The heron returned a week later. He perched on the ledge and pushed the window open. The other girls in the attic thought they were dreaming, for what they saw was impossible, and so they went back to sleep. They thought that birds and mortals lived in the same world, but only the world of men mattered. Julien had thought the same thing when he found the heron in the yard in Paris. By now the military had taken over the house, and the family lived in the greenhouse with the domed skylight. When the rain fell it sounded as if rocks were falling. Julien and his father had been taken as forced labor. They cleaned the streets, scrubbing stones. They had blisters on their hands and they didn’t speak to Madame Claire about their humiliation. They didn’t have to. Claire now cleaned the house for the German captain who lived there. When she thought of Marianne and how she’d treated her, she closed herself in the linen closet and cried. The German professors and their families were still on the third floor, behind a brick wall, mice who no longer dared to speak. Where would they go if they left? Wasn’t it best to hide in plain sight where no one would think to look? Claire brought them food whenever she could, the leavings from their own table or from the captain’s dinner.

When Julien saw the metal cylinder attached to the heron’s leg, he approached cautiously and untied it, then crouched behind the greenhouse to read Lea’s message. His hands shook and he read it three times before he could make sense of it. He was grateful and confused. He told himself not to have hope for the future. The life that he knew had ended, and what else was there for him? He told himself he was part of a dream in which a huge gray bird allowed him to tie a message to its leg before rising into the sky. For an instant he remembered who he was. I know exactly who you are, he’d written back. Je sais qui tu es.

Je suis ici.

I’m here.