We came to the day on which the trommellers were due to leave.
Elián was there at breakfast. He was looking at his food as if it were an algebra test—equal parts concentration and desperation. He had his head tipped down and his eyebrows knotted up and his free hand in a fist on his knee. It was not the world’s most inviting posture. We were all afraid to touch him, lest he snap at us, or shatter.
When the bell rang to send us out into the gardens, he got up with a huge scrape of bench on floor. I saw him take three apples from the bowl by the door.
He strode out in front of everyone.
I took Xie’s hand and we followed him. Her fingers were tight. We were both afraid.
But by the time we reached the gardens, Elián was nowhere in sight.
The trommellers were taking down their tents, packing up their bags. There were not so many of them, and yet there seemed in those moments to be a thousand. And my fellow hostages, too, seemed multiplied. There were children helping our visitors, children tending to the trommellers’ goats, children just stealing a moment to sit in the shade as the day began to open and blaze.
Where on most days I could have seen at one glance that there were seven of us, and we were all where we should be, on this particular day it was hopeless.
It was Elián’s perfect chance, and I knew he’d take it.
Still, I looked at each face and hoped I would find him. Hoped at the same time that I would not find him. Hoped that he had taken something better than three apples.
The trommellers were wrapping their heads, pulling on their smoked goggles, shrugging on their coats and packs. I looked at them one after another, but I did not find Elián. Slowly things were settling, the trommellers gathering together, and the Children of Peace finding their groups. Slowly it was becoming clear: Elián was gone.
“Where is he?” hissed Thandi.
We were gathering baskets from the toolshed, going out to pick apples. The six of us. It was now spotlight-obvious that we were only six. Thandi had squeezed out the question while in the shelter of the lintel, but it still made all of us sneak looks at the Panopticon, checking the sight lines.
“It doesn’t matter if they see me ask,” said Thandi. “Do you really think they haven’t noticed he’s gone?”
“But where is he?” said Han.
“None of us know,” I answered. For surely if Elián had not (quite) told me, he would not have told anyone.
Han looked puzzled, Grego frightened, Thandi furious—another of our prefabricated moments. We were pressed together, tightly knotted in the doorway, as if that would protect us. We knew it wouldn’t, but it was hard not to hope.
“We should get the Abbot,” said Han, even as Thandi said: “We should turn him in.”
“That would not spare us,” said Grego.
And Da-Xia turned her face to the open air and said, “Let him have whatever time he has.”
As she said it, bells started to ring overhead, tolling like disaster, like fire, like a call to arms.
“Yeah, time’s up,” said Thandi.
“Indeed,” said the Abbot, coming around the corner. “If you would all come with me.” He made his mouth curl up a little, a cool parody of a smile. “We have a guest.”
The Abbot had us sit on the lawn. The trommellers were nowhere in sight, but they had to be around—the Royal Visitor was eating our watermelons. Proctors were herding the rest of the Children of Peace inside. It was high morning. The sun beat down. The bells stopped, and still we sat there, motionless. My stomach felt tight and sick. The Abbot stood in front of us with his hands folded. No one said anything.
Then, suddenly, movement. One of the trommellers came stumbling toward us, across the lawn. At her heels was the big scorpion proctor. We could see from the way she leapt and staggered that it was herding her with electricity—pushing her along as if she were a goat.
She came up to us, panting. Her eyes were wide and her mouth was pulled open in pure fear. “I didn’t do anything!” she gasped. “I didn’t!”
“This is Hannah,” said the Abbot mildly, and mostly to us. “It seems Hannah is missing her shoes.”
We looked at Hannah’s feet. They were bare. And big, for girl’s feet.
“I didn’t, I didn’t. Please—” begged the child. She was our age, but without our training she did seem a child. There were fresh little blisters up and down her bare ankles—electrical point burns.
“You are missing your shoes, and I in turn am missing a hostage,” said the Abbot. “It seems an odd coincidence, Hannah.” He was looking not at Hannah, but directly at us.
I looked at my own feet, clad in their tabi. Finally, finally, I saw the point of tabi: one could not go far with so little protection for one’s feet.
“What else is missing, I wonder,” said the Abbot. “Wipe your nose, Hannah, dear. I need an inventory.”