He hesitates. When he lifts his ear defenders, sounds come rushing in. The moaning boiler, the plip-plopping leak, a distant, incongruous sound like the chirping of crickets, and what sounds like police sirens: blocks away but approaching fast.

Sirens?

He replaces the muffs and puts both hands on the push-bar. The electronic alarm shrieks as he sticks his head into the snow. A set of blue and red lights is careering into the alley.

He pulls his head back inside and the door closes and the alarm ceases. By the time he has rushed back to the front door, a police SUV, emergency lights whirling, is rolling halfway onto the sidewalk, nearly hitting the book drop box. Its driver’s door flies open and a figure rushes out and Marian drops the pizzas.

A spotlight hits the front of the library.

Seymour sinks to the floor. They will storm in here and shoot him and it will be over. He scurries behind the welcome desk and drives it across the entry mat and barricades the front door. Next he seizes the shelf of audiobooks, cassettes and CDs falling everywhere, and drags it across the front window. Then he crouches with his back to it and tries to recover his breath.

How did they get here so quickly? Who called the police? Is it possible that the sounds of two gunshots could be heard five blocks away at the police station?

He has shot a man; he hasn’t detonated his bombs; Eden’s Gate is untouched. He has botched everything. The eyes of the wounded man at the base of the stairwell track his every movement. Even in the dusky, snow-veiled light, Seymour can see that the patch of blood on his shirt is larger. The lime-green wireless earbuds in each of his ears: they must be connected to a phone.

Zeno

Christopher and Olivia, wearing their ski masks, pile treasure into saddlebags on the back of Aethon-the-conveniently-located-donkey. Alex says, “Ow, that’s heavy, stop, please, this is a misunderstanding, I’m not a beast, I’m a man, a simple shepherd from Arkadia,” and Christopher-who-is-Bandit-Number-One says, “Why is this donkey making so much danged noise?” and Olivia-who-is-Bandit-Number-Two says, “If it doesn’t shut up, we’ll be caught,” and she whacks Alex with her foil-covered sword, and the exit alarm downstairs blares, then stops.

All five children glance at Zeno where he sits in the front row, apparently decide that this, too, must be a test, and the masked bandits continue ransacking the inn.

A familiar jolt of pain rides through Zeno’s hip as he rises. He gives his actors a thumbs-up, hobbles to the back of the room, and eases open the little arched door. The stairwell lights are off.

From the first floor comes the jumbled thuds of what sounds like a shelf being pushed over. Then it’s quiet again.

There’s only the red glow of the EXIT sign at the top of the stairs, transforming the gold paint on the plywood wall into a frightening, poisonous green, and the far-off keen of a siren, and a red-blue-red-blue light licking along the edges of the stairs.

Memories sweep through the dark: Korea, a shattered windshield, the silhouettes of soldiers swarming down a snow-covered slope. He finds the handrail, eases down two steps, then realizes that a figure is curled at the bottom of the stairwell.

Sharif looks up, his face drawn. On the left shoulder of his T-shirt is a shadow or a spatter or something worse. With his left hand, he puts an index finger to his lips.

Zeno hesitates.

Go back, waves Sharif.

He turns, tries to make his boots quiet on the stairs; the golden wall looms above him—

Ὦ ξένε, ὅστις εἶ, ἄνοιξον, ἵνα μάθῃς ἃ θαυμάζεις

—the severity of the old Greek striking him suddenly as alien and chilling. For an instant Zeno feels as though, like Antonius Diogenes studying the inscription on a centuries-old chest, he is a stranger from the future, about to enter some unknowable and deeply foreign past. Stranger, whoever you are… To pretend he knows anything about what those words signify is absurd.

He ducks back through the arched doorway and fastens the door behind him. Onstage the bandits are driving Aethon-the-donkey down the stony road out of Thessaly. Christopher says, “Well, this has to be the most worthless donkey I’ve ever seen! It complains with every step,” and Olivia says, “As soon as we get back to our hideout and unload this loot, let’s cut its throat and throw it off a cliff,” and Alex pushes his donkey head up over his nose and scratches his forehead.

“Mr. Ninis?”

The karaoke light is blinding. Zeno leans on a folding chair to keep his balance.

Through his ski mask Christopher says, “I’m sorry I messed up my line before.”

“No, no,” Zeno says, trying to keep his voice quiet. “You’re doing wonderfully. All of you. It’s very funny. It’s brilliant. Everyone is going to love it.” The cicadas and crickets drone from the speaker. The cardboard clouds twist on their threads. All five kids watch him. What is he supposed to do?

“So,” Olivia-the-bandit says, and twirls her plastic sword, “should we keep the story going?”

SIX

THE BANDITS’ HIDEOUT

* * *

Cloud Cuckoo Land by Antonius Diogenes, Folio Z

… through my big nostrils I could smell roses growing in the last gardens at the edge of town. Oh, what sweet, melancholy perfume! But each time I veered to investigate, the cruel robbers beat me with their sticks and swords. My load poked my ribs through the saddlebags, and my unshod hooves ached, and the road wound higher into parched, stony mountains in the north of Thessaly, and again I cursed my luck. Each time I opened my mouth to sob, what came out was a loud, pathetic bray, and the knaves only whacked me harder.

The stars sank away and the sun rose hot and white, and they drove me higher into the mountains, until hardly anything grew at all. Flies hounded me, my back roasted, and there were only rocks and cliffs for as far as I could see. When we stopped, I was left to nibble spiky nettles that stung my tender lips, while my saddlebags were loaded with everything they had stolen from the inn, not only the jeweled bracelets and headdresses of the innkeeper’s wife, but soft white loaves and salted meats and sheep’s cheeses.

At nightfall, high on a rocky pass, we reached the mouth of a cave. More thieves came out to embrace the thieves who brought me here, and they prodded me through room after room twinkling with stolen gold and silver, and left me in a miserable unlit cavern. All I had to eat was fusty straw, and all I had to drink from was a little seep bubbling through the rock, and all night I could hear the echoes of the marauders laughing as they feasted. I wept at my…

CONSTANTINOPLE

AUTUMN 1452

Anna

She turns twelve, though no one marks the day. She no longer runs through ruins, playing at being Ulysses as he steals into the palace of brave Alcinous: it’s as if, when Kalaphates pitched Licinius’s parchment into the flames, the kingdom of the Phaeacians went to ashes too.

Maria’s hair has grown back where Kalaphates tore it out and the bruises around her eyes have long since faded, but some deeper injury persists. She grimaces in sunlight, forgets the names of things, leaves phrases half-finished. Headaches send her scurrying for the dark. And one bright morning, before the noon bell, Maria drops her needle and scissors and claws at her eyes.