Although his eyes and ears and mouth had all been closed by the magic of the Silent City, Brother Zachariah could still smell and hear the carnival much better than any mortal—here was the scent of sugar and hot metal and, yes, blood as well, and the sounds of barkers and calliope music and excited shrieks. Soon enough he could see it too.

The carnival stood on mostly level ground where once there must have been quite a battle. Brother Zachariah could feel the presence of the human dead. Now their forgotten remains lay buried under a grassy field where a kind of stockade fence had been erected around all manner of brightly colored tents and fanciful structures. A Ferris wheel stood above these, carriages dangling from the central wheel, full of laughing people. Two great gates stood flung wide open, with a broad avenue between them welcoming all who approached.

Sweethearts in their Sunday clothes strolled through the gates, arms around each other’s waists. Two boys pelted past, one with tousled black hair. They looked about the age that Will and Jem had been, a very long time ago, when they’d first met. But Will’s hair was white now, and Jem was no longer Jem. He was Brother Zachariah. A few nights ago, he had sat at Will Herondale’s bedside and watched his old friend struggle to draw a breath. Jem’s hand on the coverlet was the hand of a young man still, and Tessa, of course, would never grow old. How must it seem to Will, who loved them both, that he must go on so far ahead of them? But then, Jem had left Will first, and Will had had to let him go. It would only be fair when, soon, Jem would be the one left behind.

Inside his head, Brother Enoch said, It will be hard. But you will be able to bear it. We will help you bear it.

I will endure it because I must, Brother Zachariah said.

Sister Emilia had stopped, and he caught up with her. She was taking in the carnival, her hands on her hips. “What a thing!” she said. “Did you ever read Pinocchio?”

“I don’t believe so,” Brother Zachariah told her. Though he thought that once, when he’d been in the London Institute, he might have heard Tessa reading it to a young James.

“A wooden puppet yearns to be a real boy,” Sister Emilia said. “And so a fairy gives him his wish, more or less, and he gets into all sorts of trouble at a place that I always thought would look rather like this.”

Brother Zachariah said, almost against his will, And does he?

“Does he what?” Sister Emilia said.

Does he become real?