Read the first chapter of the provocative new YA fantasy This Rebel Heart

Katherine Locke, an award-winning author, is known for her picture books, young adult and middle grade novels, as well as romance novels. Their YA fantasy is coming soon. This Rebel HeartThe film is shot in Budapest in 1956, which has seen its color disappearance since World War II.. The novel follows Csilla, a young Jewish newspaper typist who’s preparing to flee to Israel with her aunt. Csilla has a special connection with the Danube River that runs through Budapest — it whispers to and protects her, and it saved her family from being taken by Nazis in 1944. However, the river was unable to save her parents seven years ago from the Soviet police.

Now, after her parents’ public exoneration sparks civil unrest, Csilla worries who in her life she can trust. When a student revolutionary and an angelof death come into her life, Csilla discovers that the support and encouragement she needs is there to help her find her voice. Now she must make a difficult choice. Will she choose to live or free the country she loved but has not loved her back?

Here Locke presents the first chapter in his book This Rebel HeartDue out April 5.

Before I can start writing a book, the first line must be known. When I’ve got the first few words down, I proceed to the end and begin the final chapter. This is almost always the same. It is important to understand how the end works before I can start.

This is the first line This Rebel Heart came to me quickly.

She awoke to find herself in pieces.

I didn’t know at first who she was, or what I meant by She woke up in pieces. Was it literal? Figuratively? It was important? Und wer was it for? she?

I continued to write.

Dylan, in the Details

I was able to see the entire story unfold on screen below my fingers, like a river that cuts through land and disappears into the sky. I’ve never been so enthralled, so caught up in a story as I was writing this one. This was an intense feeling and an exhilarating rush. I’m not a runner, but it’s the endorphin high that runners talk about, or skydivers. Despite how exhausting writing can be, how emotionally draining it is, I always wanted to return to these pages, to linger in every corner of Budapest, to drag my fingers through this silver river I’d written.

I’ve also never struggled more with a book.

1956’s Hungarian Revolution was a grassroots revolution started by workers and students who demanded reforms. It was overthrown by 2500 Russian tanks, located in Budapest. The West perceived that the West had broken its promises and were too distracted by Suez Crisis. And like many historical moments that become key to nationalist movements, it wasn’t flawless. It’s easy to cast it as simply a David vs. Goliath type of moment, but the revolution was full of revolutionaries — people. People who are regular, imperfect, hopeless, bias, complex, and messy. It was also what I wanted to put on the pages.

Random House Children’s, Knopf Books for Young Readers

I knew how this story ended — and I knew how the Hungarian Revolution ended. That was between. Her body was broken when she woke up. The last line of the book. Although it’s rare, sometimes the river will run over its banks twice in their lifetime.That helped me to better understand the frustrating and difficult nature of revolutions, people-led movements and fighting for something that is important, even though you may never be able to see the benefits of your work. I was able to understand the world we live in and myself better.

Every morning, my body is broken. By writing, I can put myself together once again. I read. It is a way to dream about and strive for a better world.

Enjoy this chapter. This Rebel Heart.

She woke up in pieces when she awoke.

It happened frequently.

Csilla Tisza had to get herself back together. In her sleep, Csilla Tisza’s body drifted apart. Csilla Tisza’s hands were always at the far end, reaching out for the bolted-closed window. The Duna River was facing the window.

Invariably, she returned to the river.

The skin was knitted from edge to edge by her, and she assembled it herself. She touched her shoulder again and it bonded to her upper arms, her elbow to her elbow, her elbow towards her forearm, and her wristbones toward her wristbones. The pain in her head was only felt when she could curl her fingers into her palm. This was when she realized she had been connected once again. It was the pain.

Her eyes never left her skull.

They knew what they were doing. They’d seen things out there, in the world, that they didn’t want to see again. They’d rather stay here, beneath the quilt her mother had made, in the bed where her parents made her, in an apartment one-fourth the size it was when she was a child, when she was one-fourth the size she was now.

