Fathers and sons -- Fiction; People with disabilities -- Fiction; Princes -- Fiction; Refugees -- Fiction
Even when they had finished and undressed for the night, they said very
little.
"Where do our thoughts go when we are asleep?" The Rat inquired casually
after he was stretched out in the darkness. "They must go somewhere.
Let's send them to find out what to do next."
"It's not as still as it was on the Gaisberg. You can hear the city
roaring," said Marco drowsily from his dark corner. "We must make a
ledge--for ourselves."
Sleep made it for them--deep, restful, healthy sleep. If they had been
more resentful of their ill luck and lost labor, it would have come less
easily and have been less natural. In their talks of strange things they
had learned that one great secret of strength and unflagging courage is
to know how to "let go"--to cease thinking over an anxiety until the
right moment comes. It was their habit to "let go" for hours sometimes,
and wander about looking at places and things--galleries, museums,
palaces, giving themselves up with boyish pleasure and eagerness to all
they saw. Marco was too intimate with the things worth seeing, and The
Rat too curious and feverishly wide-awake to allow of their missing
much.
The Rat's image of the world had grown until it seemed to know no
boundaries which could hold its wealth of wonders. He wanted to go on
and on and see them all.
When Marco opened his eyes in the morning, he found The Rat lying
looking at him. Then they both sat up in bed at the same time.
"I believe we are both thinking the same thing," Marco said.
They frequently discovered that they were thinking the same things.
"So do I," answered The Rat. "It shows how tired we were that we didn't
think of it last night."
"Yes, we are thinking the same thing," said Marco. "We have both
remembered what we heard about his shutting himself up alone with his
pictures and making people believe he had gone away."
"He's in his palace now," The Rat announced.
"Do you feel sure of that, too?" asked Marco. "Did you wake up and feel
sure of it the first thing?"
"Yes," answered The Rat. "As sure as if I'd heard him say it himself."
"So did I," said Marco.
"That's what our thoughts brought back to us," said The Rat, "when we
'let go' and sent them off last night." He sat up hugging his knees and
looking straight before him for some time after this, and Marco did not
interrupt his meditations.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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