“You never went to her? Told her what her duty was, no matter how much doing it might hurt? You were older, presumably wiser, and you never gave her counsel?”
More silence. They were whole people and thus not cursed with the gray, but they had suffered their own afflictions. I could understand how that had weakened them and made them fearful. But I was still angry.
“She needed you!”
Claudia reached out and took my hands. I almost pulled them away, then didn’t. In a soft voice she probably couldn’t hear herself, she said, “No, Sharlie, you were the one she needed. You were the promised prince, and now the promise has been fulfilled. What you say is true—we were weak, we lost our courage. But please don’t leave us in anger. Please.”
Did I know before then that a person can choose not to be angry? I don’t think I did. What I knew was that I didn’t want to leave that way, either.
“All right.” I spoke loud enough for her to hear. “But only because I lost your three-wheeler.”
She sat back with a smile. Radar had put her nose on Woody’s shoe. He bent over to stroke her. “We can never repay your courage, Charlie, but if there’s anything we have that you want, it’s yours.”
Well, I had the door knocker, which felt like it weighed about four pounds, and if the price of gold now was roughly the same as it had been when I left Sentry, it was worth about $84,000. Added to the pellets in the bucket, I was pretty well set. Living large in the hood, as they say. But there was one thing I could use.
“How about a sledgehammer?”
Not exactly what I said, but they got the idea.
7
I’ll never forget the terrible winged thing that tried to emerge from the Dark Well. That’s a bad memory. A good one to balance it out was leaving Lilimar the following day. No, good isn’t good enough. It’s a fine memory, the sort you take out when no one has a kind word for you and life seems as tasteless as a slice of stale bread. It wasn’t fine because I was leaving （although I’d be a flat liar if I didn’t say how much I was looking forward to seeing my dad）; it was fine because I was given a send-off that was fit for… I was going to say fit for a king, but I guess what I mean is fit for a departing prince who was reverting back to a suburban kid from Illinois.
I was riding shotgun in a cart pulled by a pair of white mules. Dora, wearing her red headscarf and her fine canvas shoes, held the reins. Radar sat behind us, ears up, tail swishing slowly back and forth. Both sides of the Gallien Road were lined with grayfolk. They knelt with their palms to their foreheads as we approached, then stood and cheered as we passed. My surviving mates from Deep Maleen trotted beside us, Eris pushing Doc Freed in his gold-accented wheelchair. She looked up once and tipped me a wink. I tipped her one right back. Above us flew a cloud of monarch butterflies so thick they darkened the sky. Several lit on my shoulders, wings flexing slowly, and one touched down on Radar’s head.
Standing at the open gate, wearing a dress the same deep blue as the triple spires had become, the crown of the Galliens on her head, was Leah. Her legs were planted apart in a way that reminded me of how she had stood on the stone stairs above the Dark Well, sword drawn. Resolute.
Dora gigged the mules to a stop. The crowd that had followed us fell silent. In her hands, Leah held a garland of blood-red poppies, the only flowers that had continued to grow during the gray years, and it did not surprise me—nor will it you, I think—to know that the people of Empis called those flowers Red Hope.
Leah raised her voice to be heard by those crowding the street behind us. “This is Prince Charlie, who now goes to his home! He carries our thanks with him, and my enduring gratitude! Speed him with love, people of Empis! This is my command!”
They cheered. I bent my head to receive the garland… and to hide my tears. Because, you know, in the fairy tales, the prince never cries. Queen Leah kissed me, and although her mouth was broken, that was the best kiss I’ve ever had, at least since my mother died.
I feel it still.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO Here’s Your Happy Ending.
1
On my last night in Empis I stayed where I had on my first, in Dora’s little house near the well of the worlds. We ate stew, then went outside to watch the vast wedding band of gold in the sky that had been Bella and Arabella. It was very beautiful, as broken things sometimes are. I wondered again just where this world was, and decided it didn’t matter; that it was, was enough.
I slept again beside Dora’s fireplace, with my head on the pillow with the butterfly appliqued on it. I slept without night visitors and without bad dreams of Elden or Gogmagog. It was mid-morning when I finally woke up. Dora was hard at work on the sewing machine Mr. Bowditch had brought her, a pile of broken shoes to her left and mended ones to her right. I wondered how much longer that trade would last.