Rabbit, Soldier, Angel, Thief: CBCA Honour Book 2022

By Katrina Nannestad

Award-winning writer Katrina Nannestad transports us to Russia and the Great Patriotic War and into the life of Sasha, a soldier at only six years old ...

Wood splinters and Mama screams and the nearest soldier seizes her roughly by the arms. My sister pokes her bruised face out from beneath the table and shouts, 'Run, Sasha! Run!'

So I run. I run like a rabbit.

It's spring, 1942. The sky is blue, the air is warm and sweet with the scent of flowers.

And then everything is gone.

The flowers, the proud geese, the pretty wooden houses, the friendly neighbours. Only Sasha remains.

But one small boy, alone in war-torn Russia, cannot survive.

One small boy without a family cannot survive.

One small boy without his home cannot survive.

What that small boy needs is an army.

From the award-winning author of We Are Wolves comes the story of a young boy who becomes a soldier at six, fighting in the only way he can -- with love. But is love ever enough when the world is at war?


AWARDS

Honour Book - CBCA 2022 (Younger Reader's Book of the Year)

Winner - The Indie Book Awards 2022 (Children's)

Winner - ABA Bookseller's Choice 2022 Book of the Year Awards (Children's)

Winner - ARA Historical Novel Award 2022 (Children and Young Adult)

Shortlisted - ABIAs 2022 (Book of the Year for Younger Children)

• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers Australia
• Release date: Nov 1, 2021
• ISBN: 9781460713365

Katrina Nannestad

Katrina Nannestad is a multi-award-winning Australian author. Her books include the CBCA-shortlisted We Are Wolves, The Girl Who Brought Mischief, The Travelling Bookshop series, The Girl, the Dog and the Writer series, the Olive of Groves series, the Red Dirt Diaries series, the Lottie Perkins series, and the historical novels Rabbit, Soldier, Angel, Thief, Waiting for the Storks and Silver Linings. Katrina grew up in country New South Wales in a neighbourhood stuffed full of happy children. Her adult years have been spent raising boys, teaching, daydreaming and pursuing her love of stories. Katrina celebrates family, friendship and belonging in her writing. She also loves creating stories that bring joy or hope to other people's lives. Katrina now lives on a hillside in central Victoria with her husband, a silly whippet called Olive and a mob of kangaroos. www.katrinanannestad.com

Book preview

Chapter One

I’m cold. I’m crawling through the dark, flat on my belly, elbows and legs working. But I’m cold. So cold. The ground is hard, icy, cruel. The chill presses through my clothes and skin, right to the core of me. And the fear does, too.

I start to shake. A little at first. Then plenty, so that every bone in my body rattles. Surely rattling bones make a sound. Like pebbles in a pocket. No, louder. Like hand grenades jiggling in their crates in the back of a truck. The sound will give me away.

I hear footfalls, soft and stealthy. A patrol. They don’t want others to hear as they approach. But I hear. My ears are sharp, practised in the art of listening.

I press myself into the shadows. Even the dark of night has shadows. Perfect for hiding. I merge into the darkness and wrap my fingers more firmly around the handle of my knife. I force my rattling bones to be still.

Feet and legs pass by. Two pairs. They’re so close to my face I could lick the heels as they go.

I wait until there is nothing but silence.

I wait a little longer, then slip out of the shadows.

The way is clear now. I slither like a lizard, no longer feeling cold or pain, fear or fatigue. I make straight for my target, pale and plump, almost shining in the night. I pull back my arm, clench my jaw, then stab. I plunge the knife in as deep as it will go.

A voice cries out, waking soldiers all around me, but I’m here now and determined to finish what I started. I pull downward and the blade of the knife rips the stab wound wide. There’s another howl and a bright flash. A searchlight draws a line through the darkness. Then two. They dash about, their beams crossing and separating and scanning past my face and my feet and the crying, howling soldier who’s now cursing, too.

I grab what I came for, squeeze my fist tight and run like a rabbit.

I run and trip and collide with soldiers and bits of iron and metal and fabric, dodging one searchlight, then another, until at last I’m hit. Blinded by the light. Frozen to the spot.

Caught.

I remain silent as the nurse guides me back to bed. It’s Irena, my favourite. She’s young and pretty and talks a lot about her family at home in Siberia.

‘Poor boy.’ She shakes her head and tucks the end of my bandages back inside my pyjama shirt. ‘It was bad enough when we found you wandering in the street last night. But now this! Running about with a knife in your hand. A ten-year-old! And on those legs!’

I wasn’t just running, I was crawling, too. But I don’t say it out loud.

‘And for what?’ Nurse Irena’s voice is growing louder. ‘To stab Sergeant Stepanov’s pillow? That pillow was a gift from his lieutenant for saving his life.’

