“You came to put her on the sundial.”
“Yes. And there’s gold. Little gold pellets, kind of like birdshot. I don’t need that now, but Mr. Bowditch said later on I—”
“Never mind the gold. Just getting to the sundial… and using it… is a mission dangerous enough for such a young prince as yourself. It risks Hana. She wasn’t there in Bowditch’s time. You may find your way past her if you’re careful… and lucky. Luck can’t be discounted in such a business. As for the gold…” He shook his head. “That’s riskier yet. It’s good you don’t need it now.”
Hana. I filed the name away for later. There was something else I was immediately curious about.
“Why are you all right? Except for being blind, I mean.” I wished I could take it back as soon as the words were out of my mouth. “Sorry. That didn’t come out right.”
He smiled. “No apology necessary. Given a choice between being blind and having the gray, I’d choose blindness every time. I have adjusted quite well. Thanks to Adrian, I even have make-believe stories to read. The gray is slow death. It becomes harder and harder to breathe. The face is swallowed up by useless flesh. The body closes up.” He raised one of his hands and made a fist. “Like this.”
“Will that happen to Dora?”
He nodded, but he didn’t have to. It was a child’s question.
“How long does she have?”
Woody shook his head. “Impossible to say. It’s slow, and not the same for everyone, but it’s relentless. That’s the horror of it.”
“What if she left? Went to wherever the others are going?”
“I don’t think she’d go and I don’t think it matters. Once it comes, there’s no outrunning it. Like the wasting disease. Is that what killed Adrian?”
I assumed he was talking about cancer. “No, he had a heart attack.”
“Ah. A little pain, then gone. Better than the gray. As to your question, once upon a time… Adrian said that’s how many stories start in the world he came from.”
“Yeah. It is. And things I’ve seen over here are like those stories.”
“As are things where you came from, I’m sure. It’s all stories, Prince Charlie.”
The wolves began to howl. Woody fingered his braille book, then closed it and put it on a small table beside his chair. I wondered how he would find his place again. Catriona returned, jumped into his lap, and began to purr.
“Once upon a time, in the land of Empis and the city of Lilimar, where you are bound, there was a royal family going back thousands of years. Most—not all, but most—ruled wisely and well. But when the terrible time came, almost all of that family were killed. Slaughtered.”
“Leah told me some of that. You know, through Falada. She said her mother and father were dead. They were the king and queen, right? Because she said she was a princess. The littlest of them all.”
He smiled. “Yes indeed, the littlest of them all. She told you her sisters were slain?”
“Yes.”
“What of her brothers?”
“That they were killed, too.”
He sighed and stroked his cat and looked at the fire. I’m sure he could feel its heat, and I wondered if he could see it a little, too—the way you can look at the sun with your eyes closed and see redness as your blood lights up. He opened his mouth as if to say something, then closed it again and gave his head a little shake. The wolves sounded really close… then they stopped. The way that happened all at once was eerie.
“It was a purge. You know what that means?”
“Yes.”
“But some few of us survived. We escaped the city and Hana won’t leave it because she’s an outcast from her own land, far to the north. There were eight of us who made it through the main gate. We would have been nine, but my nephew Aloysius…” Woody gave his head another shake. “Eight of us escaped death in the city, and our blood protects us from the gray, but another curse followed us. Can you guess?”
I could. “Each of you lost one of your senses?”
“Yes. Leah can eat, but it’s painful for her to do so, as you may have seen.”
I nodded, although he couldn’t see it.
“She can hardly taste what she eats, and as you saw, she can’t speak except through Falada. She’s convinced that he is fooled by that, if he listens. I don’t know. Maybe she’s right. Maybe he hears and it amuses him.”