“Who made up this torture?” Birdie slid her sneaker across the dirt floor of the… what was it?
A classroom, she supposed.
But it was unlike any classroom she’d been in before. For starters, it was enormous, with windowless stone walls that climbed three stories to an arched ceiling overhead. The air was cold and damp, and what meager light there was puddled under electric wall sconces that flickered like candles.
Besides, it was summer, thank you very much. She shouldn’t be in a classroom at all.
She rolled her eyes toward the sky, which had to be out there somewhere beyond the thick stones, blue and cloudless, the last of the morning rain chased off by an eager wind.
“I cannot believe this is happening.” She slipped her pack from her shoulders and dug for her jacket. She wasn’t sure whether to laugh or cry.
“Oh, it is happening.”
The voice cracked behind her, making her jump and nearly drop the pack. She hugged it close as a teenage boy marched past, clipboard in hand.
He was older, with blond hair and brown eyes that were set too close together in his gaunt face. His crisp shorts and a button-down shirt made him look like a walking ad for private school.
Where had he come from?
She scanned the room but saw only the medieval doors at the top of the stairs. A few minutes earlier, the woman from the ticket kiosk had used a skeleton key to unlock one of them, shown her inside, and then left, allowing the wooden door to drift closed with a thud, taking the sunshine with it.
Had he been hiding in the shadows?
“Come,” he said, the word clipped and accented with German. “Follow me.”
Birdie didn’t move. “Where are we going?”
He raised a brow.
“And who are you?” she asked.
His straight shoulders slumped.
“We are going just there.” He pointed across the cavernous room to a rough-hewn table that stretched nearly half its length. Skinny chairs lined both sides.
Empty skinny chairs.
As if signing her up for history camp at a ruined fortress in middle-of-nowhere Germany wasn’t bad enough, her mother had dropped her off early.
She willed the dirt floor to split open and swallow her whole.
“My name is Friedrich. I am head counselor of Camp Rheinfels.” He clicked on a penlight at the top of his clipboard and skimmed a sheet of paper. “There will be others, of course. They will arrive soon. Because you are early, you can begin by sorting the costumes.”
“Wait. Did you say… costumes?”
Friedrich nodded once, crisply, but didn’t look up. “Yes. But first, your name, please?”
“Birdie Blessing.”
He glanced up from the clipboard then, lifting his eyes just enough to see if she was messing with him.
She recognized the look.
A name like Birdie always got looks.
His gaze was sharp as he took in her long dark hair, her hazel eyes, and her height, which was shorter than his by more than half a foot.
He must have determined she was serious because he twisted his lips and returned to his clipboard. He ran a mechanical pencil along the list of names on the sheet of paper. “Yes, here you are. The last one. Did you sign up just now?”
“Apparently.”
“Age?”
“Fifteen.”
He scratched it on the paper. “State?”
“Uh, Pennsylvania?”
He nodded, jotting again. Then he used the pencil tip to point to a pile of fabric at the far end of the table. “Start there. You must separate the costumes into types – dresses, pants, shirts, vests, aprons. There may be a bit of chainmail. I will return shortly.”
He clicked off the penlight, then sprinted up the stone staircase. When he reached the top, he used both hands to open one of the heavy doors just enough to slink through.
Birdie caught a flash of blue sky and sunshine before the door thudded shut again, leaving the sconces as the only source of light.
A shiver ran up her spine as her eyes readjusted to the gloom.
What had this room been?
Did she even want to know?
She tried to visualize the map she’d seen in her mom’s tour book, Marty McEntire’s Europe for Americans Travel Guide.
Not the dungeon.
No, that had been on the other side of the fortress.
She turned in a slow circle, attempting to get her bearings. She’d been too mad about getting shuffled off to camp to take in the scenery on the drive up the hill. And once her mom dropped her off, she’d been ushered unceremoniously down here without so much as a “Guten Morgen.”
Not that it had been a Guten Morgen anyway.
In fact, the Morgen had pretty much stank.
The morning had dawned gray as rain pelted the windows of their room, which was on the top floor of the family-run Hotel Flussufer overlooking the Rhine River. They’d overslept, and she’d had to hustle to shower and dress before the proprietor stopped serving breakfast in the restaurant downstairs.
“This is different,” she whispered as she slid into a chair across from her mom and set down a bowl of cereal she’d collected from the buffet, where yogurt, pastries, and cereal shared space with lunchmeat, cheese, salmon, dinner rolls, and hard-boiled eggs.
Her mom nodded as she speared a sliver of cold salami with her fork. She appeared refreshed for once, relaxed and comfortable in a T-shirt and jeans. She’d pulled her highlighted hair into a messy bun and brushed on just the right amount of makeup to draw attention to her eyes, which were hazel like Birdie’s.
They were tucked into a tiny table in the restaurant, which ran the length of the hotel’s enclosed front porch and had tall windows that showcased the dreary morning. Despite a full house, the room was quiet. No music played, and the few conversations taking place were quick and hushed. Birdie noticed one other family with two kids about her age, but everyone else appeared to be well past retirement.
She thought back to the lively discussions they’d had at the communal table at the bed-and-breakfast they’d stayed at in Bruges. That had been their first stop on this summer-long trip through Europe. She’d met a boy named Ben at that table, along with his Uncle Noah, and an elderly couple – Harry and Helga – from Ohio. The caring owner, Mrs. Devon, had cooked omelets and bacon for breakfast, and they’d all eaten together and shared stories like a family.
