“Was there? And was there, by any chance, a sign on the door? An instruction, perhaps?”

“It said … it said ‘be sure,’” said Jacqueline.

“Mmm.” The man inclined his head. It wasn’t a nod; more a form of acknowledgment that someone else had spoken. “And were you?”

“Were we what?” asked Jillian.

“Sure,” he said.

The girls stepped a little closer together, suddenly cold. They were tired and they were hungry and their feet hurt, and nothing this man said was making any sense.

“No,” they said, in unison.

The man actually smiled. “Thank you,” he said, and his voice was not unkind.

Maybe that was what gave Jillian the courage to ask, “For what?”

“For not lying to me,” he said. “What are your names?”

“Jacqueline,” said Jacqueline, and “Jillian,” said Jillian, and the man, who had seen his share of children come walking through those hills, come knocking at those gates, smiled.

“Jack and Jill came down the hill,” he said. “You must be hungry. Come with me.”

The girls exchanged a look, uneasy, although they could not have said why. But they were only twelve, and the habits of obedience were strong in them.

“All right,” they said, and when he walked through the gates into the empty square, they followed him, and the gates swung shut behind them, shutting out the scrubland. They could not shut out the disapproving red eye of the moon, which watched, and judged, and said nothing.

5. The Roles We Choose Ourselves

5

THE ROLES WE CHOOSE OURSELVES

THE MAN LED THEM through the silent town beyond the wall. Jill kept her eyes on him as she walked, trusting that if anything were to happen, it would begin with the only person they had seen since climbing into the bottom of their grandmother’s trunk. Jack, who was more used to silence, and stillness, and found it less distracting, watched the windows. She saw the flicker of candles as they were moved hastily out of view; she saw the curtains sway, as if they had just been released by an unseen hand.

They were not alone there, and the people they shared the evening with were all in hiding. But why? Surely two little girls and a man who wore a cape couldn’t be that frightening. And she was hungry, and cold, and tired, and so she kept her mouth closed and followed along until they came to a barred iron door in a gray stone wall. The man turned to look at them, his expression grave.