1Alone in the apartment while Mama was out shopping with Kirsti, Annemarie and Ellen were sprawled on the living room floor playing with paper dolls. They had cut the dolls from Mama’s magazines, old ones she had saved from past years. The paper ladies had old-fashioned hair styles and clothes, and the girls had given them names from Mama’s very favorite book. Mama had told Annemarie and Ellen the entire story of Gone With the Wind, and the girls thought it much more interesting and romantic than the king-and-queen tales that Kirsti loved.

2“Come, Melanie,” Annemarie said, walking her doll across the edge of the rug. “Let’s dress for the ball.”

3“All right, Scarlett, I’m coming,” Ellen replied in a sophisticated voice. She was a talented performer; she often played the leading roles in school dramatics. Games of the imagination were always fun when Ellen played.

4The door opened and Kirsti stomped in, her face tear-stained and glowering. Mama followed her with an exasperated look and set a package down on the table.

5“I won’t!” Kirsti sputtered. “I won’t ever, ever wear them! Not if you chain me in a prison and beat me with sticks!”

6Annemarie giggled and looked questioningly at her mother. Mrs. Johansen sighed. “I bought Kirsti some new shoes,” she explained. “She’s outgrown her old ones.”

7“Goodness, Kirsti,” Ellen said, “I wish my mother would get me some new shoes. I love new things, and it’s so hard to find them in the stores.”

8“Not if you go to a fish store!” Kirsti bellowed. “But most mothers wouldn’t make their daughters wear ugly fish shoes!”

9“Kirsten,” Mama said soothingly, “you know it wasn’t a fish store. And we were lucky to find shoes at all.”

10Kirsti sniffed. “Show them,” she commanded. “Show Annemarie and Ellen how ugly they are.”

11Mama opened the package and took out a pair of little girl’s shoes. She held them up, and Kirsti looked away in disgust.

12“You know there’s no leather anymore,” Mama explained. “But they’ve found a way to make shoes out of fish skin. I don’t think these are too ugly.”

13Annemarie and Ellen looked at the fish skin shoes. Annemarie took one in her hand and examined it. It was odd-looking; the fish scales were visible. But it was a shoe, and her sister needed shoes.

14“It’s not so bad, Kirsti,” she said, lying a little.

15Ellen turned the other one over in her hand. “You know,” she said, “it’s only the color that’s ugly.”

16“Green!” Kirsti wailed. “I will never, ever wear green shoes!”

17“In our apartment,” Ellen told her, “my father has a jar of black, black ink. Would you like these shoes better if they were black?”

18Kirsti frowned. “Maybe I would,” she said, finally.

19“Well, then,” Ellen told her, “tonight, if your mama doesn’t mind, I’ll take the shoes home and ask my father to make them black for you, with his ink.”

20Mama laughed. “I think that would be a fine improvement. What do you think, Kirsti?”

21Kirsti pondered. “Could he make them shiny?” she asked. “I want them shiny.”

22Ellen nodded. “I think he could. I think they’ll be quite pretty, black and shiny.”

23Kirsti nodded. “All right, then,” she said. “But you mustn’t tell anyone that they’re fish. I don’t want anyone to know.” She took her new shoes, holding them disdainfully, and put them on a chair. Then she looked with interest at the paper dolls.

24“Can I play, too?” Kirsti asked. “Can I have a doll?” She squatted beside Annemarie and Ellen on the floor.

25Sometimes, Annemarie thought, Kirsti was such a pest, always butting in. But the apartment was small. There was no other place for Kirsti to play. And if they told her to go away, Mama would scold.

26“Here,” Annemarie said, and handed her sister a cut-out little girl doll. “We’re playing Gone With the Wind. Melanie and Scarlett are going to a ball. You can be Bonnie. She’s Scarlett’s daughter.”

27Kirsti danced her doll up and down happily. “I’m going to the ball!” she announced in a high, pretend voice.

28Ellen giggled. “A little girl wouldn’t go to a ball. Let’s make them go someplace else. Let’s make them go to Tivoli!”

29“Tivoli!” Annemarie began to laugh. “That’s in Copenhagen! Gone With the Wind is in America!”

30“Tivoli, Tivoli, Tivoli,” little Kirsti sang, twirling her doll in a circle.

