A year passed, during which, as Raffe and many of his other friends remarked to Lake, he appeared to be doing penance for some esoteric crime. He spent long hours in the Religious Quarter, haunting back alleys and narrow streets, searching in the dirty, antique light for those scenes, and those scenes alone which best embodied his grief and the cruelty, the dispassionate passion, of the city he had adopted as his home. He heard the whispers behind his back, the rumors that he had gone mad, that he was no longer a painter but a priest of an as yet unnamed religion, that he had participated in some unspeakable mushroom dweller ritual, but he ignored such talk; or, rather, it did not register with him.

Six months after Bender’s funeral, Lake visited 45 Archmont Lane, new cane trembling in his hand. He found it a burnt-out husk, the only recognizable object amidst the ruins the bust of Trillian, blackened but intact. At first he picked it up, meaning to salvage it for his apartment, but as he wandered the wreckage for some sign of what had occurred there, the idea became distasteful, and he left the head in the rubble, its laconic eyes staring up at the formless sky. Nothing remained but the faint smell of carrion and smoke, rubbing against his nostrils. It might as well have been a dream.

Later that month, Lake asked Merrimount—lovely Merrimount, precious Merrimount—to move in with him permanently. He did not know he was going to ask Merri, but as the words left his lips they felt like the right words and Merri, tears in his eyes, said yes, smiling for the first time since before Lake’s ordeal. They celebrated at a café, Raffe giving her guarded approval, Sonter and Kinsky bringing gifts and good cheer.

Things went better for Lake after that. Although the nightmares still afflicted him, he found that Merrimount’s very presence helped him to forget, or at least disremember. He went by Shriek’s gallery and took all of his paintings back, burning them in a barrel behind his apartment building. He began to frequent the Ruby-Throated Calf again. His father even visited in late winter, a meeting which went better than expected, even after the guarded old man realized the nature of his son’s relationship with Merrimount. He seemed genuinely touched when Lake presented him with the twin paintings of his own hands covered with insects, and with that approval Lake felt himself awakening even more. There were cracks in the ice. A light amid the shadows.