The book thief and her brother were traveling down toward Munich, where they would soon be given over to foster parents. We now know, of course, that the boy didn't make it.

It was packed with humans.

Almost an inspired spurt.

The time had come. For one.

My feet stepped through the cluttered aisle and my palm was over his mouth in an instant. No one noticed. The train galloped on. Except the girl.

When the coughing stopped, there was nothing but the nothingness of life moving on with a shuffle, or a near-silent twitch. A suddenness found its way onto his lips then, which were a corroded brown color and peeling, like old paint. In desperate need of redoing.

That red sky…

Their mother was asleep.

A six-year-old boy died in the third carriage.

There was an intense spurt of coughing.

That last time.

How does a book thief end up kneeling and howling and flanked by a man-made heap of ridiculous, greasy, cooked-up rubble?

And soon after -- nothing.

Years earlier, the start was snow.

A train was moving quickly.

HOW IT HAPPENED

I entered the train.

A SPECTACULARLY TRAGIC MOMENT

Seeing nothing.

Just as the Fuhrer was about to reply, she woke up.

Her brother was dead.

His blue eyes stared at the floor.

It was January 1939. She was nine years old, soon to be ten.

With one eye open, one still in a dream, the book thief -- also known as Liesel Meminger -- could see without question that her younger brother, Werner, was now sideways and dead.

One eye open.

Prior to waking up, the book thief was dreaming about the Fuhrer, Adolf Hitler. In the dream, she was attending a rally at which he spoke, looking at the skull-colored part in his hair and the perfect square of his mustache. She was listening contentedly to the torrent of words spilling from his mouth. His sentences glowed in the light. In a quieter moment, he actually crouched down and smiled at her. She returned the smile and said, "Guten Tag, Herr Fuhrer. Wie geht's dir heut?" She hadn't learned to speak too well, or even to read, as she had rarely frequented school. The reason for that she would find out in due course.

One still in a dream.

And the shaking.

It would be better for a complete dream, I think, but I really have no control over that.

The second eye jumped awake and she caught me out, no doubt about it. It was exactly when I knelt down and extracted his soul, holding it limply in my swollen arms. He warmed up soon after, but when I picked him up originally, the boy's spirit was soft and cold, like ice cream. He started melting in my arms. Then warming up completely. Healing.

For Liesel Meminger, there was the imprisoned stiffness of movement and the staggered onslaught of thoughts. Es stimmt nicht. This isn't happening. This isn't happening.

Yes, I know, I know, I assume it has something to do with instinct. To stem the flow of truth. Her heart at that point was slippery and hot, and loud, so loud so loud.

Why do they always shake them?

Stupidly, I stayed. I watched.

She woke her up with the same distraught shake.

If you can't imagine it, think clumsy silence. Think bits and pieces of floating despair. And drowning in a train.

Next, her mother.

This time, the train limped through the snowed-in country.

She climbed down into the snow, holding the small body.

As you've been informed, two guards also exited the train. They discussed and argued over what to do. The situation was unsavory to say the least. It was eventually decided that all three of them should be taken to the next township and left there to sort things out.

They stepped onto the platform, the body in her mother's arms.

What could the girl do but follow?

It hobbled in and stopped.

Liesel had no idea where she was. All was white, and as they remained at the station, she could only stare at the faded lettering of the sign in front of her. For Liesel, the town was nameless, and it was there that her brother, Werner, was buried two days later. Witnesses included a priest and two shivering grave diggers.

They stood.

In panic, the mother opened the door.

Snow had been falling consistently, and the service to Munich was forced to stop due to faulty track work. There was a woman wailing. A girl stood numbly next to her.

The boy was getting heavy.

AN OBSERVATION

A pair of train guards.

When it came down to it, one of them called the shots.

The other did what he was told.

A pair of grave diggers.

The question is, what if the other is a lot more than one?

For two days, I went about my business. I traveled the globe as always, handing souls to the conveyor belt of eternity. I watched them trundle passively on. Several times, I warned myself that I should keep a good distance from the burial of Liesel Meminger's brother. I did not heed my advice.

Standing to Liesel's left, the grave diggers were rubbing their hands together and whining about the snow and the current digging conditions. "So hard getting through all the ice," and so forth. One of them couldn't have been more than fourteen. An apprentice. When he walked away, after a few dozen paces, a black book fell innocuously from his coat pocket without his knowledge.

From miles away, as I approached, I could already see the small group of humans standing frigidly among the wasteland of snow. The cemetery welcomed me like a friend, and soon, I was with them. I bowed my head.

Mistakes, mistakes, it's all I seem capable of at times.

Only the girl saw it.

Somewhere in all the snow, she could see her broken heart, in two pieces. Each half was glowing, and beating under all that white. She realized her mother had come back for her only when she felt the boniness of a hand on her shoulder. She was being dragged away. A warm scream filled her throat.

There was something black and rectangular lodged in the snow.

Frozen blood was cracked across her hands.

A final, soaking farewell was let go of, and they turned and left the cemetery, looking back several times.

A SMALL IMAGE, PERHAPS TWENTY METERS AWAY

Within seconds, snow was carved into her skin.

The girl, however, stayed.

Her knees entered the ground. Her moment had arrived.

When the dragging was done, the mother and the girl stood and breathed.

Still in disbelief, she started to dig. He couldn't be dead. He couldn't be dead. He couldn't --

She bent down and picked it up and held it firmly in her fingers.

The book had silver writing on it.

They held hands.

A few minutes later, Liesel's mother started leaving with the priest. She was thanking him for his performance of the ceremony.

No one waved back.

As for me, I remained a few moments longer.

