A Way Through the Sea Read online

  Henrik was balancing now on the low wall of the bridge leading across the moat to the castle.

  “As you wish, my dear fellow pigeon trainers,” he said to them, starting to get silly. He did a low stage bow from the top of the wall to his only audience. Since the war had started, there weren’t any tourists around. But the Germans had insisted that since everything was “normal,” this castle would remain open as usual.

  “O Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo?” Now Henrik was really getting into it.

  “Wrong play, Henrik,” Elise corrected him. “This is Hamlet’s castle, remember? Not Romeo and Juliet.”

  “Oh, yeah. Well, at least I got the Shakespeare part right.”

  He did get the Shakespeare part right. Shakespeare wasn’t Danish, but he wrote about Hamlet, the Prince of Denmark, in one of his famous plays. The castle was his home and the setting for the play. Mr. Isaksen, the boys’ teacher, told them they would read the play probably next year.

  “So what are we going to write on the bird’s note?” asked Henrik, hopping down. The note was going to Grandfather; Elise had talked him into checking on the birds. They might come in at about the same time, but one of them was bound to win. And Peter had already clipped a little metal capsule on Number Two’s tiny leg, the kind of message holder that screwed apart. It was just big enough to fit a little note inside. Mr. Andersen had ordered it from Copenhagen, from a place that made pet supplies, leashes and collars, cages, bird stuff.

  “I have an idea,” said Peter. “How about let’s write `Help. Locked in the castle with Holger the Dane. Can’t find Hamlet. Can’t wake him up. Henrik, Peter, and Elise.’ “

  “That doesn’t make sense,” said Elise. “Where’s Hamlet supposed to be?”

  “Just a joke, Elise,” said Peter.

  “Well, scratch the part about Hamlet, and it will make more sense,” suggested Henrik.

  “Okay, okay,” agreed Peter. He thought Henrik was always agreeing with his sister. But he pulled a pencil stub from his pocket and started writing the message on a scrap of paper. Elise held Number Two, who squirmed a little, while Henrik checked the little strap around the bird’s leg to make sure it was on tight. All set.

  Next Henrik carefully pulled his own bird out of the wicker basket, stroking him softly as he did. These birds were getting a workout lately. Elise pulled out Number Three, who was thrashing around a little more than the other two.

  “Ready?” asked Peter as they looked over each bird. No feathers missing or anything. “On the count of three. One, two, three!”

  This was the part Peter liked the best, when the birds flew out of their hands, and he could hear their wings clapping and whistling as they flew a few happy circles above. The three birds weaved in and out of the castle’s towers, over the water for a moment, then straight back to their home just across town.

  “I still can’t figure out how they always know the way,” said Henrik as he looked off in the direction the birds had taken.

  “A book I was reading said they have some kind of built in compass,” said Elise. “Plus they can tell where they’re going by the way the sun is.”

  “Hmm... the sun,” said Henrik. “You’re always reading something, aren’t you?”

  “Yeah, well, let’s go see who won this race,” said Peter. He wasn’t sure about internal compasses; he was just eager for the rematch. Maybe Number Two would make it home first this time.

  “What’s your hurry?” asked Henrik. “Let’s not rush today. It’s still early, and it’s Sunday, right?”

  So the three of them pedaled the long way around—the same way Henrik and Peter had gone the day before, only in the opposite direction. Elise wasn’t quite as fast a pedaler, but she kept up pretty well. Peter saw the ocean through the trees for a moment as they made their way along the shore road. They hadn’t gone more than five minutes, though, when Elise slammed on her brakes. Her tires squirmed and complained, and she nearly lost her balance.

  “Hey, wait, you guys,” she yelled. “I saw something!”

  Henrik and Peter circled around, and they all took a closer look at what appeared to be a bicycle tire hidden in the bushes. It was a tire, all right, attached to the rest of a bike. Uncle Morten’s bike.

  “Are you sure it’s your uncle’s?” asked Henrik.

  “Positive.” Peter pointed to the little light on the front fender. “He keeps it in the boathouse. I’d know it anywhere. But I don’t know why he would ride it out here.”

