It was growing darker. Alba could scarcely see the girl or the beast.

“Would you write that I loved them?” Rae’s voice was softer, muffled as though it came from a distance. “That I wanted to return to them?”

Alba clasped Rae’s hand tight. It seemed she was slipping from her. “I will,” she said. “I promise, I’ll find a way to write it all. Rae…,” she called into the dark. She could neither see nor feel the girl at all now. “Rae?”

Drip.

For a half moment, the earth opened around Alba. Roots twisted away, stones tumbled into twilight, grubs and creeping things wriggled their firm white bodies, fleshy and luminous in the dark. Briefly, she saw Rae and the wolf as they had been before, together on the edge of the meadow, the wide starlit sky sweeping above them. The air rang with churring—cicadas, crickets, green meadow shadows—then darkness closed over them again.

Drip.

Field turned into forest, forest into mountain, mountain into soil.

Drip.

Alba, waking, felt her cheeks damp in the haze of the chamber.

Drip.

“Rae!” she called at the stones. She listened and listened. No song came from beyond.

Drip.

She was alone.

Sitting up, she found she had taken hold of something in her sleep: Maurus’s pot shard—wait there—was clutched tight in her fist. She turned it over, feeling its edges. Tentatively, she ran a corner along the wall; though it was too dark to see, she could feel it leave a faint scratch along the stones.

She stood. I, ALBA, THE ORACLE-APPRENTICE, she scratched. KNOW THIS TRUTH. She took a step back. No, the shadows were too thick. Still, she felt the letters, pale and faint, were glowing there—felt the words would keep giving her light.

She ran her hands over the walls. So much space, she thought.

So much time.

LIII

THE NO-LONGER-A-BOY-BOY-KING, OR TTHHHRRRP

He could not escape it.

Wherever he went, he heard the girl’s unendurable singing.

He heard it as he reclined on his cushions; he heard it when he poked the fish in his pond. He heard it when he marked the lines of his name on a parchment; he heard it when he scraped the last bit of jam from his bowl.

“Make it stop!” he demanded.

“Make what stop?”

“The singing.”

“What singing?”

“The girl! With the wolf! Make her stop singing!”

A servant would be dispatched. An advisor. A guard. Down the corridor they’d go; up again they’d come. She’s not singing, they’d say, or, She is singing, but I’ve told her to stop. And yet, the noise would not end.

He heard it in the halls, in his chamber, in the farthest corners of the palace and gardens. He put his hands to his ears; he buried his head beneath pillows. He grew more and more heated. “Make it stop! Make her stop!”

Governor-Advisor, even, attempted to soothe him. “The wolf hasn’t eaten in over a week. It won’t be long now. No animal can overcome its own appetite.”