“You can’t go back out, Emmeline. It’s dangerous. There are bombs falling everywhere.”
As if to prove her point, several booms pounded outside and the room shook.
“They’re going to kill us all!” a man shouted.
“Hush, now!” the woman yelled back to him.
“But my mother and sister—,” Emmy pleaded.
The woman’s eyes narrowed in concern. “Were they on the street with you?”
“No. They’re at home. I was on my way to them.”
She patted my arm. “They are surely in a shelter, too, Emmeline. Just like you. They’d want you to stay safe. You can’t go out there now.”
“It’s bloody Armageddon,” another man said, sounding terrified.
The woman who was singing softly nearby stopped for a second and told the man to shut up. A child whimpered and she started singing again.
The satchel.
Julia’s book.
“Where is it? Where’s my bag?”
The woman held up the satchel. “Right here. It’s right here. See? You’ve nothing to worry about. You’re safe here.”
“Nobody’s safe,” a voice grunted.
The angry flutes whistled outside, followed by a thunderous roar, and again the room shook.
From somewhere behind Emmy an old man began to recite the twenty-third psalm. The woman who held the compress to her head joined him. A few others did, too.
“I’m thirsty,” Emmy whispered.
The woman reached behind her for a glass jar and poured water into a tin cup, which she held to Emmy’s lips. The water tasted like metal. Emmy lay back down.
The woman unwound the shawl she had over her shoulders and folded it into a tight rectangle. Then she placed it under Emmy’s head.
“Rest now,” she said.
Emmy slept.
When she awoke, the room was in semidarkness and cloaked in an odd silence after so much noise hours before. People were walking about slowly, gingerly. Those who hadn’t had a cot on which to sleep moved stiffly after having spent the night on the hard floor.
Emmy rose to a sitting position, her head protesting. She reached up to touch her forehead and felt a band of gauze, sticky with dried blood. The woman who had ministered to her the night before was asleep on the floor.
“Is it over?” someone asked.
“Who knows?” someone answered. “Who knows anything?”
Emmy reached for her satchel at the woman’s feet and got up carefully, holding her head as she stood. A wave of dizziness nearly sent her toppling back to the cot. A man walking past steadied her and Emmy whispered her gratitude.
She wanted to thank the woman who had cared for her, but she had to get home to Mum and Julia. Perhaps she would see the woman again someday.
Perhaps.
Emmy slid the strap of the satchel over her shoulder and tested her footing. Her left ankle ached ferociously. She tried out a few small steps as she followed those also wanting to exit the shelter. They went down a hallway, through a set of double doors, and to a stairway that led upward. Emmy took the steps one at a time with a hand firmly on the rail. With each step, the smell of ash and fire and dust became more pervasive. The light at the top of the stairs was a sickly yellow, not from the morning sun but from a thousand fires still burning.
