The bird dances in my belly, or at least that’s what I think I feel, and who is there to tell me any different? I must show no emotion, no worry, nothing but pure equanimity when the authorities arrive. The bird I’ve ingested has led me to a child who doesn’t recognize me, and I’ve brought him back here for a shot at a future worth living in, but the bird is also a stupid machine, and it only knows how to do one thing: search, track, find. It found my boy, but he must not be found again.

I finish the job, and when I’m done I smooth the threadbare carpet over the corner floorboards and step outside to heave my hammer into the sea. Too late I wonder, will it seem suspicious, my lack of a hammer? I decide not to worry about that. The presence of a hammer, the lack of a hammer, either could be the clue that cuts short precious minutes my son needs for his escape, but the most important thing of all is that I appear neither worried nor hopeful when the black-booted troops swoop down from the sky: I gave up looking for my son long ago. My son. It feels unnatural to claim him as I strain for the sound of his descending footsteps. It’s good that I hear nothing.

When they come there will be no sign of my guide, this tiny saw-winged searcher, pilfered two weeks ago from a distracted patrolman, a man who will not be able to describe the face of the woman who bumped him on the street just before it went missing, though yes, he is certain it was a woman, a woman with long red locks like—I rush to the bathroom, nothing, to the kitchen, nothing, to the sewing basket, nothing but an old pair of embroidery scissors, and it takes five precious minutes to hack my hair close to my scalp, ten more to find a half-empty bottle of peroxide and bleach it to a patchy acid blonde—the woman that patrolman saw is nothing like me, not this poor specimen in a worn-out fisherman’s cap, pressing her hands against the wall of her house, listening for something that is no longer there.

Another silent flutter from my belly startles me, and I stumble. I’m still holding the tiny pair of scissors, their handles worked in the shape of a dove’s wings, and I decide to keep them, just in case, though what good they might be against military-grade weapons I cannot say. But I can say, because even a minute, even a few seconds could mean the difference between capture and escape to a new life, a new future for my son, and he is my son, no matter what they say. The bird in my belly makes me think of the afternoon eleven years ago when I first felt him moving inside of me. I didn’t know he was a boy; I didn’t know what he was at all. Children have become rare, and they belong not to their mothers but to the state, or so say the ones who make the rules. But he is mine, mine, and he’s moving now like the bird, flying down damp stone steps two at a time in the dark. I don’t allow myself to imagine this, nor the long, cold tunnel through which he’ll make his solitary way, and I don’t let myself worry about the reliability or competence of the comrades who will meet him at the end of that tunnel in a day’s time, and most of all I don’t let myself think of the months or years or lifetime to come during which I will never know, never for certain, whether he made it to the end of that tunnel, and safety, and a new life in a gentler world, and a future with some joy, some choices in it, because the single most important thing, the only thing that matters now is that there be no hint or trace of those questions on my face when they come, and I know they will be coming soon.

The quivering grows stronger and I worry I may vomit. I must not. If I do, the little bird might find an escape, an easy way out through my esophagus, rather than the more time-consuming and painful alternative that will come later on, after the authorities are gone. I clench my teeth. Was this a mistake? Should I have smashed it with that hammer and thrown it into the sea? I didn’t want to smash it, even after it had done its duty, even after it had scanned the decade-old sample of his blood I had the good sense to stash amongst my treasure trove of frozen sheep bones and fish heads. I didn’t want to smash it, even after it processed the markers that located him and brought me to him, my son, for whom I have spent that decade hiding and fighting and killing. Even after all of that was done, I didn’t want to smash it. For he is not the only would-be, so-called orphan in this ugly world. If I survive the next few hours, I might find more. I will do my best, for their mothers, for him, for myself. For the future I hope I’ve given him.

I press my hands against my belly as if that might calm the bird, reassure it that our work has only just begun; there are countless lost children to find...And then. One day. One day, if I am very lucky. One day—but the search will be harder next time. The bird will not guide me. I’ll have to do it alone, and my son will be well hidden, but try though I might, I can’t banish the thought of seeing him again. Seeing him grown. Seeing him strong. I can’t stop myself from slipping into hope’s dark embrace, and yes, I’m already losing my footing when the whirring chop of helicopters explodes from every direction at once. Soon boots will be at my door. And what is that feeling in my gut, my throat? Is it the grasping of miniature claws, the scraping of tiny, unnatural wings as they climb up, up, eager to dig into the insufficient barrier of my teeth? And what is that sound behind the wall, so gentle, so faint beneath the roar of black blades slapping the air above my house? Is it the sound of second thoughts, of childish, furtive footsteps returning to what is known? Stay put, I urge the bird; run, I urge my son. Give me another minute, maybe two. Let me throw myself down, let me make a shackle of my body to keep those black boots here in this room, with me. Give me one last chance to do what I have to do.