You were, are and will be

The first thing the child remembered was the sound of a bell.

Not a school bell. This one rang only when the wind came from the sea, and the wind had no business reaching the place where they were being kept. The building was deep among trees. Its windows had been painted over. The floor beneath the thin mattress was concrete, cold enough that she had learned to sleep with her knees against her chest.

The bell sounded again. Three small, uncertain notes.

“That’s outside,” whispered a boy.

He was crouched beside the door, his ear close to the gap beneath it. There were three children in the room. A boy who counted footsteps. A girl who tried not to cry. Another girl who had stopped speaking to either of them after the first night.

“How do you know?” the frightened girl asked.

“The air changes when they open the back door. Listen.”

She listened. At first there was only the water dripping into the basin and the dry rub of a rope somewhere in the wall. Then came another sound: two men arguing, their words muffled by distance.

The boy lifted his head. His left sleeve had been torn at the elbow, and he had tied one strip of its fabric around a rusty hook. He had spent most of the morning working it loose without a tool. The other girl had called him stupid for trying.

“They’ll catch us,” she said now. Her fair hair was tangled across her face. “They’ll be angry.”

“They’re already angry.” He placed a finger against his lips and tugged at the hook. It moved a little farther. “When I open this, we go straight to the trees.”

“And if you can’t?”

He did not answer. He pulled again. The door latch shifted with a sharp metallic click, and all three children stopped breathing.

A long moment passed. No footsteps came.

The boy pushed the door. It opened half a hand’s width. Through the gap lay a corridor, a bright rectangle of daylight at its far end, and the edge of a man’s boot.

“Wait,” he mouthed.

The man went away. The boy took the smaller girl’s wrist. His fingers were dirty, but his grip was steady. For one foolish moment she thought she might begin laughing, not because anything was funny, but because after so many hours of fear somebody finally seemed to know what to do.

They ran barefoot through the corridor and out a rear door that had been left ajar. The ground beyond it sloped toward a grove of cedar. Wet grass slapped their ankles. They had reached the first trees when the third child shouted that she had forgotten something.

“What?” the boy demanded.

“My necklace!”

“There isn’t time.”

She stopped anyway. The necklace had been taken with their clothes. She could not possibly know where it was. But she screamed that she would tell the men where the other two had gone unless they came back and helped her find it.

The boy froze. The smaller girl felt his hand tighten around hers.

A door slammed behind them. Someone shouted.

“You promised,” the fair-haired girl said. “You promised you wouldn’t leave me.”

The boy’s face changed. The smaller girl would remember that more clearly than the trees, more clearly than the men’s voices. It was the expression of someone discovering that keeping one promise could mean breaking another.

“Come with us,” he said. “Right now.”

Instead the other girl turned and ran toward the building, waving both arms. “Here! I’m here!”

The men saw them.

The boy dragged the smaller girl into the trees. Branches caught her hair and opened thin lines on her cheeks. Behind them came an adult voice telling them to stop. He chose a narrow path beside an old wire fence, one that disappeared beneath brambles. They crawled through an opening so low the boy had to flatten himself against the earth to fit.

A wire caught the girl’s wrist. She stumbled and cried out. The fence was anchored with a broken metal plate; one sharp corner cut across the inside of her left wrist. She stared at the sudden red line as if it belonged to somebody else.

The boy came back for her.

“No,” she said. “You’ll get caught.”

“Then move.”

He put his body between hers and the fence, forced the wire upward with his shoulder, and pushed her through. The metal cut him too. She saw blood under the cuff of his shirt, bright against the pale skin of his wrist.

He tore off another strip of fabric and knelt in the wet leaves to wrap her injury. His hands shook now. She noticed because until then he had behaved as though fear were something that happened only to other people.

“Does it hurt?” he asked.

She nodded.

“I’m sorry.”

“You didn’t do it.”

“I should have seen it.”

The bell rang again, somewhere beyond the trees.

“If they come,” she whispered, “will you go?”

His eyes were an impossible shade between silver and gray. In the thin morning light they looked like rain against glass.

“No.”

“You should.”

“I said no.” He pressed the knot into place. “You don’t have to believe everything people tell you. But believe me about this. I’m coming back if we get separated.”

A man’s shadow crossed the brambles. Somebody grabbed the boy’s collar.

The little girl screamed.

A child opened her eyes to the ceiling of a bedroom filled with early light.

For a few seconds she could hear the bell. Then it became the ordinary chime outside the house, the one that rang when the garden gate moved in the wind. A white curtain lifted and fell. On the bedside table sat a glass of water, a picture book, and one sock she had been too sleepy to put away.

Himari sat up. Her breath was ragged. She pushed back her blanket and examined her left hand, turning it palm upward until the sunlight touched the smooth skin of her wrist.

There was nothing there.

Beside her, the woman on the other pillow stirred. Dark hair was scattered across the cotton case, and the hand resting near Himari’s shoulder wore a thin bracelet that had slipped beneath the sleeve of her nightdress.

“Hima?” The voice was warm with sleep. “You’re awake early.”

“I heard something.”

“The gate again?”

Himari considered that. “Maybe.”

The woman propped herself on one elbow. Color had drained from her face. She looked toward the window, then down at her own hand, as though checking that it was where she had left it.

“Did you dream?” Himari asked.

“Everyone dreams, sweetheart.”

“That isn’t what I asked.”

For an instant the woman’s mouth parted. Then she smiled and drew Himari close, pressing a kiss into the crown of her hair.

“It’s your big day,” she said. “We should be thinking about that instead.”

On a chair by the wardrobe hung a small ceremonial jacket and a pleated skirt, ready for the school opening ceremony. Someone had polished Himari’s shoes so thoroughly that the buckles reflected the window.

Himari let herself be held. Her gaze remained fixed on the woman’s left sleeve.

Outside, the garden bell rang for the third time.