She shrugged. There were clouds in the north, darkening. The sky was streaked with gold.
“At the institute,” Komako said, “will there be others like me? Like Ribs?”
He didn’t understand, and then he did. “Oh. Children? Why, are you worried about it?” As soon as he asked it he felt foolish; of course she’d be worried. He recalled his own midnight dread, as he’d climbed into the railway carriage with Henry Berghast, all those years ago.
“Listen,” he said, kneeling down. Sometimes he forgot she was just nine years old. “It’s a place where you’ll be safe, Komako. There’s other children, yes. You’ll make friends and you’ll lose them and maybe you’ll even find someone you like more than that, when you’re older. There’re teachers and classes and books for reading and you’ll learn about dustwork and what it is and what it can and can’t do. It’s a big old house and there are fields and the dirt is red like blood and the grass is greener than the water in Tokyo harbor. You’ll see. And there’s a lake for swimming in the summer, and an island with ruins on it.”
His voice faltered, remembering. The warm air smelled of salt, of sunbaked wood. Deckhands were running up the shrouds and barefooted along the booms, furling sails, tying them back. They were shirtless and sun-blackened like figs. Their shadows leaned far out over the water.
“What about you?” said Komako, in a small voice.
He blinked. “Me?”
“Will you be there, too?” she asked. “You won’t leave me?”
Jacob reached a slow arm out, and laid it around her shoulders, and she didn’t flinch, or tense, or draw away. They stood like that in the light of the setting sun.
“I’m not going anywhere,” he lied.
* * *
That night, in his slung hammock, in the narrow cabin he shared with Coulton, he dreamed of Bertolt. It didn’t seem like a dream. He was in the long ward at Cairndale. All the beds were vacated, their mattresses and ticking upended and left leaning against the wall, all but one. Daylight came in a white glow through the muslin curtains. His brother lay in bed, his flushed face turned into the pillow, hands unmoving and pale on top of the bedsheet. He was the same age he’d been when he died. So small. A nurse whom Jacob did not know walked swiftly down the room, her heels clicking, and stopped at Bertolt’s bed. She lifted a wrist and after a moment dropped it and then leaned across to open Bertolt’s eyelids. The room got brighter, and then brighter still. And then Jacob awoke.
He’d sweated through his nightshirt. He turned blearily and saw Coulton’s hammock hanging like an emptied sack and his friend nowhere. The lantern on its hook on the beam had been left burning low. Jacob swung his feet out, slid to the floor, rubbed at his face.
The drughr was standing in the corner.
“For God’s sake,” he hissed. His heart was hammering.
The invisible girl, she was watching you earlier, it said. You did not see her. You must be more careful, she is too curious.
“She’s not the only one,” he said pointedly. “Where’s Coulton?”
Mr. Coulton will not be back for some time.
But Jacob scarcely heard her. Something about the way she was standing reminded him of something, a memory from long ago, from his childhood in Vienna. And then he remembered.
“I know you…，” he said suddenly. “I’ve seen you before. When I was little—”
Yes. In the Stephansplatz.
“Under the cathedral arches, that day Bertolt fell in the street. That day the horse kicked him.”
Also the day you both first entered the orphanage. I saw you climb the steps; I saw the nuns take you inside. You looked back at me. Do you remember?
He shook his slow head. He was trying but couldn’t.
Also in the railway carriage, when Henry Berghast took you out of Vienna. I was seated across the aisle, at the window, watching you. You kept looking at me.
“I remember that,” he whispered.
I have always been with you, Jacob. I have always watched over you. You are precious, a great power is in you. Think of all the good you could do, the people you could help. If only you will let yourself become what you are meant to be.
“Bertolt always said tomorrow was a new start. What we were going to do hadn’t been done yet.”
But it has already been decided. What you will do, what you will become. Sometimes it is decided for us.
“I … I don’t know.”
You were meant for this. You were meant to help him. To find him.