Free In the Claws of the Eagle by Aubrey Flegg

whispered.
    The old man bent even closer. ‘The Jews’, he whispered in his ear.
     

    Erich stopped on the stairs to listen, his pyjamas cold on his shoulders. No one had heard his scream. He had woken in a sweat. Mr Solomons had been cutting up people with scissors and mixing the pieces in a drink for mother. Could Mr Solomons really be trying to poison her? He could hear Grandpa snoring and was glad; this was something Erich wanted to investigate on his own. He had never understood his mother’s paintings, but if she was happy, he was happy. He took a deep breath and turned into the sitting room where there was a row of them propped up against the wall. He approached them suspiciously and began to move methodically down the line.
    Some were very simple, just lines and blocks of colour; he felt safe with these, and began to wonder what the fuss was about. All these were the elite, the few that had survived Sabine’s frequent over-painting and scraping-out of old canvasses. They were in many styles, mostly abstract, shapes and colours that were meaningless to Erich. It was just as he thought – her playthings – nothing even as meaningful as his Wiener schnitzel . He had reached the end of the line and was about to go, when out of the corner of his eye, one of the pictures appeared to move.
    He whipped around. Nothing. He was sure though. He had seen a person move! He turned away slowly and there it was! Out of the corner of his eye there was a person that had not been there before. He turned back, careful not to lose the image. It was a girl dancing, head thrown back. How had he missed her? Now, as he looked down the line of painting, he realised that there were more. Not moving, that had been an illusion, but people and faces, and possibly places, emerging and fading as his eyes moved from picture to picture. Some of the pictures gave him feelings of sadness.
    ‘Poor Mother,’ he murmured, as his eight-year-old mind unwittingly revealed the pain his mother had so successfully concealed from the world. He moved slowly, falteringly, back down the line. Here was one he could hardly look at now: a seascape or a troubled sky? Then suddenly out of the tormented blues his father’s face emerged, cyanose, as Erich had seen it one time when his heart was bad. The image went and he could not see it again. Feeling shaken, he arrived at the end of the line. The last canvas had been turned to face the wall. Erich turned it and looked at it curiously; it was easier, much more realistic than the others, a gnarled tree covered in ivy. He knelt to prop it up, and then nearly reeled back as the ivy seemed to burst apart in his face, and there was Grandpa Veit, his face staring out at him. Erich dropped the picture back against the wall and covered his eyes.
    What evil magic was this? What spell was Mother under that made her paint these terrifying things? Still half covering his eyes, he ran for the door and nearly straight into Grandpa Veit who stood blocking his way, spindle-shanked in his nightshirt. Erich staggered to a stop and stood, waiting for a blow to the head or a blast of the old man’s anger, but none came. To his amazement, his grandfather began speaking to him seriously, as if talking to a young soldier just back from patrol.
    ‘So you have seen it, have you? You have been looking into the heart of darkness, boy. The pure apple infected by the worm. The Rhine Maiden sings, but the worm has the ring. Who will be our Siegfried, Erich, where are our heroes?’
    Grandpa had told him the Siegfried saga at great length, even so, Erich had only the vaguest idea of what the Rhine Maidens were, except that they must be beautiful, and that Siegfried was a hero of heroes. But Veit had seized Erich by the shoulders. ‘We have work to do, lad. Not only have we an empire to recover, but a race to save.’
    The words and the passion behind them stirred Erich like the rousing music that would boom out from Grandpa Veit’s hissing