Salt to the Sea

by Ruta Sepetys

Then, without a word, she lifted my arms and placed them around the nurse.

He was scared to touch her, but wanted desperately to touch her.

In my mind, the warm sun burned bright. The unfenced pastures rolled soft, like worn velvet. The window boxes puffed with flowers and the tree branches stooped heavy with ripe plums.

Tears, like slender icicles, were frozen to his cheeks.

“Feet with roots, that’s called a fungal infection,” Poet told the wandering boy.

Of course he had. Koch’s murderous reputation had made him known. And feared.

Revolting. If women were so careless to become pregnant at such a time, let women sort it out. It was not a job for one of the Führer’s finest.

Yeah i hate this dude

quickly realized that what pleased my father the most was my happiness. So I learned to appear happy, even if I wasn’t.

became good at pretending. I became so good that after a while the lines blurred between my truth and fiction. And sometimes, when I did a really good job of pretending, I even fooled myself.

There is so much ugliness and imperfection in the world. We know it exists but we create further trauma by being forced to look at it. Some things are better ignored.

“You’re exceedingly responsible. You have this terrible need to heal people.” I looked up from my jackknife. “Why is that?”

“Life’s not fair. You’re lucky.” I didn’t feel lucky. I felt guilty.

This guy was a first-class booby.

I’m sorry, but I’m not putting my future in the hands of this heavy breather.”

“But, Eva, dear, your shoes are carrying your most valuable possession—your life. Do not delay. Everything else can be replaced,” said the shoe poet.

Was there really a desperate hero inside of him or just a nervous skin condition?

had lived for twenty-one years, but the recent months had changed me.

Survival had its price: guilt.

I’d be a torn kite stuck in the dead branches of a tree, unable to fly.

Perhaps the children are little cherubs, looking after withered men like me.”

I was so tired. I closed my eyes and waited for the sound of Death’s key in the lock.

My curiosity burned. What was in the crates?

I allowed all of the ferocity of the past years to rise up inside me. Like a boiler about to blow, I leaned over the table.

You’re proof that there are still good men in the world.”

War had bled color from everything, leaving nothing but a storm of gray.

I often fell asleep to a breeze floating through my open window. It’s true. It was like that once.”

Had this guy been broadsided with a brick at some point?

His impure thoughts were radically different from my own.

I suddenly had an overwhelming urge to knock him off the ledge.

“Yet amidst all that, life has spit in the eye of death.

What did I want? I wanted the war to be over so I could ask her out.

I told myself that her eyes weren’t pretty and that I didn’t want to kiss her.

This was the type of man who looked at a picture on the wall and instead of admiring the photo, looked at his own reflection in the glass.

Can history disappear if it’s written in blood?

After bouncing for months on the run, the sway of the sea soothed like a lullaby.

Yet somehow, after five cruel winters of war, I was still alive.

I had expected everything to end. But now, I began to think that maybe the sign had been wrong. I had fought so hard and overcome so much.

I had to consider the possibility. Maybe the storm was finally behind me.

My constitution has been destroyed by the enemy. The enemy is the sea.”

Was it the way he said it? Was there something that lingered behind it? Or was it just my own pathetic loneliness that made me grab the scissors?

I wanted to say something to comfort her, but I wasn’t good at this kind of thing.

Her honesty and guilt, they made me like her even more.

“Wisdom pays the largest debt to his shoemaker.”

“Just when you think this war has taken everything you loved, you meet someone and realize that somehow you still have more to give.”

Emilia was saying we had to go up top into the cold. Emilia was saying the ship was sinking.

But then I remembered. Ten of the lifeboats were missing.

Our blessed shoe poet. Our Opi. Our one light in the darkness. He was gone.

How foolish to believe we are more powerful than the sea or the sky.

The knight. He had the baby. I knew he’d be a savior.

Fate is a hunter. Its barrel pressed against my forehead.