The Word Shaker

Yes, the Führer decided that he would rule the world with words. "I will never fire a gun," he devised. "I will not have to". Still, he was not rash. Lets allow him at least that much.
He was not a stupid man at all.

His first plan of attack was to plant the words in as many areas of his homeland as possible. He planted them day and night, and cultivated them. He watched them grow, until eventually, great forests of words had risen throughout Germany... It was a nation of farmed thoughts.


(...)

Soon the demand for the lovely ugly words and symbols increased to such a point that as the forests grew, many people were needed to maintain them.

Some were employed to climb the trees and throw the words down to those below. They were then fed directly into the remainder of the Führer's people, not to mention those who came back for more.

The people who climed the trees were called word shakers.
THE BEST word shakers were the ones who understood the true power of words. They were the ones who could climb the highest. One such word shaker was a small, skinny girl. She was renowned as the best word shaker of her region because she knew how powerless a person could be without words.

(...)

One day, however, she met a man who was despised by her homeland, even though he was born in it. They became good friends, and when the man was sick, the word shaker allowed a single teardrop to fall on his face.

The tear was made of friendship - a single word - and it dried and became a seed, and when next the girl was in the forest, she planted that seed among the other trees. She watered it every day.

(...)

The tree grew every day, faster than everything else, till it was the tallest tree in the forest. Everyone came to look at it. They all whispered about it, and they waited... for the Führer.

Incensed, he immediately ordered the tree to be cut down. That was when the word shaker made her way through the crowd.

She fell to her hands and knees. "Please," she cried, "you can't cut it down." The Führer, however, was unmoved (...) he turned to his right-hand man and made a request. "Ax, please."

At that moment the word shaker (...) boarded the tree, and even as the Führer hammered at the trunk with his ax, she climed until she reached the highest of the branches. The voices and ax beats continued faintly on.

Clouds walked by - like white momsters with gray hearts. Afraid but stubborn, the word shaker remained. She waited for the tree to fall.













But the tree would not move. Many hours passed, and still, the Führer's ax could not take a single bite out of the trunk. In a state nearing collapse, he ordered another man to continue.

Days passed. Weeks took over.

A hundred and ninety-six soldiers could not make any impact on the word shaker's tree. 













Uddrag fra The Book Thief - Markus Zusak