  “Maybe it’s stolen,” Elise suggested. “Maybe the thief stashed it here in these bushes, and he’s coming back for it.”

  Henrik found a rough path that led from the side of the road and into the woods. It started right at the bush where the bike had been stashed. Peter looked at Elise, who kind of shrugged her shoulders. Without saying anything more, they pushed the bike back into the bush, parked their own bikes behind another bush, and started down the path.

  The three of them had explored this area before, but Peter couldn’t remember exactly if this trail led straight to the beach or if it just wandered through the woods.

  “What do we do if we find a thief in the woods?” Peter was in the lead and turned to whisper to Henrik behind him. They almost collided.

  “Here, let me go first,” said Henrik as he stepped past Peter. Henrik was usually the first one at school to stand up to bullies, or score a goal in soccer, or climb to the top of the school building to fetch a lost ball. He was also the first one in the neighborhood to break his leg falling out of a tree, and he got into more of that kind of trouble than anyone, mostly from all the crazy ideas he came up with. Not smart aleck trouble, just getting into things trouble.

  Peter? He was the one who could get the pigeons to perch on his shoulder and eat out of his hand, the one with the stamp collection, the one who liked to draw pictures of airplanes. Maybe he wasn’t as smart as his twin sister, but he was the one who usually figured how to get out of the trouble they got into, like the time they were going to raise and sell hamsters. (He shuddered every time he thought about that one.)

  Mostly, Peter didn’t mind being in the middle. The way he looked at it, he, Henrik, and Elise were all just good at different things. Elise was reading long chapter books when she was only six years old, and she could cook practically anything their mom could. The year before she had won a prize at the school science fair for her experiment with plants, and she was the best piano player in the school. But between the three of them, there was no doubt: Henrik was definitely best at leading the way on a trail like this.

  The path twisted down through a dense stand of trees and bushes, and the branches whipped at their arms and legs as they passed through. Overhead, silvery beech trees formed a canopy, and the sun only broke through in splinters. If Peter hadn’t been so worried about running into a thief in the woods, he would have enjoyed it.

  Suddenly Henrik froze and signaled with his hand to the others. Peter could see nothing but heard voices up ahead. Two voices. One of them was Uncle Morten’s, but he wasn’t speaking in Danish.

  “It’s just my uncle,” Peter whispered into Henrik’s ear. “No thief.” So they tiptoed around a bend in the trail and stood awkwardly at the edge of a clearing.

  The Swedish man standing next to Uncle Morten was short and dressed like a fisherman in boots and gray work clothes. Uncle Morten towered over him, light haired like Peter and Elise, but large, well built, and bearded. He stopped what he was saying in midsentence, looked up, and stuffed an envelope into his shirt.

  “Hi, Uncle Morten.” Peter tried to sound casual. “We saw your bike in the bushes by the side of the road, and we weren’t sure. We just came in to see if there was a thief in here or anything.”

  “Oh, hi, kids.” Uncle Morten took a breath, looking normal again. The fisherman still didn’t look so sure. “You kind of caught me off guard there for a minute.” Then he saw that they were staring at the other man. “Olaf, this is my nephew Peter, my
niece Elise, and their friend Henrik. They’re fine.”

  Peter thought that was a strange thing to say. What else—are we supposed to be sick or something? But before he could wonder anymore, the Swede was gone. Peter didn’t know if his uncle knew they had heard him talking in Swedish with the other man.

  “Here, I have to go back to town,” said Uncle Morten. “Is that the way you kids were going?” He was doing his best to sound cheery, but he looked embarrassed about the other man. Peter wasn’t sure why. “I’ll ride back with you—that is, if my bike is still there.” Henrik hadn’t said a word, and Elise was quiet, too.

  Uncle Morten led the way back up the trail toward the road and their bikes. Peter was still wondering who this Olaf was when Henrik held him back for a second, grabbing his arm.

  “I saw something else,” he whispered hoarsely into Peter’s ear.

  Peter just looked at him with his “What next?” expression.

