Milligan put a hand on Reynie’s shoulder. “I would booby-trap it just to be sure,” he said, “but it’s your escape route. The tunnel’s the fastest way to the other side. All right? Now let me show you how to send a signal.” Milligan took a flare gun from inside his jacket. It was about the size of a water pistol and just as simple to operate. “Flip the safety switch here, aim at the sky, pull the trigger. Got it? I’ll see the flare and come at once.”
Milligan kissed Kate on the forehead and tousled Reynie’s hair. Then he grabbed the rails of the ladder and slid all the way to the ground — just as Kate had done from the barn rooftop a few days ago.
Milligan disappeared into the trees, and Reynie and Kate turned solemnly to their duties. They stood back to back in the middle of the silo roof. Reynie looked south over the meadow; Kate looked north to the open stretch of ground beyond the woods. The moon had fully risen over the mountaintop now, bathing everything in ghostly light.
“There he goes,” Kate whispered after a while. Reynie turned to see a figure darting across the open ground at the far edge of the woods. Suddenly the figure stopped and waved in their direction with a wide, slow sweep of his arm. Kate returned the gesture. From this distance Milligan appeared as tiny as an insect, and as he turned and ran farther north he grew smaller still. Soon he had vanished into the thickets.
They glanced at each other but said nothing. Both felt the weight of their duty upon them. Reynie watched south. Kate watched north. The island seemed preternaturally still. The trees did not stir, nor was there the faintest breeze. It was as if the wind exhausted itself by day and so must rest at night. Thirty minutes passed, then an hour. In tense silence the two young sentries stared out upon the moonlit landscape, hoping against hope that what they were looking for would not appear.
Two hours later Constance came down the village path toward the silo. Kate had been worrying about this, and in a whisper she told Reynie she thought Constance was too little and clumsy to climb up to the roof, to say nothing of how easily distracted she was. What if she stopped paying attention? But Reynie had given this some thought as well, and his opinion was that if Constance committed herself, they could rely on her. Besides, what was there to distract her on top of the silo?
“If you say so,” said Kate, who generally deferred to Reynie’s opinions, “but I’ll feel better if I help her up and give her a safety line. Can you cover for me?”
Reynie spent the next couple of minutes looking anxiously south, then north, then south again. He was afraid to look away from either direction for more than a second at a time, and as a result he appeared to be doing vigorous neck exercises when Constance appeared at the top of the ladder.
“What in the world are you doing?” Constance said. “You look ridiculous!”
As Reynie explained, Kate took out her rope and tied it around the little girl’s waist, tethering it to the top of the ladder so that she couldn’t possibly fall more than a few feet. They must have discussed this precaution down on the ground, for Constance raised no arguments, though she did complain that the rope was pinching her. Reynie continued looking back and forth, back and forth. He was much relieved when Constance took over Kate’s post and let him concentrate on the meadow. Kate went to fetch Sticky, who had stayed behind with Number Two.
“No change?” Reynie asked Constance. They were standing back to back.
“She opened her eyes once and begged me to do my own laundry,” Constance said. “I told her I prefer that she do it, which is what I always say. I didn’t want to make her more confused than she already is. She sighed and went right back to sleep.”
Before long Sticky came up the ladder. Without taking his eyes from the meadow, Reynie handed him the flare gun (he’d decided the flare gun was a responsibility he would
Reynie wished them luck and went down the ladder. He took his time heading back along the path, glancing around to see if anything clue-related caught his attention. Nothing did, but that might have been because Reynie had a hard time concentrating. Spending two hours at rigid attention was exhausting, especially at the end of a long and tiring day — and Reynie was pretty sure this had been the longest, most tiring day of his life. Between dawn and dusk they had visited the museum library, run from the police, faced a Ten Man, outsmarted Risker, and flown to this island, where the difficulties and danger had only increased. Reynie knew full well that at this very moment, Ten Men might be prowling the island, searching for Number Two, but he was suddenly so weary and bleary that he didn’t even have it in him to be anxious. He supposed that was one benefit of exhaustion.
Kate took one look at him and sent him upstairs with one of the lanterns. “Go get a blanket and lie down. I’ll wake you if anything happens. Honestly, Reynie, you’re dead on your feet!”
Reynie couldn’t argue. He could hardly even mount the stairs. In a sort of dream state he took a blanket from the closet and staggered into a bedroom. Some part of his brain was just alert enough to consider sparing the lantern batteries, and he turned off the lantern and opened the shutters to let in the moonlight. Then he threw his blanket onto the old-fashioned rope bed and fell in after it. The ropes and fastenings were loose, so the bed sagged pitifully — he would not “sleep tight,” as the old saying went — but Reynie couldn’t have cared less. Tight or loose, he could sleep through a train wreck. He could sleep through a tornado.
He could even sleep through the sound of Constance’s screams, which is exactly what he did.
Pleasant Dreams and Other False Comforts
At the moment Reynie was crashing into sleep, Sticky was on the silo roof trying not to do the same thing. The impossibly long day had caught up with him, too. It hadn’t occurred to Sticky that he would be in danger of falling asleep — not when he was on lookout duty, not when he was so afraid of what might happen. And yet, staring at the same spot minute after minute in the quiet night, he found his eyelids growing heavier and heavier, and Sticky became aware of how truly sleepy he was. Was this what Mr. Benedict felt like all the time? He began to pinch himself every so often. Then, after a while, Sticky would realize he had forgotten to pinch himself and his eyelids were drooping dangerously, and with a jolt of fear he would stiffen and blink and stare hard over the meadow. With his pulse pounding in his ears — an unnerving sound that reminded him of footsteps — Sticky would try to determine how long he’d been unfocused. A second or two? A few minutes? Longer? He would glance at the full moon, but unlike Kate he was no judge of distances or proportion. The moon seemed to be more or less overhead, just as it had been ever since Sticky came outside.
Eventually Sticky realized he was posing a danger not just to himself but to his friends as well, and though his
