Free While the World Is Still Asleep (The Century Trilogy Book 1) by Petra Durst-Benning

to the Black Forest. The smoke that spiraled from the chimneys and dissipated in the winter air smelled of pine needles.
    Josephine stopped and gazed at one particularly stately house. No doubt a family was gathered peacefully inside . . . A gentle longing tugged at her. How was her family doing? Had Clara made the same pretty paper angels she had made the year before? And who was helping Frieda carry in the wood for her fire now that Josephine wasn’t there to do it for her?
    Hitching up her skirts, Josephine marched on toward the forest. She still had to stop occasionally on the steep slopes until her coughing subsided. Despite all her outings and the good Black Forest food and all the peace and quiet she enjoyed in Schömberg, her cough had not noticeably improved. Dr. Homburger now frowned in vague annoyance whenever he saw her, as if it were her fault that she had not yet recovered. But no one was more annoyed about it than Josephine herself.
    She had just reached the first trees when she heard a crunching sound somewhere to her left. This was quickly followed by a swish and a grating crashing noise. Then a large shadow shot past so close that Josephine felt a rush of air as it passed.
    A second later, the speeding shadow tumbled to the ground a few yards away.
    Josephine gazed at the scene in shock: a young woman, her skirt disheveled, her face twisted in pain, lay bare-legged beside some kind of contraption made of wheels and metal rods.
    “What in the world is that?”
    But all she got in reply was a moan.
    “Are you hurt? Can I help?” Josephine ran down to the young woman, who looked to be about Josephine’s age, and tentatively reached out her hand. She had hair the color of wheat, which, now that she had lost her wool cap, fell in a tangle over her stunned face.
    “It’s all right,” the girl groaned as she slowly pulled herself together and clambered to her feet. “It’s not the first time I’ve fallen off. I just hope nothing’s happened to the velocipede.”
    “The . . . what?”
    “The velocipede. It belongs to Mr. Braun.”
    Josephine nodded, grateful for a piece of information that she could begin to understand.
    “Mr. Braun is a businessman who comes here a few times a year. He doesn’t just own the bicycle, he also owns the yellow house with the wrought-iron balcony, the last house on the street. You must have walked right past it. My father looks after the place when Mr. Braun’s not here. I took the opportunity to borrow his velo,” the girl explained as she pulled the strange machine up by one of its metal rods and scrutinized it thoroughly.
    The thing that the girl had first called a velocipede and then a bicycle consisted of a curved, tubular-steel bar to which a seat was attached. It had two wheels, with the front wheel somewhat larger than the one at the back. Both wheels were considerably narrower than the wheels of a coach. They looked more like the wheels on the handcart of the milkman who plied his wares in Josephine’s neighborhood back in Berlin. It looked very strange . . .
    “The bicycle survived the crash just fine, and I’m not hurt. What about you?”
    Josephine spread her arms out as if to say, no harm done .
    The girl sighed with relief. “Thank God for that! If I’d crashed into you . . . But I couldn’t have known that someone would be walking around here, and the bicycle doesn’t have a brake, unfortunately. What are you doing out in the woods by yourself? You’re staying at the sanatorium, aren’t you? I’ve seen you marching through our village a few times now. I wanted to catch up and have a little chat, but you’d always disappeared by the time I got outside.”
    Josephine smiled and introduced herself.
    “Jo? From Berlin? I thought so. You’re the girl my great-aunt Frieda sent down here.” The young woman tossed her hair, which just made it stand out even more wildly from her head. “I’m Lieselotte, but everyone just calls me