Csilla’s hair stayed attached to her head too, moon-colored as it’d been since the day she was born. It sparkled, caught and reflected light like a prism. Each strand deflected and reflected light making it difficult not to gaze at the threaded lines that moved with her.

She wore it on her head.

After the end of World War II, Budapest was devoid of any color. Color marched out after the Soviets arrived. (In truth, by the time the Soviets arrived, the only color left in Budapest was blue — the color of the sky, the color of babies’ eyes, the color of the thread in her father’s tallit, the color of her mother’s favorite dress.)

In the one bed that they shared, their aunt also slept beside her. Her aunt didn’t drift too far away from her.

Csilla took deep inhalations and pressed her right hand against her breasts, just below her left breast. She felt her heart beating against her palm. She was still alive. The river spoke to her from somewhere else, beyond the window and beyond this bed.

She felt the whispers inside her chest. Her mind could pick up on them. When she was a child, before the war, before the river, her parents spoke to each other in Yiddish, a language they didn’t share with her. This was how the river felt to her — a language that soothed her, a constant presence, but one she barely understood.

She was young and she learned Yiddish from her parents. By the time she was old enough to understand that they’d use Yiddish to speak about her, or about things they didn’t want her to hear, or to fight, they’d stopped speaking Yiddish. Her mother had continued to speak Yiddish with her sister, Csilla’s aunt Ilona, but that was the entirety of the Yiddish left after the war, after the Shoah: soft words between sisters in the early mornings, over cups of coffee and in the bathroom, where one brushed the other’s hair.

The Yiddish at her home died with her parents.

Csilla only had the river to her and its still, inexorable murmurings.

Csilla, like every morning, waited. Csilla was listening, almost as though she could hear the apartment speak. It was as if the time could rewind.

She wanted time to rewind, but she didn’t know where she’d stop it if she could. She’d go back to four years ago, before Stalin died, before her parents were detained and murdered by the Hungarian secret police, the ÁVH, for a crime she was sure they hadn’t committed—the crime of dual loyalty, of Zionism. She’d go back ten years, to her father’s joining the Hungarian Workers’ Party and the security services, working alongside the people who’d murder him six years later. She’d go back to a time when she did not know her father’s crimes, revealed to her only after his death. She had not understood what an architect he had been of other families’ destruction until the place he built destroyed her own.

She’d go back fourteen years, to a time when they might have been able to flee Hungary, escape to Israel or Yugoslavia or somewhere less terrible, less painful, where they wouldn’t have had to endure the things they endured in the war, where they would have been free to come and go as they wished. Because she wasn’t here.

Now, when she and her aunt escaped in two weeks, she’d be leaving the bodies of her parents behind, in a gentile graveyard, where she could not leave stones on their markers. She would say Kaddish for them in a different time zone, on soil they’d never know.

Her parents would be raised elsewhere, but she would remain in Hungary.

It is impossible to change the world. She reminded herself. You can only survive the one you’re in.

Sometimes, however, the world changed around her and it was difficult to survive in that new environment. Yesterday this world she lived in had collapsed. This morning, she wanted to know what side it’d fallen on. Her parents and the other victims of the purge had been exonerated in an official state funeral yesterday. They were also reburied with their families, who are now deemed to be in good standing in the eyes the State. She and her aunt had stood, blank-faced, as they’d practiced for the four years since Simon and Éva Tisza were killed, all in black, in a gray city, and watched bodies they’d never seen lowered into graves they had not chosen in a funeral that was not in any way Jewish.

In fact, four years earlier her father was made an enemy of people. He took everything they had. And Csilla had grown up in the shadow of her father’s crimes, both real and imaginary. Jew. A Titoist. A Zionist.

He was reburied yesterday, and so the Party admitted that they’d arrested, tried, convicted and executed him on false pretenses.

They said it was a mistake.

It wasn’t a mistake. You can correct mistakes. There is no way to undo death.