Nurse Sophie peers at me from the other side of the bed. ‘Sergeant Stepanov sacrificed his arm and his left buttock to save his lieutenant. That pillow was as good as a medal for bravery.’

‘Better than a medal,’ says Nurse Irena. ‘A medal won’t give him a good night’s sleep. But that pillow, soft and plump, is made for deep sleep and peaceful dreams. It’s fit for Stalin himself!’

Sergeant Stepanov now hobbles to the end of my bed. ‘That pillow is hardly fit for anyone now. There are feathers flying out all over. They’re floating up around the bed, drifting down one by one, tickling my nose and chest and armpits so that I want to giggle like a little child!’ His forehead is as wrinkled as his pyjamas. ‘What were you thinking, boy?’

I blink three times, then stare.

Nurse Irena and Nurse Sophie smile, hovering over my face. Sergeant Stepanov opens his mouth and breathes noisily. They are all waiting for my answer. Hoping for any answer. But I don’t speak.

I haven’t spoken for months.

Not since I woke up here in the Red Army hospital in Berlin.

Sergeant Stepanov waves his remaining hand in the air. ‘Ah, it’s nothing, young Sasha. After four years of war, I am so used to sleeping on sticks and straw and dirt that I can hardly bear to feel my head sinking into something as soft as feathers. Even so, I don’t think you should go around stabbing at things in the dark. That knife might have missed the pillow and sliced something off my body. And honestly, I can’t afford to lose another hand.’

‘Or buttock!’ calls a voice from across the ward.

‘He won’t have anything left to sit on!’ shouts another.

‘Shut up!’ cries a third. ‘It’s the middle of the night! I need my beauty sleep.’

‘They’re right,’ says Nurse Irena. ‘All of these soldiers need their rest so they can recover from their injuries. It’s time you slept, too, Sergeant Stepanov. And you, Sasha.’

She and Nurse Sophie tuck me in from both sides. They pull and tug and tuck as hard as they can. I think they’re hoping the sheets will pin me down so I can’t escape again. Nurse Irena leans forward and presses her lips to my forehead. Nurse Sophie wiggles her fingers in a baby wave. Sergeant Stepanov winks. And then they are gone.

I pull my hand from beneath the sheets and open it. Feathers. So many feathers! I smile, glad that my mission was a success.

Ever since the lieutenant brought Sergeant Stepanov the pillow three days ago, I have wanted the feathers from inside. I have needed the feathers. I don’t know why, but I had to get them.

I sniff them. Brush them across my face. Rub them between my fingers. Then I tuck them beneath my pillow. Later, when everyone’s asleep, I’ll climb out of bed and stuff them into the hole I’ve made in my mattress, together with all the other things I have stolen.

Chapter Two

Doctor Orlova is sitting by my bed. She’s there most days when I wake from my afternoon sleep. Sometimes she’s smiling into my face. Other times she’s dozing in her chair. But as soon as I move, even if it’s just a twitch of my little finger, she springs to life.

‘Hello, Sasha.’ Doctor Orlova smiles, and the wrinkles around her eyes and mouth multiply.

I rub my eyes and sit up, slowly, carefully, so my chest wounds don’t hurt too badly. I stare at her. I don’t smile and I don’t speak. I can’t. I’ve forgotten how. But I think the kind doctor understands. She must know I’m glad to see her, otherwise she wouldn’t keep visiting, day after day.

‘I hear you had another adventure last night.’ Doctor Orlova chuckles softly. ‘And I understand that the adventure involved Sergeant Stepanov’s pillow.’ She laughs a little louder, a little harder, so that now her bony shoulders are dancing up and down.

She’s lovely and I want to smile at her. I want to say, ‘You’re beautiful, with your crinkle wrinkles and your frazzled grey hair that looks like it’s never been brushed and your bony shoulders that jiggle and dance in time with your chicken-clucking chuckles.’ But I can’t. I don’t know how to make the words run from my head to my lips and out into the air. So I just stare.

‘I know,’ whispers Doctor Orlova, as though she has heard my thoughts. She reaches out and pats my knee through the blankets. ‘I know, Sasha . . . I know . . .’

I stare.

‘Ah! I almost forgot!’ The doctor leans sideways and feels about on the floor beneath her chair. When she straightens, she’s holding a small bouquet of flowers – yellow marigolds, pink and white daisies and blue, blue cornflowers.

I stare and she waves the bouquet around, carelessly. ‘I went for a walk this morning. Through the rubble in the street outside the hospital. Ugh! What a mess we have made of Berlin! It had to be done, of course. Hitler had to be stopped. But the ruins! The dust! The rubble! It’s almost as bad as Stalingrad.’

