Flying Without Wings Read online

  Flying

  Without Wings

  Paula Wynne

  Prado Press

  London, United Kingdom

  Author Copyright

  Copyright © 2019 by Paula Wynne.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in reviews and certain other non-commercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, write to the publisher, addressed “Attention: Permissions Coordinator,” via the web address below.

  Paula Wynne, Prado Press: http://paulawynne.com/contact

  Publisher’s Note: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are a product of the author’s imagination. Locales and public names are sometimes used for atmospheric purposes. Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, or to businesses, companies, events, institutions or locales is completely coincidental.

  Development and Line Editor: David Imrie at NovelEdit.net

  Cover Designer: Sara Lee Paterson

  Author Contact

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  Also By Paula Wynne

  The Grotto’s Secret

  The Sacred Symbol

  The Luna Legacy

  Elixa

  Flying Without Wings

  Coming Soon

  Cold Feet

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  For my husband Ken Sheridan

  Only on the wings of our love do I fly.

  “What good are wings

  without the courage to fly?”

  Atticus

  “He knows not where he’s going,

  For the ocean will decide.

  It’s not the destination,

  It’s the glory of the ride.”

  Zen Dog by Edward Monkton

  1

  Johan Falkner

  7 May 1945

  Theresienstadt Concentration Camp, Czechoslovakia

  Johan Falkner fell from his bunk and woke me, his spirit. Providence endowed me to watch over this ten-year-old boy in whom I live. Thus far, despite these dark years, we have managed to remain intact and partly sane…

  The earth shuddered again as a second mortar exploded and the ground under the barracks shook.

  Now fully awake, Johan gasped.

  The guard hut!

  Had it been bombed?

  Through the shocked silence, broken only by the sound of his gnawing belly, twisting and turning as it cried out for even a crust of bread, Johan wondered if it was still inside the guard hut.

  Would it survive a blast? No, it would splinter into tiny little red fragments.

  Then all would be lost.

  2

  Most of those around us sleep curled up like babies. There’s a strange kind of comfort to pulling your legs up and curling your arms around them. Would they sleep like that forever? And even if they did, would the nightmares ever end?

  Although awake now, Johan’s blurry gaze darted to the door. Above him, arms and legs dangled over the second and third tier bunks. They looked like skeletons crawling out of their graves.

  As more and more people had arrived at Terezín, he and Ima had been forced to share their bed with three other women.

  They all struggled to sleep, but eventually they had found a way to curl up in their own tiny spaces. His place was the top corner, and when the wobbly bunk jerked from the force of the blasts, he had fallen out.

  If any of them had to answer nature’s call in the night, they had to climb over each other to use the stinking bucket. Of course the Nazis forced them to keep that at the door, so everyone had to do their business in public. And so that everyone coming in or going out could smell urine and what few diseased solids any of them had to pass. Johan had grown so used to the stench that on most days he ignored it, but when it was his turn to toss out the bucket he, like everyone else, couldn’t help vomiting.

  Now, one of the women sharing their bunk gave him a pained stare, while the other behind grabbed fistfuls of her own hair and tugged at it repeatedly. Her hollow eyes frightened him, as did those of many of the mothers in their barracks.

  Another mortar exploded nearby.

  That one must surely have smashed it.

  He had to find out.

  Staggering to his feet through the ever-present exhaustion, he tried to lull the hunger pangs.

  All around the barrack, mumbles and muted cries were breaking out. Someone snivelled into their hands, making sucking sounds. Soft moaning and whimpering drifted up to the roof, and many of the younger girls rocked back and forth with their hands over their ears. Some even pressed clenched fists into their temples.

  Elza had done that.

  Johan hated it when the girls clawed at their cheeks, dragging their fingers down until red marks rose on their pale skin. His sister never did that, instead she had backed away and tried to flee the terror, but that had only stirred up the Wolf.

  Johan shook off the terrible memories.

  Ima’s hiccupping sobs echoed up to the tin roof, loud and terrifying.

  ‘Don’t go,’ she whispered, curling her arms over her head and squeezing her eyes, which had once shone but were now sunken and dull, shut. Johan often wondered if he would ever see joy in them again.

  Ignoring his mother, Johan crept through the anxious muttering to the only window in the long rectangular prison block.

  ‘Careful, Johan!’ hissed Frau Gerber as he tiptoed past the broken pot and pieces of string she used to collect the water from the inside of the roof each night. ‘If you spill it again there’ll be none for you or your mother tomorrow.’

