Katie Gardner was not a poet, but she loved flowers. There was a creek a ways behind her house under a river sky with pricks of white for clouds; wildflowers of every kind imaginable bloomed from the banks and she would gently coax them out with her grubby fists and string them together into a crown; like a faerie-queen she entwined them in her hair and danced in the way of children, kicking the shimmering water around her bare ankles and earning a scolding from her mother for her wet socks (she removed them, but her feet were always damp when she pulled them back on) upon her return.

Cologne, 1927

She had a book of ruffled coffee-stained pages (it was once her father's) that she painstakingly filled out with the meaning behind each flower, whenever she found out. It had been one year and she had a grand total of one entry.

-x-

A new family had moved into the box house next to hers. She had peeped behind the threadbare curtains, and had seen, amongst the pile of boxes and a skinny cat, two boys about her age, curly haired and dark eyed. She had known immediately, from their elfish grins, that they were not to be trusted.

Her father had looked on at the father of those boys with a practiced eye; raking over the red pins on his lapel.

Communist.

Not to be trusted, also.

-x-

"What are you doing!" Katie screamed as she scrambled out of her front door towards the garden. The taller of the two New Boys was holding a fistful of daisies, damp earth bits scuttling from its torn roots.

Daisy: The meaning is to be innocent. Innocent is to not know.

"My name is Travis and this is my brother Connor." The boy seemed to see no problem in stealing other people's hard grown work. "Thank you for the flowers, my cat is hungry." He said this reasonably, as if there was an obvious connection between the two.

"Those are my flowers!" The little girl huffed angrily as she pulled on a pair of too-big wellingtons (her mother would insist if she was awake). "You are thieves! Get out, Get out!"

Her dark eyes were buzzing with a barely restrained anger, but it was the wet tears in them that truly scared the boys and the one called Travis dropped the daisies into the mauled earth as he and his brother scurried furiously over the fence into the enclave of their home. The kitchen was cool and musty and there was strudel cooling on an oaken table.

She had spent such a long time over those daisies, it was the first time her mother had allotted her a portion of the garden. She had thought daisies dainty and pretty, like the rainbow glints in prisms. She had saved- a tiny penny here, a small coin there- for a long time before she could buy a packet of the seeds. And now they were gone.

-x-

The next morning (rain: grey sky, harsh droplets and pale mist), she spotted a bushel of flowers hastily wrapped in brown wax paper on her doorstep. It didn't take a genius to figure out, especially with the misspelled Sorry in scratchy lettering on the wrap, who they were from.

They were roses, and they were pink.

Rose: It means love, but there are many colours. Pink is for friends.

September 1930

It was a sunny day, which suited Herr Gardner very well. His SS uniform was crisp on the mussed bed, his hair combed neatly to the side. Outside, he was making sure the Wife was teaching his daughter how to cook. She would have to be a good German maiden, an asset to the Fatherland. He decided that he would take a morning walk before the rally. Shutting the thin-spiel gate behind him (like the old paper clips he had used back as a clerk during the Great War), he saw the neighbour, Stoll, shut the door behind him.

The two appraised each other coldly before plastering fake smiles on their hard faces. Somewhere in the forest, a beige bunny-rabbit hopped through the green.

Gardner noticed that Stoll was holding the daily paper; he noticed the clenched fists (tension, he thought smugly, and rightly so). That infuriating red badge was still pinned to his lapel.

"Morning." He broke the silence, and Herr Stoll waved the paper in reply.

"107 seats, the party won!" Gardner boomed happily. He heard something in the house break- the Wife was going to pay for the plate herself- and Herr Stoll grimaced, wincing.

"It is still early, comrade." He chose the word particularly to infuriate his neighbour. One of his sons, the younger one, ran out onto the porch and tackled his father from behind- the man grinned and ruffled the boy's curls affectionately.

"Da, mother says it's time to eat."

"I will be seeing you, Herr Gardner." Stoll inclined his head.

Before he shut the door behind him, Herr Gardner raised his arm in a salute. "Heil Hitler!" The words rang through the cheerful morning, their bleakness strangely welcome.

"Not yet, my good man." Herr Stoll replied. "Not yet."

-x-

"And that is why they say that the Eiffel tower is named so." Travis said knowledgeably, nodding his head. "It is made up of many sticks of metal, all called the Eiffel. That is the French word for... do you know, Connor?"

Katie's widened in anticipation of the to-be-gained knowledge.

