Rowan, 14 years
"Rowan!"
I don't listen to any of them.
Home. I need to get home. I shouldn't have lingered, and now the horn is blaring and the guards are already sprinting for the Ward, rushing to reinforce the wall while the rest of the district scrambles to get inside before the gates seal.
I don't know what they want. But I can feel them anyway, lurking in the shadows behind me, their footsteps catching and disappearing every time I think I'm about to hear them properly.
They scare me. And because I don't know what would truly happen if they manage to get their hands on me, I run.
My shoulder still throbs where I hit the alley wall, a hot, ugly ache under the thin fabric of my shirt. I went down hard in the dark, skinning my palm open and tearing my shoulder badly enough that blood soaked through my sleeve by the time I made it home.
Ma nearly lost her mind. Sola came back the next day with the band.
"For when your heart starts doing that thing again," she said, like she was angry at me for scaring her. Like she wasn't terrified too.
Now, I run faster and faster, the memory stuck in my mind, until I finally see our house.
That's when I hear them.
At first it's only the sound of those familiar boots hitting stone, close enough now that I know I didn't imagine them this time.
My whole body jerks. I bolt the last stretch and slam through our front door just as the rest of the street catches up.
Voices rise outside as doors start slamming, people shouting to get inside.
Feet pound across the lane, and somewhere farther down a woman screams so sharply that my chest tightens hard enough to make it hurt.
Ma goes still. One second she's muttering under her breath and gripping the broom like she's about to march back outside and drag Sola home by the ear herself, and the next she's frozen in the doorway, all the color draining out of her face as she stares into the street like she's seeing something I can't yet.
"Ma?"
She doesn't answer. She steps out onto the threshold instead, lifting herself just enough to look over the low fence.
The noise swells with her movement. Men shout over one another. Doors slam. Boots hammer past our fence. The horn still blares over all of it until my head feels too full, too hot, my pulse tripping so hard in my throat that I can taste it.
Please come home. Please come home. Please come home.
Then I hear her say Sola's name, only once, under her breath, and something in the way she says it makes my stomach twist.
I edge closer before I can stop myself, my shoes sliding against the floorboards, and that's when I see them through the narrow gap beside her shoulder.
They aren't guards. But I already knew that deep down, didn't I?
They're moving through the lane with the same terrible patience they always do, never seeming to hurry, dark coats cutting through the crowd while everybody else stumbles out of their way.
One of them shoves old Mister Vale back when he tries to slam his door too fast, and another turns just enough for the light to catch on something metallic under his coat.
My breath catches. They've never come this close. Not in plain sight. Not to the house.
Over the past two years, rooms have been left turned over, drawers left hanging open, things gone missing that Ma always blamed on thieves or bad locks or Sola being careless, but I know better.
I know what it feels like when something keeps circling back.
And deep down, I think I know what they're looking for.
Ma moves before I can think. Her arm shoots out, catching me across the chest and shoving me back so hard I stumble against the wall by the kitchen table just as she swears under her breath and reaches for the door.
"Stay there," she snaps, finally looking at me, and there's something in her face I've never seen before, something tight and frightened enough to make me obey without another word.
She tries to shove the door closed, but a hand slams against it from the other side before she can. The whole frame shudders beneath the impact.
"Open up," a man calls, his voice carrying straight through the house like he already belongs inside it. "We're looking for something."
Ma squares her shoulders so fast she almost looks angry instead of scared. She yanks the door open just enough to fill the space with her body, broom still clutched in one hand like that could do anything against men like them.
"Look somewhere else," she bites out. "You've got no business here."
One of the men laughs softly.
I can't see all of him from where I'm standing, only the line of his shoulder and the black leather of his glove where he braces one hand against the doorframe, but that's enough to make my skin prickle.
Another man stands a little behind him, his coat hanging open just enough for me to see the gun at his hip, and the sight of it turns everything inside me watery and wrong. My hands start to shake.
A gun.
A real gun.
"You have something that doesn't belong to you," the first man says, almost polite, which somehow makes it worse.
Ma doesn't move. "My daughter isn't home."
My heart slams so hard I actually press a hand to my chest, as if I can hold it in place if I push hard enough.
Of course she thinks this is about Sola.
Of course she does. She's late. She's always late.
She knows things before the rest of us do, always slips out and comes back with that look on her face like she's halfway through a thought she won't share.
Please don't let them find her. Please, not her.
Somebody crashes into the side fence. Another door slams open across the way.
One of the neighbors starts shouting that the district's locking down and if these bastards don't move their fine boots, they'll be sealed in with the rest of us, and in the middle of all that noise I hear footsteps flying up the side path, too fast, too uneven, somebody breathing like they've run the whole way in one go.
Then Sola appears out of the dusk, so fast it almost feels like she's been thrown there, hair half loose from its tie, cheeks flushed, one sleeve torn near the wrist, her eyes huge and fixed on the men at the front before they snap to Ma.
"Inside." Ma barks the order, and I've never heard her sound like that in my life.
Sola doesn't argue. She doesn't even look at me. She ducks low, slips through the gap Ma opens with one sharp movement, and Ma catches her by the back of the coat, dragging her fully inside before slamming the door hard enough to shake the wall.
For one wild second I think that's it. I think we did it. I think they were too slow and now she's home and we can all just stay quiet and wait for them to leave.