  He grimaced as he remembered the foul taste of the water, laced with sweat and dust. But he also trod cautiously: bad as it was, that water was better than the thirst that came without it. He missed the water that Elza had collected from her hole in the roof when it rained. That had been pure and sweet, but the guards had found the hole and blocked it up, and she had been punished for
making it.

  Johan almost vomited at the thought of her.

  Each day the blasts of gunfire came closer. Now, the air hummed with the sound of planes overhead. The whoosh of an incoming mortar roared past the barracks. Seconds later, it exploded in the valley.

  Through a hole in the wooden frame, Johan stared at the guard hut, brightly lit by the flames.

  There it was. Still intact. Standing proudly on the desk by the window, where it had been placed.

  His most treasured possession until it had been stolen from him. His wings.

  3

  Staying alive is my focus. But it’s difficult to not fall with hunger and desperation and depression. And from being trodden on by guards who do not care about one more Jewish child lying face down in the mud. I cannot understand the stone-cold souls who do these things. Men who must have families of their own. No, I must not dwell on it, it is easier to just think about surviving each day. To ignore the stench of death each waking morning. Yet this aeroplane wasn’t something to ignore…

  Despite the smoke and drizzle that hung in the air, in the harsh glare of the floodlight in front of the hut Johan could see the blood red wings and streamlined fuselage of his prized possession. His aeroplane. The name, which he knew was K345, stood out in white. Lost to the dark and distance, but as clear as day in his memory was the small tin airman, wearing a black helmet and white goggles, sitting in the cockpit, looking down the barrel of his machine gun. Even the black propeller spun around.

  But it wasn’t his aeroplane anymore.

  Three years ago, soldiers had come to Johan’s home in Würzburg and ordered his parents to hand in all their valuables, including their bank account and property details, and the keys to the family apartment. When the sounds of their neighbours being herded out of their homes and onto the street had echoed through the building and Ima had been frantically packing a mix of treasured and necessary things in a suitcase, Johan’s only thought had been to save his aeroplane. He had kept it tucked under his jacket as they were marched to the train, protected it as more and more people were squashed into the wagon until he thought he would suffocate. And then, as they had stumbled out of the train and shuffled in under the barbed wire, the man with all the decoration on his uniform had pointed a riding crop at her.

  ‘That one!’ Two soldiers had clicked their heels, saluted and shouted, ’Yes, Herr Kommandant Wollner!’ and pulled his sister out of the line.

  The kommandant had bent down to place his large hairy hand on her curly hair.

  Maybe only for that reason, the kommandant had not noticed the hidden aeroplane bulging inside his jacket. At the time, Johan had been so thankful that his sister’s beauty had distracted the kommandant.

  But now…Johan shook the thought away and bit down on his jaw. Even as much as he wanted his aeroplane, he would trade all claim to it, if only to have his sister back.

  A rumbling and a series of thudding blasts in the distance, probably cannon, jerked Johan out of his fog of memories and guilt. All week, Ima had been whispering that Terezín had become a war zone of the retreating SS. She said that the Russians were bombing everything in their way. Towns were flattened. Houses turned to dust. People reduced to bones.

  A tremor snaked through him. Already he had cleared away too many bones from the oven room.

  Normally that man, the kommandant, Friedrich Wollner, made sure only dust came out of the ovens, but a few bones were buried in the stinking ash. Johan had heard the kommandant shout at a guard that there was now a big rush to destroy all Nazi torture evidence.

  Johan touched his pocket. Ran his finger over the small bone hidden inside. Thank goodness Ima had not found it. He could not let her go through that again! Nor could he let the Nazis remove the last remains of their family.

  Well, he didn’t really know if the bone was hers, but it was his duty to clean the oven room and he had found it the day after she had been taken there. She had broken a finger as they were herded onto the train. Ima had done her best to set it, but it had healed crookedly, and when he had seen the little bone amongst the ashes he had recognised its angle.

  Outside, the sky was blacker than a Nazi uniform. Another scarlet blast ruptured the night, rattling the thin pane of glass. A whoosh of air entered through the cracks with tiny stars of light. Bits of the stone wall shot out and landed on Johan’s shoes.

  Another hollow boom.

  ‘Johan!’

  He spun around. After the bright flash, darkness seeped back into every corner of the stone barrack. It took his eyes a few seconds to readjust to the gloom.

  ‘Come back! You will be hanged for spying!’ Ima’s sobbing grew louder. She choked out her words, ‘Or the Wolf will throw you in the oven room. You know that nobody comes out of there!’

