A group of children, including the red-haired girl on the bike, played in the dirt behind a fence. Izzy thought she heard them chanting, “Gather the wheat, gather the clover. Green Man, Green Man, let Osiris come over.”

They froze and fell silent when they saw her. All but four of the children, the bike-girl, another older red-haired girl, and two red-haired boys—hopped the fence and ran off. The littlest girl adjusted a broken tiara on her head. It looked as if it had been made from twisted wire and bottle caps.

Izzy’s water from the market tasted like plastic when she took a sip. The chemicals in most heated plastic might cause breast cancer, she’d heard. Bisphenol A.

“Hi.” She waved. “Can I ask you something?” She fished for cash in her jeans’ pockets, but they were empty.

The children all lined up in a row holding hands by the fence and just stared up at her as if they’d been told to do this—like something out of the horror movies Cyrus used to watch. The one with the demon kids standing in a cornfield.

Izzy held out the flyer. “Does this man look familiar?”

Still holding hands, the children stepped nearer, but no one spoke.

She smiled at the littlest girl. “I met you before, remember? We came to plant the vegetables.”

The girl sucked on her lower lip with her two front teeth.

“This man was with me. And two friends. Do you remember?”

The girl nodded. She turned to the others.

The taller girl started to chant softly, “Bubal hartebeest, Caribbean monk seal, great auk, ibex, Javan tiger.”

Shit. Not again.

“Passenger pigeon, Pyrenean ibex, quagga, sea mink, Tasmanian tiger, Tecopa pupfish, West African black rhino,” both girls said.

“Wow, you know a lot about animals. They’re all endangered, right? Or extinct?” The girls didn’t respond. “I’m Izzy. What are your names?”

The kids looked at each other now.

“It’s okay.” She reached out her hand to the taller boy. He looked at her for a while before he shook her hand, limply. “Give me a grip, buddy,” she said, and the boy tightened his grasp. “Nice to meet you.”

Silence.

“Can you help me? I need to find him.”

The girls started up once more. “African elephant, Asian elephant, bald eagle, giant panda, orangutan, polar bear, rhinoceros.”

Who were these children? More lost than even she had been at that age. Maybe the garden had been a stupid idea, but what else could she and Cyrus have done for them?

The first girl said, “We are all sharing the earth’s pain.”

Fuck.

The children looked at each other again. The taller boy shrugged. His eyelashes were pale red, almost transparent in the sunshine.

Izzy handed him the flyer. “Please call this number if you see or hear anything,” she said. “Okay?”

Then the smallest girl walked over. “When he dies, we will stand around the glass box and cry, and our tears will turn into roses and lotus flowers,” she said.