on the bed, then inspected every square centimeter with his eyes and fingers. His favorite jacket and his usual work pant both had tiny brown balls stuck to cuffs or seams. Wili removed them; they looked so innocuous in the room's pale lamplight.

He put them in a dresser drawer and returned his clothes to the closet.

He lay awake for many minutes, thinking about a place and time he had resolved never to dwell on again. What could a hovel in Glendora have in common with a palace in the mountains? Nothing. Everything. There had been safety there. There had been Uncle Sylvester. He had learned there, too - arithmetic and a little reading. Before the Jonques, before the Ndelante -it had been a child's paradise, a time lost forever.

Wili quietly got up and slipped the cameras back into his clothing. Maybe not lost forever.