Then the voice comes again, closer this time, right outside the door.
"We're not here for her."
The whole world pulls tight around that one sentence. Ma goes rigid with her hand still on the latch. Sola's breath catches, and my own lungs lock so hard I can't pull air in properly.
"The younger one," the man says, calm as ever. "Bring out the boy."
Ma turns so fast her eyes find me at once, planting herself between me and the door. "You're not getting my son."
Sola reaches me next, her fingers clamping around my wrist so hard it hurts as she drags me down beside the kitchen counter.
I crouch because she makes me, folding in on myself so fast I almost hit the floor, my back pressing into the wood, my breath coming too fast and too thin, each inhale slipping off before it gets deep enough.
"Quiet," she hisses, and only then do I finally look at her properly.
There's dirt on her cheek. Blood on the heel of her hand. Her face is pale in a way that frightens me more than the men outside, but her eyes are steady, fixed on me like she's trying to pin me in place by looking.
"Sola—"
"Quiet."
Outside, the men shout again, voices harder now, while the horn keeps blaring and the Ward bells start up over it, deep and heavy, rolling through the district until every window seems to rattle. Somewhere nearby, a child starts crying. One of the men curses. Another tells him to leave it.
"We'll be back. You can't hide him forever."
Boots scrape against stone. Then the voices pull away, and none of us move.
They never even tried to get past the door. They could have. Instead they only watched, as though they already knew they didn't need to.
Around us, little by little, the lane empties. The shouting dies first. Then the doors slamming. Then the last echo of boots on stone. The bells stop, and even the horn cuts off. Wind moves through the lane instead, cold and thin, catching at the walls hard enough to make the old wood creak.
The district settles into that awful silence it sometimes does, like everybody's inside with the lights low, waiting for the Ward to hold. Waiting for morning.
Ma still has one hand on the front door when she turns, her face white with fury. "What did you do?"
"I didn't bring them here."
"They asked for Rowan."
"I didn't do anything," I blurt out. "Ma, I swear."
Ma rounds on Sola so fast I almost flinch with her, catching hold of her arm. "Then why were they here?"
"Leave him alone," Sola hisses.
I push up off the floor and bolt for the back stairs, taking them two at a time with one hand dragging against the wall to steady myself as my pulse kicks hard enough to blur my vision. Nobody tries to stop me. Maybe they already know where I'm going.
I slam my bedroom door behind me and drop straight to my knees beside the bed. My hands won't work. Then I shove aside the loose blanket hanging over the frame and reach under the warped floorboard near the wall, fingers digging into the narrow gap until the edge gives and lifts.
The bundle is still there, folded tight in oilcloth. Hidden where nobody would think to look unless they tore the whole room apart.
When I finally pull it free, the page looks exactly the same as it did the day the merchant woman pressed it into my hands in the Düren market, old and strange and too fine for our house, the notation running across it in sharp, unfamiliar lines that look like no music I've ever seen.
I've still played pieces of it anyway, testing phrases on the cello when nobody was home, even when the notes made something in me feel strange and unsettled afterward.
Ever since then, the house has never felt right.
Doors are left open. Drawers are turned out. Footsteps echo where there shouldn't be footsteps. Shadows in the lane too often to be chance. Düren is dangerous, everybody knows that, but this is different. It keeps circling back, keeps finding us.
Tonight they even came to the house.
My hands close around the papers so tightly the edges bite into my skin. This has to be the reason.
I want it gone. I want all of it gone.
I grab the little tin from under the windowsill where I keep stolen matches for candle wax drips and music stand tricks, shove the papers and the matches under my shirt, and climb out through the narrow roof hatch before I can think better of it.
The night air hits cold and damp, making me suck in a breath too fast. I crawl up the slanted roof on hands and knees, tiles rough under my palms, until I reach the flatter edge overlooking the dark line of the woods.
I can never see beyond them.
Only the trees, black and crowded and still.
My heart is still going too fast. My fingers won't stop shaking.
Burn them. Burn them and maybe they'll stop coming back.
I don't know if that's true. I don't care if it makes sense. Right now, it's the only thing I have.
I strike the first match too hard and snap it. The second catches.
The flame flares between my fingers, lighting the edges of the paper gold, and for one last second I hesitate, staring at the notes that never looked like notes to me at all, only something secret and wrong and too old for my hands.
"I don't want you," I whisper, my throat tight enough that it comes out broken.
Then I touch the flame to the corner.
Fire eats the music fast, faster than I expect, racing across the dry edge with a soft, hungry sound as the paper curls inward and the lines disappear into black.
I drop the burning pages into the metal rain bucket bolted near the roofline and stumble back, breathing hard as the flames climb and crackle, destroying everything Sola told me to protect.
My eyes sting.
Smoke rises in a thin dark ribbon, curling up into the night.
Please let this fix it. Please let them leave us alone now.
Below me, somewhere inside the house, I hear Ma shouting my name. Then Sola calls for me too.
"Rowan!"
I flinch so hard I lurch for the new band strapped around my wrist, thumb pressing clumsily against the smooth metal, but the dangerous flutter in my chest refuses to settle.
The last of the paper collapses into glowing black flakes.
With the fire dying and the woods standing silent beyond the roof, it almost feels like the whole world is holding its breath.
And deep in my chest, under the smoke and the shaking and the awful relief, something new takes root.
The fear doesn't leave. It stays.