Author's note: A 3 part chapter. I hope you enjoy it. Please R&R.
The next morning the Von Trapps were walking again, but their pace was considerably slower. There just wasn't enough food for all of them to maintain the steady exercise of considerable walking. Georg noticed that almost all of his children were limping slightly as well and figured that they were either sore, blistered or both. He felt worse than ever for putting them through this but knew that they had no other choice. None of the children were complaining and he did not ask any of them why they were so slowed down. There was nothing any of them could do about any minor injuries right then, and he knew it was best to keep them focused on walking rather than think about how tired, hungry and sore they were. He just slowed down his pace to match theirs, and kept walking.
His heart was filled with pride as he continued leading the long line of his family. They were all being so brave and strong. The older children, specifically Liesl, Friedrich and Louisa had taken on a certain leadership with the others that he had never seen before. He knew that they were all aching, tired and scared, and yet they remained cheerful, encouraging the younger ones, and talking about what fun Switzerland would be. He remembered the admonition he had received from Maria all those months ago and realized again how right she was. Friedrich and Liesl were truly on the brink of adult-hood, and all of them were growing up faster than he had recognized. He wished he had the time and resources to stop, to tell them how proud he was of them, to take care of their aching bodies and aching hearts, but that would have to wait. This time he had Marta on his back. Though she was almost two years older than Gretl she did not weigh much more, and he realized how delicate she was. Not just physically more delicate, but so sweet and feminine even at such a young age. His heart ached all the more at the thought of how he had neglected her – neglected all of them – for so long. "You're with them now," Maria had reassured him many times, "and that's all they've ever wanted." He vowed, once again, that no matter what happened he would never shut them out again.
Gretl walked with Maria in the back of the line, keeping up a fairly steady stream of chatter. As much as he loved her, Georg was glad he didn't have to hear much of it – he was too focused on getting his family to safety and shelter, and kept reviewing different possible scenarios in his head and how he might handle them. What if they did find some people in the mountains? What if they got to a village and couldn't find lodging for all of them? There was so much to think through that he was profoundly grateful that Maria had the patience to listen to Gretl. It also seemed to him as though they had sung every song they knew at least a dozen times, and had made up a new song about walking through the mountains. He couldn't wait to arrive in Switzerland and eventually have a home for his family where he and Maria could have their own room again – separate from the children – but he also knew how much help and support the children would need once they were safe and settled. 'God knows what they're thinking or what they're dealing with,' he thought soberly to himself. His heart felt heavy as he wondered what fears or doubts were now in their hearts, and how long they would be there. At least his pockets were a little lighter. He had given Maria some of the gold and jewelry he had brought. In case something unthinkable happened, he wanted to make sure that she would have at least some financial security.
At the back of the line, Maria was holding Gretl's hand, making sure she wasn't tripping over the uneven ground and rocks. Truth be told, Maria was hardly listening to Gretl, she was just letting her talk as the girl chattered on about what new dolls and dresses she wanted to get in Switzerland. Gretl had even started to make up the friends that she would meet there. She was glad to hear Gretl talking and took that as evidence that letting her cry her heart out last night had been cleansing for her, but Maria was more concerned with keeping her daughter upright and walking than she was about listening to her. Maria was also concerned at how slow their pace had become, but also knew there was nothing more they could do but keep going. She thought about how dramatic and desperate the last few days had been and wished she had the time to love and be with all of her children the way she had with Gretl. For the time being though it was most important that they get physically safe and settled, and then she and Georg could help them through whatever mental or emotional impact this was having on them. She was glad she and Georg had been able to talk the night before. His strength and his love filled her with a sense of security that seemed ridiculous to be feeling out here in the middle of nowhere. Maria felt more anchored to him than ever, and found that she now loved him even more than she already had.
