“Anything could be,” she answered, feeling suddenly testy in addition to uneasy. It was inappropriate for him to waste time feeding his own curiosity. “Whether he is or not isn’t for me to say.”

Pursing his lips, the messenger said, “Nor for me to ask, judging by your tone. Forgive me. For us in the Westlands, though, we are hungry for hope. We hear rumors, but we’ve heard rumors for hundreds of years. Nothing yet has come of them.”

“I didn’t take you as that old.”

The man smiled again. “You are anxious to begin. I understand. Shall we?”

Despite her impatience, Mór scanned the overgrown walls before answering. She made eye contact with Tunnel, who stood with his arms crossed, leaning against the arch through which they would exit. He acknowledged her with a lift of his chin. Like everything about him, it was a gruff gesture, but it was comforting as well.

“Yes,” she said, “do begin.”

The messenger cleared his throat. His gaze flicked to Mór, amused just a moment longer, and then his arms went limp in his lap and he seemed to focus his entire consciousness on his breathing. Eyes closed, he inhaled and exhaled. Every so often he let out a low moan. For a time his head dropped forward as if he were asleep. And then it seemed he really was asleep, his moaning nothing but faint snoring. That was how it always was. Mór waited, watching him, curious, as ever, about what was about to happen.

Then, the moaning ceased. The man’s breathing stopped. For an uncomfortably long few moments it was as if the sleeping man had passed into death. And then he looked up. He gasped and blinked his eyes open. His now blue eyes—the whites veined with a crimson lacework of age, yellowed and tired—were not the messenger’s eyes anymore. Nor was his voice the same.

“Dearest,” his mouth said. The voice coming out did not fit the shape or the movement of his lips. A dry voice, slow and patient and heavy with melancholy and love, it was a voice she knew well from her girlhood but had not heard from the actual man in some years. “You are not my little girl, are you?”

Her first impulse was to refute that. Yes! Yes, she was his little girl. Of course she was. That’s all she ever would be. It was cruel for him to say otherwise. But she had said that on other occasions, and it did no good. Instead, she swallowed and said, “No, but I am the one who was that little girl. Now I am the woman who remembers that girl and remembers you. Hello, Yoen.”

The messenger smiled. His eyes closed for a moment. Opened. Yoen’s voice said, “Hello, dearest. I wish my eyes could truly see you, at least once more before I fly. That would do my heart good.”