The Crimson Train

Celeste loved the way she could almost feel the diamond stars sparkling in the distance the way they did each night from her bedroom window, tucked into the very folds of her youth. She needed nothing more in life than the sweet lullaby of the sky in the darkness on her transparent, silk curtains, resembling snowflakes in a cozy winter storm. 

“Sweet children of the universe,” she whispered, “What have we done to deserve you?”

Those very children were the reason for Celeste’s breath, the reason she woke at the crack of dawn each morning to a bustling city of war bonds and burning Nazi flags. Gunshots, grenades, and the rubble of a home she could never have imagined being destroyed in such a dramatic way: they were the reasons to sleep, but the stars were the reason to open those heavy, weighted eyelids and kiss the sweet breath of daybreak.

“Oh, my little Celeste,” cried a voice from the stairway just below her open window, “Bonjour, darling. Have you slept well in this small corner of your beautiful world?”

Now, as one might quickly notice, Mrs. Turner was quite the actress with words that danced like Chanel in the wind: she was the world’s most interesting governess, and Celeste knew it.  

“Bonjour, Mademoiselle Turner,” the window hollered down, “I’ll only be a minute!”

The buzz of the city is never more beautiful than when you are part of it, like an actor in the globe. Celeste could hardly take in all of the sights, the sensation of the place she was proud to call her home. But today, of all days, was the time in which she needed to take it in: something to remember her beloved London by. Since the rumble of traffic became a bombshell imploded, like the laughs of sweet children to the black-out drill sirens: her joyous life became one of pain, sorrow, and fear. And now it was time to leave.

Her trunk never felt heavier in her cold, red knit mittens as the door to the train came into sight. Her past and future were dazed in the smoke of her present, as her life crumbled like the city beneath her feet.

“Oh, darling Celeste, until the stars shine again on us together, you will always be in my dear prayers,” cried Governess Turner, as the tears crept down Celeste’s soft, round, rosy cheeks. It had happened so fast, too fast.

The door to the train, glooming like the figure of her future, loomed just beyond the crimson steps, while the bright, shining door of the only home she’d ever known whispered goodbye through the whimpers of the wind. Her parents, her siblings, her friends, all took the step from their past to the future with more than a second thought, and she didn't know which door to call her shelter. 

“All aboard,” the conductor shouted as the daughters and sons of England were whisked away from the uncertain death of the anti-Semitism terrorists that were the third Reich. 

Time slowed: the seconds seemed to turn to hours, stealing the hope of life and the song of the stars from the palms of Celeste’s once fragile, gentle hands. What would she do?

Ahead or behind, future or past: the red or crimson door, the love or the rust of what would become her fateful present. It burned her to think that such a choice could kill what could come. It ached to think that she was left with two choices facing a certain death: what had happened to the world she loved so dearly?

So she ran, she ran as fast as her stockinged legs could carry her, trunk in hand, with nothing but the plump pearls of rain falling from the smoky skies. It was the only thing she could get herself to do: she wasn’t ready to choose between two.

“Oh Celeste, Celeste! Come back girl,” shouted Mademoiselle Turner as her voice faded into the cries of sorrow behind. She wasn’t ready to choose: THAT was her choice. 

The dark clouds circled like horns of the devil, catching Celeste inside this ruined city. She had no one else to protect, it was just her. She had to make choices for herself now, the way her brother, Ashton, and parents did before her. The way the children boarded the orphan train. The way the soldiers shed their blood on forgotten fields to keep the birthday wishes of their youth: the way she had to keep running. So that's what she did.

She could no longer tell if the tears were from her eyes or the thunderous bellows just above her blue blossom bonnet, it must have been both. 

Her weary legs could not inch another step, thinking it was best to rest it off. And just as she settled in the rubble of a brick building she once knew, she heard the sobs of a mother. 

“My baby,” she hollered, hoping for a Nazi to blow her pain away: the way they had done to her baby. 

Celeste couldn’t help but stare for a moment or two: the woman looked like her mother with such beautiful bangs and a homemade housedress, strung by a simple collection of pearls.  

“Hello Madam,” Celeste whispered as she walked toward the broken figure with a strut of doubt and dead confidence that mirrored the sorrow the mother displayed for all of Europe to see. To her surprise, the woman placed her blue, swaddled child in the arms of Celeste as she pulled a piece of shattered metal from the disrupted dirt down below.

