used to be a street lamp right beside it. The snow filled empty room of roofless houses. The buildings were destroyed to bricks from the last bombing. At the day, the dwellers came back to scavenge for anything that survived the explosion, but not at the night. No one dared to come back as it was still a recent event Even before that, it's not a popular part of the town to venture. The street was even emptier than a graveyard.

Or is it not?

She tried to get it out of her mind, thinking it was just the cold breeze playing tricks to her ears. Yet that sound kept getting stronger and louder; a breathing sound that was not her own.

The girl followed yet again another impulsive decision. She forced her stiffening feet to the source of the sound. The breathing she heard turned into harsh pants and groans, confirming that she was close. She might see something she shouldn't have, and she was right.

Under the shadow between two buildings, a figure was laying against the a dead-end wall. The darkness covered most of it's feature, but it was visible, that the man, or woman, was hurt.

The girl took her step slowly, feeling every ice trickling down her hair and the weight of her own breath. Now from the distance, she can see the stranger better. It was definitely a man, with dark hair and dark clothing stained with snow. His face seemed young, not much older than her. Foreign, that of the middle-eastern immigrants that her mother sometimes scowled at, although ironically an immigrant herself.

Blood. So much blood seeped from his dark coat, making a wine-colored stain, scarlet on the pure white snow. He clutched both of his hands on the wound in attempt to reduce the bleeding. Evidently, it didn't work. Helpless, as if a deer shot during a hunt.

The man felt her presence. He looked at the girl with such a piercing gaze that she flinched. She swore, that dark eyes shone silver for a second. She wanted to approach him, to help him, but her feet won't move any further. She's paralyzed from that look. She took back comparing him to a wounded deer. That was the look of a lion, ready to strike.

Rushing footsteps and shouts in foreign tongue released her from that penetrating eyes. Mofs.

"Finde ihn! Finde ihn! Finde diesen verräter!"

Find him, the girl recognized some word. Are those soldiers coming for him? She glanced back at the man, whose now stared intensely at his wound as if he can heal it with just a look. Suddenly, the man grabbed her arm tightly and pulled, and the girl yelped as she fell on her bottom. She's about to raise again in protest yet she was once again frozen by that silver eyes, this time as real as moonlight.

The man trapped her in his arms, made her unable to move, and covered her mouth with a bloody hand. The blood sipped to her lips and she tasted rust. Her heart was pounding heavily and her vision went blurry. The soldiers were nearing. They can't run or hide. They will get caught, and it will be the end. She thought of her mother and little brother. What will happen to them if she's gone and how much she regretted leaving them alone.

Perhaps she still hoped, after all.

The girl closed her eyes, waiting for the shouts of the soldiers that finally appeared in front of them. A second. A minute. Nothing happened. The shouts and footsteps kept diminishing, until the street returned quiet again.

"Ze zijn weg."

A fluent dutch, yet foreign accent. The girl jumped from the man's hold, nearly tripped at her own feet. He gave her a strange smile and she was lost at words.

"My apologize..." The man's voice was deep and soothing. He opened his mouth again to say something, but winched from the pain. The girl found her voice again.

"But..." Tears started rolling down her eyes unexpectedly. "But how...?"

It's the only thing she managed to say. So many things whirling inside her mind. Too many what, why, who, and hows. She realized the back of her coat was now stained by his blood. It made her remember about his wound. But the soldiers. The soldiers was right in front of them. They can't possibly not seen them.

The man rose from his position, grabbed her arm again and pull her slowly until she crouched next to him. This time she didn't resist.

"You and I..."

That voice draws her as like a warm haze and she leaned closer to hear him, feeling their heavy breaths.

"We are..." His voice became a faint whisper, and the man fell unconscious on her lap. The girl immediately touched his neck with two fingers and in relieve, found a weak pulse.

The girl paddled her bike furiously to the nearest doctor she knew. She was his only hope, not just because she felt the need to help him. She desperately needed him alive, because he have to tell her the meanings of his words. He was also her hope.

Back at townhouse number forty, the sick boy tossed and turned on his sleep. His body kept flickering and blurring, as if shifting between existing and not existing.

In the dark, the young ballerina practiced her pirouette with only the distant light of London. She waltzed, but fell hard to the floor on the third spin. Every lamp in that house suddenly blazed. Then came the bomb sirens.

At a mansion in Westchester, New York, the raven-haired girl awoken from her sleep. She found her bed floating in the air. In fact, everything in her room was floating. She sighed; her brother was having a nightmare.

In Brooklyn, the red-haired boy sneaked in to his parent's bedroom. He found the newspaper that they hided, careful not to wake them. In his eyes, a green glow emitted from his father's body. He ignored it and ran back to his room.

At a church in Spanish Harlem, the little girl strolled in the hallway of the nun's dormitory. Everyone was asleep from the lullaby echoing from her lips.

And they all – the wounded man, the sick boy, the young ballerina, the boy with a nightmare, the father of the red-haired boy, and the little girl in the hallway– whispered, mumbled, muttered, and even sang the same words, although in different languages:

"Wij zijn een samenleving – "

"мы общество –"

"Nous sommes une société – "

"Somos una sociedad – "

"We are a society – of the Strange."

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D I C T I O N A R Y
Finde ihn: Find him (German)
Finde diesen verräter: Find that traitor (German)
Mofs: Dutch slang for Germans
Ze zijn weg: They are gone (Dutch)
Nonsens: nonsense (Dutch)
Neen: No (Dutch)
 

A / N
READ ON WATTPAD @ROSEGOLDFAE for faster update and beautiful graphics! I only use google translate for the dutch so correct me if I'm wrong. This is second draft.