Trn opened the gate.

I thought it would be an ogre. And they would have a battle.

I’m sorry you’re disappointed.

Aleks kicked a stone tumbling over the paving before stepping through the gate.

Maybe next time his adventures will lead him to an ogre.

Probably not. I don’t think so.

Do you have your satchel ready for next week?

Aleks heaved a long breath.

Yes.

Trn unlocked the door, the stairwell darkened over them. A figure limped through the shadow and Trn said, Good day, Mr. Havlicek. The man nodded and shut his door.

You’re the troll and Mother’s the princess, right?

What makes you say that?

I don’t know, Aleks said, leading the way with trudges up to the flat.

***

At the square dining table in the front room he read over his history. When his eyes tired of the page he squinted through the light from the high window at the wavering spires of spruce, the roofs of houses scaled like fish with red tiles. Morning smoke rose from a scatter of brick chimneys until the wind caught and toppled all the columns. At the very crown of the hill the solid and foursquare gymnasium, on the near wing the roof shingled with pigeons. What the stone of those walls hoarded now, the echoes they gave. Above the trees all the dormer windows barred and painted black. Some pigeons gathered themselves and heaved into the air, wheeled about and settled among the same tiles, a few more stirred, and then the whole flock scattered and swept suddenly away into the dark of the trees, and then the sound penetrated the glass, the echoing report followed instantly by two others. Then a space of time and three more deliberate shots. The chimney smoke fell toward him. Three more to make sure. He closed his book.

In that courtyard he’d kicked at footballs. The classrooms cells now where they counted prisoners’ bones with their fists. In the shadows of the basement cuffed to steam pipes they hung for their lashings. Three roped bodies slumped from posts driven in the ground where Pavel and Tomas had shouted at him, the ball bounding off the wall. Rough triangles of cloth knotted at the back to blind the last few seconds. What the red eyes of those pigeons saw. Blood and gore pulsing over the knots. The lessons they handed out there now. The instruction the Gestapo trafficked in. Selling tickets to those with German names who wanted to watch the hanged swing by their crooked necks from the arms of the gallows.

***