31“It doesn’t matter, because it’s only a game anyway,” Ellen pointed out. “Tivoli can be over there, by that chair. ‘Come, Scarlett,’” she said, using her doll voice, “‘we shall go to Tivoli to dance and watch the fireworks, and maybe there will be some handsome men there! Bring your silly daughter Bonnie, and she can ride on the carousel.’”

32Annemarie grinned and walked her Scarlett toward the chair that Ellen had designated as Tivoli. She loved Tivoli Gardens, in the heart of Copenhagen; her parents had taken her there, often, when she was a little girl. She remembered the music and the brightly colored lights, the carousel and ice cream and especially the magnificent fireworks in the evenings: the huge colored splashes and bursts of lights in the evening sky.

33“I remember the fireworks best of all,” she commented to Ellen.

34“Me too,” Kirsti said. “I remember the fireworks.”

35“Silly,” Annemarie scoffed. “You never saw the fireworks.” Tivoli Gardens was closed now. The German occupation forces had burned part of it, perhaps as a way of punishing the fun-loving Danes for their lighthearted pleasures.

36Kirsti drew herself up, her small shoulders stiff. “I did too,” she said belligerently. “It was my birthday. I woke up in the night and I could hear the booms. And there were lights in the sky. Mama said it was fireworks for my birthday!”

37Then Annemarie remembered. Kirsti’s birthday was late in August. And that night, only a month before, she, too, had been awakened and frightened by the sound of explosions. Kirsti was right—the sky in the southeast had been ablaze, and Mama had comforted her by calling it a birthday celebration. “Imagine, such fireworks for a little girl five years old!” Mama had said, sitting on their bed, holding the dark curtain aside to look through the window at the lighted sky.

38The next evening’s newspaper had told the sad truth. The Danes had destroyed their own naval fleet, blowing up the vessels one by one, as the Germans approached to take over the ships for their own use.

39“How sad the king must be,” Annemarie had heard Mama say to Papa when they read the news.

40“How proud,” Papa had replied.

41It had made Annemarie feel sad and proud, too, to picture the tall, aging king, perhaps with tears in his blue eyes, as he looked at the remains of his small navy, which now lay submerged and broken in the harbor.

42“I don’t want to play anymore, Ellen,” she said suddenly, and put her paper doll on the table.

43“I have to go home, anyway,” Ellen said. “I have to help Mama with the housecleaning. Thursday is our New Year. Did you know that?”

44“Why is it yours?” asked Kirsti. “Isn’t it our New Year, too?”

45“No. It’s the Jewish New Year. That’s just for us. But if you want, Kirsti, you can come that night and watch Mama light the candles.”

46Annemarie and Kirsti had often been invited to watch Mrs. Rosen light the Sabbath candles on Friday evenings. She covered her head with a cloth and said a special prayer in Hebrew as she did so. Annemarie always stood very quietly, awed, to watch; even Kirsti, usually such a chatterbox, was always still at that time. They didn’t understand the words or the meaning, but they could feel what a special time it was for the Rosens.

47“Yes,” Kirsti agreed happily. “I’ll come and watch your mama light the candles, and i’ll wear my new black shoes.”

48But this time was to be different. Leaving for school on Thursday with her sister, Annemarie saw the Rosens walking to the synagogue early in the morning, dressed in their best clothes. She waved to Ellen, who waved happily back.

49“Lucky Ellen,” Annemarie said to Kirsti. “She doesn’t have to go to school today.”

50“But she probably has to sit very, very still, like we do in church,” Kirsti pointed out. “That’s no fun.”

51That afternoon, Mrs. Rosen knocked at their door but didn’t come inside. Instead, she spoke for a long time in a hurried, tense voice to Annemarie’s mother in the hall. When Mama returned, her face was worried, but her voice was cheerful.

52“Girls,” she said, “we have a nice surprise. Tonight Ellen will be coming to stay overnight and to be our guest for a few days! It isn’t often we have a visitor.”

53Kirsti clapped her hands in delight.

54“But, Mama,” Annemarie said, in dismay, “it’s their New Year. They were going to have a celebration at home! Ellen told me that her mother managed to get a chicken someplace, and she was going to roast it—their first roast chicken in a year or more!”