Liesl was walking at the front of the line, right behind her father and Marta. She wished she could walk more quickly, but her legs just wouldn't move as well as they did the day before and her feet hurt with each step. She found she didn't mind the pain as much as she used to. Inside she was feeling alternately numb and heartsick and thoroughly ashamed of herself. No one had mentioned it, which she appreciated, but she knew that her gasp at the abbey had almost cost her family everything. Here she was thinking she was so grown up and then it was she, not one of the younger ones, who accidentally let the Nazis know they were there. And why? Because of a boy. A boy who had already made it clear he didn't love her anymore. Liesl dashed a few tears away from her eyes. Why couldn't she stop crying? He didn't deserve it! He had rejected her and betrayed her family, and here she was, carrying on like her heart was broken. 'My heart is not broken,' she declared firmly to herself. Still, she wondered again how she could have been so naïve. The signs had been all around her: Rolf talking about the Nazis, talking about how her father 'had better know what's good for him,' even the arm band he had started wearing. But she had ignored all of it, thinking that she loved him and that he loved her. She swallowed another sob, not sure if the sob was for this lost love or for how humiliated she felt. She wished she could talk to her new mother. Somehow Maria had always understood and loved her, from the moment she had crawled through her window. She wanted to feel that love and reassurance, and ask her what to do now, now that she was more than just jilted but completely betrayed! Now that she saw how naïve she had been, now that she carried the guilt of having almost ruined her family's escape. 'I'm just going to keep going,' she reminded herself again. 'I'm going to give father and mother all the help they need. I'm not going to cost them anything else.' She had already helped as much as she could – sometimes walking with the younger ones, and always sounding cheerful and encouraged about their future in Switzerland when talking with her siblings. She remembered how just the other day Maria had told her to just wait a few more years for love. Well, that was before she knew just how badly it could hurt to be betrayed. That was before the long and painful days of walking allowed her to reflect on how naïve she had been. 'I'm just never going to fall in love again,' she decided resolutely, and she felt a door close in her heart. The more comfortable numb feeling returned. And she kept walking.
Behind her, Friedrich wasn't thinking at all about Rolf, and hadn't since they had escaped from the abbey. He had thought about the gun held to his father, but not the boy behind it. He had no idea how his sister was feeling and certainly wasn't thinking about how or why she had gasped. Friedrich was thinking about himself, and his father. All his life he had wanted to be like his father. He had wanted to be big, strong and brave. He knew his father was a hero, and he also knew what a strong leader his father was. Friedrich had wanted to be a hero and leader like that for as long as he could remember and had never known how. He had always felt like he was missing out on some secret, some magic formula that would turn him into the hero he wanted to be. Suddenly, he felt like he'd been handed a crash course in it, and it he was excited but terrified. Just watching his father handle this escape through one set back and another was more of a lesson than he had ever had in his life, but for the first time he also felt like a partner to his father. A partner in helping his family escape. He had been so proud when he had helped Max and his father push the car as they were first leaving the villa, and had been proud to tell his father that they could make it through the mountains without help. He was determined to make good on that promise and so he kept walking, helped the younger ones when they needed it, and even made sure that what little food they had went mostly to the younger children who were so tired. But deep inside his heart, Friedrich was terrified. He felt very young and saw what a big gap there was between his father and himself. His father had faced a gun. A gun. A loaded gun that had been pointed right at him and at any moment could have taken his life. Yet his father had faced it calmly and put himself between the gun and his family. That was a hero. Friedrich knew he wasn't a hero, and for the first time was wondering if he would ever be one. He was just too scared. When Herr Zeller had stopped them on their way out of the villa, he had been so terrified he could hardly breathe and yet his father had faced Herr Zeller as calmly as if they had been having a cordial meal together. His father had an answer for everything when Friedrich's mind had gone blank. And when Friedrich had seen that gun he'd been more scared than he had ever been in his life, yet again his father had been totally calm. Is that what it meant to be a man like his father? To never be afraid? 'If so,' Friedrich thought to himself 'I'll never be that kind of man.' He felt like he was losing a part of his dream, part of who he had thought he was, or would be. And Friedrich didn't know what was scarier: the thought of the Nazis, the gun, the narrow escape, the seemingly endless walk and their uncertain future … or the fact that he was scared.
