Beyond the beltway, off the crumbling black two-lane highway, was a clearing. In this field stood a stadium, once a place for unimportant football games and indifferent county fairs. And today, in the stadium, the children and the sun.

A break in the infinite cloud: a golden and final shaft of light poured in, sparkling with dust and dandelion seeds. Beneath, filling the stadium and spilling over, stood the children, who stared unblinking at the light flooding through the rent in the charcoal sky. Silent and unmoving, on the pitch or in the stands or around the stadium perimeter.

One might see and hear frantic parents shuffling through the crowd, calling out names to the empty spaces between their children or yanking them away to take them home. This was futile: parents who carried their children away found them missing again the next morning, back in their places at the arena; woke up in silent houses to find doors still locked, barricades untouched, shackles empty – and who could have said how? Or why?