Monday morning, his father is already waiting, work satchel in hand, when Bird emerges from the bedroom. He has hidden his schoolbooks under the blanket on his bed; in their place, the bag on his back holds a change of clothes, a toothbrush, and all the money he has. All the dropped bills he’s found and saved over the years, all the lunch money kept from all the days when, rather than eat in the cafeteria, he would sit alone with his thoughts outside. Just enough, according to the timetables in the library, for a one-way ticket to Manhattan. The bus he’s selected departs at ten o’clock. Plenty of time.
Though the elevator has been repaired at last, it groans and fumbles as it shudders its slow way downward. Between the mirrored walls, an infinite chain of Bird and his father accordions into the distance.
Bird waits until the numbers tick down from six to five before he speaks.
I forgot my lunch, he announces.
Noah, his father says, how many times do I have to tell you.
The elevator grinds to a halt and opens onto the dorm lobby. Sunlight pours through the plate-glass windows, so bright he feels like an insect on a light table. Surely his father will look at his face and know that he’s lying. But his father just sighs and checks his watch.
Staff meeting at nine today, he says. I can’t wait for you. Run back up and get it and hurry to school. Don’t dawdle, okay?
Bird nods and hits the elevator button again, and his father turns to go. At the sight of his back—so familiar, in his old brown coat—Bird’s throat tightens.
Dad, he calls, and his father turns around, gives a soft oof as Bird throws his arms around him.
What’s this? his father says. I thought you were too old for hugs.
But he’s teasing, and he squeezes Bird tight, and Bird snuggles into the comfortable dusty wool of his father’s overcoat. He suddenly wants to tell him everything. To say, come with me. We’ll find her together. But he knows his father will never let him go, let alone come with him. If he wants to go, he will have to go alone.
Bye, Dad, he says, and his father gives him a wave and is gone.
Upstairs, Bird lets himself back into the apartment and rushes to the window. He ducks behind the curtains and peeks down at the small grassy square of courtyard below. There he is: the dark speck of his father, nearly at the gate.
He’s watched his father cross this courtyard before, on snow days when Bird’s school closed but his father’s work did not. He used to stand by the window, waiting until his father emerged far below, watch him head down the path and out of sight. In the winter, the small dots of footprints that appeared in his father’s wake were like magic. Up close, Bird knew, they were jagged holes crushed into the ice. But from where he stood—ten stories up, pinned against and behind glass—they were dainty and precise. Beautiful. Purposeful. Thin stitching on a snow-white quilt; a trail of stones placed to mark the path home, or to show someone the way. How comforting, to know that he could go downstairs, follow the marks his father’s feet have made, all the way to wherever he’s gone.
Now, as he watches, the lone figure in the brown coat hugs that coat tighter around himself against the chilly fall breeze and steps through the gate. There is no snow, yet, to hold footprints, and in a moment, as his father disappears from sight, it is as if he never passed that way at all. Today it strikes Bird as unbearably sad, to pass by and leave no trace of your existence. To have no one remember you’d been there. He wants to run down all ten flights of stairs and place his feet into the invisible footsteps his father has left behind. He presses his fingertips to the cool glass, as if—if he tried hard enough—he could push the entire window aside and step through into the air above all of this.
He hadn’t looked up when she’d said goodbye.
Birdie, she’d said, I have to go out.
Was that it? Or had she said: I have to go? He can’t remember. He’d been playing with Legos, building something. He doesn’t even remember what anymore.
Bird, she called again. She’d hovered just behind him, and he’d bristled with irritation. Whatever he was building wouldn’t hold together; it kept tipping and falling in a shower of bricks, breaking itself apart again and again. He took two bricks, jammed them together as hard as he could, so hard that the knobs left divots in his skin.
Birdie, she said. I’m—I’m going now.
She was waiting for him, waiting for him to come and kiss her, like he usually did, and he attached one more brick and the whole thing collapsed again with a clatter, and he blamed her, for calling him when he was busy with something else.
Okay, he said. He picked up the bricks again, piecing the thing together once more, and by the time he turned around at last, to see if she was still there, she was gone.
It is nearly nine o’clock: time to go. When his father comes back for dinner, the apartment will be empty, and Bird will be in New York. He’s thought about this all weekend, how to tell his father where he’s gone. Any mention of his mother is too big a risk, so his note is short and obscure: Dad, I’ll be back in a few days. Don’t worry. Beside it, he places the cat letter in its envelope on the table. Then he rips the paper from the cubby in two: the Park Avenue address he tucks back into his pocket; the last line—New York, NY—he sets beside the letter and his note. And last of all, a box of matches. He hopes his father will understand—where he’s gone, and why, and most of all, what to do with this information.
