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neatly, quietly, elegantly into place, like a body slumping into the grave.
    He was still angry about Peled. Peled should have known better than to let his rifle get too near Shimon. It didn't matter that the safety had been on, it didn't matter that his trigger finger wasn't even on the trigger housing. It was simple: people didn't point guns at Uncle Shimon.
    Keep things simple, that was the trick. Don't worry about who is the friend, who is the enemy. That can get too complicated when you stand next to Uncle Shimon because sometimes friends wear funny foreign uniforms and sometimes enemies wore good Metzadan khaki.
    Protect Uncle Shimon, and do what Uncle Shimon says.
    Nothing else mattered.
    Avram shifted nervously in the seat next to him, his attention split between his clipboard and the view outside. Avram was the organizer. He had been, ever since Shimon Bar-El's magic had touched him and the little boy who wasn't yet Dov. Shimon had touched all of them; and of the six who survived Shimon's Children's Crusade, all were different.
    Poor Avram, always made things complicated. He liked it complicated, now. It hadn't always been that way. Things had been very complicated once, for the both of them, back when their names hadn't been either Dov or Avram, neither Ginsberg nor Stein, back when they were children in Bienfaisant, half this world away.
    Dov didn't remember much about that; he'd lost most of those memories over the years.
    It was only the end that he remembered at all clearly, and that only in flashes, because that was complicated. Little Annette running into the boy's dormitory, clutching scraps of her dress to herself, blood trickling down her skinny thighs; the men in the black uniforms kicking in the door and laughing at her, then pinning her down while they took turns with her; two of the men in black uniforms hacking Ton-ton to bits, and not because the poor spaniel had tried to attack them—it had just cowered under the porch. They had just done it for fun.
    The men had used up the girls too quickly; they started in on the boys.
    Two of them had grabbed Etienne and bent him over a table; a third pulled his pants down.
    He didn't let himself remember much about that, only the end, with all the bodies scattered over the rough wood of the dormitory floor, some of them in the gray shirts and trousers of the orphanage, some of them in the black uniforms of the soldiers, and the thick man in torn khaki with the funny slanted eyes kneeling over him, gripping little Etienne's shoulder with surprising gentleness and saying, "You're the biggest one still living—well, still ambulatory, anyway—and I need you. Can you hear me?"
    He remembered nodding, the movement sending pain shooting through his broken teeth. "What's your name?" the man asked.
    Little Etienne, the complicated little fool, he couldn't say anything, not through the pain and the tears. It hurt so much .
    And the man with the funny slanted eyes said, "Well, then, I will call you Dov, because that means 'bear' in my language, and you're a big boy—you remind me of a bear. Hmm, you don't know what a bear is? That's fine, don't worry about it. I'll do the knowing for both of us. You're Dov—and you can call me Uncle Shimon. Can you remember that? Uncle Shimon."
    Then he said the words that Dov would never forget, could never forget, the words that changed Dov's life, right then and there.
    They were beautiful words:
    "You must be very strong for me, Dov."
    It was so simple. You must be very strong for me, Dov.
    It was the most natural thing in the world, the easiest thing anybody had ever done, even through the pain and the tears and shattered teeth and the blood, for Dov to say, "Oh, yes, Uncle Shimon. I will be very strong."
    He would be very strong, and he was very strong. Uncle Shimon wanted it that way.
    Dov gripped the seatback in front of him and squeezed, hard, exercising his hands, not quite tearing the upholstery. It was important to Uncle