A Little Princess

an homage to Frances Hodgson Burnett's classic

Again, the whine of the shell. Melchisedec scampering across the floor and disappearing under the bed. Sara’s ears singing with the prelude to the weapon detonating, like the aura her mother used to have before her migraines. But her mother lies wrapped in a white floursack in a makeshift graveyard now, so the headaches don’t trouble her anymore.

Instinctively Sara drops down and rolls into the tightest ball she possibly can. She knows that if those missiles are aimed for her building, it won’t save her. But it’s all she can do. Drop, roll, rock back and forth, and cry for the mama who will never hear her. The crazy flapping in the artificial wind. That’s because the force of the bombardment has already shattered two of the windows and her father had to tape up black refuse bags to stop the winter rains coming in.

Sara does not have a phone or watch. She has no way of checking how long the attack lasts. It always feels like forever, that her ears will bleed out in the meantime. There is no silence in the skies any more, just the endless roar of fighter jets. She has little tics she uses to get through it: pulling her lip until it bleeds, picking at the skin on her fingers, chewing the insides of her mouth until they become mashed, painful sores. Sometimes just putting her bare feet together, feeling the disharmony of the ankle bones clashing.

Now she feels a small, furry presence beside her, brushing her skin. She stops picking, her fingers relax. A little squeak, audible even with the jets overhead. An earthy stink. She is not alone in this hellscape. Melchisedec has not abandoned her after all, he has emerged from his little hole under the floor.

Sara opens one eye and there he is, a large, brown rat with inquisitive eyes and whiskers. Normally when he looks at her like that, it’s because he wants food, and even though they are running low on the tinned preserves her father has brought back from the aid centre, Sara can usually find something for him.

Before – oh how sweet and distant that word, before, like another land across the glittering Mediterranean Sea, a mile from her door, but a place she is no longer allowed to visit because it’s patrolled by You-Know-Who –

Before, she used to read Victorian and Edwardian classics, translated of course. The Secret Garden excited her, imagining the moss-covered, overgrown walls in the damp English countryside, then the door opening…

It has been a long time since Sara has last seen a tree.

Her favourite book was The Little Princess. Partly because the girl in the story was called Sara – same as her! – but also because of the story of how she lost all her wealth and was banished up to a cold and threadbare attic to be a servant in her school, friendless and lonely. But then she came across a rat, and called him Melchisedec. He is a Bastille rat sent to be my friend. I can always get a bit of bread the cook has thrown away, and it is quite enough to support him.

Sara doesn’t read books any more. She doesn’t pretend their apartment is the Bastille like Sara in the story does about the attic. Because it’s a happy ending for Sara-in-the-book, but Sara in real life does not know how this will end. Whether her father will come back or not. Whether her friends will be alive, or will they be buried under fallen masonry like her sister, or rescued and brought to the hospital like her mother, only for the hospital to be bombed too.

But she keeps company with Melchisedec, and he with her, just as book Sara did with her rat. They will see this out together, one way or the other. He listens, he is wise. He lives for the moment and knows what it is to be shunned, hated, misunderstood.

There is a lull in the bombardment, enough for Sara to go to the kitchen. The electricity has been off for weeks, but there is a small bit of cheese on a rind. Sara cuts it up into cubes and puts them on a plate with some crackers and presents them to Melchisedec, who nibbles a bit on the cube and then scampers away with the rest, to feed his family.

He will be back soon, Sara knows, and so will the bombers. But for that moment, seeing him happy with what little she has to give, nibbling at the bits of crackers and cheese, she feels like the queen of that small room.