“Well, Maus,” Papa began, using Gerde’s favorite nickname. “A long, long time ago, there was a great fight all around the world, and so the Americans came to Germany. Not many people know this, but some of the Americans climbed all the way up to the peak of Zugspitze.”
His fingers strained to the to top of his knee, which formed a peak under the blanket.
“And then, they saw the summit cross. Maus, do you know what they did when they saw that cross?”
Gerde nodded, making a finger gun with her hand. “Pew, pew. Pew, pew.”
“Yes, Maus, they used it for target practice. Which is why-” Here Papa grunted, pretending to haul a new cross up the mountain. “-we have a new cross up there today. But some people,” he added, tapping her nose. “Some say that the original cross is buried up somewhere on Zugspitze, waiting for one brave little Maus to find it.”
“I could find it, Papa.”
“Ja, Gerde. I know you could.” Here he gave her a sly look and leaned in close as if sharing a secret. “And if you do, you should know that it is magic.”
Gerde’s eyes widened. “How is it magic, Papa?”
“Long ago, before soldiers and guns and such, there was lightning on the mountain, great bolts coming down in storms not too different from the one we are in now. And this lightning would strike the cross again and again until finally, the cross was taken down for repairs. And who can say where the lightning went? I think just a little bit is trapped inside that original cross, waiting to be released.”
“What would it do, Papa? If it were released?”
He raised his eyebrows. “Ah, who can say, Maus? I imagine a wild thing like lightning can do a great many things. Perhaps it is up to the imagination of the wielder.”
Gerde sat up. “I know exactly what I’d use it for, Papa.” She rose onto her knees, jumping up and down on the bed. “I’d use it to cure Mama’s hands! Then she could teach me to paint and be a proper artist!”
Laughing in a gentle but pained way, her father kissed her on the head and slowly rose, guiding her back under the covers and tucking the blanket under her sides. “Between the two of you, this house would make the greatest art Germany had ever seen. Gute Nacht, little Maus.”
“Gute Nacht, Papa.”
+++
Ten years old and fiercely determined, Gerde stood on the summit alone, gripping the hiking rope beside her. In her mind, she could see it winding all down the mountainside, dark and steady against the snow, which shifted in the wind like Mama’s powdered sugar. This hike was what Gerde loved best about weekends. Papa let her ride the gondola lift up to Zugspitze, where he would always give her the same talk before going inside to work in the lodge: “Today you’ll find that summit cross, ja? Remember to watch where you step. Be careful, Maus.”
Looking out past the summit cross, Gerde saw the peaks of Germany and Austria stabbing upward. On a clear day, this view would have revealed four countries, but today the snow fell like a veil across the horizon.
An alpine chough lighted on the cross, cawing at Gerde. Remembering how the birds back at the main lodge used to eat from her mother’s fork, Gerde fumbled in her pockets for a morsel, but could feel nothing through her thick gloves.
“Nichts,” she told the crow, smiling shyly. “Sorry. I have nothing for you.”
The little bird cried out again, its yellow beak catching the sun, fire against its dense coat of black feathers. Gerde wondered if she had time to go back to the main platform and find food scraps for the crow. Papa had said he would bring a hot chocolate to share soon. Gerde had been hiking practically since she was a baby, and she knew these paths like the back of her hand. Gerde turned to go, and another crow landed in front of her, cawing insistently.
“I know, I know. I’m going to get you something right now,” Gerde promised, stepping around it. The bird called at her back, seeming distressed, and Gerde told herself to be fast.
+++
The first thing Gerde was aware of was the cold. Somehow, she was no longer wearing her jacket, and her wool sweater was not enough to shield her from the biting wind. She shuddered, and a nearby voice said, “You’ll catch your death dressed like that, Spatzi.”
“Papa?”
Gerde sat up and looked around, but all she could make out through the snow was a giant crow perched on the ground beside her, taller than she was. The crow spoke again.
“Nein, Spatzi. Here, let me give you something for that cold.”
The bird bent to the earth and grasped something with its beak, suddenly producing a beautiful black feathered cape from the snow. Gerde stared.
“How did you do that?”
The crow made the strangest sound, a kind of breathy cawing almost like laughter.
“I can do a great many things here, Spatzi. It is my realm.”
“What do you mean, your realm? And why do you call me Spatzi?”
The tissue tightened on both sides of the crow’s beak as if it were smiling at her.
“The air is thin on Zugspitze, Gerde. It is easy to fall into other worlds. This is Vogelland, the land of birds. I call you Spatzi because that is what you are, a little sparrow.”
“If you call me Spatzi, what do I call you?”
Again, the crow strained its face as if it was smiling. “I am Anse.”
Without thinking, Gerde held out her hand to shake. “Pleased to meet you, Anse. I’m Gerde.”
“Ja, I know,” Anse said good naturedly, allowing her to grasp his wing. “We have been waiting for you, Spatzi.”