Celeste, with the lady's dead daughter in hand, knocked the noose from the woman’s neck, then placed the baby back into her mother’s arms. No words were shared since their rather disturbing meeting until a rather strange confession crossed the lips of the broken-hearted ghost to the waif who refused to conform. 

“My dear, have you crimson stairs to climb? Have you a home not shriveled to the feet of Hitler? That man has taken the world away from all of us, he has killed you in a way far worse than death. And through him, it was I who bound the blood of your brothers. If you can find it in your wholesome heart to forgive an orphan like me, I could fly away from the fiery chains of hell to which I have been sentenced.”

A dumbstruck Celeste had no thoughts, but tears. Again, they rolled down the 'puff pastries' that her mother would tenderly kiss and her brother would pinch until purpled. But how could this woman: this broken, lonely woman, be the bullet that bombarded Belgium? The fire that flooded France? The monstrosity that stole her from her Mademoiselle Turner, the only kin she had known since the bloodshed of her loves. 

“Who do you call yourself,” Celeste whispered through the heated anger and sorrow, creating the gunpowder of impulse every Brit called their own. 

“Lucinda Hilter Lechler. My blood is the poison that runs through Adolf’s very veins.”

“Who do you call yourself,” Celeste queried once again, but this time, with the passion of her governess: her Juliet, her Rose, her Eleanor. The very woman who pulled her from the disaster once before: the very woman who she had left behind in a fight for her future: for all of their futures. It was a choice she promised never to regret, for regret meant dread, and she learned that every regret in the face of a fight was a choice to surrender, and for the sake of her family and herself, she would never throw the towel in.

The tears on Celeste’s face mirrored the crystals of the strange woman in front of her. She didn’t know whether to run, make a move, or help the seemingly defenseless woman. Just as she opened her chapped lips, the sirens rang out: lights out. Celeste dragged the woman under a slivered piece of wood, dangling from the wreckage of what was once her neighbor’s home. 

“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” Lucinda sobbed, as she held her baby close. Celeste grabbed the clammy hand of her acquaintance, squeezing it with a caring warmth.

“I would turn his blood cold if I were given the chance: I never liked him much anyway.”

“I don’t hate to admit this, but I feel as though all of Europe would do the same: Hitler would be dead millions of times over,” Celeste laughed, though it came out louder and prouder than she wanted it to. Lucinda couldn’t help but chuckle along. 

For a moment, just for a moment, the cold reality of their intertwined lives seemed to disperse under the silver stars Celeste loved with everything she was.

“Until never do we part,” she would say jokingly to her dear friends from lightyears away, as she closed her weighted lashes into the slumber of the cursed princess. It was a memory that seemed to vanish overnight: a memory she wished she could live just once more.

Celeste and Lucinda became fast friends, being that there was not a soul left in the city of mere shadows: even the ghost of her lost child had disappeared like ash in the wind.

“To hell with Hilter,” Lucinda cackled, “To hell and burn with him.”

But as much as Celeste hated the Reich, she loved her family and governess more. Under their eyes, she would never cuss a word of anger, not even for the devil incarnate himself. That was the last promise she made to her loving mother, the final lesson she shared. And it was painfully true.

“My mother hated Hitler as much as us all, but under the name of God, she would never dare curse a man to hell. I vowed to her, that much, that I would do the same: I love her more than I hate him, and that is a truth I will proudly shout from every trench and rooftop and to the devil’s face itself,” Celeste stated, still holding her neighbor’s hand in hers.

Lucinda smiled, showing full loving lips that resembled love itself. She motioned to Celeste, handing her the lost daughter, the darling she never even got to name. Still covered in a quilt, the adoring runaway picked up the cloaked baby, frozen in a state of tranquility and sadness: Celeste both pitied and envied the girl: she would be with the stars above.

That night, under the glow of shining diamonds, Celeste and Lucinda placed the child in a freshly dug grave, surrounded by a ring of wildflowers, plucked from asphalt cracks.

“This is our revenge, this is us. He tried to take this moment, this memory, away. This peace of mind, not even he can grasp: this is our protest and our stand. We will never cower to his undeserving power again,” Celeste sang, staring at the stars above her.

Mother,

Father,

Brother,

Take care of her.