“What are you doing?” It was the same voice that yelled from the stairs, muffled by the closed secret door, but still distinct.

“One of the boys was missing,” Roslyn said, her voice calm and unhurried. “I came to look for him.”

“What were you doing down here?” the soldier asked.

“I… I got scared,” the boy who had been taking care of Iris said. “I was hiding.”

There was the sound of movement, then the scrape of metal along the floor. The desk, perhaps, being pushed back or out of the way.

“Please, no,” the boy yelled out.

“You want to be scared?” the soldier said.

“No. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have hid. I wasn’t thinking.”

Silence for a moment.

“And you were alone here?”

“What?” the boy said. “Yes. Alone.”

“Please,” Roslyn said. “The boy is young. He saw his parents killed in the middle of the night, so naturally he gets scared sometimes.”

“We’ve all seen people killed in the night,” the soldier said. But Roslyn’s words must have gotten to him. The harsh tone in his voice was gone. “Next time, you don’t hide, you understand?”

“Yes, sir,” the boy said.

“Go upstairs with the others.”

Again movement. Feet, not as loud as the soldier’s, moving out of the room.

“Come with me,” the soldier said.

“Where?” Roslyn asked.

“I’m the one who asks the questions.”

“Of course.”

There was the sound of several feet walking out of the office, and then there was silence.

Marion waited, hoping that the sleeping child in her arms would remain that way.

What could the soldiers want with her? Her difference from the other children should have made her less desirable for the soldiers rather than more. Her kind was seldom wanted. Not just here in Côte d’Ivoire, but in most countries throughout the world. Yet this wasn’t the first time the soldiers had come looking for a child like her.