The boat rocked and rolled as they approached shallower water. This was the last stage of his journey, from Norway across the North Sea to Scotland. Isaac would now be on his own, with only the paper in his pocket that he’d worn thin with folding and unfolding and the hope in his heart of seeing his parents again at last. He lifted his head above the hatch just enough to peer over the gunwales of the boat. Near to sunset.

“Down,” hissed the crewman, who pressed him back into the hold, sliding the hatch shut. Isaac was sure that between the movement and the fishy smell of the bilge he would be sick. But he held his mouth tight and swallowed his bile as he tried to bend his too-long legs back into his small space among the other refugees.

They’d been pushing across the North Sea toward the Orkney Islands for what seemed like so long he’d lost track of day and night, especially since the ten passengers huddled together in the cramped hold were only allowed on deck to relieve themselves when it was dark.

Isaac had hardly spoken to anyone else. Conversation was discouraged: “Sounds travel through water. Can’t risk it.” He’d just met the others—men, women, no one else nearly as young as he was—as they were being smuggled aboard in the dead of night in Stavanger. Plus, his English was practiced but stiff, and that was the only common tongue among them.

But also silence, as he well knew, was best.

A smuggler pushed through the refugees, handing each of them a bit of British currency. “For here’s where we leave you. Good luck.” Isaac folded the unfamiliar bills into his wallet.

After maybe another hour, the hatch slid open again. “Time,” came the coarse whisper, just as Isaac felt the boat’s hull scrape bottom.

The refugees pushed up through the hatch into the cold wind. Isaac tugged his coat across his chest and heaved his pack to his shoulder. The shallow beach butted against a headland. Distant fortifications loomed like hunched giants.

As the boat beached, Isaac looked up at the sky and witnessed the infinite magic of the twilight stars.

At last, he was safe, or so he thought. He leapt from the bow onto the damp sand and trailed the others toward the cliff, stumbling over jutting stones that were hard to make out in the gloom. He turned to look as the boat pushed back into the North Sea, swallowed up quickly by swell, leaving the refugees on their own. Leaving Isaac alone on a beach in a bracing wind.

He turned landward again and saw with surprise that the others had vanished like phantasms.

“Wait,” he called in Czech, forgetting in his surprise to use English.