Voice Of An Angel

• Oli Carnew, Grade 12
• Short Story
• 2015

Only one thing has remained constant throughout human history. As dictators are pulled down to make room for another, icons fade and statues crumble, the duality of the human spirit is the true pervasive marker of humanity.
The flower which blooms in the mud, is far more beautiful than the view from a throne built upon the graves of numerous men, women and children. However, in the blind fury and insatiable hunger for power, the weakest amongst the strong are forgotten.
Such it was during a war which was not supposed to happen. No sooner had a battle against human brutality been waged, than another rose to fill its place, spouting murder and hatred. An agenda forced on a people afraid to have a voice, to stand above the stench of hateful execution and dare to raise a hand.
Amongst such brutality, beauty speaks loudest in its quiet voice.
Ilse huddled in the dark. Bunched within a huddle of people who had never lifted a finger, against the Allies or the Fatherland.
Pushed against the wall, she felt the cool, hard walls of the cellar, and was afraid. Where she supposed she should be comforted by their strength, they felt fragile, a small capsule buried under the weight of the earth, a grave waiting to be filled in.
The children with her in the cellar also felt the weight of the earth, threatening to envelope them in its cool dusty embrace.
Although only five years younger than her, Ilse was far older than those children unfortunate to be “living” in Nazi Germany. Her casual playtime had been replaced by survival, laughter and playtime on the street was overrun with the awful staccato of machines, furnishing the instruments of death. When bedtime stories should be read, the lights were turned out, allowing the oppressive darkness to fill the house.
This same darkness enveloped her now, underground in a cellar with the cloying scent of sweat and fear, heavy on her senses and clutching at her heart.
She could feel the bombs striking the earth, reverberating through the cellar walls, singing their deathly tune. As such parcels of death trailed the night behind them, pelting into the earth with vengeful interminably, Ilse began to sing.
She began shakily. As if afraid of being heard above the sirens wailing somewhere above.
The tune was not complex, but simple, each tone being tested out with a tentative voice, before being found acceptable and the next note pushed through the still air.
As her quiet voice filled the room, it found the children huddled in mothers’ skirts as well as the adults hidden within a mind of perplexities, the thumps of steel striking concrete becoming hollow and far away.
Detached from the earth, with a sky dark for the evil in contained, Ilse sang, working away the brutal words of a monster incarnate.
Within a world pockmarked by pride and hatred, a German girl sang the sweet song of death.