He has never traveled out of Cambridge; all night he’d fretted about the dangers that might lie ahead. Taking the wrong train or turning down the wrong street or boarding the wrong bus, ending up who knows where. A ticket agent demanding: where are your parents? Policemen stopping him, loading him into the back of a patrol car, carting him back to his father—or worse, somewhere else. Strangers, so many of them, scrutinizing him. Measuring him with their eyes, gauging whether he is a threat or to be threatened.
Yet none of this happens. Baseball cap pulled down, sunglasses on, he rides the T to the station. The cops on the platform, talking football, don’t even give him a second glance. Instead of approaching the ticket window, he heads for the machine: cash in, ticket out, no questions asked. At the bus terminal, no one looks around; everyone here seems to be focused on the ground, avoiding eye contact, and it occurs to him that maybe they, too, are hoping not to be seen. A pact between strangers, all of them agreeing tacitly to ignore one another, to mind their own business, for once. As one fear after another fails to materialize, Bird grows increasingly, absurdly confident. It’s as if the universe is signaling he’s on the right path, that he’s doing exactly what he’s meant to be. When his bus pulls in, he takes a seat by the window toward the back. He’s made it. He’s on his way.
After his mother left, for months he would lie in bed at night, certain that if he could stay awake long enough, she would return. He was convinced, for reasons he could never explain, that his mother came back in the night and disappeared by morning. By sleeping, he missed her each time. Perhaps it was a test—to see how badly he wanted to see her. Could he stay awake? He imagined his mother, each night, standing over his bed, shaking her head. Again he was asleep! Again he had failed the test.
It made perfect sense to him then; it still does. In all the stories his mother had told him, there was an ordeal the hero had to endure: Climb down this well and fetch the tinderbox. Lie beneath this waterfall and let it drum you to pieces. He was sure if he could stay awake his mother would be there. The fact that the test was so arbitrary did not bother him; the tests they had in school were arbitrary, too: circle the nouns and underline the verbs; combine these two random numbers into a third. Tests were always arbitrary; it was part of their nature and, in fact, what made them a test. Separate the peas and the lentils from the ashes before morning’s light. Journey beneath the sea and bring back the pearl that shines by night.
He’d pinched his own arm, bruising black and blue down the forearms, trying to stay awake. Night after night he would catch a sliver of flesh between finger-pad and thumbnail, squeezing until white flashes flecked the corners of his vision. In the morning, his mother was still gone and a half-moon of purple blotted his forearm, and his father asked if the other boys at school were bullying him. They were, but not in the way his father meant. It’s fine, Dad, he said, and all day his eyelids drooped and sagged, and that evening, he would try, and fail, to stay awake again. It was around then that he stopped believing in stories.
Now, after all this time, he is on his way to find her. Like someone in those very stories she’d told him all those years ago. He will journey to where his mother is waiting patiently for him. As soon as she sees him, whatever spell has kept her away all this time will be broken. In the fairy tales, it happens at once, like a switch flipped: At once she recognized him. At once she knew her true self. He is certain this is how it will happen for his mother, too. She will see him and at once she will be his again and they will all live happily ever after.
The interstate scrolls by as the motor settles into the steady thrum of high gear. The farther they go, the easier Bird begins to breathe. He falls asleep and wakes only when the bus downshifts and merges left, jostling him against the glass. By the roadside: a navy-blue SUV has pulled over to the shoulder, a police cruiser parked behind it, lights flashing. An officer, navy suited, emerges from the driver’s seat. Stay away from policemen, his father says in his mind, and Bird tugs the visor of his hat a bit lower, shading his face, as they whip by. He should be scared, but to his surprise, he isn’t. Everything beyond the window feels far away, walled off behind glass, and his heart beats with the same slow, steady thump of the wheels beneath them. Outside the bus, trees and scrubby fields blur on and on.
The bus drops him in Chinatown in the midst of a fine drizzle. A different world: more people than he’s ever seen, more bustle, more noise. Despite the clamor and commotion, he feels oddly at home, and it takes him a moment to understand why: all around him, suddenly, are people with faces like hers. And a bit like his. He has never been in a place like this, where no one gives him a second glance. If his father was here, he’d be the one standing out, not Bird, and Bird laughs. For the first time in his life, he is unremarkable, and this feels like power.
Before he left he’d studied the map, the librarian nudging it wordlessly toward him. A grid, his father would say, calm and patient. Just count your way up and over. He does the math: Bowery will turn into Third; eighty-seven blocks up, then two blocks west. Just over five miles. All he has to do is walk in a straight line.
He begins.
He begins to notice things.