  A horrible shiver rippled through Johan. ‘Shh,’ he hissed back at her. He always, always listened to Ima. Except when he was snooping on the soldiers or the kommandant.

  Over the past three-years the camp commander had become known as ‘The Wolf.’ Ima had said it was because he stalked his prey.

  ‘Come back, Johan,’ Ima insisted. ‘We must just pray the Russians get here soon.’

  Ever since that dreadful night, Ima was always caressing and squeezing his hand, wrapping her arms around him at every opportunity. He understood her need to hold onto the only child she had left of the two who had come here with her. Now Ima hoped that her elder son still lived somewhere alongside their father.

  A croaky voice mumbled, ‘Be quiet! Both of you. The Wolf is doing his rounds. If he hears you he will take one of our daughters again for the night.’

  His gaze penetrating the shadows, Johan could see rows of white eyes. From their crammed beds, women and children watched him, like rabbits peering out of their den, suddenly bright and feverish, ready for news of the Russians.

  A voice spat out, ‘You cannot forget what happened to Elza!’

  A twisted sob escaped from Ima and Johan scowled. He couldn’t see who had spoken, but hatred oozed out with the words.

  Like the hatred growing in his heart.

  Ever since they had arrived, The Wolf had chosen groups of girls. And sometimes even boys. He had offered them privileges if they called him ‘uncle’ and slept in his chamber. Johan couldn’t understand what favours the Wolf did for them, because at night he heard them shrieking and then sobbing until morning.

  On her return, the first time, Elza’s crying was like a creature howling through the night. It had frightened him so much: he had clung to Ima’s back while she wrapped her arms around his sister and held her like that for hours. Until he went numb and had to move.

  Before the war one of the prisoners, Frau Shlain, had been a nurse, and she tended to the girls and listened to their stories.

  Two days after she had been taken and did not come back, one of the other girls had described something shocking to the Frau. The girl had explained how The Wolf had laughed as he explained his wish to test the theory that Jews were the greater vermin and would perish quicker than a rat.

  They had given Elza rat poison.

  At that stage she could hardly eat anything, but The Wolf’s men had forced the rat poison into her twisted mouth.

  The girl had said that The Wolf sat beside Elza and stroked her hair, saying he was sorry that she was now so ugly that no one would ever want her. He had explained to Johan’s dying sister that he couldn’t possibly let such a beautiful girl tempt him any longer, and that was why he had sent her to the Frying Room.

  Then, The Wolf and his soldiers had taken bets while they watched her die with the rats.

  Ima had never been the same since. Her composure had disintegrated into a mixture of fear and hatred, and now she spent all her time praying for either salvation or retribution, sometimes both.

  A disgusted mutter sliced through the shadowy gloom, a testimony that the same thoughts were in all of their minds: ‘Can you imagine what other wagers they make on our poor girls?’<
br />
  Most of the women moaned to themselves, rocking back and forth and curling their arms over their heads or hugging themselves to try and stop the fear. Some would bite down on their jaw until their lips were bloodied.

  ‘Shh!’ Johan swivelled back to his spying position. His mouth set in a grim line with his jaw tense.

  Late one night, when Johan had whispered to Ima, asking how his sister hadn’t died from all the beatings, she had encouraged him to listen to his inner spirit and speak with it, as that would keep him going.

  She had said something strange. That people are not their bodies. Their bodies only house their soul, their inner spirit.

  After Elza’s ashes had been swept up, Ima had made Johan promise that he would be one with his spirit and control his thoughts until he was greater than their captors. Only then, like those stronger prisoners, would his deeper essence keep him alive.

  Without telling Ima, he had started talking to his spirit, but only deep inside himself where nobody could hear the words. He had told his spirit that he didn’t want to think of Elza anymore, it hurt too much. It was easier to hide her far away, deep down inside where he could lock away his sadness in a box with her memories. Although he wanted to, he could not tell this to Ima, so only his spirit knew.

  Grinding his teeth, Johan leaned forward, his neck stiff. Worry over Ima stabbed at him. The approaching guns told him a change was coming. He needed to be prepared, so he had to know what The Wolf was planning. Johan knew he was taking a chance spying on The Wolf, but what else could he do?

  Resting his hand on the cold, abrasive stone ledge, Johan again imagined the smooth fuselage of his Kellerman aeroplane under his fingers. Picturing the toy aeroplane as his own warplane was one way of staying alive.