Free Liesl & Po by Lauren Oliver Page A

perched in the bright, empty air with nothing to hold her.
    “Where to?” Po asked Liesl.
    They needed to find the train station, Liesl knew, because trains led out of the city of Dirge, to places of willow trees and lakes. Her head was full of birds. She pictured the men she had often watched from her window, striding toward the city center, their greatcoats flapping behind them like crow wings. Important men going important places, carried back and forth by great, chugging trains. She imagined them in her head; she mentally retraced their footsteps.
    “This way,” she said to Po, and pointed.
    Bundle led the way, followed by Po. When the two ghosts had already crossed the street and melted into the shadows on the other side, Liesl found that her legs still wouldn’t move. She thought, Forward! She thought, Jump! But nothing happened.
    Po, noticing that Liesl was still standing there, frozen, returned to her.
    “What are you waiting for?” the ghost asked.
    “I—” At the last second, Liesl could not tell Po she was scared. “I forgot to say thank you,” she said finally.
    Po flickered. “Thank you?” it repeated. “What is that?”
    Liesl thought. “It means, You were wonderful ,” she said. “It means, I couldn’t have done it without you .”
    “Okay,” Po said, and began skimming away again.
    “Wait!” Liesl reached out to take the ghost’s hand and felt her fingers close on empty air. She giggled a little. “Oops.”
    “What is it now?” The ghost was barely controlling its temper.
    Liesl let out another snorting laugh and covered her mouth to stifle the sound. “I wanted your help crossing the street,” she said. “I keep forgetting you aren’t real.”
    “I’m real,” Po said, bristling. “I’m as real as you are.”
    “Don’t be mad,” Liesl pleaded, and as Po floated off, she put one foot in front of the other without even noticing it. Step, step, step. “ You know what I mean.”
    “I just don’t have a body. Neither does wind or lightning, but they’re real .”
    “It’s only an expression, Po.” Liesl had crossed the street. “Sheesh.”
    “Light doesn’t have a body,” Po continued, and up ahead, Bundle yipped and skipped and turned full circles in the air. “Music doesn’t have a body, but that’s real. . . .”
    “For someone with no body, you’re very touchy , you know.”
    A lone guard, returning from a long, cold shift at the residence of the Lady Premiere, heard voices and, pausing at the entrance to his building, saw a pretty girl carrying a knapsack and a wooden box, babbling happily to herself while beside her shadows shifted and swayed.
    The guard thought, Such a shame, when madness strikes in one so young. But that’s the way of the world now. And then he stepped inside and closed the door.
    The girl and her ghost-friend continued down the street, moving toward the center of the city, arguing, while Bundle slipped and slid and floated beside them.
    They argued and walked, walked and argued, and got farther away from Highland Avenue, and #31, and the attic.
    Perhaps that was how the sparrows did it too; perhaps they were looking so hard at the peaks and tips of the new rooftops coated with dew, and the vast new horizon, that they only forgot that they did not know how to fly until they were already in midair.

Chapter Twelve

    MO DID NOT GIVE MUCH THOUGHT TO THE PRETTY, babbling girl he had seen in the street. He was distracted.
    Even after he had climbed the stairs to his apartment, and removed his coat, and changed into his warm thermal pajamas, and released Lefty from the fabric sling he used to carry her back and forth to work, and poured her a saucer of warm milk—even then, he could not stop thinking about the small, hatless alchemist’s assistant with the chattering teeth.
    Mo often felt his brain was like a big tin can, mostly full of air. Ideas tended to bounce around aimlessly there, clattering and making a lot of noise. Causes got