She stops after mentioning Stalingrad, as though she expects me to say something. But I don’t. I never speak. She knows that. And all I can think about is the flowers.

‘Anyway,’ Doctor Orlova continues, still waving the bouquet about in front of her, ‘I walked, ankle-deep in dust, then climbed over broken walls and kicked through bricks and, all of a sudden, I found myself standing in a garden. There, in the middle of the ruins! Can you imagine such a thing, Sasha?’

I open my mouth and lean forward, just a tiny bit. Maybe a centimetre. I want to touch the cornflowers, but I can’t make myself move any further. I can’t get my hands to shift or reach or stretch.

‘The garden was so very beautiful,’ says the doctor, ‘that I sat down on a broken step and laughed. Really laughed. It was joy, you see.’

I do see. I do!

‘How wonderful,’ she sighs, ‘that these delicate blooms have survived the destruction of war.’ She closes her eyes and falls silent.

I don’t take my eyes off the flowers. I want to reach out and touch them. Yellow marigolds. Pink and white daisies. Blue, blue cornflowers.

The doctor’s eyes flick open and she smiles. ‘And they made me think of you, Sasha. So I picked some and here they are.’

She holds out the bouquet, but my hands stay by my side, resting on the blanket, fingers curled shut, even though I want to take it. I am desperate to hold the flowers, to touch them and sniff them and feel their petals tickling the tip of my nose. I am hungry to own them, to keep them.

I long for the flowers like I longed for the feathers from Sergeant Stepanov’s pillow.

Doctor Orlova sighs and her shoulders droop. ‘But maybe you are not one for flowers. Forgive me, Sasha. It was foolish.’ She withdraws the bouquet, pressing it to her chest. She stands, smiles and begins to walk away.

‘Please,’ I whisper.

The doctor stops.

‘Please,’ I say little louder, my voice sounding strange and rough after not being used for so long. ‘I would like the flowers very much.’

I hold the flowers for the rest of the day. I brush them across my cheeks. I smell them. I poke at their petals, softly, lovingly, first with my little finger, then with my pointer. They’re so pretty. So special. And not just because they’re a gift from Doctor Orlova, or because they’ve survived the bombings and the Battle of Berlin. There’s something else that makes them special.

If only I could remember.

‘Pretty flowers,’ says Nurse Sophie when she brings my soup.

I don’t answer, but I eat with the flowers clutched in my free hand.

‘Pretty flowers,’ says Nurse Irena when she arrives to change the dressings on my head and chest and legs. I don’t answer, but I keep hold of the flowers.

Irena tells me all about her village in Siberia and how the donkeys hate it when her papa plays the accordion, but love listening to her mama sing. She prattles on and on so that I barely think about the ugly red wounds scattered all over my body, until they are covered once more with fresh white bandages. I want to say thank you to Irena for looking after me so well. I think it would be nice to give her one of the pink daisies to match her pretty pink lips, but I can’t bear to part with even one of them. They are so special. So important.

I sleep with the flowers tucked under my chin and cling to them throughout the following morning, even though they’ve wilted.

Then, while I’m eating my kasha for lunch, a picture pops into my head. It’s a picture with flowers in it. Lots and lots of flowers. And a village. And a house with a garden. And the flowers are there in every bit of the picture. They might be inside the house, too.

Then other pictures start to pop into my head.

By the time my bowl is taken away, my mind is racing and some of the things that are stuffed into the hole in my mattress begin to make sense, because they, too, are in the pictures in my head.

I wait, silent and still, until the sick and injured soldiers around me are taking their afternoon sleep, then I sort through all the things I’ve stolen.

When Doctor Orlova arrives, I am sitting up in bed, the flowers in my lap and a strange mix of objects lined up across my blanket: a dead beetle, eight buttons, three pencils, a piece of frayed rope, a handful of feathers, twelve matchboxes, a harmonica, a ball of string, a pair of underpants, six spoons, a piece of chalk, two blocks of soap, a brick, a furry ushanka hat and a photo of Nurse Irena’s family in Siberia.

Doctor Orlova’s eyelids flutter, but otherwise she doesn’t seem surprised.

And then I realise. She already knows I’m a thief! And if she knows, Nurse Irena and Nurse Sophie know, too. I blush at the idea.

Doctor Orlova takes one of the pencils and uses it to lift up the pair of underpants. ‘I hope these are clean, Sasha.’

They are. I stole them from the laundry three days ago – from the clean pile, not the bag of dirty clothes.

