Jack looked through the trees at Layla with Ashe’s tiny body in her arms. Lillian was immobile on the ground next to her. Jack called out again, hoping no one else would hear his desperation. Layla was often impatient with him, but she would not ignore him. Layla adjusted Ashe to lie on the ground next to Lillian while Layla rose to her feet. They were oblivious to him. Jack felt the book cinched under his belt. He knew its hiding place behind the bookshelf and there was no point leaving it there while the soldiers were burning everything in their path. Jack was hanging by his right hand to the portal, with the other he reached to tuck the book down safely under his belt. The portal felt soft under his hand, the edge began to fade from view and his hand slipped. He thought of his father’s slender hand pulling him up in the rafts of the barn when he had been climbing perilously in the loft where no one was allowed. He noticed all this despite his thoughts, by looking up at the portal, he fumbled as he touched the bound book pressing against his stomach. The book leapt into the air. It came down in front of him, turning slowly. The pages opened before Jack and the leaves of the book fluttered in the sudden breeze. They were blank. Jack forgot about the portal and his slipping grip. He forgot about hanging in mid-air and Layla on the ground below him. He forgot about the soldiers and trying to find his mother or father. He could only see his father sitting on a chair in the empty kitchen after dinner writing in the book and then tucking it away when everyone was asleep. Jack had peered out from the top of the steps to study his father at night. His father had often disappeared, and Jack wondered what a man would do for days when he was not with his family or working. He wanted to sit with his father at night and ask him, but he knew he would have little or no response from his quiet, restrained, reluctant father. He was appalled that there was nothing in the book. His father was gone and the one form of communication between them was pointless. Jack felt his face go hot and the skin on the back of his neck prickled. He was angry with his father, with the meaningless book. Jack felt childish, outraged and abandon all at once. The portal disappeared. Jack was back to wishing he could be next to Layla, Ashe and Lillian. He fell through the treetops, directly on the grassy headland where Layla now stood up. He landed on his back on the opposite side of Lillian. Layla jerked, turning to look at him when he thudded down next to them gasping, the wind knocked out of him and one hand on their father’s book, carefully cinched in Jack’s belt, cover closed as it had been before he had begun to think of his father.