Louisa was as tired of singing as she was of walking. She was surrounded by her entire family, but she had never felt so alone in her life. She knew she was expected to be "strong" – whatever that meant. She could feel the pressure from Liesl and Friedrich to be cheerful for the other children, and she could feel the relief from her parents when she acted that way. But it was just an act and she was feeling angrier with every step. How could Liesl and Friedrich be so calm, and even cheerful? They were leaving their home, leaving everything she had ever known or loved, and she hated it. Louisa wasn't used to just feeling sad - when anything upset her she acted on it. If father was away or they had a new governess she didn't just feel badly about it, she collected a jar of spiders or a toad. Or if she was very lucky, a snake. Then she felt better. But Louisa didn't know how to make herself feel better right now. She was leaving her home, there was nothing she could do about it, and to make matters worse she had to act like it was a great adventure. Louisa didn't know how to just feel sad. It might have helped if she did. Or it might have helped if she had known that she was feeling sad, that her heart was breaking, and that it was okay to feel that way. But she didn't know that, and instead she felt angry and alone. She knew that her father joining the Third Reich was a bad thing and she knew that her parents felt they had no other option but to leave. She was so angry at the Nazis for trying to make him join them that she wanted to scream. But she didn't scream because she was supposed to be strong and cheerful. The more she walked the more angry she felt until she was almost as angry at her parents as she was at the Nazis. 'Why couldn't they have figured out something else?' she asked herself. 'Now we're in the middle of the mountains and I'm so cold and hungry and tired. Who knows when we're going to get to Switzerland, or what will happen there. And I don't want to live in Switzerland!' Louisa wrapped her arms around herself, suddenly hating herself for being so mad at her parents. She knew they loved her – they loved all of her siblings – and they would never do anything to hurt them if they could possibly avoid it. She drew in a deep breath, shuddering almost like a sob. She was mad at herself, mad at her parents, mad at the Nazis, and come to think of it, mad at God. How could He let something like this happen? How could there be something so bad in the world that they'd have to leave their home to avoid it? Things like this weren't supposed to happen, especially not when they'd finally been happy again. Father stayed home now, she had a new mother she adored, and she was genuinely having fun – not the kind of fun she used to have when she had been upset. That had always left her feeling hollow in the end. Things had finally started going so right but she hadn't even gotten a real chance to enjoy it before things went so wrong. She could hear Gretl chattering away to Maria. She saw how enthusiastic Liesl and Friedrich always seemed, and she wondered why she was the only one who was feeling so upset. And so she kept walking because there was nothing else to do, but she felt angrier, more confused and more alone with every step.
Kurt was hungry. He was so hungry he couldn't remember the last time he was full, and he couldn't remember the last time his stomach wasn't hurting or grumbling. 'How was a person supposed to live without enough food?' he wondered once again. His stomach hurt and he felt like he was getting grumpier with every step. At first he had been too scared to be hungry. There was so much running, and a gun, and he wasn't exactly sure what it meant that the borders were closed, but it sounded bad. It sounded serious. Everything had been so serious. They piled into the car and then their father joined them and took off, driving faster then he ever had before. Then they just left the car and started walking up into the mountains as fast as they could even though it was night. Kurt had been scared, but he was determined to prove how tough he was and so he didn't complain, he walked and walked and did everything he could to let his father know he was okay. That was a long time ago, though. That was before he realized that they would be walking for so long and didn't have a lot of food. That was before the emptiness in his stomach felt like it had expanded to his whole body. He felt like he had been walking for days, he had been hungry for days, and he still didn't know if they were safe. No one told him if they were safe yet, but he hardly cared anymore. All he could think about was what he could be eating if they were comfortably back at home. He didn't know when he'd get a real meal again or stop feeling so hungry and empty. Kurt tried to think about all of the different things he'd eat once they were really safe in Switzerland, but nothing helped. He was still so hungry. Bad things had happened in his life before: his mother had died, his father had ignored him, and he'd been in a lot of trouble off and on in school and with the various governesses. Yet no matter what had happened Kurt had always known that he was physically secure. He would get to eat and sleep and have everything he really needed. For the first time in his life, he was beginning to realize that wasn't necessarily true. Though he wouldn't have known how to explain it even if he had the chance, Kurt was losing a profound sense of security. He kicked a pebble that was in his path and regretted it right away. His feet already hurt enough.
For the first time in her life Brigitta wished that she was younger than she was. She usually wished to be older – she found most people's assumptions about what a 10 year old could do or understand infuriating and somewhat insulting. Now, though, she watched the difference between her older siblings and her younger siblings, and herself in the middle, and she wished she were younger. It wasn't so much that she wanted to be carried. She could handle the walking. But she desperately wanted to be closer to her parents during this walk. She wanted the love and physical contact that Marta and Gretl were getting, but she knew she couldn't ask for it. An independent soul, Brigitta had never asked for love and reassurance in her life, but then she had never felt so lost before. She knew her parents were doing everything they could to help all of them, to get all of them as quickly and safely to Switzerland as possible, and didn't think it would be fair to ask for more. Brigitta, perhaps more than any of the other children, was aware of what was happening in Austria. She understood that Austria was no longer completely under its own government and she knew that was happening in other countries too. She wasn't entirely sure what that meant though, and wished someone would explain it more clearly too her. And tell her that it would all be okay. But they weren't telling her it would all be okay, because as far as she could tell, no one knew if it was going to be okay or not. Brigitta wasn't even sure what "okay" meant anymore. She understood that her father had been told to go fight for the Nazis and that he didn't want to. She didn't blame him. People who would take over a country and government without caring what the people in that country thought or wanted? She wouldn't want to fight for them either – even if she could fight. She definitely didn't want her father going to fight for them. They cared so little about what he thought or wanted - they didn't even care that he had just come back from his honeymoon. How could she be sure that they would even care if he lived or died when he was fighting for them? The world had become a darker place for her in the last few days. She had realized she was living in a world where people's lives or opinions didn't matter as much as she thought they had. It seemed like they didn't matter at all, and as evidence her family was being forced to escape from their home. A shadow swept through her heart and she shivered not so much from the cold but from the evil she could suddenly sense in the world. She wondered if there had always been evil and she hadn't known it, or if it was new. She didn't know which would be worse. Either way, she desperately wanted love and reassurance from her parents. She wanted to hear that this evil wouldn't suck out all of the good that was so new to their lives. As she watched all of her siblings she knew that all of them were going through their own ordeals and she told herself it wouldn't be fair to ask to be hugged and kissed and reassured when all of them needed it. The truth was that Brigitta would not have known how to ask for it even if she had felt like she could. She wouldn't have known how to explain this sense of evil she was suddenly aware of, or know how to say that she needed to feel enough love to would wipe the evil away. So she kept walking and the shadow crept even deeper into her heart.
