No one comes to help. An older couple about-faces, as if they’ve remembered something urgent elsewhere. A man hurries away, bent over his phone; cars flow by, unperturbed. They must see, Bird thinks, how can they not? The dog, ankle high, barks and barks. A doorman emerges from the building behind and Bird nearly sobs with gratitude. Help, he thinks. Help her. Please. Then the doorman pulls the door shut. Bird can faintly make him out on the other side of the thick plate glass, blurred and ghostly, watching as if it were a scene on a TV screen: the woman’s cheek against the sidewalk now, the jolt of her body with each blow. Waiting for it to be done so that he can open the door once more.
The woman has stopped moving and the man looks down at her—with disgust? With satisfaction? Bird can’t tell. The dog is still snarling and barking, furious and impotent, its small feet scuffling the pavement. With a swift movement the man brings his boot down, hard, on its back. The way he might crush a soda can, or a cockroach.
Bird screams then, and the man turns and spots Bird watching him, and Bird runs.
Blindly, as fast as he can. Not daring to look behind him. Bookbag hammering against him like a drumbeat. Sweat-soaked shirt hot then cold at the small of his back. Is she dead, he thinks, is the dog dead. Did it matter. The man’s eyes still drill at the nape of his neck and his stomach heaves and he retches, but nothing comes out. He darts down an alleyway and huddles behind a dumpster, catching his breath, the back of his throat raw and burning.
He’d forgotten: in fairylands there is evil, too. Monsters and curses. Dangers lurking in disguise. Demons, dragons, rats as big as oxen. Things that could destroy you with a glance. He thinks of the man at the Common. He thinks of his father, his broad shoulders and strong hands, lifting him back to his feet. But his father is far away, cocooned in the soundless library, where the outside world cannot reach. He has no idea where Bird is, and this more than anything makes Bird feel terribly alone.
He stays there for a long while, trying to smooth his breathing, trying to steady his hands, which won’t stay still. When he’s finally ready, he rises on shaky feet and picks his way back to the corner. He’s run backward, several blocks off course. When he reaches Park Avenue, he moves quickly and cautiously, scanning the streets. He feels conspicuous now; he notices people noticing him. He understands, as he hadn’t before. Perhaps he’d been invisible once, but the spell has worn off—or maybe it had only ever been in his imagination. People can see him, and at last he understands how small he is, how easily the world could shred him to pieces.
* * *
? ? ?
It’s late afternoon by the time he finally reaches the address: a big brick building, flowered window boxes, a huge green door. Not an apartment building—a single-family townhouse, a thing he had not known existed here. The Duchess’s castle. Cautiously, he studies it from across the street. In stories you might find anything inside a castle: riches, an enchantress, an ogre waiting to devour you. But this is it, the place his mother has sent him. Street name and numbers written in her own hand. A leap of faith, then.
He climbs the marble steps and reaches for the brass knocker and raps it, three times, against the green-painted wood.
It feels an eternity, but it’s really only a minute or two before an older white man answers the door. He’s a bit stout, in a uniform: shiny brass buttons on navy-blue wool, like the captain on a ship. He eyes Bird coldly, and Bird swallows twice before he can speak.
I am here to see the Duchess, Bird announces, and as if by magic, the captain nods, and steps aside.
A foyer of sunny yellow, a fireplace with a fire lit, even though it’s only October. Cream-colored tiles on the floor, studded with squares of ambery brown. A marble-topped table with scrolled legs squats in the middle of the room, its only apparent purpose to hold the biggest vase of flowers Bird has ever seen. All around him the lights are haloed with gold.
I’m here to see the Duchess, Bird repeats, trying to sound surer than he is, and the captain squints down at him.
I’ll have to call up, he says. Who may I say is here, please?
And because he is hungry and thirsty and exhausted, because he has walked for miles on an empty stomach, because his head feels uncannily detached from his body, like a balloon floating just over his shoulders, because he feels slightly unreal and he’s not sure this place is real, let alone this city, nor the Duchess he’s come to see, Bird answers as if he were in a fairy tale, too.
Bird Gardner, he says. Margaret’s son.
If you will wait here, the captain says.