I got there first and knelt beside them where they lay.

“Oh, are you all right? Are you all right?” I cried over and over.

“We’re fine, Franny, let us get our breath,” said Old Tom, who was stunned and gasping.

“I thought it was a lost cause. For the last hour I thought all of you who had left were a lost cause,” I said somewhat incoherently.

“Well, we’re not,” said Old Tom, still trying to collect himself and somewhat incoherent himself.

“Where are the others?” asked Wilfred, starting to sit up.

And then we saw it through the woods. Flashlights.

“Oh my God,” I said. “The soldiers.”

After that things swung into action very fast.

Before I knew it, Old Tom was on his feet. “Quickly, Franny, you and Wilfred grab the parachute, take it back, and hide it somewhere. I’m going to help Sina.”

Sina, having ascertained that Old Tom and Wilfred were all right, had already run toward the parachute that had landed on the beach. Wilfred and I gathered the parachute and went racing back to the house. It would all be for naught if the soldiers caught us. Old Tom ran to the beach to help out there.

“Help!” Winifred was crying. “Someone help.”

Later Winifred said that she wished she hadn’t been so completely positive she was going to die because she might have enjoyed the ride down more. The night garden particularly was bathed in heavenly light, and the ocean sparkled with the moon. It would have been beautiful, for a moment it almost was, despite everything, once it was clear everyone had remembered to pull the cord correctly and the parachutes had inflated as they should and there was a pleasant, slow drift toward the fields. But then a minute later a sudden gust of wind took their parachute and for a sickening moment she thought they were going to be blown out to sea. Before that happened, though, the parachute caught on the rocky cliff by the cove. Flying Bob grabbed Zebediah and Winifred because it was clear that the three of them were going to smash into the rocky cliff edge. He pulled them in tighter and held them against his body, hoping to shield them from the rocks. A second later Winifred felt with a sickening thud her father’s body hit the boulder, and she and Zebediah rolled off him as best they could. Winifred was immediately alarmed because their father did nothing to help disentangle them but lay ominously still.

“Daddy!” screamed Winifred as she tried to pull herself and Zebediah free, but he did not answer.

“What’s the matter with him?” asked Zebediah.

Winifred only gasped. She was looking down at the rock beneath her father’s head to the gathering dark pool of blood.

The Long Night

THE LONG NIGHT

Sina flew across the field and squatted beside Winifred and Zebediah.

“Hush,” she said. “Hush. There are soldiers coming.”