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Gaia now, the colors and music, the beauty and wealth. The specials at the Tvaltar paled by comparison. That one glimpse, she later realized, was proof of a life that might have been hers had she not been so clumsy, or if they had instituted the safer policy before she’d been born.
    She would make sure that the babies in her care had the opportunities she’d never had, those lucky three every month. If the rest, the other half dozen or more babies were unadvanced, then that was their destiny. They would take their chances with life in Wharfton as she had.
    She had no idea if her visage betrayed the shades of her thoughts, but Sgt. Grey was regarding her still with an attentive, expectant expression.
    ‘I’m glad to serve the Enclave,” she said finally.
    “As am I,” he replied.
    He turned then, and she watched his fingers close on the knob. A moment later the door closed softly, and she was left alone in her home, with a drafty flare from the fireplace high’ lighting the silent strings of her father’s banjo and the fact that both her parents were gone.

Chapter 3
    Rapunzel
    WHEN GAIA HAD FINISHED cleaning out her teapot and cups and replenished the herbs she had used for Agnes’s labor, she carefully repacked her satchel, keeping it ready as her mother had taught her. Next she straightened up everything that had been disturbed in the guards’ search, trying to make the little house feel like home again. Even the two yellow can’ dies on the mantel that they lit every evening in honor of her brothers had been shifted a few millimeters from their familiar spots. Despite the return of order, her sense of unease remained, and when she slumped down in her father’s chair before the dying embers on the hearth, she could not relax enough to sleep, even when weariness seeped into her muscles with the gentle heat.
    A soft tapping came on the back door. She rose. “Who’s there?”
    “It’s me. Theo. Amy sent me over to see if you’re all right.”
    She pulled open the door and Theo Rupp entered, opening his arms wide. “Scared you, didn’t they?” he said.
    Gaia gratefully flew into his hug, closing her eyes as the man’s strong arms enfolded her. The potter smelled of clay and dust as he always did, and he patted her back with a heavy hand. She sneered. “There, now,” he said, releasing her. “Why don’t you come on over and spend the night with me and Amy? You don’ t want to be alone over here.”
    Gaia stepped back to the fireplace and threw another log on. “No,” she said, taking a seat and motioning him toward her father’s more comfortable chair. “I want to stay here. They might be back anytime.”
    “I didn’t actually see you come home or I would have been over sooner,” Theo said apologetically. “Amy saw a guard leave ten minutes back and said you had to be here. Was there just the one, then?”
    She nodded. “One was enough.”
    Theo sat slowly, and she searched his face to see if he knew anything more. Theo and his wife Amy lived across the road, and like the other neighbors, they must have seen her parents being taken away.
    “Tell me what you know,” she said. “Do you have any idea why my parents were arrested?”
    “None. Total mystery,” he said. “You know, it just happens sometimes. The Enclave takes somebody in, asks a few questions, then lets them go none the wiser. Your parents might have been standing next to someone and might have seen some’ thing and now the Enclave wants a little information.”
    “But if it’s that simple, why did they arrest them? Why didn’t they just ask the questions here? My parents would have cooperated.”
    “Don’t know,” Theo said. “That’s their way.”
    Gaia looked down at her hands and splayed her fingers in the light from the fire. She trusted Theo. She’d known him her whole life, and his daughter Emily was Gaia’s dearest friend.
    “Do you know anything about my mother keeping a list of some sort?” she asked.