"Oh, and you think there's a better way?" Katy asked, halfway over the stile leading into the gold field that lay next to the house.
"Well yeah. Staying out of it altogether", came the clipped response from her brother. He stood ten metres away, standing with his arms crossed over his chest. "He doesn't like us anyway, why disturb him even more? Dad'll kill us. Very, very slowly."
Katy had by now climbed over, and stood amidst the poppies. "I don't care. Isabella said there she saw something moving down here, I want to see what it is. Are you coming?"
Brian shifted his weight from one leg to the other, contemplating the risk, then finally shook his head and anxiously turned back towards their house.
"No, I'm going back. You wanna get in trouble? Don't say I didn't tell you so" He shouted over his shoulder.
Katy sighed and murmured something about wimps and goody-goodies, and ran down the field towards the forest at the end. She looked at the line of trees marking the edge, and her eye caught a reddish glimmer in the branch of one of the trees. Intrigued, she ran closer to it and noticed there was a necklace hanging from the branch, and a strange scratching on the bark below it.
Katy reached up to touch the mysterious necklace and, discovering a slippery feel, sharply drew back her hand. Her heart skipped a beat as her brain registered the reddish tinge on her fingers. She gasped, disgusted, and risked another look at the necklace. It was a plain what-should-have-been-silver chain, with a six-pointed star hanging at the bottom, a star that Katy knew from somewhere, but she didn't know where.
Peeling her eyes from the silver shimmer, she looked at the scratched bark below it. It was letters, a name, but a name that meant nothing to her.
"Deputy Director David".
The noise of birds was dying down as the sun did too, and in the twilight of sounds and lights Katy noticed a moan coming from somewhere around her. Her mind dared her to investigate further, and she'd come for something interesting, so why should she quit now?
Katy pricked her ears, and looked towards the origin of the moaning. She recognised it as coming from behind a tree, and as she rounded to face it she saw an explanation for the necklace.
A bloody, scarred, burnt woman, tied to the tree, and dressed in something that was – or should have been – a white sundress. She had long, black, curly hair and Katy god the impression that she would have been beautiful were it not for the state she was in. It was the kind of thing Katy had seen in films that even her father had turned away from. The woman's eyes were swollen slits, and the slashes and black burn marks on her neck and arms made Katy want to retch. It dawned on her that the woman might have been conscious, but the sight and the awkward horror of what she was seeing stopped her from even opening her mouth, and she stepped back.
Katy's mind finally finished processing what she was seeing, and she suddenly let out a piercing scream that marred the peacefulness of the orange summer evening. She flew back towards the house and the six-pointed star finally found meaning to her.
The Star of David.