Number the Stars by Lois Lowry Page B

haze of dreams Annemarie heard Henrik rise and leave the house, headed for the barn with his milking pail, at daybreak. Later, when she woke again, it was morning. She could hear birds calling outside, one of them close by the window in the apple tree; and she could hear Mama below, in the kitchen, talking to Kirsti.
    Ellen was still asleep. The night before, so shortened by the soldiers in the Copenhagen apartment, seemed long ago. Annemarie rose quietly so that she wouldn’t wake her friend. She pulled on her clothes and went down the narrow, curved staircase to find her sister kneeling on the kitchen floor trying to make the gray kitten drink water from a bowl.
    â€œSilly,” she said. “Kittens like milk, not water.”
    â€œI am teaching this one new habits,” Kirsti explained importantly. “And I have named him Thor, for the God of Thunder.”
    Annemarie burst out laughing. She looked at the tiny kitten, who was shaking his head, irritated at his wet whiskers as Kirsti kept trying to dip his face to the water. “God of Thunder?” Annemarie said. “He looks as if he would run and
hide
if there were a thunderstorm!”
    â€œHe has a mother someplace who would comfort him, I imagine,” Mama said. “And when he wants milk, he’ll find his mama.”
    â€œOr he could go visit the cow,” Kirsti said.
    Although Uncle Henrik no longer raised crops on the farm, as his parents had, he still kept a cow, who munched happily on the meadow grass and gave a little milk each day in return. Now and then he was able to send cheese into Copenhagen to his sister’s family. This morning, Annemarie noticed with delight, Mama had made oatmeal, and there was a pitcher of cream on the table. It was a very long time since she had tasted cream. At home they had bread and tea every morning.
    Mama followed Annemarie’s eyes to the pitcher. “Fresh from Blossom,” she said. “Henrik milks her every morning before he leaves for the boat.
    â€œAnd,” she added, “there’s butter, too. Usually not even Henrik has butter, but he managed to save a little this time.”
    â€œSave a little from what?” Annemarie asked, spooning oatmeal into a flowered bowl. “Don’t tell me the soldiers try to—what’s the word?—
relocate
butter, too?” She laughed at her own joke.
    But it wasn’t a joke at all, though Mama laughed ruefully. “They do,” she said. “They relocate all the farmers’ butter, right into the stomach of their army! I suppose that if they knew Henrik had kept this tiny bit, they would come with guns and march it away, down the path!”
    Kirsti joined their laughter, as the three of them pictured a mound of frightened butter under military arrest. The kitten darted away when Kirsti’s attention was distracted, and settled on the windowsill. Suddenly, here in this sunlit kitchen, with cream in a pitcher and a bird in the apple tree beside the door—and out in the Kattegat, where Uncle Henrik, surrounded by bright blue sky and water, pulled in his nets filled with shiny silver fish—suddenly the specter of guns and grim-faced soldiers seemed nothing more than a ghost story, a joke with which to frighten children in the dark.
    Ellen appeared in the kitchen doorway, smiling sleepily, and Mama put another flowered bowl of steaming oatmeal on the old wooden table.
    â€œ
Cream
,” Annemarie said, gesturing to the pitcher with a grin.
    Â 
    All day long the girls played out of doors under the brilliant clear sky and sun. Annemarie took Ellen to the small pasture beyond the barn and introduced her to Blossom, who gave a lazy, rough-textured lick to the palm of Ellen’s hand when she extended it timidly. The kitten scampered about and chased flying insects across the meadow. The girls picked armfuls of wildflowers dried brown, now, by the early fall chill, and arranged them in pots and