That on all the signs here in Chinatown, something has been painted out or taped over or, in some cases, pried away. He can still see the perforations where something was once nailed on, still make out shapes embossed beneath silvery-gray duct tape. He notices that the street signs have been painted over, too: a fat swath of black runs under the feet of neat white letters spelling mulberry and canal, like a shadow at high noon, like a dark ring beneath the white of an eye. Only when he spots one where the paint has begun to wear away, revealing a thicket of characters beneath, does he understand. He remembers his father’s finger, inscribing characters like these in the dust: once, all these signs bore two languages. Someone—everyone—has tried to make the Chinese disappear.
He begins to notice other things.
How the people he passes speak either in English, or not at all, casting quick glances at one another but saying nothing. Only when they duck into a shop can he sometimes catch the low murmur of another language—Cantonese, he guesses. His father would know; his father might even understand. Everyone here seems cautious and edgy, scanning the sidewalks and the street, checking over their shoulders. Poised to run. He notices how many, many American flags there are—on nearly every storefront, on the lapels of nearly every person he sees. In the corner of each store hang the same kinds of posters from home: god bless every loyal american. All the way through Chinatown, not a single store is without one. Some sport other signs, too, garish in red, white, and blue: american owned and run. 100% american. Only when he’s left Chinatown, and the faces around him become Black and white instead of Asian, do the flags become more sporadic, the people here apparently more confident that their loyalty will be assumed.
He walks.
He passes storefronts shielded by graffitied metal grates. New and Used. Bought and Sold. For Lease. A concrete median dividing patched concrete streets. Mystifying names: Max Sun. Chair Table Booth. On the curbside, broken pallets splay like desert-bleached bones. No grass, no trees, nothing green, only street lamps the same gray as the sidewalk, the roads, the dirt that streaks its way up the sides of the buildings from the ground. Everything grit-colored, as if trying to escape notice. The people who pass carry heavy plastic bags, roll shopping carts, avoid each other’s eyes. They do not linger. Sometimes the crosswalks under their feet are simply spray-painted on, the lines wobbling and uncertain; in other places there are no crosswalks at all. More than a decade after the Crisis ended, so many things still haven’t been repaired.
Block by block, the landscape begins to shift around him. Stunted patches of grass fight their way through gaps in the sidewalk. How long has he been walking? An hour? He’s lost track already. Has the school already noticed his absence, have they notified his father? Up, up, up. The drizzle slows, then stops. Supermarkets with giant glossy billboards of pizza, intricately ruffled kale, slices of mango that make his mouth water. His stomach growls, but he doesn’t stop: he has no money left anyway. Bodegas with tumbling mountains of fruit and buckets of sheathed roses and indifferent, yawning cats stretched across the displays; barbershops where men’s laughter floats through the propped-open doors on a wave of aftershave. In their windows, familiar posters: proud to be american. we watch over each other. Now there are trees, small wispy ones barely above a man’s head, but trees, nonetheless. Somewhere a church bell strikes. Three o’clock, or four? The street buzzes with life, and he can’t tell chimes from echoes. He should be walking home from school, but instead he is here, his pulse growing faster with each block. Nearly there.
He walks faster and around him the city changes faster, too, like a sped-up video zipping into the future, or possibly the past. The way things used to be, that golden pre-Crisis world he’s only heard about. More taxis, nicer ones, newer. Cleaner, as if they’ve just been washed. The streetlights are shiny black here, taller, sleeker, as if here there is more space to hold their heads high. He passes buildings with crowns of decorative stonework over each window: someone took the trouble, up here, to pick out details in beige against the red, just so that they would be beautiful. Now there are stores with wide glass windows, unafraid of being smashed. Restaurants with awnings. People walking small dogs; trees ringed by neat metal fences no taller than his knee: for show, not for protection.
As the mist clears, he spots patches of green high in the air: rooftop gardens, the peaks of potted evergreens pointing at the sky. The buildings and businesses are no longer trying to hide. yes we are open. Flashy, catchy, quirky names, trying to stand out, trying to catch your attention and stick in your mind: The Salty Squid. Sound Oasis. Chickenosity. His father would have laughed. In each window, the familiar star-spangled placard. Banners advertising the fanciness of what they had, not its cheapness. Higher and higher the cross streets climb, as if he is scaling a ladder: Fiftieth, Fifty-Fifth, Fifty-Sixth. Men in suits. Men with ties. Men in leather shoes with fringed tassels and smooth soles in which you had no need to run. Long ago his father had worn shoes like that. Banks, so many banks—three, four, five in a row, sometimes the same bank on both sides of the street, one across from the other. He had not known it was possible to be so rich you would not cross the street.
