I looked at the sky through the wreckage of the canvas. The stars seemed closer here tham anywhere. I remembered holding out my hands to stars like that in Omaha when I was a child. I knew they were the same stars, but lying there between two people who meant a surprisingly great deal to me, I saw them as The People’s stars. I gazed and wondered how Phil was doing. Eugenie told me once that she wanted my bedroom because it overlooked the back lawn, where we played croquet and lounged about. I thought she had probably moved her things in there by now. My parents must have given me up for dead.

For one frightening moment, I wondered if they had been killed in that clearing after Methuselah raced me out of it. I must have gasped with the thought, because Hawk put his hand on my arm. He gave it a little shake and whispered, “Liz? What?”

I edged closer and whispered my sudden fear. “They were unharmed,” he said softly, his lips close to my ear. “Others stayed to watch, then joined us.”

“Thank God,” I said, then thought to beat myself up a little more. “Why in heaven’s sake did that thought never occur to me until now?”

“I would suggest that you have been busy for many days.” It was as dry a statement as I ever heard from one of The People and made me chuckle, which I think Hawk intended.

He said something strange then, something that a few weeks ago would have earned him a sharp rejoinder, at the least. “When all this ends, and it will, do something for me.”

I didn’t tell him that I would do anything for him. He had saved me on more than one occasion. He had only to ask. “I will,” I whispered.

“No matter what happens to The People, or me or my mother, ask yourself, when you are back in Omaha, if you wish none of this had happened.”

It was an odd request. I considered it, and couldn’t help a smile in the dark. Maybe I was being flippant and shallow. “I am certainly happy my school friends can’t see me now,” I said. “I doubt they would even recognize me.”

“Would you recognize you?”

Would I? He slept then, his hand still on my arm. I relished the way his body relaxed in sleep, as if he trusted me. His deep and peaceful breathing became more soothing than I could ever have told him. I tried to scold myself into remembering that this was all a terrible fix to be in. With any luck, this awful experience would fade, and I would go back to being Elizabeth Ann Everett of 303 McDermott Street, Omaha, Nebraska. If not Vassar this fall (no loss), parties and card games and flirting and new dresses loomed in my future, all those comforts familiar to me.