Layla was running now, pulling Lillian dangerously. Ashe squeezed his arms around her neck so tightly she could scarcely breathe. Jack would be behind her, but she could not stop to look for him. Layla put as much distance as she could between them and the boy-soldier with the bayonet and the invisible companion in green uniform. The other recruit might not be as generous.

The woods were coming to an end. The woods around the village were litered with caves disguised by underbrush. If someone heard them coming, surely they would peer out to see who was coming. The men and boys from the village would recognize her and pull her into their hiding places. Layla did feel something pulling her, but it was not the hands of one of the villagers. In front of her, she saw the air move in whirls. The green of the trees was brilliant, the leaves floated as if they were in the water. The white mountain face was just beyond these trees and Layla glimpsed the bright rough cliffs in between the floating green leaves. It was the white mountain face that pulled at her. The whirling air looked like the ripples of the stream when she dropped something small onto the surface of the slow-moving water. The undulating air pulled at her legs, she felt the sinking feeling in her stomach that came over her when she jumped off the rocks into the lake in the valley, plummeting down into the cold green-blue pool below. Lillian's delicate hand slipped away from her for a moment and Layla grabbed her wrist, while pinching her arm so tightly around Ashe that he cried, just as she felt the cold air rush over them like water, followed by a gust of dry heat. Layla gasped for breath. The cold air surprised her, and she was lifted off her feet, her legs uselessly milling in the air as if running. She Lillian and Ashe hung suspended in the air before they spilled onto the grass in a valley.

Where was Jack? Layla looked behind her. There were no woods, no spindly oak trees and chestnut trees with their damp leaves sending up the smell of rotting foliage from the wet ground. She did not hear shooting and did not see the red blaze from the church. Jack was not there. The fall to the ground knocked the wind out of Layla, Ashe fell on top of her chest and stomach. Lillian lay a few feet away, on her face, immobile. Jack had the book. It was safer with him. Layla could only do so much. If she was to carry the two children, she could not worry about the book as well. That she had tasked to Jack. He knew where their father kept the book tucked behind the kitchen cupboard and had cinched it in his belt when the soldiers arrived yelling for everyone to go into the church. Their father had gone out the night before to see what the other men were talking about as they gathered around the fountain. Just before he left, he put the book in its place and looked directly at Jack as he did it. Layla had not thought anything of it then, but when she saw Jack reach for the book as they peeled out of the back door of their home, she realized that they had silently communicated something that she failed to understand. Just like she did not understand where Jack had gone. He was a faster runner than she was, although he was younger and he was not carrying anyone else. He should have been right next to her, if not in front. Layla reached out to Lillian, touching the sleeve of the pink and white shirt she wore. Lillian did not move, her face was turned away from Layla. She would not call out to Lillian or Jack until she knew if they were safe from the soldiers. If they were lucky enough to be in a cave in the underbrush, she did not want to reveal that to the boy-soldiers roaming the woods with their bayonets. This did not look like the woods. The sky was open and fat cumulus clouds floated over Layla as she lay still assessing her surroundings. There was grass, instead of leaves and a bird flew overhead. The air was entirely silent, no wind, no movement. They were not in the woods and they were not in a cave. This did not look like the valley below the village at the end of the long and winding road the truck had climbed that morning, slick with dew.

Jack’s legs were still milling in the air when he saw the treetops below him. He had been a few feet behind and to the right of Layla when she dissolved into the shimmering air that moved like water just before the white mountain cliffs.

She was leaning into her half running stride and it was her head that first entered into the undulating green leaves, then her shoulders, her arms holding Ashe and, lastly her right arm trailing behind the rest of her body pulling Lillian in with her. Jack stopped moving his legs and looked below, through the full lush boughs of the tree he saw Layla lying on the lush green grass with Ashe on top of her chest. He called out hoarsely. Layla put her hand on Ashe’s back to comfort him and her head turned toward where Lillian lie, motionless. Layla reached out her arm and touched the edge of Lillian’s pink and white top. Jack called out, loudly this time. Layla closed her eyes and let her head fall back. His voice echoed back to him. Jack felt the book, cinched under his belt. He held onto to the bottom edge of the time portal with both hands.

He wanted to adjust the book safely, but if he let go with one hand, he could not keep a grip on the portal. The book slid up on his stomach and he grasped it thinking it was more important to preserve the book and wondering what it would feel like to fall through the air and have the tree branches break his fall.

He would break bones if he survived the fall at all. As his fingers touched the rough wine-coloured binding of the book with his right hand, his left began to slip with the weight of his body.

He hung in mid-air, suspended. He moved his legs in an instinctive gesture to push himself up and remained where he was, above the treetops. Jack called out again, angry and frustrated to Layla. Even if she could not see him hidden by the tree leaves, she could hear him. Layla lay still, a breeze blew a wisp of her long hair across her forehead and carried his voice back to him. He looked at the book his father had always taken care to tuck behind the bookshelf each time he opened it to read and scribbling quickly on the pages, something to be kept away from view rather than displayed with the other coloured bound books and clock on the shelf. He opened the book. The first white page was blank, so was the next. All the pages were blank. Jack’s stomach tightened. He was preserving a book of blank pages and he wished he could be down next to Layla. He wanted to throw it at her to show her what a stupid thing he had risked going back into the house for while the soldiers were rounding up friends and neighbours, light fire to the church. Their father had been hiding a useless book. He wanted to reach out and wake up Lillian from her immobile sleep. He did not understand any of this and was compelled to stay in mid-air while his anger at himself grew and he saw Layla, Ashe and Lillian a few hundred feet away oblivious to his calls. At that moment, he fell through the air and landed on his back on the opposite side of Lillian. Layla jerked herself up when he thudded down next to them gasping, the wind knocked out of him and one hand on their father’s book.