“We?”
“My brother, Eike, waits for us at the top of the platform.” Anse now knelt on the ground beside Gerde and spread his wings. They were marvelously iridescent, as if crystals had been slipped in between the layers of feathers. Gerde now saw that Anse was quite large, big enough to carry her.
“Do you want me to get on your back?” she asked.
“Ja, Spatzi. We have a ways to go.”
Gerde carefully climbed onto Anse, careful not to pull at his plumage.
“Now put your arms around my neck, and we’ll be off.”
“Is it very hard, flying?” Gerde asked. “I’ve never flown before.”
“Nein, Spatzi, it is like ice skating with your hands. You will learn soon enough. Are you holding on?”
“Ja, Anse.”
Anse leapt over the side of the rockface, catching the air under his great wings. Suddenly, they shot upward and into a cloud, so that all Gerde could see was mist. Ice crystals stung her cheeks, and she buried her face in Anse’s back. As abruptly as they had risen, they descended, and she found herself tumbling off Anse’s back and onto the platform.
Gasping, she looked around her wildly. “But Anse, where are the gondola cars? Where is the lodge?”
Anse walked softly to stand beside her, leaving deep impressions in the snow behind him. “We do not need them, Spatzi. We can fly up to any mountain, and our food lies at the base of Zugspitze, in Toller Wald, the Great Forest.”
Gerde was about to protest that she could not fly when a second massive crow landed before them.
“Ah, Spatzi, this is my brother Eike,” Anse said warmly.
The crow knelt on its great orange talons so that its yellow beak was buried in the snow. Gerde could not keep from staring at the way its knees bent backwards, inverted and strange.
When it rose, it spoke softly, in a voice more gravelly and deeper than Anse’s. More like what one would imagine a crow sounded like, Gerde supposed.
“It is a pleasure to finally speak to you, little one.”
“Finally?” Gerde asked. “Have we met before?”
Eike’s black eyes turned up at the edges, and his laugh sounded to Gerde like the crackle of broken beech leaves in the fall, somehow comforting in its roughness.
“We have met a great many times, Spatzi. But you would not have remembered Anse or me. The peak of the mountain holds open the sky for a great many worlds here. Vogelland is but one of them.”
Eike gestured to the edge of the platform with his beak. “There are two paths down this mountain for you, Spatzi. Both are correct. Anse and I are merely your guides; we can show you, but we cannot choose.”
The wind had picked up, and now it seemed to pull at Gerde’s straw-colored hair like invisible hands.
“When are you going to show me?” Gerde asked, raising her small voice to overcome the wind.
Anse gently pushed Gerde toward the mountain’s edge. She clawed at his feathers, afraid of being blown over. She had never felt so light, as if in jumping, she might not even fall.
“This is one path, Spatzi,” Anse murmured into her ear. “I can teach you to fly to the horizon and back. Horizons are fixed in Vogelland. You will learn to become used to such things.”
Gerde shuddered. “But Anse, I will fall. I do not have your wings.”
Anse shook his great black head. “Nein, Spatzi. The wings will come to you. You will see.”
Gerde leaned forward skeptically, straining her eyes to see the forest below, but all she saw was thick gusts of snow. She looked up and jumped, startled to see Eike on her other side with something clutched in his beak. He gently laid it at her feet.
“Take a long look, Spatzi,” he cawed. “This is the other path. It will take you down the trail you came from.”
Gerde stared at the ground. The thick green jacket was torn in a couple places, with a deep red-brown stain on the back of the collar. Gerde stepped back, feeling that it might burn her toes. She looked up at Eike, trembling.
“I don’t understand.”
The crow was silent, studying her with narrowed eyes and a slightly cocked head.
“You have seen your options, Spatzi. Now we await your decision.”
“Is that mine?” Gerde asked quietly, waving her arm toward the jacket. She could not bring herself to look at it.
“Ja, Spatzi.” Anse’s voice was nearly a whisper.
“If I choose the jacket, what will I see?”
Eike only shook his head.
“I want to see Papa. I want him to hold me.” Gerde’s eyes began to burn, but she knew it wasn’t the wind or the cold. The two birds were still. They seemed like forgotten shadows, left on the dark side of the mountain, suddenly sprouting wings to stand beside her. She could feel no warmth at Anse’s side, and she imagined that Eike’s eyes were little black ice chips.
“I choose the jacket.” Gerde could hardly get the words out.
