Seldom told her not to stare, but then he turned, looking at the other two men and making a sorry little sound.

“What?” she asked.

He jerked his head forward again. “They were talking.”

“Talking how?”

“I don’t know . . . but then one of them looked at me.”

She started to turn.

“Don’t,” he said.

But she looked anyway. One man had stood, walking up the aisle now. She and Seldom both sat on their hands. The man passed them and bent low, saying a few words to the man in front—quiet words put inside an ear—and the sitting man shook his head, whispering and flapping his hand in the air.

The standing man nodded and returned to his seat, staring blankly at the children as he passed.

The blimp kept pushing. Elata watched the canopy. A gold-and-blue pashta bird was hovering above a bakebear, stealing ripe fruits with his long tongue. Rail was the next stop, Hanner after that, and what was Master Nissim doing? Was Diamond all right? The worst fear wasn’t the fact that something had gone wrong, which was plainly true, but not knowing what that something was.

“Get up,” she told Seldom.

He didn’t want to move, and he didn’t want to stay. The debate ended when the girl poked him the ribs.

They stood together, and she pushed him to the aisle and into the hallway. Both toilet doors were closed. She looked up into the cockpit, earning a bored glance from the pilot’s assistant. Then with the flat of her hand, she knocked hard on one door, listening to silence and knocking again.

“Occupied,” Nissim said.

Seldom put his face close to the door. “Are you all right, sir?”

There was no answer and no hint of motion, but then the door clicked and opened. Nissim was leaning against the sink. He looked as if he had been standing that way for a very long time. The window was closed but crooked after a rough repair. There was no corner where a second person could hide.

Nissim put three fingers over his mouth, wanting silence.

But Elata couldn’t stop the words. “Where did he—?”

“No.”

She opened the other toilet door. No Diamond.

A grim and peculiar smile filled the old face. The Master winked at them and in a whisper asked, “Where are they?”

Elata risked one hasty look. “In their seats, watching us.”

“I bet they are,” he said. Again he put his fingers to his mouth, a strange, scared expression blooming on his face.

They said nothing after that. They walked back to the open bench, and Elata sat where Diamond had been. She felt the propellers working and the slow swaying of the blimp, and for a few moments she forgot where she was. Suddenly she was a tiny girl, riding beside her dead father, enjoying her very first blimp ride.

The two men behind them were muttering.

Nissim shared the same bench, sitting beside the aisle, his shoulders held high.

One man went to the man sitting in front, and both of them continued into the hallway. Elata couldn’t see them, but she heard one toilet door open, then the other, and never any courteous knock.

She sat like Nissim sat, straight and square.

The men didn’t come back.

“What are they doing?” she asked.

Seldom tipped his head, trying to see.

“Probably talking to the pilot,” Nissim said. “But they won’t learn anything useful.”

The men eventually returned, joining their friend in back. The three of them were muttering and cursing. People turned to watch. Passengers who hadn’t noticed anything before now began to pay close attention.

The third man, the one who always sat in back, said, “Wait here.”

Then he walked up to Master Nissim.

“Move over,” he said.

The Master looked up, making a long odd sound, as if he felt sick. Then he pushed to the right, and Seldom shoved Elata against the window.

The man sat, staring straight ahead. He had a face that probably always looked annoyed. His mouth was tense, the eyes like slivers. A voice came out of someplace deep inside his chest, asking nobody in particular, “What happened to the boy?”

Nissim said nothing.

The man turned to glare at him. Then he stared at Elata and Seldom, measuring them. To Seldom, he said, “Where did your friend go?”

As if lashed by electricity, Seldom flinched and moaned.

“We don’t know the boy,” Nissim said.

“No?”

With that, the Master started telling a story that was much lie as truth. This very smart man, this one-time teacher, often talked about duty and integrity and being relentlessly honest. But he was suddenly weaving an elaborate tale about a strange boy showing up at school this morning. He claimed that he was a naturalist and these children were his students, and the three of them were on their way to the canopy to hunt for a rare species of ant. The strange boy had tagged along, which was a mistake. Master Nissim regretted that and hoped that nobody would get in trouble, particularly him. Then he introduced the children, except he used invented names, and he offered a palm to the annoyed man, claiming that his name was Master Shine.

Elata liked to lie, and she always had the talent. But she couldn’t begin to keep all the details of this story straight.

Nissim was doing a grand job of wasting time, she realized.

Finally the annoyed man said, “Just shut up.”

Nobody spoke.

Glancing over his shoulder, he nodded and one of his partners came forward, bending low while the annoyed man told him, “Search the cargo and search between the bladders. Make sure he’s not onboard.”

“Oh, the boy isn’t here,” Nissim said.

The annoyed man turned back, acting surprised to find him still here. “So where is the nameless one?”

“I was trying to explain,” Nissim insisted with a tight, offended tone. “I wasn’t comfortable having him with us, but then he said that he needed help with the toilet. So I took him. And when we got behind that door, the child looked at me with those pale sick eyes . . . he looked at me and said that he didn’t very much like the world, and he was leaving.”

The annoyed man didn’t react.

“Leaving where?” Seldom asked.

Nissim sat back in the bench and shook his head. “I was standing beside him. And then a moment later, he was gone.”

The man made a long wet sound, as if preparing to spit.

“But you obviously know something about the child,” Nissim said. “And I can guess why you want to find him.”

The man started to answer but thought better of it.

“That boy is magical.” Master glanced at Elata, flashing a fine little smile. Then to everybody, with a teacher’s best voice, he announced, “That peculiar little creature just melted into the air and was gone.”

The nearby passengers had been listening, and they laughed nervously. The annoyed man got to his feet and started to curse, nobody able to tell just who was receiving the brunt of his rage. Then he went to the back bench again, and eventually his partners returned. The cargo hold and every cubby had been searched, and no odd boy was uncovered. Then a few moments later, the blimp arrived at Rail and the gangway deployed, and after a few hard words, two of the men disembarked.

“Now who’s left?” Nissim asked.

Elata looked. “The leader is.”

As if in misery, Seldom bent forward. “Did that really happen?”

Nobody answered.

“Did Diamond vanish?”

“No, of course not,” said Elata.

“Good.”

Then Nissim leaned close to them, quietly saying, “But there is magic about our friend. And probably more than any of us can know.”

Diamond ran until too many people were sharing the walkway, and then he walked, quick feet taking little steps. He was always watching faces. Young men deserved special attention. The men who had scared Master Nissim could be somewhere close. With his mind’s eyes, he studied their faces. If they appeared again, he would run. If cornered, he would fight. He wasn’t sure how to fight, but he had the knife and healthy share of fear, and while he walked, Diamond imagined battles between him and those big dangerous men—noisy wild struggles full of blood and deep wounds.