That breakfast room had been lively, warm. In comparison, this place felt like a heavy, cold blanket.
The hotel’s proprietor was a man named Herr Mueller, who had a pale face and a deeply receding hairline. He was working his way from table to table with a carafe of coffee, speaking quietly with each of the guests.
He stepped over to refill her mom’s cup. “Ah, the beautiful Blessings. And what are your plans for today? We missed you at breakfast yesterday.”
“Oh, thank you.” Her mom reached for the cream. “Yes. We got an early start. I’m so sorry if you waited for us.” She stole a quick glance at Birdie before continuing. “Today I’m planning to drive back to the castle on the Mosel River that we visited yesterday, Burg Eltz.”
Birdie’s eyes narrowed. They’d spent the entire afternoon at Burg Eltz. It was a magnificent place, to be sure, a perfect castle hidden in the forest with towers and spires that rose like something straight out of Grimms’ Fairy Tales, but why make the drive and spend a second day when there were so many other things to see right here?
“Of course, of course.” Herr Mueller nodded approvingly. “It is a splendid Schloss – that is our word for castle. The same family has owned it for nearly nine hundred years and, unlike many of the castles here along the Rhine River, it was never attacked.”
“Yes, it’s lovely. Today I’m taking my sketchbook. The owners were kind enough to grant me permission to explore the rooms that aren’t on the tour.”
They had? When had that happened? Birdie didn’t remember a conversation like that at all.
“You are an artist?”
“A designer. I design clothing and home accessories and I’m working on a new medieval-inspired line.”
Herr Mueller cradled the carafe against his chest. “Burg Eltz is a perfect place for such research. The two of you will enjoy the day.”
Her mom cleared her throat and wrapped both hands tightly around her coffee cup. “Actually, my daughter will spend her day here, in Sankt Goar. I’m driving her up the hill to Burg Rheinfels. There’s a camp for teens there.”
Birdie’s eyes had grown wide in surprise. She thought Herr Mueller’s had, too, but he recovered before she could be sure.
“Of course,” he said. “The history camp for the tourists. Some of my guests send their children there.”
He had not elaborated. He’d topped off her mom’s coffee and given Birdie a sad kind of look before moving on to the next table.
And now here she was, at camp – history camp – alone, in a creepy… kitchen?
She glanced around.
Probably not. The dim space was far too big for that, and there were no signs of fire grates or kitchen gear. And it was chilly. She wished she’d worn jeans instead of shorts.
A storeroom?
She let her mind rest on that option as she crossed the dirt floor and slid into a high-backed chair behind the pile of old-fashioned clothes. She refused to let herself think about the ghosts that might linger in a place like this.
She had enough ghosts of her own.
She surveyed the pile, pulled out a blue quilted vest, and held it up to the light. It was small, with limp leather laces that held it closed.
She tossed it back onto the pile.
Why had her mom signed her up for this stupid camp? She’d seen it in the Fun for Kids section of the guidebook, but she never in a million years imagined her mom would register her for the thing. They were in a foreign country, for goodness sakes. What was she thinking?
Birdie sighed, the sound lost against the thick stone walls.
She knew what she was thinking.
That was the problem.
She was thinking that Birdie could not be trusted to be left alone.
Not after what happened in Bruges.
It figured. The one time in her whole life she’d done something wrong – really wrong – and it got her bounced into day camp like a first grader.
She rubbed her forehead.
The lump had gone down, but an ugly bruise had bloomed in its place, just below the swoosh of her long dark bangs. She’d noticed it this morning in the bathroom and managed to secure her hair in a way that covered it.
But covering a bruise was not the same as forgetting what happened, and her mom had definitely not forgotten that she’d snuck out of the bed-and-breakfast in Bruges and picked a fight with some other tourists.
At least that’s what her mom thought happened.
She’d never believe the truth. Birdie barely believed it herself. It seemed like a dream. Except Ben hadn’t been a dream, and neither had the other girl at the bed-and-breakfast, Kayla, or even Henri or his little sister, Marguerite.
They’d been her friends, or at least as close to friends as she’d had in a while.
The quarter-size piece of aventurine glass, with its shimmering cinnamon color and golden speckles, hadn’t been a dream, either. They’d slipped into the past with that piece of glass, and helped Henri and Marguerite find a book they’d lost, a book that meant the world to them.
The aventurine was safe in her pack, solid, smooth, and carefully wrapped in a soft cloth she’d found in Bruges. If she’d given it even an ounce of consideration, she’d have left it in the hotel room rather than bring it to camp. She’d been so rushed – and then so mad – that it hadn’t even crossed her mind.
It didn’t matter. She had no intention of taking it out of the pack or even touching it while she was here. She and Ben had found enough adventure for a lifetime with it, and she didn’t want to find any more, especially alone in a ruined fortress.
Correction – a ruined fortress where she didn’t want to be.
Her mom hadn’t even given her the option of going back to Burg Eltz, or doing anything else. They could have spent the next couple of days together, exploring all the other castles along the Rhine River, but no, her mom had shut that idea down completely.
“You’ll have more fun at camp,” she’d said as they walked across Sankt Goar to retrieve their rental car from the public lot.
Doubtful.