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Willow Locke, a teenage immigrant living in turn-of-the century Manhattan, must find the strength within her to protect her family from an insidious corporate plot to destroy the un...
It was a cool fall afternoon. Ayala felt happy just walking down the street. It had been so long since she had been outside during the day. Every day she walked to work at dawn and walked home at dusk. Now it was only 2:30 and she had the whole afternoon ahead. She felt like another person, as bright as the light around her; healthy, whole. The world tumbled joyously before her as she walked. She picked an iris in Washington Square Park and put it behind her ear.
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The old woman with the hurdy-gurdy sat on a bench nearby and cranked out a rollicking melody, deftly keying the notes. The music drifted across the central square and flooded her with memories of her childhood in Prague. She recalled, quite suddenly, the taste of elderberries, and the slow, mystical revolution of the astronomical clock in Old Town Square.
She remembered the feeling of toddler Eitan's hand slipping inside her own as they walked out into the orchards to pick cherries. The tears welled in her eyes. She felt a physical memory, an imprint of motion she once knew well. It was a sequence she had memorized long ago, in Prague. It was the dance that went with the tune. She didn't know why she knew it, but it hung in her mind and pulled on her legs. An arabesque, step forward, step right, step backward, step left, a flourish, a pirouette. She danced to remember, but the memory itself never surfaced, only the movements.
The old woman laughed toothlessly when she saw Ayala dancing.
"You know," she cackled, "You know it."
Ayala only smiled in response; the off-balance melody careened on.
She heard the clarion shout of the paperboys and listened for her brother's voice. She isolated the thread of his speech from the cacophony.
"Eitan!" she called out.
"Hey sis, why ain't you at work?" Eitan held a cherry wood pipe between his teeth at a defiant angle.
"I- I got the day off." Ayala replied.
"The day off?" Eitan asked, astonished "From that place? Good luck."
Just then a well-dressed man stepped forward holding out a coin. Eitan handed him a paper in exchange.
"Who is that old lady?" asked Eitan.
Ayala shrugged and looked over her shoulder where a man in a bowler hat dropped a coin in the old woman's begging cup.
"I don't know," she said. "Someone from Prague."
"Did-Did you know her-," Eitan faltered, "back from when we were kids?"
"You are a kid," Ayala replied. She caught him in her arms in a crushing hug. Papers spilled from his satchel and his cherry wood pipe clattered on the stones.