"It is French for bullshit!" The little boy said gleefully and Katie gasped angrily at the swear. She scooped up a flash of river water in her palm and sploshed the cool liquid onto his curls.

"You must not say that!" She wiped her hands on her pinafore. "You also lied. Eiffel is not French for... for that." With a final nod that settled the matter, the three friends lay back against the banks, watching the blue sky above them.

The silence was a contented one for the few minutes that it smiled lazily before Travis interrupted.

"Katie, what does your father say about mine at home?"

The girl stiffened. Her father rarely talked to her, and whatever insults he had to throw at his neighbour were hissed to her mother as he sat turning the dial on the radio as crackly static dusted the room and settled like a film over the furniture.

Communist pig.

Traitor.

No good, Jew-loving leech.

"He says nothing. Why?"

"I can tell he doesn't like him. My father doesn't like yours either."

Now, Katie had no particular love for her father, apart from the fact that he was her father, but insulting your own family is all and very well until someone else does it so she sat up abruptly, daring the boy to say more with her eyes.

"Your father loves Jews!" She spat before he could start and Travis sat up, Connor scooting up next to him angrily.

"There is nothing wrong with Jews!"

"My father says-"

"Your father is wrong!"

"My father is never wrong!"

White Chrysanthemum: It tells us to be truthful. It says be Honest. Sometimes it is hard. Sometimes you don't want to be honest. Mother says not to lie.

A slim branch dropped from one of the trees, knocking against others on its descent. Katie had not met any Jew apart from the boy, a Reuben Levin who lived down the way from them. Her father had told her never to speak to his family. He did not look so different, and you could not tell that he was a Jew. He was a quiet boy.

His father owned a sweet-shop, sticky globes that tasted of summer in glass jars. Whatever Katie had heard, he seemed a nice enough man. Polite, tidy. But she never spoke to him, she only knew what she heard.

Reuben had some sort of friendship with the Stoll brothers- both of families that were not looked kindly upon by the township, although the stigma was significantly lesser for the Stolls than the Levins. Perhaps she should not have said that.

"I am sorry." She said, promising to herself that she would speak no more of Jews until she had spoken to one of them. Travis took out a packet of oat biscuits from his pocket and broke two pieces in fairly equal parts for the three of them and no more was said of the subject.

March, 1933

The devil had awoken in Germany almost fully. The Reichstag building had been set aflame and by common consensus- Hitler sat back and grinned- the Communists were found guilty.

For the Stolls, it had begun.

The night was cool and the sky had grown stars. Herr Stoll stared worriedly out his window. A yellow light bloomed out of Herr Gardner's window and there was activity in the main square.

"Maria." His wife walked towards him, her blue eyes concerned. He put a hand on her arm. "Are the boys asleep?"

"I think so." She whispered, taking his cheek in her hand. "Will they really-"

"I am pretty certain it is tonight."

"You could have run." She said softly, "We could have left."

"I am not a coward. Besides there is not enough time." The room was silent apart from the mocking of the clock, heavy and carved atop the mantelpiece. The floor was scuffed from the boy's most recent misadventure.

"Sit with me?" Herr Stoll asked his wife, and the question was the End, already.

"Of course."

They sat in the dimming lights until the sounds from the square became more furious in their intensity, causing the night air to rip and bleed. It roused the walls from their shackles and the mob was approaching their street. Maria gripped her husband's arm as a heavy pounding fell upon the door.

Herr Stoll stood staunchly.

"Now Herr Gardner-" his voice almost broke as it fell into a whisper. "There is no need to break the door."

But break it they did and the men were upon him, furious in their hysteria as they dragged him out of the house. He could hear Maria screaming behind him and he heard the door to his boy's room open.

"Communist scum!"

"Fucken leech!"

"Father!"

Maria clung to both of the boys, the mischief in their eyes dimmed.

"I love you." He managed to croak before the crowd dragged him on the truck and pulled him away.

-x-

The brothers had been locked up in their house for days now. Katie's father refused to tell her what had been done to Herr Stoll. Breakfast was a silent affair, punctuated by the clinking of the spoons.

"You are not to talk to the boys." Herr Gardner said sharply, drawing a pressed handkerchief against his lips. Katie watched a spot of milk fleck towards the polished table in distaste.

"Father, they are my friends."

"You are not to speak to them!" He yelled again, slamming his spoon down on the table. Katie flinched and dropped her head to stare at her lap. "But they- their father is gone, I have to speak-"

"You are a German."

(Find the lie.

He was not telling her to be German.

He was telling her to be Nazi.

There was a difference.

There was a big difference.)