  “Right as we were coming up the path, I saw your uncle giving that Swedish guy a lot of money. A lot of money! The guy was counting it when we walked up.”

  Elise, who was following Uncle Morten at a distance, turned around and frowned at Peter and Henrik. She made a “Be quiet!” sign with her finger on her lips.

  Whatever it all meant, Uncle Morten never volunteered any explanations, at least not for a while. No one said much on the ride back to the boathouse—maybe because they were wondering about the mysterious Swede—and Uncle Morten seemed content to stare straight ahead as he rode. In fact, no one said a word until they pulled up to the door of the little shack. No one seemed in a hurry, either, and they carefully leaned their bikes against the outside wall by the door.

  When they peeked inside, Grandfather told them Number Three had won that time, which made Elise grin real big. That must have been all she wanted to know because without a word she turned around, took her bike by the handlebars, and started off. For once not wanting to stay around the boathouse, Henrik and Peter followed her.

  “Bye, Uncle Morten. Bye, Grandpa,” called Peter.

  “See you later, kids,” came Uncle Morten’s voice from inside the shed.

  The three walked their bikes in silence, not knowing what else to do with the day. “Oh well,” said Peter, trying to think of a joke as they headed toward home. They were tired of riding, and disappointed at the way things had turned out with Uncle Morten. “At least Number Two came in second this time.”

  But what was Uncle Morten doing in the woods? Peter thought again as he pushed his bike past a pothole in the street. Henrik and Elise said nothing more.

  The Wind Changes

  5

  Peter, Elise, and Henrik spent a lot of time down at Grandfather Andersen’s boathouse the rest of the summer, but when they ran into Uncle Morten, no one ever mentioned their meeting in the woods. Peter’s uncle didn’t act differently, though, probably because he hadn’t realized how much the three had seen. Peter decided that since he couldn’t really figure it out, he wouldn’t think about it anymore, and he tried not to let it bother him. But Henrik brought it up again one afternoon when they were starting a paint job on a little rowboat inside the shed.

  Elise had managed to find a couple old cans of paint and had poured one called “Gunmetal Gray"—mostly hard with chunks of dried paint—into a larger, older can of something called “Easter Lily Yellow.” Then she skimmed off the top with a rag and carefully stirred the lumpy new blend. The boys grinned when they saw the ugly awful color it made.

  “A new discovery,” Grandfather told them as he left on an errand with Elise. They had to pick up some supplies for Grandfather’s fishing boat. “You should call it `Dead Lily.’ “

  So Peter crawled underneath the upside down boat with a little coffee can full of Dead Lily while Henrik painted the top. It seemed like a good idea at the time. They worked quietly for a while before Henrik said something.

  “I’ve been thinking,” he announced.

  “Yeah?” replied Peter, afraid of what his friend might say. “About what?”

  “About your uncle.” Henrik was serious. “And I’ve got it figured out. He’s either a big time gambler, or a bank robber, or he’s in the Resistance.”

  Peter thought his friend sounded as if he had just solved the perfect crime.

  “Come on, Henrik,” said Peter. “You know my uncle’s not a crook. He and my grandfather are the only ones in the family who go to church, besides when everyone goes on Easter and Christmas.”

  “So what about him being in the Underground, the Resistance?”

  “What does that have to do with throwing around a lot of money?”

  “I don’t know,” said Henrik. “But you know the other guy was Swedish. We both heard them talking in the woods that day. Elise, too. Maybe it was Underground business. Payment for smuggling sabotage people over to Sweden or something.”

  Peter thought about it for a minute. His uncle in the Underground? That was a growing group of people who were fighting back against the Germans—blowing up factories and that sort of thing. The Underground’s secret mission was to make it as hard for the German invaders as they could. One of the groups called themselves “The Helsingor Sewing Club,” a cover name Peter liked. It was dangerous and serious, but they were the country’s heroes, really. The only thing was, no one knew who they were, it was so secret.

  “We’ll have to ask the Brain what she thinks about it when she gets back,” said Henrik.

  “Okay, maybe, but I don’t think she knows any more than we do. She hasn’t talked about it.”