I waved.

Mother and daughter vacated the cemetery and made their way toward the next train to Munich.

Both had sores on their lips.

Both were skinny and pale.

Liesel noticed it in the dirty, fogged-up window of the train when they boarded just before midday. In the written words of the book thief herself, the journey continued like everything had happened.

I think her mother knew this quite well. She wasn't delivering her children to the higher echelons of Munich, but a foster home had apparently been found, and if nothing else, the new family could at least feed the girl and the boy a little better, and educate them properly.

When the train pulled into the Bahnhof in Munich, the passengers slid out as if from a torn package. There were people of every stature, but among them, the poor were the most easily recognized. The impoverished always try to keep moving, as if relocating might help. They ignore the reality that a new version of the same old problem will be waiting at the end of the trip -- the relative you cringe to kiss.

The boy.

There was the chaos of goodbye.

Quite a way beyond the outskirts of Munich, there was a town called Molching, said best by the likes of you and me as "Molking." That's where they were taking her, to a street by the name of Himmel.

That's the sort of thing I'll never know, or comprehend -- what humans are capable of.

Whoever named Himmel Street certainly had a healthy sense of irony. Not that it was a living hell. It wasn't. But it sure as hell wasn't heaven, either.

She picked him up and continued walking, the girl clinging now to her side.

Liesel was sure her mother carried the memory of him, slung over her shoulder. She dropped him. She saw his feet and legs and body slap the platform.

How could she move?

How could that woman walk?

A TRANSLATION

It was a goodbye that was wet, with the girl's head buried into the woolly, worn shallows of her mother's coat. There had been some more dragging.

Himmel = Heaven

Authorities were met and questions of lateness and the boy raised their vulnerable heads. Liesel remained in the corner of the small, dusty office as her mother sat with clenched thoughts on a very hard chair.

They'd been expecting a girl and a boy and would be paid a small allowance for having them. Nobody wanted to be the one to tell Rosa Hubermann that the boy didn't survive the trip. In fact, no one ever really wanted to tell her anything. As far as dispositions go, hers wasn't really enviable, although she had a good record with foster kids in the past. Apparently, she'd straightened a few out.

Regardless, Liesel's foster parents were waiting.

The Hubermanns.

For Liesel, it was a ride in a car.

She'd never been in one before.

There was the constant rise and fall of her stomach, and the futile hopes that they'd lose their way or change their minds. Among it all, her thoughts couldn't help turning toward her mother, back at the Bahnhof, waiting to leave again. Shivering. Bundled up in that useless coat. She'd be eating her nails, waiting for the train. The platform would be long and uncomfortable -- a slice of cold cement. Would she keep an eye out for the approximate burial site of her son on the return trip? Or would sleep be too heavy?

A PHOTO OF HIMMEL STREET

"Nearly there." The foster care lady, Frau Heinrich, turned around and smiled. "Dein neues Heim. Your new home."

A man was also in the car. He remained with the girl while Frau Heinrich disappeared inside. He never spoke. Liesel assumed he was there to make sure she wouldn't run away or to force her inside if she gave them any trouble. Later, however, when the trouble did start, he simply sat there and watched. Perhaps he was only the last resort, the final solution.

Liesel made a clear circle on the dribbled glass and looked out.

The day was gray, the color of Europe.

The car moved on, with Liesel dreading the last, lethal turn.

There is murky snow spread out like carpet.

Curtains of rain were drawn around the car.

There is concrete, empty hat-stand trees, and gray air.

After a few minutes, a very tall man came out. Hans Hubermann, Liesel's foster father. On one side of him was the medium-height Frau Heinrich. On the other was the squat shape of Rosa Hubermann, who looked like a small wardrobe with a coat thrown over it. There was a distinct waddle to her walk. Almost cute, if it wasn't for her face, which was like creased-up cardboard and annoyed, as if she was merely tolerating all of it. Her husband walked straight, with a cigarette smoldering between his fingers. He rolled his own.

The buildings appear to be glued together, mostly small houses and apartment blocks that look nervous.

A TRANSLATION OF ROSA HUBERMANN'S ANNOUNCEMENT

Published by the Bayern Cemetery Association

The seat in front was flung forward. A corridor of cold light invited her out. She would not move.

"Was ist los mit dem Kind?" Rosa Hubermann inquired. She said it again. "What's wrong with this child?" She stuck her face inside the car and said, "Na, komm. Komm."

"What are you assholes looking at?"

THE GRAVE DIGGER'S HANDBOOK

The book thief had struck for the first time -- the beginning of an illustrious career.

A gang of tears trudged from her eyes as she held on and refused to go inside. People started to gather on the street until Rosa Hubermann swore at them, after which they reversed back, whence they came.

Eventually, Liesel Meminger walked gingerly inside. Hans Hubermann had her by one hand. Her small suitcase had her by the other. Buried beneath the folded layer of clothes in that suitcase was a small black book, which, for all we know, a fourteen-year-old grave digger in a nameless town had probably spent the last few hours looking for. "I promise you," I imagine him saying to his boss, "I have no idea what happened to it. I've looked everywhere. Everywhere!" I'm sure he would never have suspected the girl, and yet, there it was -- a black book with silver words written against the ceiling of her clothes:

Liesel would not get out of the car.

Quietly.

There was the gate next, which she clung to.

A Twelve-Step Guide to

Grave-Digging Success

Outside, through the circle she'd made, Liesel could see the tall man's fingers, still holding the cigarette. Ash stumbled from its edge and lunged and lifted several times until it hit the ground. It took nearly fifteen minutes to coax her from the car. It was the tall man who did it.

The fact was this: