* * *

The ride seemed endless. They plowed through avenues and lanes, following the twisted map of the labyrinth, and when the doors opened and the dwarfs, who had grown and now looked like ordinary men, pulled her out on the stretcher, Alicia noticed that the carriage had miraculously turned into a van and they were in a narrow, dark street that cut a swath through the shadows. The little devil, who suddenly bore Fermín’s unmistakable features, told her she was very nearly safe and sound. They carried her up to a large carved oak door, behind which a man with sparse hair and vulturine eyes peeked out. The man looked at both sides of the street and whispered, “Come in.”

“This is where I say good-bye,” announced the prince.

“Give me a kiss, at least,” Alicia murmured.

Fermín rolled his eyes. “For God’s sake, kiss her, or we’ll never be done.”

And with all his dark grace, Prince Armando kissed her. His lips tasted of cinnamon, and by any reckoning he knew how to kiss a woman: with art, composure, and the long experience of an artist who takes pride and pleasure in his work. Alicia allowed a chill to run through her and stir forgotten corners of her body, and then she closed her eyes, sealing off the tears.

“Thank you,” she whispered.

“Unbelievable,” said Fermín. “Anyone would say she was fifteen. Thank goodness her father isn’t here to see it.”

What sounded like the mechanism for a cathedral clock sealed the door behind them. They went down a long, palatial corridor peopled with frescoes of fabulous creatures that appeared and disappeared in the light of the oil lamp carried by the keeper of the place. The air smelled of paper and magic, and when the passageway opened up into a large hall with a vaulted ceiling, Alicia saw it.

A labyrinth of shimmering forms ascended toward an immense glass dome. Moonlight, split into a thousand blades, poured down from up high and threw into relief the seemingly impossible geometry of a spell made up of all the books, all the stories, and all the dreams in the world. Recognizing the place she had dreamed of so often, Alicia stretched out her arms to touch it, fearing it would vanish in the air. Next to her appeared the faces of Daniel and Bea.

“Where am I? What is this place?”

Isaac Montfort, the keeper who had opened the doors for them and whom Alicia recognized after so many years, knelt down beside her and stroked her face.

“Alicia, welcome back to the Cemetery of Forgotten Books.”

36

Valls was beginning to suspect that he had imagined it. The visions faded, and he was no longer sure whether he’d dreamed about the woman who had come down the stairs to the door of his cell and asked him whether he was Minister Valls. At times he doubted that it had actually happened. Perhaps he’d dreamed it. Perhaps he was just another wreck of humanity rotting in the cells of Montjuïc Castle who, overcome by delirium, had come to believe that he was his jailer and not who he really was. He seemed to remember a case like that—Mitjans, his name was. Mitjans had been a famous playwright during the years of the Republic, and Valls had felt enormous contempt for him because life had given him everything that he, Valls, had longed for and had been unable to achieve. Mitjans, who like so many others had been the object of his envy, had ended his days in the castle, no longer knowing who he was, in cell 19.