Moonlight filtered down through the tangled branches of the trees, laying shapeless shadows across the dry earth. Each time the breeze passed, the leaves rustled for a moment, and then the forest sank back into its silence. If it were not for the broken calls of night birds somewhere far off, you could have believed that time had stopped altogether in this darkness.

Rüzgâr, Ege, Ada and Miray lay side by side on a kilim they had spread over the ground, beneath an old tree whose trunk narrowed as it reached for the sky. The July night had long since shrugged off the heat of the day. The cool air touched their bare arms lightly, and now and then a rising breeze stirred their hair and the thin fabric they wore.

None of them spoke.

Their eyes were turned to the moon, fading now and then behind the clouds that drifted slowly across the sky. After all the running, the fear and the noise, lying quietly beside one another let them believe, however briefly, that they were safe.

Rüzgâr suddenly sat up.

The movement was not sharp enough to break the silence, but it was enough to draw the attention of the other three. He settled cross-legged and looked into the darkness ahead of him for a few seconds. Then he reached inside his jacket.

From between folds of thin black cloth he drew out four necklaces.

The moonlight caught the small metal spheres swinging at the ends of the chains. Rüzgâr held the necklaces in his open palm and looked at his friends. He did not need to say anything. Ege raised himself onto one elbow first, then sat up. Ada rose without a word. Miray gathered herself on the kilim and joined them.

Before long the four of them were sitting beneath the tree, turned towards one another.

Rüzgâr held one of the necklaces between two fingers.

“These…” he said.

The word seemed to hang in the air after it left his mouth. Before he went on, Rüzgâr looked at Ege, at Ada and at Miray, each in turn. He was weighing the gravity of what he was about to say in their eyes.

“These will be our last way out.”

The faint smile on Ege’s face disappeared. Ada’s gaze dropped to the metal sphere at the end of the chain. Something uneasy and hard to name settled over Miray’s face.

Rüzgâr closed his left hand around the sphere. With the thumb of his right hand he slowly turned the upper half. The mechanism opened with a click so faint it was almost inaudible.

Inside the sphere was a clear liquid.

For an instant the liquid trapped the moonlight that fell on it, then gave it back as a pale gleam. It was as though a shard of light torn out of the night were floating inside that tiny vessel.

“If they ever catch you…” Rüzgâr said. His voice was lower than it had been a moment before. “If you have nowhere left to run, if you realise you are about to fall into their hands…”

He did not finish the sentence.

He looked at the open sphere between his fingers. The liquid inside it said what needed saying for him.

“That is when you use this.”

The breeze rose again. The branches of the tree brushed against one another. The sound of the wind moving through the leaves was like a whisper carried from far away.

“We are not going to let them write our ending,” he said. “They will not be the ones who decide what happens to us. If it comes to that, we will make the decision ourselves.”

Ada lifted her head and looked at Rüzgâr. There was no fear on her face. At least not from the outside.

Ege could not take his eyes off the metal sphere. Only a few hours earlier they had been joking, teasing one another, laughing with the relief of having finally come through the danger.

Miray had folded her hands over her knees. Her fingers were locked together, the knuckles gone white. She listened to Rüzgâr in silence, her eyes never leaving the liquid inside the sphere.

Death was sitting in Rüzgâr’s palm now, like a small piece of jewellery.

“Do you understand?” Rüzgâr asked.

No one answered right away.

This time the silence was not a peaceful one.

What he had said was heavier than they could carry. They did not want to die. Not one of them wanted to choose death. But in recent days they had learned that the distance between living and dying was not as wide as they had believed.

Sometimes that distance was no more than the far side of a door. Sometimes a single word said to the wrong person. Sometimes a few footsteps behind them.

They knew they had to do something to stay alive. And yet they could no longer tell what was right as easily as they once had. The ground beneath them had worn thin. On one side of them was fear, on the other anger. They were trying to keep their balance between the two.

And Rüzgâr, unlike the wind he was named for, never truly died down.

Ada was the first to hold out her hand.

Rüzgâr laid one of the necklaces in her palm. Ada studied the metal sphere for a moment. Not one muscle moved in her face as her fingers travelled over the mechanism. Then she slipped the chain over her head and put the necklace on.

Ege hesitated for a moment.

His hesitation was not cowardice. Perhaps more clearly than any of them, he understood what was being offered, and that it was not a game. Even so, he held out his hand. Rüzgâr gave him the second necklace.

As Ege put it on, the metal sphere dropped against his chest. Its coldness reached his skin through the thin fabric.

Then Miray held out her hand.

Rüzgâr laid the third necklace in her palm.

Miray held the metal sphere between her fingers. The liquid inside it shifted with the faint trembling of her hands. There was more sorrow than fear in her eyes. It was as if, in accepting the necklace, she were accepting not only a possible death but a share in the fate of these people.

After looking at the sphere for a while, she slipped the chain around her neck.

She shivered when the metal touched her skin. Still, she did not draw her hand back.

Rüzgâr had forced no one. He had not asked them to swear an oath, nor threatened to cast out anyone who refused. And yet not one of them stepped back.

Because they trusted him.

That trust did not come from believing that Rüzgâr always made the right decisions. They all knew that most of the time his decisions were the wrong ones. He was usually the one who got them into trouble in the first place.

But they also knew that inside that trouble he would never leave them alone.

Perhaps that was what trust really was.

Not believing that someone will keep you out of the dark, but believing that when you fall into it, they will stay there with you.

Rüzgâr fastened the last necklace around his own neck. Four metal spheres glimmered faintly with moonlight on four separate chests.

For a while no one spoke.

Then Ege leaned back, as if to scatter the air that had grown heavy.

“One day, when I tell my kids about this, I’ll change this part a little,” he said. “I’ll put a secret map in it instead of poison. Much more family-friendly.”

A small smile appeared at the corner of his lips.

Ada rolled her eyes, but for a moment the hardness in her face gave way. Miray lowered her head and smiled quietly. Something faintly warm came into Rüzgâr’s eyes as well.

Ege looked up at the sky again.

“It’ll still make a good story,” he added. “An adventure big enough to tell our children about.”

That night, it could not be said that any of them truly grasped what they had said.

They were young enough to think themselves invincible, and wounded enough to be unable to take death lightly. They saw the necklaces at their throats as a symbol of their freedom. Yet each of them, along with the small metal sphere they now carried, had crossed an invisible line.

They were no longer only friends.

They carried the same secret, the same fear and, if it came to it, the same ending.

When the moon came out from behind the clouds again, all four necklaces shone at once.

In that moment they believed this was a beginning.

Perhaps they were right.

Because some beginnings do not enter a life like light.

Some begin with the weight of a thin chain slipped around the neck.