Jonathan didn’t take the turn that would bring him down past the Hatch and up to the library. He walked right by it, moving slow to protect his candle’s fragile flame. He didn’t have any matches. There hadn’t been a chance to grab a lantern. The thin white candle was the only light he had.

He pressed forward through the darkness, stopping from time to time to listen. All he ever heard, besides his breathing and the ever-present dripping, was the papery scrape of tiny claws on wet stone.

“Colin?” he whisper-shouted. His voice came back to him in damp echoes. There was no answer.

He climbed a short staircase, then descended a longer, spiral one. He passed a narrow window set high in the wall. There was no glass—just a narrow, tombstone-shaped opening in the wall, a couple of feet tall. The wind blew spatters of icy rain into the passageway. Jonathan had to stand on the tips of his toes to peer out at the ocean that surrounded them. Dark clouds were stacked and heaped to the horizon, just as they had been since he arrived. They looked grimmer now, though, more threatening. Like they were coming for him. The waves jostled and crowded one another like an angry mob storming Slabhenge Castle.

He kept going, leaving the gray light of the window behind, returning to the world of claw scrapes and candlelight.

“Colin?”

He turned a sharp corner into a hallway that was narrower, tight. He passed one door, closed and silent. Then another. Then one that hung open, the door dangling from a single broken hinge; the room behind it was small and dark and empty. Inside was only a broken chair and some empty bottles littered on the floor.

The fourth door was closed and Jonathan was just past it when something caught his eye. Something small and white on the floor, barely within the reach of his candle’s wavering light. He stopped and bent down.

It was a paper crane. Tiny. Not much bigger than a marble.

Jonathan smiled and stood up. He pushed the door open with an echoing creak.

Beyond was a steep, skinny staircase that circled up into shadows. Jonathan walked up it, letting the door swing closed behind him.

It was a long staircase, rising in a tight spiral. Up and up and up until Jonathan knew that he wasn’t just climbing a staircase; he was climbing one of Slabhenge’s towers.

At the top was another door, open just an inch. He pressed his hand against the knotty wood and pushed the door open.

The room was perfectly round, with a high, coned ceiling. In the middle was a thin mattress covered in a rumpled pile of blankets. On the far side of the room, Colin sat in a straight-backed chair, looking out a round window.

He turned and gave Jonathan one of his short-lived smiles.

“You found my little bird,” he said.

“Yeah.” Jonathan stepped into the room. It had four circular windows, one looking in each direction. The glass was broken out of one of them. There was a puddle of rainwater on the floor beneath it. A chilled wet breeze spun through the room.

Colin shivered.

“There’th a thtorm coming.”

“Probably.”

“Definitely.”

Jonathan crossed over to one of the windows. It looked inward to Slabhenge, down onto the courtyard. He could see Tony and Miguel halfheartedly kicking the ball back and forth. They looked small and far away. They looked like little kids.

“Do you want a chocolate?” Colin asked.

Jonathan looked at him and smiled. Colin smiled back.

“No, thanks. He’ll probably check my breath when I get back.”

Colin’s smile widened.

“He’th pretty mad, huh?”

Jonathan’s smile dropped away.

“More than pretty mad, Colin. You need to be careful. You shouldn’t sneak down anymore. I—don’t know what he’ll do to you.”

Colin shrugged.

“I’m careful. Everyone is athleep when I come down. Or eating. And I know all the wayth to ethcape now.”

“What do you mean?”

Colin’s eyes widened and an excited smile spread across his face.

“Thith plathe ith really amathing. All the hallth and stairth and roomth are connected. There are almotht no dead endth. It’th like an anthill. All turnth and loopth and thircleth. And I know it. Or motht of it. He’d never catch me.”

Jonathan shook his head.

“Don’t risk it, Colin. You can’t let him catch you. He’s kind of … losing it, I think. And I can’t …” Jonathan’s voice broke off. He frowned and bit his lip. “I can’t protect you anymore. He won’t listen to me now.”

Colin tilted his head and blinked.

“What happened?” he asked. Jonathan looked away, out the window, then back to Colin.

“They think I know where you are. Well, they thought I knew where you were. And Benny … Benny told them some stuff.”

“What? What did he thay?”

Jonathan swallowed and took a deep breath.

“He said that he’d looked through my paperwork. He showed them my—my scars.” Jonathan rubbed at his arms. “He told them I was sent here for … for … murdering my little sister. Sophia.” Jonathan’s voice caught when he said the name. His breaths were fast and shallow and they burned in his throat. His voice scratched down into a whisper. “He told them I started a fire. And that she died. He told them I killed my little sister.” Tears, as hot as the rain was cold, dropped from his eyes and down his cheeks.

Colin frowned. His eyes squinted into Jonathan’s face.

“It ithn’t true, though,” he said.

Jonathan’s throat tightened like a punch-ready fist. His eyes burned like deadly fire. He ripped a ragged breath from his lungs and looked away.

“Oh,” Colin said, his voice a breathless whisper. “It ith true.”

Jonathan rubbed at his tears with his wrist. He looked away, through his tears, out the window at the storm.

“Tell me, Jonathan,” Colin said softly. “Tell me what happened.”

Jonathan wiped at his face with a sleeve. “It doesn’t matter.”

Colin stood up and walked over to where Jonathan stood.

“It doth. It doth matter. Tell me.”

Jonathan took a shuddering lungful of air. His teeth chattered when he exhaled.