The meal continued in silence.

Holly: Domestic happiness: Happiness of the home.

August 1935 (they are fifteen)

Katie had pulled on her uniform. It was starched and felt scratchy to her calloused fingers. The vase on the dining table was filled with fresh daisies, an act that seemed almost cruel in its irony.

Before she dropped into her seat at class, her satchel strap pressing into her skin, Katie caught Travis's eyes. For a moment, there were summer days and flowers by a river, but the next there was a mob and a lost father and a lost friend. They tore their eyes away with much awkwardness and Katie rolled her shoulders back, straightening her neck as the teacher walked into the door.

If she had turned, she would have seen one of the boys toss a paper wad into the Stoll's curls. Connor would have responded by pulling the wad out of his hair with a big grin- aw, shucks, for me?- and put it into the glass jar that he had polished insolently for his "presents".

The teacher made them stand and raise their arms in the Nazi salute.

When they sat, scraping their chairs in ghastly unison, she began. Her lips were dry and the words raspy.

"The Jew," She began, flicking the pages of the book (she was very pretty, Katie noticed, in that blonde-hair, blue-eyed Aryan ideal that the Stolls and the Levins conspiciously lacked) "Has a skull very obviously smaller than that of the Aryan."

Everyone looked back to where Reuben sat next to the Stolls and did not bother to conceal their snickers.

"The Jew-" the teacher began again, smirking slightly in a way that made Katie hate her, "is-"

"A common gutter rat!" One of the boy's finished for her. Katie winced.

"Shut up." The voice belonged to Connor and it was quiet. Everyone else in the room made sounds of barely disguised elation in the anticipation of a ruckus.

"What is it, Communist?" The boy- his named was Rudolph- asked with a raised eyebrow, "Scared we'll take your friend away the same way we took away your father-"

Reuben leaped from his seat onto the boy in anger and a fight broke out. There was screaming and there was taunting and the Stolls and Levin were the only members on the losing side.

The teacher was panicking and she ran out of the class-room to get help. Katie quickly stood from her seat and made her way to the thick of the fray, yelling for them to stop, stop, stop.

They did not stop.

Wisteria: Steadfast. Always there.

Rhododendron: Be careful, please.

When the fight was broken up there was blood and broken teeth. Of course, the fault was that- in obvious parallel to the state of the country, Rudolph smugly claimed- of the Communists and the Jew.

November, 1938

The Night of Broken Glass

Reuben's youngest brother, Malcolm, was young enough to be shipped off to England for his safety. The rest of his family were not so lucky. On this night, there so many stars in the sky, the forest seemed to be lit up in ice.

Katie shivered as a gust of wind blew in through her open window. She knew what was planned for tonight. The killing of the Nazi by the Jew in Paris had made headlines, stirred the beast up once again. The people were angry.

Angry beasts need feeding.

She had heard Rudolph say gleefully to his friends what the night would bring. Her father too, was dressed up in full uniform (brass included and polished, thank you very much) in preparation for the act.

Was she brave enough?

She decided that for old time's sake, she had to be.

She waited until she heard the door slam, which signalled that he had left for the bar to get a pre-drink to race out of the back door. If she had been any less concerned, she would have loved the way the stars were caught in the daisies in her garden.

Pounding on the door of the Stolls, she prayed.

It was Maria who opened it and she looked far too old to be so young.

"What is it?" Her voice was afraid and bitter. This was, after all, the daughter of the man who had took her husband away.

"I'm sorry but they're planning-"

"Who is this, then?" Travis's voice floated over. It was suspicious, unwelcoming.

"The Nazis are planning tonight, to-"

"Say no more." Maria said hurriedly. She grabbed Connor's arm- he had been standing behind her- and pulled him out. "Go warn the Levins, hurry!"

"Why are you helping us?" Maria asked, the desperation settling into harsh suspicion.

"The Nazi," Travis said lightly, "is feeling generous."

Katie glared at him. "My father is the Nazi. I am just German"

They stood in awkward silence on the porch before Travis grabbed Maria's arm. "Mother, they will come for us as well. They haven't forgiven father, yet- Go to the basement."

"You're coming too." A light had made its way around the bend, spilling over in rage. They were coming.

"I've got to make sure Reuben gets here, mother, go!"

Maria glared at him but it had already begun.

From the end of the street, the sweet-shop had been set aflame.

Connor was too late.

There were four Levins: the mother, the son, the father (who had fought for Germany in the Great War) the grandfather.

Just numbers, yes? Just Jews.

