He hugged her and smiled.

“I’m Okay. I’ve been keeping really busy, building a stables and repairing the fencing around the property. The next 20 acres is up for sale and I was thinking of maybe getting it too, if nothing else at least I could protect the trees.”

“What’s going to happen to this place, Urs? If they never find anything concrete….you know.” David asked, wishing he hadn’t.

Urs just grinned at his discomfort. “Don’t sweat it, Bro,” he said using one of David’s favorite American sayings. “Honey put everything in both of our names and with a codicil for right of survivor. So it’s mine, at least until she comes home.”

David and Holly exchanged glances. “Urs, it’s been a long time now, eight months…don’t you think that….”

He put his long fingered hand gently over Holly’s mouth.

“No, I don’t. I think I would feel it if she was gone. And in a strange way it doesn’t matter…I want her back, here with me but if that doesn’t happen there will never be another woman to take her place, Holly. If I have to, I can live with only those twenty-three days we had.”

He stood and deposited her in David’s lap.

“I’ve written something new. It might be good for the group. Want to hear it?”

Of course they did and he went to the grand that he had bought in Luzern and played a few bars of the intro then began again and sang it for them.

It was an incredibly beautiful love song that he called Petite Etoile, done in French, definitely written with Honey in mind, all about a love lost and pined for, then found again in the joyous ending. Holly had teary eyes when he finished and David was a bit hoarse but said he loved it and they spent the next hour going over harmonies and figuring how to split it for the group.

Holly wandered back to the Lounge, happy to see them working together, both enthused. Thank God for the Music, she thought. Without it Urs would have been lost. She rested her hand on her small bump and thought about the baby and how happy David was, relieved that the news hadn’t brought the pain of losing the twins back to haunt Urs.

**

The crush of people around the medical helicopter was overwhelming, the noise of their screaming and crying a little frightening to the clearly outnumbered troops but they held fast. Captain Prentice was escorted out of the darkness to the chopper and lifted inside, sat on the floor with the other medical staff in the overcrowded aircraft, waiting for the crowd to be cleared enough to lift off.

A short woman in the traditional black chadur slipped under the arm of a guard and raced to the open door, holding up a stuffed sling, trying to pass it to her and she drew back in fear, thinking of the satchels full of bombs they had been warned of.

“I’m Canadian, please take my sons out of here. No, let me go, I’m Canadian,” the woman shrieked in good English when one of the guards grabbed her arm and tried to drag her away. The sling was on the floor of the chopper now, right beside Nancy Prentice’s feet. Her instinct was to kick it out the door and she raised her foot to do so but it emitted a loud wail, the cry of a baby. Very carefully she pulled back the covering and saw a baby, no, two babies, one crying in frustration at being disturbed, the other still sleeping.

The woman was still fighting with the guard, the pilots had ordered the doors closed but Nancy could hear her screaming: “Save my sons, please, take them to their father.”

The door closed as the woman was struck in the head with a rifle butt and the chopper lifted off.

Nancy carefully lifted the infants onto her lap and opened the sling fully.

Yes, definitely boys, about 4 months old she thought and thin but not overly, long dark hair that lay curling on their tiny heads. She found a dirty gray/white piece of thick canvas tied with a strip of rag around the pink forearm of each child, a tag, the notes in English and mostly the same, written in red ink.

‘Peter {the other note said Lucas}5/14/07 ….son of Urs Toni Buhler/ Switzerland&Honey Harper/Canada. Please get him to his father. E.mail: Ekinamadi@comet.net.’

“Well, don’t that beat all,” said the wounded soldier seated next to her as he read the note and looked at the babies.

“I wonder what the story is behind this,” Nancy answered. She looked down at the now quietly sleeping boys and smiled. “Don’t worry little guys. I’ll get you home to your Daddy.” It was September 10th in Herat, Afghanistan, the 9th still, far away on the Music Farm in Switzerland

**
Urs woke from the dream, reaching his hands out, trying to touch her but the images faded and he was left sitting on the edge of the bed, wringing wet with sweat.

It had seemed so real….people in a huge crowd, screaming and pushing and Honey, he knew it was her though she was enveloped in a black cloud, screaming at someone….Please, save my sons…Take them to their father.

He was shaking from the intense emotions in the dream, unable to forget easily. He went in the bathroom and wet his face with cool water, then stood at the window for a few minutes looking out at the still green fields behind the house.

It was just a dream, just another one similar to the many he had suffered through these past few months. He couldn’t let it bother him. And yet it did.

Out of habit he went to the closet at the side of the bedroom and opened it, inhaling the light scent that still lingered on Honey’s clothing, all neatly lined up in sections, casual shirts, casual jeans and slacks, skirts, dresses, suits, a whole section with nothing but BIG clothing for her pregnancy, just as she had left them with the shoes neatly in a line on the floor. He pulled one of the oversized tees off a hanger and drew it over his head, somehow felt closer to her but still he couldn’t forget the disturbing dream.

He put his jeans on and wandered barefoot down to the kitchen for something, anything to help him sleep, stopped to run his hands over the keyboard of the piano he had purchased in Luzern and that had been delivered only the day before David and Holly had arrived.

The music soothed him and he played for a while, a couple of classical pieces, Mozart sonatas, then the melody for his new song, Petite Etoile. When the last note died away he placed his arms on the music rest, leaned his head against them and fell into a restless sleep. Tomorrow was September 10th and he needed some rest before flying off for some promo work in the UK.