“I … I … used to start fires. I don’t know why. I don’t even remember how it started. I liked to … watch the flames. Watch them grow. See something that I’d built get hot and bright and alive. I don’t know.” He looked up, for just a second, into Colin’s eyes, then away again quickly.

“Little ones at first, then bigger. Then I set one at school. In the bathroom. But I got caught running away. I got in big trouble. Parents called in, kicked out of school, the whole thing. It was awful. I didn’t start a fire for a while. And then … and then …” He stopped, the words stuck in his throat like ash. His teeth clenched hard and with one deep breath through his nose, he plunged forward.

“And then I started again. Small ones. In wastebaskets. At night, when everyone was sleeping. Sophia caught me. She was so mad. She was afraid I was gonna get in trouble again. She made me promise not to do it ever again. She … she even took the matches I had.” Jonathan’s voice got smaller and smaller as he spoke. He wanted to walk away, to slam the door, to retreat to the shadows with his raging. But Colin still stood there with his listening eyes before the storm-darkened window, and Jonathan’s words stumbled on.

“And then. That night. It was … like a nightmare. The smoke. The flames climbing up the walls. So much smoke. I wanted to run. And then I heard her. Downstairs. Screaming my name. And the fire was just so hot. Growing so fast.” He looked up through burning, blurry eyes. “It was like a monster, Colin. It was roaring.” His voice was cut off by a choking sob. “I could hear her. But I couldn’t save her. And she died in the fire. Screaming for me to save her.”

Colin swallowed, his own eyes full, his fingers tugging at the skin of his neck.

“That’th why. Why you were on the Thinner’th Thorrow. You think it’th your fault.”

“It is my fault!” Jonathan shouted, his voice hoarse and raw. “I killed my sister! I let her die!”

Colin took a step closer.

“Jonathan,” he said. “It wath an acthident. Jutht a terrible acthident.”

Jonathan shook his head angrily and wiped the tears out of his eyes with his wrist.

“My parents say the same thing. That it was an accident. That it wasn’t my fault. How much they love me.” He looked up into Colin’s eyes. “But I can still hear her screaming, Colin. Screaming for me. It shouldn’t be me at home with them. It should be Sophia.” He took a shaky, broken breath. “I’m probably the only one of all of us that actually deserves to be here.”

There was a moment of nothing but wind and the smell of rain and, somewhere out on the darkness of the sea, a low rumble of thunder.

Then Colin’s thoughtful eyes narrowed.

“But … how did you get the thcars?” he asked.

Jonathan sniffed and cleared his throat and took a step away.

“I better go. Sebastian’ll be getting suspicious. And you need to stay out of the way, Colin. Don’t let him catch you.”

Colin squinted and bit his lip. He seemed about to say something, then stopped. He nodded, once. Then he asked, “Are you going to be okay?”

“I’ll be fine.”

Jonathan opened the door and put his foot on the top step.

“Don’t you think they mith you?”

Jonathan stopped. He didn’t have to ask who Colin was talking about.

“You’re the only one who geth a letter every thingle day. Don’t you think they mith you? Don’t you think lothing one of their children wath enough?”

Jonathan’s eyebrows frowned. He chewed on his lip.

“Don’t you mith them? Don’t you mith home?”

Jonathan didn’t turn around. When he answered, his voice echoed down the winding staircase.

“I do,” he said, incredibly softly. Like a secret he was keeping from himself. “I do.” He focused his eyes on the flame clutched in his hand.

“I went every day to Sophia’s grave and put a flower on it. Every single day. She loved flowers. My parents promised that they’d do it for me while I was gone.”

He closed his eyes, then opened them and looked back at Colin. His eyes took in the stone floor, the stone walls, the puddle and the shadows.

“There’s no flowers here.”

When the door closed on the round room, Colin was still standing pinching his neck, a thoughtful frown on his face.

When Jonathan returned to the dining room, they were just starting their nightly letter home. No one spoke to him. The dining room was again awash in candlelight and the whispers of pens on paper. Jonathan’s letter was short. But he was the last one done. Benny read it and rolled his eyes and said, “Fine. Night-night, Johnny.” Jonathan didn’t reply, or even look Benny in the face. He supposed that he should have glared at him. Stared him down. He supposed that he should hate Benny. But Jonathan didn’t have any hate left. He’d already used it all on himself.

When Jonathan went to his mattress to go to sleep, he found that the ring of seven mattresses had shrunk to three. Most of the other boys had dragged theirs away into a different corner. Away from him. Only Walter and David had stayed.

The two boys looked at him from around the slowly dancing candle flame between them.

Jonathan put his head down and closed his eyes.

“Aren’t you gonna read, man?” Walter asked.

“You still want me to?”

“Yeah. Don’t you have another book?”

“Um-hmm.” Jonathan rolled over and fished Treasure Island out from where he’d stowed it under his pillow. He looked up at the faces of Walter and David, waiting in the yellow glow of the candles.

“You sure?” he asked. They both nodded.

He cleared his throat.

“Chapter One,” he began, his voice still a wounded whisper. It gained strength as he read. “The Old Sea Dog at the Admiral Benbow.”

In the morning, when he awoke, there was a new piece of paper lying on the pillow beside his head. It was not a crane.

The paper on his pillow was folded into the shape of a perfect flower. The flower had a shiny gold center.

A dark brown square of chocolate sat beside it.