"I'm going to miss you," she said into Burda's shoulder. "So much. I don't know how to leave you here."
"Stop that." Burda's voice came out rough and unsteady, which undid Sullha even more. "Stop your weeping and get yourself gone. You have a son to think of, and others depending on you." She pulled back, held Sullha by the shoulders, and looked at her, fierce and wet-eyed. "You will come back for the rest of us. I trust you to do that. I know you will."
It was just talk. The brave hollow promises that people offered each other when the truth was too heavy to bear. There was no guarantee of any return. They might never be able to come back for Burda or for any of the ones left behind these walls. But Sullha took the old woman's hands anyway and held them tight.
"I will come back for you," she said. "I swear it. And you have to swear that you will stay alive long enough for me to get you out of here."
"I will do my best." Burda squeezed her hands. "At my age, it's the best I can promise."
The other women came to embrace Burda one after another, and Burda received each hug with a pat on the back and a gruff word, and Sullha turned away to wipe away her tears because she could not watch all of it and stay upright.
That was when Tomek suddenly noticed that the meeting had taken an unexpected turn.
He came running, stood in front of her, and glared at Yaaf.
"Mama." He pressed back into her as if he could push her away from the threat, his eyes never leaving Yaaf. "What is a soldier doing here?"
"It's all right, my love." She wrapped her arms around him, gathering his back against her front. "This is Yaaf, and he's my friend. We were friends as kids, and then he was taken away, but he came back to look for me. He's not like the other soldiers. He's good."
Tomek eyed Yaaf with suspicion. "How did he get in here? The soldiers never come in."
She turned her boy around and crouched in front of him. "It's a secret." She lowered her voice to the register she used for the stories she told him at night, the conspiratorial hush that turned a thing from frightening to thrilling. "Yaaf can make it so no one sees him. And today he's going to do something even better. He's going to take us on a secret trip and hide us with his magic so nobody can see us either. But it only works if everyone is very, very quiet."
Tomek's wariness turned to curiosity and excitement.
"He has magic?"
"Yes."
He narrowed his eyes at her. "For real?"
"Yes. Very real."
Tomek looked over at the cluster of women, and at Bianca who was sitting on Rohilah's hip, and his small face creased with calculation. "Is Bianca going on the secret trip too?"
"Yes. Everyone who is here is going."
"And he really can make us invisible?"
"He can."
"With magic?"
"With magic."
Tomek's suspicion was replaced by wonder, and he turned to stare at Yaaf with covetous awe, a boy in the presence of the single most interesting person he had ever encountered.
"Can you make me invisible right now?"
"Soon," Sullha said before Yaaf could answer, and rose and took her son's hand. "Right now, we have to start moving. Remember. We have to be absolutely quiet."
She did not look back at Burda.
She couldn't.
If she looked back, she would not be able to make her feet move, so she fixed her eyes on the playground gate, held Tomek's hand, and waited for Yaaf to lead them out to freedom.
He shrouded them without a word, and she imagined she could feel it settling over them like a faint pressure, a sense of the air thickening. Then he started walking, and they were all moving, a strange procession of ten women and two small children, led out of their prison by a tall man in a soldier's uniform.