55“Their plans have changed,” Mama said briskly. “Mr. and Mrs. Rosen have been called away to visit some relatives. So Ellen will stay with us. Now, let’s get busy and put clean sheets on your bed. Kirsti, you may sleep with Mama and Papa tonight, and we’ll let the big girls giggle together by themselves.”

56Kirsti pouted, and it was clear that she was about to argue. “Mama will tell you a special story tonight,” her mother said. “One just for you.”

57“About a king?” Kirsti asked dubiously.

58“About a king, if you wish,” Mama replied.

59“All right, then. But there must be a queen, too,” Kirsti said.

60Though Mrs. Rosen had sent her chicken to the Johansens, and Mama made a lovely dinner large enough for second helpings all around, it was not an evening of laughter and talk. Ellen was silent at dinner. She looked frightened. Mama and Papa tried to speak of cheerful things, but it was clear that they were worried, and it made Annemarie worry, too. Only Kirsti was unaware of the quiet tension in the room. Swinging her feet in their newly blackened and shiny shoes, she chattered and giggled during dinner.

61“Early bedtime tonight, little one,” Mama announced after the dishes were washed. “We need extra time for the long story I promised, about the king and queen.” She disappeared with Kirsti into the bedroom.

62“What’s happening?” Annemarie asked when she and Ellen were alone with Papa in the living room. “Something’s wrong. What is it?”

63Papa’s face was troubled. “I wish that I could protect you children from this knowledge,” he said quietly. “Ellen, you already know. Now we must tell Annemarie.”

64He turned to her and stroked her hair with his gentle hand. “This morning, at the synagogue, the rabbi told his congregation that the Nazis have taken the synagogue lists of all the Jews. Where they live, what their names are. Of course the Rosens were on that list, along with many others.”

65“Why? Why did they want those names?”

66“They plan to arrest all the Danish Jews. They plan to take them away. And we have been told that they may come tonight.”

67“I don’t understand! Take them where?”

68Her father shook his head. “We don’t know where, and we don’t really know why. They call it ‘relocation.’ We don’t even know what that means. We only know that it is wrong, and it is dangerous, and we must help.”

69Annemarie was stunned. She looked at Ellen and saw that her best friend was crying silently.

70“Where are Ellen’s parents? We must help them, too!”

71“We couldn’t take all three of them. If the Germans came to search our apartment, it would be clear that the Rosens were here. One person we can hide. Not three. So Peter has helped Ellen’s parents to go elsewhere. We don’t know where. Ellen doesn’t know either. But they are safe.”

72Ellen sobbed aloud, and put her face in her hands. Papa put his arm around her. “They are safe, Ellen. I promise you that. You will see them again quite soon. Can you try hard to believe my promise?”

73Ellen hesitated, nodded, and wiped her eyes with her hand.

74“But, Papa,” Annemarie said, looking around the small apartment, with its few pieces of furniture: the fat stuffed sofa, the table and chairs, the small bookcase against the wall. “You said that we would hide her. How can we do that? Where can she hide?”

75Papa smiled. “That part is easy. It will be as your mama said: you two will sleep together in your bed, and you may giggle and talk and tell secrets to each other. And if anyone comes—”

76Ellen interrupted him. “Who might come? Will it be soldiers? Like the ones on the corners?” Annemarie remembered how terrified Ellen had looked the day when the soldier had questioned them on the corner.

77“I really don’t think anyone will. But it never hurts to be prepared. If anyone should come, even soldiers, you two will be sisters. You are together so much, it will be easy for you to pretend that you are sisters.”

78He rose and walked to the window. He pulled the lace curtain aside and looked down into the street. Outside, it was beginning to grow dark. Soon they would have to draw the black curtains that all Danes had on their windows; the entire city had to be completely darkened at night. In a nearby tree, a bird was singing; otherwise it was quiet. It was the last night of September.

79“Go, now, and get into your nightgowns. It will be a long night.”

80Annemarie and Ellen got to their feet. Papa suddenly crossed the room and put his arms around them both. He kissed the top of each head: Annemarie’s blond one, which reached to his shoulder, and Ellen’s dark hair, the thick curls braided as always into pigtails.

81“Don’t be frightened,” he said to them softly. “Once I had three daughters. Tonight I am proud to have three daughters again.”