Only last night, when they were home, safe inside their own apartment, did Csilla and her aunt whisper the Mourner’s Kaddish, just as they did every year on the yahrzeit of her parents’ deaths. Csilla went into their bureau to search the top drawer of the bureau, while her aunt was still shedding tears. In the back corner, in one of her father’s old gloves, were rolls of forint notes.

It hadn’t been just one thing that made Csilla and Ilona think they needed to leave Hungary. It’d been, like most things were, the slow and gradual accumulation of hurts and wants and needs that couldn’t be fulfilled by anything found here. And now that Csilla had graduated five months ago, it was easier to purport to travel — and to leave instead.

The thought of leaving Budapest where her family lived for many centuries was painful.

The idea of staying in Budapest with her family, who had been there for many hundreds of generations, was too tempting.

But some time after they received notice that her parents would be reburied, Csilla realized that she couldn’t put up with the charade any longer. She couldn’t stay here pretending that everyone around her was not at fault, and she couldn’t stay here pretending that she herself was not also at fault. Ilona nodded and had a stubborn gleam in her eyes. They saved their respective wages. Csilla, from the newspaper, and Ilona, from cleaning out the apartment.

She knew others who’d done it. There were several agencies that could help Jews living on the East-West divide after the war.

She thought no one would notice, or care, now that her parents’ records had been expunged. It was perfect timing.

The couple had almost enough and had tickets for Belgrade to see relatives.

But Csilla had felt it in the crowd yesterday, the knife’s edge of tension. She hadn’t expected that. She was terrified. This could endanger everything. At the same moment, she was tempted to run her fingers down the blade to see how it cuts.

Csilla had heard everyone murmuring behind her yesterday, and when they’d walked back through the crowd, quiet and dark and appropriately mournful, a man had shouted, “What else was a mistake? What else was a lie?”

His words were as clear to her ears as if he shouted them from her apartment.

Is there any other lie you could tell?

He hadn’t fired shots.

However, a gun was loaded.

Csilla wanted Csilla out of Hungary, before the gun went off. Their plans were to be in Israel, but they didn’t realize it.

You didn’t do anything. If her father didn’t start fires from beyond the grave.

Csilla, careful not to wake her aunt by slipping from under the quilts, stepped onto the cold floor and placed her feet on it. Csilla stood and her nightgown that was tied around her waist fell to her knees. The sheer curtain was pulled down by her to let the sun shine through the windows. It had dark waves and was moonlight-silver. This was fabric. It seemed like velvet. Velvet bolts draped over miles of land between the two cities, Buda and Pest.

The river would have been lost to her.

There would also be many other rivers.

(They wouldn’t be the same as Duna. The Duna could not be compared to any river. Csilla, however.

The river’s whispers picked up in urgency.

She turned her gaze to see the street, and almost everybody was moving. One street had two children playing with a ball. Others were walking in a straight line towards the main streets and tram stops. There was only one person standing still. A casually dressed male read an unflinching copy of the newspaper across the street from her apartment. Szabad Nép, She worked for the newspaper. From where he was standing, he’d be able to see her.

He looked up as though he could see her thoughts. She lowered the curtain, and then he stepped back.

“Fool,” she whispered to herself.

She’d thought that her parents’ cases being cleared meant she could relax, that she didn’t have anything to fear from the secret police. They were standing outside of her apartment watching her, for the first times since the disappearance of her parents.

How did she get their attention? Had they found out about her and Ilona’s plans to escape? Csilla had reached out to a Jewish man through a friend. He was a friend’s friend. She’d hoped that the letters wouldn’t be intercepted, but they might have been. It is believed that there are a hundred secret police operating between Belgrade and here.

The river was in her face, so she turned away. She tried to resist the temptation to look through the curtains. He’d still be there. The ÁVH didn’t give up that easily. She was determined to continue her regular routine. Her pulse pounded at her fingertips.

