KNOCK, KNOCK.

“Come in,” Thomas calls from the other side of the barn door. I peek inside. He is mucking out the pen into a wheelbarrow. Bog is curled on the barn’s dirt floor next to the stack of pine boxes. His face breaks in one of those smiling-dog pants.

I step all the way inside and let my eyes wander over the barn. The barn is Thomas’s domain. A place of men, and animals, and tools with sharp points. But it smells nice in here, like the hay in my straw mattress, and like sweet oats. A gas mask hangs on the back of the workbench, half forgotten. I fiddle with the rubber strap.

“I was looking for a comb for Foxfire.”

He pauses, wiping his bare hand over his forehead. Do the Americans knit special mittens for one-handed boys, I wonder?

“Do you know how to groom a horse?” he asks, curious.

I try not to look too long at his empty sleeve fastened with a diaper pin. I bend down to scratch Bog’s head. He rolls over and sticks one leg in the air so I can rub his belly with the tip of my boot. The action makes his whole body move up and down, up and down.

“Because I could show you, if you don’t,” Thomas continues. “Picking out the hooves can be tricky.” He digs through his bin of old brushes and combs until he finds a hoof pick, and hands it to me.

“And then there’s combing out the mane.” He holds up a wide comb with thin metal bristles. “You have to start at the ends and work your way up.” He gestures in the air with the comb. “Same with the tail. As far as the wings, leave them alone, I think, if she’s wounded. Best to let these things heal in their own time….”

He trails off as footsteps approach outside.

Knock, knock.

Quick and almost apologetic. Thomas and I exchange a look. He sets aside the comb and opens the door. Sister Mary Grace is there. She jumps a little when he pushes the door wide.

“Sister?”

“Thomas. Men are here to see you.” She pauses. “Officers.”

She pulls on the sleeves of her black nun’s habit as though even with yards and yards of fabric, it is still not enough material to hide behind. Her eyes shift to me and Bog. “Emmaline? What are you…” She sighs. “Go on back inside. Quick feet.”

Thomas whistles for Bog, who is on all fours in a flash, pressed to his heels.

I trudge back with them to the house. Sister Mary Grace rests a hand on my shoulder, rubbing the short tufts of my hair. Sister Constance’s pinched face peers through the glass windowpanes in the door, and then the door swings open for us. There are two men with her. They are young, with crisp uniforms and black hair beneath their caps.

Sister Constance gives me a stern look. “You know you aren’t to go out now that you have a yellow ticket, Emmaline. Especially not as far as the barn.”

“I’m sorry, Sister. I won’t sneak around anymore, I promise.”

“Indeed.” Her voice is hard.

She closes the door in Bog’s face before he can come in. He presses his dog-nose to the glass panes in the door, fogging it. Thomas starts to say something, but then stops. The soldiers seem young and affable, like they could be friends of his, but they do not smile.

“Mr. Thomas Whatley?”

“That’s me, yes.”

I watch over my shoulder as I drift down the hall, moving as slowly as I can. When I reach the library, it is filled with whispers. How odd. I go inside, where Benny and Jack and ten other children who are supposed to be preparing for class are pressed against the wall.

“What are you—”

“Quiet, flea!” Jack says in a scowling whisper. “We can hear, if you shut your mouth.”

I scowl back at him. His Lionel steam engine toy train with the real working whistle sits beside him; I’m tempted to kick it. Send the hunk of shiny green metal across the floor—

My breath catches.

Green.

The train’s paint glimmers in the light: 865-EMERALD GREEN. It would serve him right, Benny’s little stoolie, if the train disappeared….

Muffled soldiers’ voices come from down the hallway. Beth, one of the three little mice, scoots over and taps the floor next to her. Tearing my eyes away from Jack’s train, I press into the warm bodies of feverish children, my ear to the thin wall. I can only make out every few words in the soldiers’ soft voices. Something about a battle somewhere near Egypt. A shell and a hospital. Then Thomas lets out a single sharp moan.

“What’s happened?” Susan, the littlest mouse, who has just come in, whispers. “Is it about the war?”

“Of course it’s about the war,” Benny snaps. “It’s always about the war, if it’s soldiers. They’re talking about Thomas’s father. He was off fighting Rommel’s men in the western desert campaign. I think he’s been killed.” Benny tiptoes to the library door and peeks around in the hall. After a moment he comes back, and he makes a big gesture of taking off his cap, just as the soldier did. “They handed Thomas a package. I think it was his father’s last belongings from the hospital, paperwork and things. They said something about medals of honor, too, and gave him a little box stamped with the king’s own crest. Said his father was one of England’s finest heroes.”

“Poor Thomas,” Susan says.

Benny holds his chin high. “Such things happen. We must carry on.”

Peter coughs.

Sister Mary Grace sticks her head in the library and hisses that they can hear us whispering down the hall. We all scramble to our feet and rush out of the library, and there’s the sound of feet running upstairs and then doors slamming up and down the residence hall.

I pause and look back toward the library once more; Jack’s train is gone. He must have taken it with him.

“What’s happened?” Anna is calling from her bedroom upstairs. “Hello? Won’t someone tell me?”

But no one answers her.

By the front door, the soldiers are still talking quietly to Thomas, who is clutching a package filled with papers and things in his long arm. Sister Mary Grace has one of her hands over her mouth. Thomas has his back to me. His shoulders sag. I cannot see his face.

Slowly, I climb the stairs all the way to my attic room. I feel hot tears on my cheeks. Thomas is not a monster, I am certain of it. And he is hurting.

I push open the frosted window. If I lean out, I can see the corner of the walled gardens.

I know that the red ribbon and the yellow bottle are there, tucked safely into the ivy. Soon, I hope, I can add a snotty boy’s emerald green Lionel steam engine with a working whistle to the spectral shield.

I peer upward, just in case. The skies are clear. No Black Horse circling, though I know he is near. Waiting. Smelling. Hunting.

Down below, on the front steps, Bog sits in the cold, face against the glass, waiting for Thomas.