Peter Paul Rubens Virgin and Child

Peter Paul Rubens Virgin and ChildPeter Paul Rubens Rape of the Daughters of LeucippusPeter Paul Rubens Garden of Love
in the past three hundred years."
A few minutes later, as the balloon drifted on, Lee saw first a lighthouse, then the curve of a stone breakwater, then the towers and domes and red-brown roofs of a beautiful city around a harbor, with a sumptuous building like an opera the size of a city, with not a teacher in sight; it was a world of children.
But they weren't the only presences there. Lee had to rub his eyes when he saw them first, but there was no doubt about it: columns of mist—or something more tenuous than mist—a thickening of the air… Whatever they were, the city was full of them; they drifted along the boulevards, they entered houses, they clustered in the squares and house in lush wide boulevards with elegant hotels, and little streets where blossom-bearing trees hung over shaded balconies.And Grumman was right; there were people there. But as the balloon drifted closer, Lee was surprised to see that they were children. There was not an adult in sight. And he was even more surprised to see the children had no daemons—yet they were playing on the beach, or running in and out of cafés, or eating and drinking, or gathering bags full of goods from houses and shops. And there was a group of boys who were fighting, and a red-haired girl urging them on, and a little boy throwing stones to smash all the windows of a nearby building. It was like a playground