Those conversations continued late into the night, long after they thought I was asleep, and those were the moments when I realized that something about my father’s work had begun to make Mama nervous. “All of this is for Audra’s sake” was always Papa’s answer. “We’re supposed to keep our heads down and obey their laws,” Mama said whenever my father broached the question then she’d steal a glance at me. What were we supposed to do against such a vast empire?

Lithuanians disagreed, of course, but we were a small country of farmers and simple peasant folk. Our country was occupied by Cossack soldiers from Russia, the empire that claimed Lithuania as its own. My parents had often explained that as their reason for keeping me on our little farm. But do not travel like him, that’s not for you.”

“You can be like him in other ways,” Mama often said on the nights Papa was gone. By now, I could, of course-I’d seen every trick a hundred times and could do many of them myself, but never in public, never like him. I loved to sit at Papa’s feet by the fire, watching him prepare for his shows, letting him test his tricks on me to see if I could guess the secrets. Those times were special, but nothing replaced the moments when we were all together. Since Papa’s work took him away so often, she found ways to fill our home with the smells of fried sweet bread, with the music she sang as we worked the garden, and with her tender good-night kisses on my cheek. The girl who wanted to be more than she was but knew such a thing would be the kind of magic even my father couldn’t achieve. Instead, I was the girl who ducked into the shadows when we had visitors, the girl who watched life from afar but rarely participated. How I wished I could be more like him, bold and adventurous, always ready with a joke or a story. He was born with tricks and effects and a talent to share them with others, delighting audiences wherever he traveled. Not real magic, of course-I knew magic wasn’t real-but if it ever might have been, then it was inside my father’s quick hands and lively voice. No matter what was ahead, I could not stop now. I redoubled my grip on the sacks slung over my shoulder, braced myself against the wind coming at me, and continued down the path. Which left me perfectly free to do everything I could to defy the Russian occupiers. So I avoided saying my name in public, but I often wondered: If my language was forbidden, then my name was forbidden. If the soldiers we passed on the roads heard us speaking it, we could be whipped on the spot or arrested. In my language, Lithuanian, it means storm.īut my language had become illegal.

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Words on Fire by Jennifer A. Nielsen