  Just then Dead Lily dripped through a crack in the boat, square onto Peter’s nose, and then onto the rest of his face. Henrik didn’t even notice. And because Henrik was standing right next to the boat, his legs kept Peter from rolling out of the way.

  “Hey!” Peter yelled up from under the boat. “You’re getting Dead Lily all over me!” He shoved Henrik’s leg as hard as he could and wriggled out from under the boat like an inchworm in high gear. Henrik made a little hop to get his balance, came down sideways on his foot, and crashed right on top of Peter.

  That’s when the rest of the paint found them. As Henrik fell, he swept his arm wide, caught the side of the coffee can full of Dead Lily, and sent it showering all over. They lay there in a heap, dripping with yellowish gray paint.

  “You look ridiculous,” said Peter, getting up. He was wondering whether to laugh, cry, or throw the rest of the can at Henrik.

  “Looks kind of pretty on you, Peter.” Henrik was the one with the sense of humor, the one who found a joke in everything. “Matches your light hair.” He made a funny face, puckering up his fish lips as he got up and looked for a rag.

  “Cut it out, Henrik,” sputtered Peter, by this time disgusted at the whole mess. “Your mom is going to kill you for this.”

  “Yeah? So’s your mom,” he came back. Henrik had paint splattered on his dark hair, his face, and all over his clothes.

  Peter wondered how they were going to get all the paint off. He started to say something, then he giggled and it was all over. He gave up trying to be mad. The two of them couldn’t stop laughing. They were still laughing when Grandfather and Elise came back.

  She gasped, and Grandfather stopped before he had the door all the way open. His big, wide shoulders almost looked as if they wouldn’t fit through the doorway. Grandfather used to be a sailor, and he still seemed young like one, even with his wrinkled face.

  Peter and Henrik sneaked a glance at him, waiting for him to say something. Henrik was still snorting and giggling, and Peter felt pretty silly.

  “Well,” Grandfather finally cleared his throat, not moving from the doorway. He pulled at his chin and tried to look mean. “I can see you two have really mastered the technique, haven’t you?” He walked over to his workbench, brought out a couple of rags from a box below, and tossed them over to the boys. “There’s a little bit of paint thinner in the can by the window,” he said, pointing over at a shelf.
“But don’t use more than a cupful. You’ll need it for real painting. Clean up the floor when you’re done with yourselves.”

  Peter knew that gasoline was precious, with the German troops taking most everything the Danes had. Paint thinner being kind of like gas, it must have been stashed away from since before the war started. So Peter was surprised when Grandfather hadn’t been angrier. The old man only returned to the pump he was taking apart on the workbench. He was even chuckling to himself.

  Peter turned to Henrik, who was rubbing off paint with a thinner soaked rag.

  “Don’t worry,” said Henrik, scrubbing at a spot on his neck. “I only spilled a little can. It could have been a lot worse. And besides,” he added with a smile, “you were the one who made me fall.”

  Peter was about to clobber him with his paintbrush when Elise came over with another rag and helped them scrub up a little more.

  “I can’t believe you two made such a mess,” she said in her best motherly tone. Peter had seen her catch the worst dirt plenty of times. But this time, she had stayed clear of every paint speck.

  “Thanks, Mom,” he teased. “I needed that.”

  She threw the rag at him, but he ducked and it hit Henrik square in the face.

  “Bull’s eye!” shouted Peter, forgetting for a minute that Grandfather was still around.

  Henrik must have forgotten, too, because he whooped and pitched the rag straight back at Elise. But now Peter was in the line of fire, and it hit him on the back of the head.

  “Hey, no fair,” said Peter.

  By then Grandfather was getting annoyed. “All right, that’s enough, you kids. Clean up and get out now. Your mother wants you back soon for dinner, anyway.”

  “Oh, yeah,” added Elise. “I forgot to tell you. We stopped at home on the way over here, and dinner’s going to be ready in fifteen minutes. You two better get cleaned up in a hurry.” She picked up the rag carefully between two fingers and tossed it at Peter while wrinkling her nose. “I wonder why I still hang around with two boys who throw paint at each other.”