There was just a short staircase up to the entrance. Seven steps, he’d counted them. That’s why it was possible to hear when people came and went. He didn’t understand how the others who lived here could stand it. But now it was a good thing. They could hear when the door to the building opened and closed. They could hear two sets of feet with hard soles walk then stop. Outside their door.

Mom pulled them all close on the big bed, holding them at the same time. They sat there very, very close to each other, and it felt very serious, even Rasmus didn’t ask any questions or move a muscle the whole time—Hugo couldn’t even remember his little brother ever being that silent and still at the same time.

Then he heard something much louder than footsteps. Someone was trying to tear into their door. Hard metal pressed against the door, pressed, pressed, until it started to give.

They had a minute, maybe less.

And Hugo knew something that Mom didn’t know, that the black masks didn’t know either.

“There’s an escape route.”

“Lie still, Hugo. Quiet. In my arms.”

“A secret path. The kind Dad likes. Hurry up, Mom!”

He got up and opened the closet just a few steps away.

“Hugo, listen now, I . . .”

“Look here, Mom.”

He lay on his knees outside the closet with the door open and searching with his hand for the little knob that would open up the floor—found it, just where he remembered.

“The whole bottom, Mom, like a hatch.”

He pulled it. The unsteady floor that had rocked when he first jumped on it, now followed his hand up. He moved so Mom could see. A round hole. That became a doorway to the basement and the air raid shelter, as he hung down with his upper body and pulled away the plasterboard.

A powerful crash in the hall.

An even larger part of the front door had broken.

The black masks would soon be inside.

“Mom, I’m jumping down. It’s not that far. And then I’ll catch Rasmus. And then . . .”

“Jump, Hugo. Jump!”

She looked sad when she said it. But determined.

He crawled into the hole, braced his hands against the wood of the basement ceiling, hanging there with his feet down, straightening out as far as possible. And let go. It was a pretty good landing. When he looked up, Rasmus, younger and smaller, but more agile, always had been, his little brother landed softly, Hugo hardly needed to help him.

“Mom, listen. There’s an iron stand here, I’ll push it over and you can hand Luiza to me. Bend down into the hole. Do it, Mom!”

Her little boy. Who was so big, so wise.

With Luiza tight between her hands, she leaned over and down into the hole in the floor of the closet, stretching every joint in her body, and when Hugo reached his little sister’s foot, Zofia loosened her grip. Luiza seemed unaware that she had changed hands, that Hugo, balancing on the iron stand, had ever for one moment not been holding her.