Nana opened her eyes. She was indoors and alone.
It was pitch dark, but Nana looked around without concern. The room was bare, without a single piece of furniture. Dove-gray wainscoting, which must once have decorated the interior, ran around the walls, rotting black from the bottom up. From the ceiling hung the skeletal remains of a chandelier, stained by candle wax that had dripped down it. The floor, however, was earth. Nana herself lay on a crumpled sheet spread over it.
Someone seemed to have rolled her in the sheet and brought her here. Perhaps they had underestimated her because she was a child. Her hands and feet were not bound.
A thin sliver of light leaked in from the left. Nana slowly stood and went toward it, moving as calmly as though she had woken in her own room, without a trace of fear despite being a kidnapped child. The light came through a gap in the shutters covering a window. Pressing an eye to the crack, she could see an old-fashioned fence and a leafy garden that looked like the back grounds of a mansion. She stepped away to examine the window and shutters. The window was big enough for her body to pass through, but it was rather high, and a padlock secured the latch.
Nana turned back to the room. She went to the door and pushed, but it did not budge. The door was sturdy, with no gap between it and the frame large enough for even a finger. The chandelier was too high. Next she went slowly around the floor, treading on it and carefully investigating whether there might be a hidden entrance, or even a fragment of broken knife. It was no use. There was not a single spoon, let alone anything harder.
Nana returned to the window. Standing on tiptoe, she stretched out her hand and stroked the padlock. She felt all over it as though petting an animal, though it did not look as if a little girl’s thin fingers could put so much as a scratch on it. Then she stepped back and looked from side to side.
In one corner, she spotted some wainscoting with a long vertical crack caused by damp. Nana went over, took hold of the blackened boards near the bottom with her bare hands, and began to pull them away. Again and again, splinters broke off and stabbed her hands. By the time she had freed a single long piece, both hands were covered in scratches. Without the slightest sign of pain, she set it aside and returned to the window. First she tore down the curtains that were getting in her way.
Then she pushed the piece of wood into the gap between the shutter and the wall, using the sill as a fulcrum to pry the gap wider. For several attempts, the creaking hinges made it seem her plan would work. Before long, however, the wood snapped.
Nana sat down to think again. As she idly tugged the torn curtain, something seemed to occur to her. She jumped up and fetched the sheet she had been lying on. Pulling out the hem’s stitching with her teeth, she found the grain and began tearing the cloth into long strips. It took a full hour to tear it all. Such concentration was beyond what anyone would imagine of a seven-year-old. In fact, making a plan of this sort and acting upon it was itself beyond a child of seven.
When she had finished, her hands were rubbed raw and red in places, but Nana showed no pain. She gathered the strips and braided them into a long cord. Once she had made a fairly strong rope, she passed it through the gap around the hook holding the padlock, secured it there, and wound the rest firmly around her waist and arms.
She drew a breath and hung from it with all her strength. Kicking against the wall, she kept putting her weight on it. At first, her light body seemed unlikely to manage anything. But after she repeated it for some time, the part holding the hook began to wobble. She strained a few more times, and at last it came free. As the hook fell, Nana dropped onto her bottom on the floor.
“Ow…”
For the first time, she looked like a child in pain. Above her, the shutter hung open, attached only by its hinges. Nana made a loop in the end of the rope, hooked it over the shutter, and climbed until she was crouching on the sill.
“You don’t stop for a single moment, do you? Honestly.”
At the sudden voice, Nana looked back. Two men stood in the doorway. Apparently, it had opened while she was concentrating on wrenching away the shutter. One was Hoan, whose goatee Nana remembered. The other was a stranger.
“What are you planning to do up there? Jump, and you’ll crack your head open.”
Nana glanced outside. It was about two stories down. She did not think she would crack her head open. The man who had come with Hoan turned to him in disbelief.
“You’re saying that little brat broke the window open, made that rope, and climbed up there all by herself?”
“What else? Did I crawl under the dinner table halfway through my meal, braid her a rope, and throw it in?”
“Does it make sense for a child barely in her teens to do that?”
“Want something even more surprising? She’s seven.”
“What?”
Nana sat on the sill with her legs crossed and her chin in her hand, looking down at the two men. Her pose alone resembled that of a seductive woman. Had she been five or six years older, both men’s breathing might have grown difficult. For now, she merely looked like a fairy sculpture wrapped in the day’s waning golden light. When she met their eyes, Nana crooked a finger as though beckoning them closer.
“What?”
The men looked at one another in bewilderment, then back at Nana. She indicated the outside with a tilt of her head and gazed steadily at them. When their eyes met, the other man unconsciously sucked on his lower lip. Hoan muttered.
“She’s going out? Through there?”
“Hoan, did you say she’s seven?”
“Yes?”
“What kind of seven-year-old…”
Nana did not wait any longer. She slowly leaned back. Startled, both men ran to the window. The instant Hoan’s hand closed around her ankle, Nana tipped all the way backward and kicked him under the chin with her other foot. Hoan clutched his jaw and sank backward. Then he realized something and sprang up. If a girl’s foot had struck with that much force, there was only one thing that could happen next. The other man was already shouting.
“Hey!”
With the supple grace of an acrobat, Nana’s body left the sill. Headfirst. At this rate, she would strike her head against the ground…
Clinging to the sill, the two men saw something else along with Nana flying like a little bird. A rope extended into the air. Its end was wound around the shutter. As Nana’s weight pulled it taut and the shutter jerked, the men seized the shutter without thinking. Meanwhile, Nana hung safely in the air, untied the rope around her waist, and jumped to the ground.
Once down, Nana dusted off her hands. Then she looked up at the two men and their foolish expressions and blew each a kiss in thanks.
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