Doctor Orlova tosses the underpants aside and takes the buttons in her hand, all eight of them. She jiggles them about and chuckles. ‘So this is where the buttons from Doctor Kozlov’s robe got to. And the buttons from Sergeant Stepanov’s pyjama shirt. Poor man. First his buttons, then his feathers. You’ve been picking on him, Sasha.’

She reaches for the harmonica, but I interrupt her. ‘Flowers,’ I whisper.

Doctor Orlova sets the harmonica back down. She pushes a frizz of hair away from her face and sits on my bed. She reaches for the flowers, but I grab the wilted bouquet and hold it as far away from her as I can.

‘Yes,’ says Doctor Orlova. ‘The flowers are very important. I can see that. I won’t try to touch them again, I promise.’

I stare at her and return the flowers to my lap.

We sit in silence for a long time.

At last, Doctor Orlova speaks. ‘Would you like to tell me about the flowers, Sasha?’

I blink at her.

I nod.

I open my mouth, but still I cannot speak. It’s not just the flowers that are important. There’s more.

I take the piece of frayed rope and sit it gently beside the flowers. I frown. I pick up the rope, tie a knot in it, then sit it back down. That’s better.

I peer at all the other things arranged on the end of my bed. Twelve matchboxes. Twelve! It’s a lot, yet I still feel the need for more. I gather them up and sit them in my lap. I choose one and open it. It’s full of ashes. Ashes that I put there. All the matchboxes are full of ashes.

My skin creeps.

I don’t know if I want to do this.

But then my eyes settle on the ushanka, the fur hat with the ear flaps. I take it gently in my hands and stroke the thick, soft fur. And I smile for the first time in months.

Flowers.

A knotted piece of rope.

Twelve matchboxes filled with ashes.

A soft, fluffy hat.

I am ready now.

I nod again and I speak.

A bouquet of flowers,

a knotted piece of rope,

twelve matchboxes filled with ashes,

and a ushanka, soft and fluffy.

Chapter Three

It’s spring, 1942. The sky is blue, the air is warm and there are flowers everywhere. In our garden, dancing between the vegetables, we have crocuses, larkspurs, daffodils and daisies. We have five cherry trees, all loaded with blossoms. Bees buzz around the delicate pink flowers – like fat ballerinas fussing at the sight of so many tiny pink tutus. I saw a picture of a ballet dancer once. She was skinny and strong, but I prefer my fat buzzing ballerinas.

Beyond our garden, the village is blooming, too: lilac bushes, violets, lupins, a whole orchard of apricot and almond trees in blossom, and more cherries. Even the meadows stretching out from the village are filled with flowers: chamomile, wild yarrow and cornflowers. So many blue, blue cornflowers. All of Russia is blooming.

I’m six and a half, which means that I’m old enough to wander out of the house on my own. I feel grown up and important as I roam the meadows and pick wildflowers for Mama.

Flowers are Mama’s favourite thing in the whole wide world. Even though our garden and village are crowded with them, Mama will be so happy when I give her these gifts from the meadow. She will put them in a jar of water and place them on the windowsill so that everyone who walks by can also enjoy the sight of them. And tonight, when she has read a fairy tale to Yelena, my twelve-year-old sister, and me, and settled us down in our wide, warm bed above the stove, Mama will choose her favourite meadow flower, study it, then embroider its twin onto her headscarf.

Mama’s headscarf is covered in flowers. Every week she adds another with her needle and thread. She says the flowers make her feel beautiful. But Mama is beautiful even without a scarf full of blooms. She is the most beautiful woman in the village, with yellow yarrow hair, blue, blue cornflower eyes, soft cherry-blossom cheeks and a magic smile. When Mama smiles, everyone around her smiles, too. They cannot help it. And Mama smiles a lot. Even now, when all she has left is Yelena and me.

Papa and my sister Roza joined the Red Army at the start of the Great Patriotic War. All the papas and big brothers in our village joined up, and some of the big sisters, too, like Roza. But now, Papa and Roza are no more. We miss them, deep, deep in our hearts and souls. But we must all make sacrifices for Father Stalin and Mother Russia, and we are proud that our family has been part of the fight against Hitler and his German monsters.

And we still

Reviews for Rabbit, Soldier, Angel, Thief

[heatherlinc · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Oh, this book was beautiful. It reminded me a little of Morris Gleitzman's "Once" series, but better. Written for middle school readers, "Rabbit, Soldier, Angel, Thief" will appeal to all ages. I adored Sasha, he was a shining light in a period of darkness and he brought tenderness, hope and love to everyone he met.The title is a clever one as the reader gradually comes to realise the significance of each word. I loved this book! Sasha brought me to tears and I was so impressed with the author's writing. "Rabbit, Soldier, Angel, Thief "was an emotional read and, considering what is happening between Russia and Ukraine, a relevant one. Highly recommended!