Read The Curfew for Free Online Page B

music? Because music was the only thing with any religion to it?
    In the night (for it was night now) a low keening sound came. William closed his eyes. It was the sound of the bridge vibrating in the distance. The wind must strike it just so, and then …
    *Aha! I know!
    And William was back in the room again.
    Molly ran across, clattering and stamping, to where …
    a PICTURE of LOUISA was on a HOOK.
    And from the picture frame, she pulled a string. And on the string, a note.
    In the picture, Louisa was standing in the foreground, holding a kite. William was sitting in a tree farther in. A long field stretched into the distance.
    Molly was holding the note but looking at the picture.
    *You said it would never fly?
    —Never. We called it the Sledge, because it would always drag along the ground. No one could get it to work. Although to be fair, I never managed to get any kite to work.
    *What about Mom?
    —I never saw her operate a kite. She held one once. Someone else had gotten it into the air, though. I don’t think that counts.
    *Doesn’t.
    Molly opened this note.

    Here we incarcerate the song and the one who makes it .

    Molly spelled it out.
    *Incarcerate?
    —Jail.
    She ran to the birdcage (which was empty) and pulled out the next clue.
    —This is the last one, said William.
    Molly waved him off, and opened the note.
    IT READ:

    Once the province of lords, and at once, a favorite of beasts, I
delight as sugar does, but sate as water. Skinned, just as you,
I hang and await my turn, and drop to the merciless ground .

    *Sate?
    —Rid of hunger or thirst.
    *Province?
    —Look it up.
    Molly went to the dictionary, opened it, and found the word.
    *Doesn’t make it much clearer, does it?
    —No complaints now. I have to go. Solve it!
    Molly’s eyes roamed the house and alighted upon the basket of fruit. She ran to it.
    *The orange!
    She picked up the first orange, but there was no note there. Nor on the second.
    Then she spied the orange that William had been eating. He had peeled it perfectly and the round skin sat on the table. She snatched it up and it fell open in connected rings, revealing a white bead made of bone.
    Molly untied the necklace she was wearing and strung the bead onto it. There were five already there. This was the sixth.
    —Time, then, he said, and ran his hand through her hair.

William went to the door of their apartment and opened it in a slow, sweeping fashion, eyes down. Molly joined him there. He went through, and to the door opposite, and knocked three times.
    Noise came from inside. Someone was coming to the door.
    —Hello?
    The door opened. It was a woman in her seventies.
    —Would you mind, asked William, watching Molly for a few hours? I have to go out, and I can’t take her with me.
    —I will do this, said Mrs. Gibbons. You are a good father and I will do this for you and your daughter because she is very wonderful, a very wonderful young woman and I am always glad to have her here, although she has not come before. There is always a place here in the house for a wonderful young woman who goes around with the name of Molly. But you must be careful, Mr. Drysdale, if you are going out at night, because I will tell you that Mr. Gibbons, who has just come home now this very moment, he told me that he saw a man dead not four streets over, and right in a crowd. So, you have a care. The ones who enforce the curfew, they are all at once watching everyplace both here and there. This man I say was dead, and that is one way that is always the same, dead.
    William looked over his shoulder. Molly’s face was a bit drawn.
    —Dead? he asked.
    —Yes, hit with a brick. And the one who did it couldn’t be found.
    Molly stamped her foot. William looked over.
    *Be careful!
    She went past him and into Mrs. Gibbons’s apartment.
    —Here is a key, said William, so you can put her to bed.
    Mrs. Gibbons nodded and shut the door.
    He could hear her:
    —A good girl like you should not make your