Shivering in the attic, Lovisa kept trying to push her mind to a place of understanding, but it was like her thoughts were made of smoke.

Her hands were wet and she realized she was crying. Then she was sobbing, gasping for breath, shoving her fur sleeve into her mouth to muffle the sound. Sobbing like Viri, like she was five years old. Like she’d gone running to Benni and Benni had knocked her down, slammed his library door in her face.

How could she revise her comprehension of—she couldn’t hold on to the words—of someone she’d trusted, always. Someone she loved.

After a while, she made herself stop crying. She thought she could hear her parents’ angry voices above her, still arguing on the roof. Listen, she told herself, but then she became afraid of what would happen if she learned more things. She didn’t want to know any more things.

She heard her mother’s voice more clearly, then the creak of the trapdoor. Springing to her feet, groping her way down the stairs, Lovisa fled to the room with the broken window lock and climbed out, lowering herself onto the trellis, then the tree. Her hands were numb and sore, clumsy. The snow had turned icy and sharp, stinging her cheeks.

She forced herself to run back to campus, pushing her legs through fatigue. There was no curfew on the night of the prime minister’s party, so she didn’t need a pass.

In her dorm room, she kicked off her shoes and climbed into bed. Then she waited for sleep to take all of it away.

PART THREE

The Keeper

The silbercows brought a gift to the creature.

It was the corpse of a boy, to add to her treasures. The boy was wrapped in a blanket from which a beautiful golden-green scarf had escaped, billowing around his head like the filaments of a forest fish. He had heavy metal chains around his ankles.

Thank you, said the creature, startled and touched by the gift, but also worried, because the silbercows looked worried. She positioned the boy on the deck of her Storyworld, admiring him. He had deep, gray-brown skin and a thatch of dark hair, but she knew that in time, his skull would turn white and wonderfully ghoulish.

Then she waited while the silbercows rested. They’d approached from a great distance, balancing the boy on their noses and their backs. The body had kept slipping off because of the weight of the metal around his ankles. She’d watched them struggling, their injured bodies bobbing unevenly toward her, her big, beating heart surging with happiness. Whenever they were gone for a long time, she’d start to feel anxious about whether they were safe.

Time stretched out, and still they didn’t speak.

Thank you for this treasure, she finally said.

You’re welcome, they told her. How is your missing tentacle?