Travis began to run towards the fray as the broken glass skittered over the harsh earth. They mirrored the stars in the sky who did nothing to stop the madness. The night was lit aglow with it.

The old grandfather Levin looked despairingly one as his shop burned towards to the ground. The other two men tried to stop the populace from taking the mother. Bats were brought out and the beatings began. Blood rained down the streets. The Levins were not the only Jews in the township and that much was evident from the amount of liquid trickling through the gaps in the cobblestones.

Katie raced towards the crowd as well, unsure of what to do. She saw Travis and Connor fighting off Rudolph and his gang and she was pushed towards the sidewalk. Thick blows were raining down on the grandfather, he had begun to pray.

He was an old man, a good man.

Every end of the month when he was young, he would scrape together marks to buy his son's favourite cookies. When he was older, he told jokes to his youngest grandson.

But he was a Jew, so no one cared.

"Stop it!" She yelled at Rudolph, grabbing the boy's arm. He swung her away and she skittered onto the floor, glass pieces sticking into her skin (they tell us we are made of stardust). And then her father was there, his eyes like the devil's as he picked her up off the floor and dragged her screaming back into their house, not caring that she was getting cut from the glass on the street.

She tossed her, bleeding, into her room and locked the door.

The stars in the sky did nothing but watch.

White Rose: Forgiveness. Forgive this country. Is it possible? There is too much blood on cut glass.

-x-

The Levins were all shipped away towards the East. The grandfather died. There were four people at the funeral.

The sky was a terrible thing.

It did not rain.

Hitler had made the sky hard as well.

October, 1939.

The Stolls knew it was time for them to leave Germany. They would be drafted into the military soon enough and they did not want to leave their mother alone. They did not want to fight, not for them.

Their papers arrived a day after October, the war had already broken out in Poland.

They planned to leave that night and they packed their bags.

The night was dark, the streetlamp dim.

The street was thin and made of cobblestones.

Katie was sitting in her garden, her thick skirt masking the scars that ripped her skin as she stared out into the night. Her eyes were glassy.

From the house of the Stolls, a door closed silently as three thickly-clad people stepped out into the night. When Travis saw Katie, he paled as they all did. From their carpet bags and travelling shawls, Katie knew.

"Wait-" She hissed, grabbing a flower from the garden (the same way a boy had done years ago) and walking over to them. There was no one else awake.

"Don't miss us." Travis said awkwardly and Connor snickered. Maria managed a smile. Katie pressed the delicate flower, the petals soft in her skin into Travis's hand.

"I won't." She promised. The wind glittered. In the forest, a bunny-rabbit drank from the stream.

They turned around to leave, the night pressing down on their shoulders. It was dark.

"I won't tell. Go."

"You better not." Travis winked and she rolled her eyes as she went back inside her house.

From her window, she watched as their backs blended into the black and then, they were gone.

Bells of Ireland: Good luck, friend

August 1944

The Germans, by this time, were losing the war. Allied bombs rained down on the cities many times a week, sometimes daily. The shelter for the little township was located, ironically, in the basement of what had once been the Levin's sweet-shop.

The remaining villagers- sons and fathers gone away, some children and elderly dead from prior bombings- were clustered in the basement as an attack raged on outside. Katie was sitting in a corner with a cluster of children around her, begging her to tell them stories of Manaa the Faerie and Taluk the Witch.

It was a common routine, one set by the regularity of consistence.

The street, by the time it the raid was over, was still mostly untouched, as it had been all these long months. In her house, Katie was the one to prepare dinner. Her father's eyes were no longer bright, but hollow. Everyday he listened eagerly to the radio for any sign of the Nazis regaining the turned tide, and every night he was disappointed.

Rationing and lack of food meant that there was nothing in the larder save a wilted lettuce and a few mournful sticks of chewy carrot. Katie sighed, pressing a hand to her hollow stomach as she turned the fire on and poured some water into the pot. It looked like it was soup for the night.

Outside, the sky was rapidly darkening. The air was like a whistle, hollow and clear. Pale winds made the leaves on the trees flutter gently. It was little things like this that made Katie happy, that made the long nights and rumbling skies a bit more bearable.

Outside, the voices of children rose in a chant of a game. She chopped the carrots with a blunt-edged knife and slid them into the boiling pot. In the forest, a bunny-rabbit stood at the edge of the tree-rings, its nose twitching. An old lady's voice cried out in song.

Katie reached forwards, pushing the window open to let the evening air waltz in.

Star of Bethlehem: Hope