At the center of this enormous pinwheel was another butterfly statue with the wings and head destroyed. The shattered remnants were heaped around the pedestal on which it stood. Beyond, a wider way led toward the back of the palace with its three dark green spires. I could imagine the people—the Empisarians—who had once filled those curving ways merging their separate groups into one single throng. Laughing and shoving good-naturedly, anticipating an impending entertainment, some carrying lunches in hampers or baskets, some stopping to buy from food-sellers hawking their wares. Souvenirs for the little ones? Pennants? Of course! I tell you I could see this, as if I had been there myself. And why not? I had been a part of such crowds on special nights to see the White Sox, and on one never-to-be-forgotten Sunday, the Chicago Bears.
Bulking above the back of the palace （this part of the palace—it sprawled everywhere） I could see a curved rampart of red stone. It was lined with tall poles, each topped with long traylike devices. Games had been played here, eagerly observed by masses of people. I was sure of it. Crowds had roared. Now the curving walkways and the main entryway were empty and as haunted as the rest of this haunted city.
In our fifth-grade history mod, my class had built a castle from Lego blocks. It seemed like play rather than learning to us then, but in retrospect it was learning after all. I still remembered most of the various architectural elements, and I saw some of them as I approached: flying buttresses, turrets, battlements, parapets, even what might have been a postern gate. But like everything else in Lilimar, it was wrong. Staircases ran crazily （and pointlessly, so far as I could tell） into and around strange toadstool-shaped excrescences with slitted glassless windows. They might have been guard posts; they might have been God knows what. Some of the stairways crisscrossed, reminding me of those Escher drawings where your eyes keep fooling you. I blinked and the staircases looked upside-down. Blinked again and they were rightside-up.
Worse, the entire palace, which had absolutely no symmetry, seemed to be moving, like Howl’s castle. I couldn’t exactly see it happening, because it was hard to hold the entire thing in my eyes… or my mind. The stairs were in various colors, like the pinwheel paths, which probably sounds cheery, but the overall feeling was one of some unknowable sentience, as if it wasn’t a palace at all but a thinking creature with an alien brain. I knew my imagination was running away with me （no, I didn’t know that）， but I was very glad Mr. Bowditch’s marks had brought me around to the stadium side, so those cathedral windows couldn’t stare directly down at me. I’m not sure I could have borne their green gaze.
I pedaled slowly along the wide entryway path, the wheels of the trike sometimes thumping over blocks that had been pushed out of true. The back of the palace was mostly blind stone. There was a series of large red doors—eight or nine—and an ancient traffic jam of wagons, more than a few overturned and a couple smashed to pieces. It was easy to imagine Hana doing that, maybe out of anger, maybe just for sport. I thought this was a supply area the rich and royal saw seldom if ever. This was the way the common folk came.
I spied Mr. Bowditch’s faded initials on one of the stone blocks close to this loading-and-unloading area. I didn’t like being that close to the palace, even on its blind side, because I could almost see it moving. Pulsing. The crossbar of the A pointed left, so I diverted from the main way to follow the arrow. Radar was coughing again, and hard. When I’d put my face against her fur to stifle my laughter, it had been wet and cold and matted. Could dogs get pneumonia? I decided that was a stupid question. Probably any creature with lungs could get it.
More initials led me to a line of six or eight flying buttresses. I could have gone under them but chose not to. They were the same dark green as the tower windows, maybe not stone at all but some kind of glass. Hard to believe glass could provide the tremendous weight-bearing load such a huge, rearing edifice would require, but glass was what it looked like. And once again I saw black tendrils inside, lazily writhing around each other as they slowly rose and sank. Looking at the buttresses was like looking at a line of strange green and black lava lamps. Those writhing black tendrils made me think of several horror movies—Alien was one, Piranha was another—and I wished I had never watched them.
I was starting to think I was going to make a full circuit of the palace, which would mean falling under the triple gaze of those spires, when I came to an alcove. It was between two windowless wings that spread apart in a V. There were benches here surrounding a little pool that was shaded by palm trees—crazy but true. The palms obscured what lay deeper in this alcove, but rearing above them, at least a hundred feet high, was a pole topped by a stylized sun. It had a face, and the eyes moved back and forth, like the tick-tocking eyes of a Kit-Cat Klock. To the right of the pool, Mr. Bowditch had painted his initials on a stone block. The crossbar of this A didn’t have an arrow; this time the arrow jutted from the apex. I could almost hear Mr. Bowditch saying Straight ahead, Charlie, and don’t waste time.