Free Wolfsangel by Liza Perrat

mocking creature.
    When we’d gathered the last of the apples and pears we lugged the great saucepans into the kitchen, where Sabine and the children began placing the better fruit in trays.
    ‘Separate each one,’ Maman ordered, ‘so the rot won’t spread.’ Her face grim, she set about storing the rest in the cellar for making chutney, jam and pies, and her tart pear liqueur.
    The fruit episode over, the Wolfs trundled back up to the attic, and Maman exchanged her stained apron for a clean one. Patrick appeared in the kitchen and began stuffing bread and slices of cured ham into his bag.
    ‘Going out on another coup?’ I said, following him outside, and down to the courtyard. ‘Where is it tonight?’
    ‘A factory,’ my brother said, the vein in his temple flickering as he strapped the bag to the back of his bicycle. ‘But I’ve told you, best stay out of it, then nobody can force information out of you … especially not that Boche officer.’ He dragged his beret over his ears and swung a leg over the bicycle.
    ‘He won’t get a thing out of me,’ I said, waving as he disappeared down the hill into the twilight. ‘Keep safe.’
    As night fell, and I snuffed out my bedside candle, I knew I would barely sleep. How much longer would Patrick and Olivier get away with these sabotage attacks? Were the police arresting them that very moment? I kicked the sheet off my clammy body, sick with the thought of the Gestapo marching them away, handcuffed.
    I got up and stared from the window at the crowd of stars burning in the navy bowl of sky. The shadow of a clutch of oak leaves mottled the moon, and the silence was absolute, as if all of Lucie had sunk into a mournful kind of sleep.
    As the church bell chimed midnight, the moonlight outlined the figure of my brother crossing the courtyard. They were safe. One more storm averted, and one more success for our resistors.
    Patrick’s step creaked on the middle stair and I lapsed into a restless sleep.

10
    ‘Célestine, Patrick!’ Maman’s shrill voice cut up the stairs, jolting me from sleep as if she’d shaken me. ‘This farm won’t run on its own.’
    I groaned, stumbled from my bed, and threw the shutters open onto the cold dawn. I breathed in the heavy autumn smell of ripeness and decay –– the scent of the Harvest Festival.
    The crops harvested in summer and the last pears and apples picked, we looked forward to relaxing and enjoying ourselves at the festival. But with the summer drought, the autumn storms and the miserable harvest –– not to mention the occupation –– there seemed little to celebrate.
    However, it was a week since Patrick and Olivier’s Resistance coup at that factory so we all assumed the boys were safe, which was good enough reason to celebrate.
    I dashed water over my face, threw on my dress, emptied my night chamber pot and joined Maman and Patrick at the kitchen table. 
    ‘Hurry along, Célestine,’ my mother said, spreading strawberry jam on her bread –– the only fruit in abundance that year, maturing before the drought. ‘Have you forgotten the festival?’
    ‘ Oh là là ,’ I said. ‘As if I’d forget one of the few days of the year when something actually happens around here.’
    ‘You might stop moping about like some underpaid farmhand then,’ Maman said, pouring a dash of her eau-de-vie into the ersatz coffee that tasted like dishwater, and which we called café Pétain .
    ‘Underpaid? I’m not paid at all. And I don’t see why I can’t be more than a simple farmhand; do something different like … like Félicité.’ I tore off a hunk of bread, slapped on strawberry jam, and crammed it into my mouth.
    ‘Are you mad, girl?’ Maman shrieked, rising from the table and carrying her plate to the sink. ‘As if they’d let you into a convent.’
    ‘I didn’t say I wanted to be a nun. All I want is to finish school and get a proper job, so I can ––’
    ‘Don’t speak with your mouth full,’