I go home. What else am I to do? Slopping through the muck of liquefying jellyfish and mollusks, I think back to my foolish daydreams of rescuing Agnet from the ogre who holds her prisoner. My face reddens at how childish they seem now. How indulgent. The romantic flights of a brainless boy.

Bryndis startles when I slam the door behind me. She is at the table, head down on the board.

“What’s wrong?”

She raises her head, but there are no tears. Her expression is null.

“Calder is missing,” she says.

Her sweetheart. “What happened?”

“Magda said he went down to the wharf with a crossbow, barking about revenge. No one has seen him since.”

“I’m sorry, Bryn.”

“Did you find anything to eat?”

“No.”

Bryndis lays her head back down on the table.

“Where is Father?”

Her hand points to the church. “Still in the vestry.”

Marching into the church, I hammer at the vestry door and demand that he come out. There is no answer. I storm out to the yard, where the ax lies sunk into the cutting stump. I pluck it out, march back inside, and chop at the thick door. Bryndis orders me to stop and Pip flaps about like some crazed squirrel, screeching at me to put the ax away. On the other side of the door comes our father’s voice, yowling to be left alone.

The wood splinters. The latch snaps away and falls to the floor. I kick the door open and wince at the smell. Father sits at his scribing table looking like the prophet Ptolemaeus, driven mad by his own sacred texts. Bloodshot eyes and blotchy skin, a thin skein of drool running into his filthy beard. When he admonishes me for destroying his door, I hold the ax high enough to lop his head clean off. He backs away, scurrying into the corner.

“Your brandy. Where is it?”

He doesn’t answer me. Instead, he puts his hands together and prays for God to strike me down.

I pull the drawers from the desk and shake the contents to the floor. I sweep every book from the shelf, but no bottle materializes.

“Where did you hide it? Tell me!”

My father slinks away like a crab caught out in the daylight. None of us are allowed inside the vestry. This is my first glimpse of his inner sanctum, his Holy-of-Holies. A framed picture sits high on a shelf. A simple cameo profile of a young woman. I recognize the shape of that impudent nose immediately. Our lost mother. I push it aside and hidden behind it lies the brownglass bottle of brandy.

The bottle slips into my pocket. I take down the cameo and trace a finger along the contours of mother’s nose and chin. Father mutters at me not to touch it with my filthy hands, to put it back and go away.