Eike bowed his head, and Anse knelt so that Gerde could get on his back again. Gerde knew crows did not cry, but his eyes seemed much glossier than before. The flight down to the trail was much the same as the flight up had been, abrupt and fast and unbelievably white and cold. The landing caught Gerde by surprise, and she tumbled off Anse’s back into the snow. He held out his wing to help her up. Once she was standing, he pushed her with his head toward the curve in the path. Gerde could see nothing through the snow now. She was only aware of the ground beneath her feet, Anse’s head against her back, and the stone right beside her that blocked her view of the path ahead. Then suddenly, Gerde was past the stone, and everything fell away. She turned wildly, but Anse and Eike were nowhere to be found. The storm had subsided, so she had a clear view of the snow-covered mass in front of her. It was disheveled and dark and bent in all sorts of strange ways, but Gerde recognized the straw hair, the little ears poking up through the ice. It took Gerde several moments to connect the icy patch on the path to her own crumpled body, head bashed in by a rock she guessed she had fallen on. A screech tore itself from her throat, involuntary and painful and inhuman. Gerde stumbled away from her corpse, scrambling back around the curve in the path.
“Anse! Eike!” She ran and ran, but saw no black feathers, no talons or gleaming golden beaks. Gerde found herself back at the platform, alone and freezing without the jacket.
“Anse! Eike!” She called again. “I chose wrong! I’m sorry.”
Gerde waited, but she was entirely alone. She looked around. The gondola cars were back, but they were dark and not in use. She looked over the edge of the mountain. The forest at the base looked just as she remembered it, twigs in a snowglobe from this height. Gerde took a deep breath.
“I don’t know what else to do,” she called out, partly to herself.
Gerde shuffled forward until her toes hung over the edge. She kept her eyes on the Zugspitze cross, radiant even in the midst of so many clouds. In that instant, Gerde felt almost certain that this new cross contained some magic of its own. She had never seen such glowing metal. But maybe, she reasoned, this was in fact the best hiding site for the old cross: maybe the cross was never changed at all, and the one she looked at burned with thousand-year-old lightning. But it made no difference. There was no getting the cross to Mama without the gondola cars, and Gerde still didn’t understand the meaning of her mangled body on the path. At a crossroads, she felt that her only option was forward. Downward. Gerde lifted her right foot and placed it out in midair. The countryside had never looked so still, and Gerde imagined all the little families, the fingers stretching on the blankets, all the little mice drifting off into sleep. Gerde closed her eyes. She stretched her arms out at her sides, spreading her fingers all the way so that the air threaded in between. Leaning forward onto her right foot, she let herself fall. Her eyes opened out of instinct, but she found that she could not scream, only make a deep, guttural croak as she plunged down toward the toothpick trees. Gerde waved her arms wildly in the air, but to no avail. The ground drew nearer and nearer, and she could only think about how badly she wanted her jacket. Gerde at last managed to let out a scream, shrill and resounding. A split second before impact, it happened. She had never felt such pain, as if the core of all of her bones was melting into lava, burning her up with it. She closed her eyes and felt her legs grow incredibly heavy. Crying out, she felt the vertebrae in her spine fuse, neck becoming stiff and immobile. Her teeth suddenly retracted into their gums, and Gerde’s eyes widened, tongue feeling for the lost bony peaks. There was an intense tingling at the base of her spine, and she felt her tailbone extend into the frosty air behind her. The burning sensation now spread across Gerde’s skin, and she screamed in agony as feathers erupted, thick and black. A single tear rolled down Gerde’s cheek, and then her jaw wrenched itself forward with a terrible crack, and her nose seemed to arc down to meet it, forming a hard beak. All at once the burning feeling vanished, and Gerde felt hollow and light. Her vision sharpened, and she saw her own shadow on the ground, wings creating a cross shape on the snow. She allowed her wings to spread out fully, catching the breeze and suddenly finding herself rising through the trees.
Like ice skating with your hands, Anse had said. Gerde pumped her wings and soared up toward the mountain, toward Papa. She alighted on the summit cross, feeling strange about the scales across her feet. The metal seemed to hum beneath her as if alive. The gondola cars and the lodge were back. Gerde scanned the crowd before her with sharpened eyesight, cawing with delight when she saw Papa walking through the snow, hot chocolate in hand. Gerde tried to call to him, but she could not seem to form words. Papa seemed lost, looking into the crowd around him with a frown.
“Gerde?” he called.
She was consumed by an intense sorrow, watching him stand there in the snow, surrounded by flocks of people moving back and forth like migrating birds. Eike landed beside her.
“It is time, spatzi,” he said simply. “You cannot help him now. You were at the crossroads, and you chose. There is nothing for you here.” He gently used his wing to turn Gerde’s head away from her father. “We fly now.”
For the second time, Gerde threw herself off the side of the mountain, half expecting to fall again. Instead, she soared beside Eike, and they quickly caught up to Anse. To Gerde’s surprise, the horizon seemed to actually be drawing closer. It gleamed with a crackling light energy. Gerde saw a crack in the horizon ahead, a little hole she could fit through if she folded her wings just so. Anse and Eike went ahead of her, and Gerde followed, allowing the warmth to envelope her, a promise, as she flew away from the mountain and the broken sound of her father’s voice.