Csilla quickly braided her hair in the shower by running her fingers through her messy moon curls. Csilla tied her hair fast and tightly so that it wouldn’t fall apart suddenly. Though there was no color in Budapest, Hungarians tended toward dark hair and dark brows, and so even in the city’s seemingly permanent grayscale, her hair made her recognizable.

A door creaked across the hallway. Csilla felt shaken and dropped her bobby pin into a sink. Her spine felt tingle with panic. István, who lived across the hall, was better than any alarm clock. When she was a child, this entire floor had been her family’s apartment. The building was nationalized by officials, who then divided the apartments up into smaller units. István had the real kitchen and the real dining room, with the bay window she had loved more than anything. Across the hall, Rosza had the east-facing bedroom that had belonged to Csilla’s grandparents. István rose every morning at dawn and left his apartment every morning at a quarter to seven, slamming the door behind him. Csilla was not awake when the door creaked in her sleepwear.

Lateness is not possible. This is not the case. Csilla, not here.

If she is late, the man next to her would notice.

He could arrest her for — truly — anything he wanted. He didn’t need a specific cause. Lateness, however, could count as one. They’d make up whatever charges they wanted, once they had her.

She couldn’t give them an excuse.

She lived her whole life outside her apartment.

In two weeks, she wouldn’t need to worry about this.

She still needed to worry today. But there was more. It’s amazing! She could also lose.

Is there any other lie you could tell?

She pressed a quick kiss to Ilona’s cheek, and her aunt’s eyes fluttered open. She reached up and clenched her fingers around Csilla’s hand.

“I’m late,” Csilla whispered, her voice shaking. “And there are eyes outside.”

Ilona’s eyes widened, and Csilla saw her come fully awake and into herself. “Be safe,” she whispered back. “We’re so close—”

“I know,” interrupted Csilla. “I have to go.”

She then slipped out the apartment door and locked it. The keys were in her purse.

She reached out to touch the knob that opened the doors. Although she tried to take a deep, steadying breath, her fingers began to tremble.

She was sung to by the river.

It was hard for her to ignore it.

*

The man at the other corner of the street was not visible from her outside. He followed her. Of course he did. He walked faster, and her steps were as quick as her heartbeat.

She was surrounded by buildings that blurred in the light and against the sky. The morning mist made it more confusing because of how gray the city was.

Csilla was young — but she remembered some of the Before. Csilla was young — but she remembered some of the Before. What stunned Csilla the most — in the rare moments when she slowed down to think about it — was how everyone had accepted the changes without much fuss.

She’d been four when the colors began to leach out of Budapest, running like rainbow streams through all the streets toward the river. There’d been articles in the papers and talk in the coffeehouses and whispers on the corners. There’d been inquiries and speeches and radio programs. People had congregated in the streets, watching the color drain as if from a face at the news of a loved one’s death. The color began to drain from the buildings and the street art, as well as the clothes.

It was the time when people lost it. It was like her parents had died when she saw them in moving photographs.

There was much discussion and no one could find the answers. The government set up panel after panel with experts. It was not clear why. The people stopped congregating soon afterward. Radio programs changed to provide more current news. They turned their backs.

Life had continued.

People were still going to work.

People still married and celebrated and separated and died as if the world hadn’t changed all the rules right around them.

She was only seven years old when the war was over. Budapest had been stained with sapphire and sepia by the end. The floors and walls were stained blue. River was the color of blood that ran beneath the skin of a tender wrist. Gray became more common the longer Soviets stayed. The blue disappeared when the Soviets left. It didn’t drain like the greens and yellows and oranges and reds and purples before the war. It was just there, and then it was gone, leaving the people of Budapest wondering if it’d ever been there at all.

When the secret police came, they slipped so effortlessly into the fabric of society that the people wondered — not aloud, of course — if they’d been there all along.

Csilla also remembered this as the secret cop followed her around the city.

She remembered her father telling her, “Things will get back to normal.”

But that was a lie, like so many other things he’d told her.