He waited until Mór nodded, then he continued, “Don’t forget that. Don’t let them make their lies into truths. Never forget that you are Mór, sister of Ravi, child of the parents we share. Promise me that.”

She promised, and he finally let go of her wrists. “Why do you say these things?” Mór asked. “You act as if we are separated, but we’re not. Just be quiet and don’t draw attention and they will leave us with each other.”

Ravi said nothing, and was glad when she did not ask him to swear, as he had done.

Sometime in the middle of the night he decided what he would do. And it was the opposite of not drawing attention. Mór would not understand it, but if he managed what he thought he could, she would come to understand later. He did not know exactly how he would do it, but he resolved to try. He felt he would know the moment when it showed itself.

S econd to the league vessels themselves, the barges that approached the shore the next morning to transport the children were the largest human-made structures Ravi had ever seen. Squat rectangular rafts, they stretched wide along the shore, flattening the waves beneath them. They were made of a slate-gray material, dull in a manner that seemed to capture the light of the risen sun. Ravi could not say what made them move, but something did, slowly, inexorably. And there were people aboard them. Not many, and not near enough to make them out clearly. But on one of the closer barges a cluster of five figures stood atop a raised platform. They did not move and were nothing more than outlines at first, but Ravi felt certain that each stared directly at him.

The children on the beach stared as if these silent things and those aboard them were more frightening than anything they had yet faced. They began to murmur and whisper. A boy near the twins said, “This is sorcery.” Nobody denied it.

“Don’t wet your trousers,” one of the soldiers nearby said, guffawing. “Look at the lot of you. Gape mouthed like so many carp!”

Another added a remark about the smell of soiled undergarments. Still another—a bit farther away and moving forward with his arms outstretched to push the children in—made a joke about the enormous chopping block approaching them.

“Why are they doing that?” Ravi wondered aloud. “Why frighten us still more?”

His sister, holding his hand, did not respond.