Marta's arms were tired and aching from holding on to her father. She didn't complain, though. Her legs were even more tired so it was better than walking. She could feel the tears starting to roll down her cheeks again and pressed her face into the top of her father's back. Marta knew that her first mother had died, but she didn't remember her and didn't remember losing her. Her father, strict as he had been, had always been such a strong and forceful presence that it had never occurred to her that anything bad could ever happen to him. Now they were leaving their home, leaving everything she had ever loved, and she wasn't completely sure why but she knew that something bad was going to happen to him if they didn't leave. Then she saw a man pointing a gun right at her father. Her new mother tried to keep her from seeing, but she had seen enough to suddenly realize that her father could die. He might die some day, and the thought was terrifying. What would happen to her if her father wasn't there to take care of her and make sure she had everything he needed? She found herself thinking of her beautiful pink parasol. She hadn't gotten it for her birthday – her father hadn't even been home for her birthday. But she had gotten it a week after he had returned from Vienna. As she had squealed with delight and rushed to hug her father, she also saw Fraulein Maria – mother – beaming in the background. Now she had leave it behind and for all she knew one of the mean men would find it and take it. 'They probably will,' she thought to herself. She could picture one of the mean men taking it and giving it to a mean woman who wouldn't know that it really belonged to Marta Von Trapp. Marta knew they were going to Switzerland, but she didn't even know if they had pink parasols in Switzerland. If they did, would she have to wait until her 8th birthday to get another one? If they didn't she would never have a pink parasol again. Marta realized she didn't know anything about Switzerland. Did they even have ballerinas? Would there be bad men there too who would try to hurt her father? What would happen if they did hurt her father? Marta wrapped her arms more tightly around her father's neck, and let the material of his coat absorb her tears.
There was no fanfare or sign when they finally crossed over into Switzerland. There wasn't even a noticeable change of scenery. Georg wouldn't even have known that they were in Switzerland except for the fact that he had studied several maps before they left and was able to estimate that at the pace they had been walking they were well into the Swiss Alps by now. He was acutely aware of his children's hunger and fatigue and so had been following Maria's suggestion for a little while by making sure their path followed a stream that was winding its way down the mountain. As he and Marta crested a hill he looked down into the valley and could see what looked like the top of a chimney with smoke coming out of it.
"Let's take a rest," he announced to the rest of his family, and was greeted with sighs of relief and disappointment. The relief was easy to understand, the disappointment less so until he heard Kurt mutter "we're never going to get there."
'If it's at all possible,' he declared to himself 'I am going to make sure they can rest and find food here.' Georg lifted Marta off his back and set her on the ground, giving her a hug before he let her go, and the he walked back to Maria. Wrapping one arm around her shoulders he both hugged her and steered her away from the children. They walked a few steps away and looking down into her face Georg realized he couldn't resist kissing her before they spoke. After they broke away from each other, he brought her all the way against his body for a proper hug. "It looks like there may be people in the valley below," he whispered to her. "I want you to wait here with the children and let them rest while I go see if it is safe. If they don't have a telephone and it seems to be safe I will bring all of you down, but I will still want your opinion as well." He turned to face his wife again and smiled, saying "After all, these are your people more than mine."
Georg wondered if he should leave Rolf's gun with Maria but realized with a stab of regret that she wouldn't know how to use it. In untrained hands, it could do more harm than good. He made a mental note to teach her how to use a gun as soon as he could. The couple rejoined their children and Georg explained that he was going to walk ahead a bit while they waited with Maria. Before he left he made sure to hug or caress each of them in some way, and then kissed Maria again. "Be safe," she whispered.