“My name is Charles Reade. Charlie. Did Leah tell you that?”
“No, it doesn’t work that way. It’s more like having an intuition. It’s nice to meet you, Prince Charlie.” Now that the light was on his face, I could see his eyes were as gone as Leah’s mouth, with only long-healed scars to mark where they had been. “My name is Stephen Woodleigh. I once had a title—prince regent, as a matter of fact—but those days are gone. Call me Woody, if you like, for we live near the woods, don’t we? I and Catriona.”
“That’s your cat?”
“Yes. And I believe your dog is… Raymar? Something like that, surely. I can’t remember.”
“Radar. She was Mr. Bowditch’s. He died.”
“Ah. I’m sorry to hear that.” And he looked sorry, but not really surprised.
“How well did you know him, sir?”
“Woody. Please. We passed the time. As you and I will, Charlie, I hope. But we should eat first, because it’s a long way you’ve come today, I think.”
“Can I ask one question first?”
He smiled broadly, turning his face into a river of wrinkles. “If you want to know how old I am, I really can’t remember. Sometimes I think I was old when the world was young.”
“It’s not that. I saw the book and wondered… if you’re, you know…”
“How I read if I’m blind? Have a look. Meanwhile, would you like a leg or a breast?”
“Breast, please.”
He began serving out, and must have been used to doing it in the dark for a long time, because there was no hesitation in his movements. I got up and went to his chair. Catriona looked up at me with wise green eyes. The book was an old one, with a cover showing bats flying against a full moon: The Black Angel, by Cornell Woolrich. It could have come from one of the stacks in Mr. Bowditch’s bedroom. Except when I picked it up and looked at where Woody had left off, I saw no words, only little groups of dots. I put it back and returned to the table.
“You read braille,” I said. Thinking, the language in books must change, too—get translated. How weird is that?
“I do. Adrian brought me a lesson book and showed me the letters. Once I had those, I was able to teach myself. He brought me other books in braille from time to time. He was partial to fanciful stories, like the one I was reading while I waited for your arrival. Dangerous men and damsels in distress living in a world far different from this one.”
He shook his head and laughed, as if reading fiction were a frivolous pursuit, maybe even crazy. His cheeks were rosy from having sat close to the fire, and I saw no trace of gray in them. He was whole, yet he wasn’t. Neither was his niece. He had no eyes to see with and she had no mouth to speak with, only a sore she opened with her fingernail to take whatever poor nourishment she could. Talk about a damsel in distress.
“Come. Sit.”
I came to the table. Outside a wolf howled, so the moon—moons—must have appeared. But we were safe in this house of bricks. If a wolfie came down the chimney, it would roast its furry assie in the fire.
“This whole world seems fanciful to me,” I said.
“Stay here long enough and it will be yours that seems like make-believe. Now eat, Charlie.”
9
The food was delicious. I asked for seconds, then thirds. I felt sort of guilty about it, but it had been a long day and I’d pulled that cart eighteen or twenty miles. Woody ate sparingly, nothing but a drumstick and a little of the cranberry jelly. I felt more guilty when I saw that. I remembered my mother delivering me to a sleepover at Andy Chen’s house and Mom telling Andy’s mom that I had a hollow leg and would eat them out of house and home if she let me. I asked Woody where he got his supplies.
“Seafront. There are some there who still remember such as we… or such as we were… and pay tribute. The gray has come there now. People are leaving. You probably met some on the road.”
“I did,” I said, and told him about Peterkin.
“A red cricket, you say? There are legends… but never mind. Glad you put a stop to it. Maybe you’re a prince after all. Blond hair, blue eyes?” He was teasing.
“Nope. Both brown.”
“So. Not a prince and certainly not the prince.”
“Who is the prince?”
“Just another legend. This is a world of stories and legends, as is yours. As for food… I used to get more viands than I could eat from the people of Seafront, although usually fish rather than meat. As you might expect from the name. It was a long time before the gray came to that part of the world—how long I can’t say, the days blend together when one is always in the dark.” He said that without self-pity, just stating a fact. “I believe Seafront may have been spared for awhile because they are on a narrow peninsula, where the wind always blows, but no one knows for sure. Last year, Charlie, you would have met scores of people on the King’s Road. Now the flood is ebbing.”