A department store the length of an entire block, all sleek dark granite polished to mirror gloss. As if to say: in this place, even stones shine like stars. In its windows, faceless mannequins wear floral silk scarves around their throats. Tall apartment buildings, each window a pocket of reflected sky set into the walls like a gem. He imagines his mother living in one of them, looking down on him, waiting for him. Soon he’ll know. Refrigerated trucks idle by the curbs, crammed with grocery deliveries, huffing their frosted breath into the air. Now there are coffee shops, places meant to linger in. Billboards for whitening and straightening teeth; hotels with suited bellhops in hats poised just outside. Here, people hold bags not meant to carry, but to be pretty. Dry cleaner after dry cleaner: a neighborhood of silk, too delicate to wash. At each door, burly men from the neighborhood watch stand guard.
Seventy-Fifth Street. Seventy-Sixth. Older buildings that wore their age gracefully, looking staid, not shabby. Here foreign words are proudly displayed: Salumeria. Vineria. Macarons. A safe and desirable foreignness. Shops labeled gourmet and luxury and vintage. Here—and it does not seem possible that this is the same street he’s followed from those painted-over signs and fearful whispers; it must be another world he’s journeyed into—the street is wide and lined with trees. He likes the thought of his mother here, in this beautiful place. Blond women in jogging tights puff beside him, ponytails bobbing, as they wait for the signal to change. Nannies push sleek strollers, the babies inside sumptuously dressed. He passes stores that make only picture frames, restaurants that serve only salad, shops selling pink shirts embroidered with tiny, smiling whales. Buildings so tall their tips are invisible, even when he cranes his head so far he nearly falls backward. Anything could happen here, everything does happen here. It is like fairyland, or a fairy tale.
This is the place, he thinks. This is where she is.
And because this is a magical fairyland, where anything can happen, because he is so invigorated by all that he’s seen, still swooning on the rich air of possibility inflating his lungs, he isn’t surprised when suddenly, there she is: his mother, just across the street. A small brown dog at her side. Something inside him leaps skyward in a shower of sparks, and he almost cries out in joy.
Then his mother glances down at the dog, which is nosing in a manicured flower bed, and it is not his mother at all. Just a woman. Who doesn’t resemble her at all, actually; only in the most superficial ways—an East Asian woman with long black hair, carelessly pulled back in a knot. The face, now that he can see her more clearly, is nothing like his mother’s. His mother would never have such a dog, this little amber powder puff like a teddy bear with black-button eyes, a pert velvet nose. Of course it isn’t her, he chides himself, how could it be. And yet there is something about the way she holds herself—the alertness of her posture, the quickness of her eyes—that reminds him of her.
The woman notices him across the street, watching her, and smiles. Perhaps he reminds her of someone, too; perhaps at first glance she mistook him for someone she loves and now that love spills over to him, a largesse. And because she is looking at him, because she is smiling at him and perhaps thinking fond thoughts about this little boy who reminds her of someone she loves, she does not see it coming: a fist, smashing into her face.
It happens in seconds but it seems to stretch on forever. Out of nowhere. A tall white man. The woman crumpling, turned to rubble. Bird’s own body petrified, his scream cemented in his throat. The man towering over her, kick, kick, kick, soft sickening thumps like a mallet on meat: her belly, her chest, and then—as she curls up like a shelled shrimp, arms over face, trying to protect what she can—the curve of her back. Her cries wordless sounds, hanging in the air like shards of glass. The man himself says nothing, as if he is doing a job, something impersonal but necessary.
No one comes to help. An older couple about-faces, as if they’ve remembered something urgent elsewhere. A man hurries away, bent over his phone; cars flow by, unperturbed. They must see, Bird thinks, how can they not? The dog, ankle high, barks and barks. A doorman emerges from the building behind and Bird nearly sobs with gratitude. Help, he thinks. Help her. Please. Then the doorman pulls the door shut. Bird can faintly make him out on the other side of the thick plate glass, blurred and ghostly, watching as if it were a scene on a TV screen: the woman’s cheek against the sidewalk now, the jolt of her body with each blow. Waiting for it to be done so that he can open the door once more.
The woman has stopped moving and the man looks down at her—with disgust? With satisfaction? Bird can’t tell. The dog is still snarling and barking, furious and impotent, its small feet scuffling the pavement. With a swift movement the man brings his boot down, hard, on its back. The way he might crush a soda can, or a cockroach.
Bird screams then, and the man turns and spots Bird watching him, and Bird runs.
Blindly, as fast as he can. Not daring to look behind him. Bookbag hammering against him like a drumbeat. Sweat-soaked shirt hot then cold at the small of his back. Is she dead, he thinks, is the dog dead. Did it matter. The man’s eyes still drill at the nape of his neck and his stomach heaves and he retches, but nothing comes out. He darts down an alleyway and huddles behind a dumpster, catching his breath, the back of his throat raw and burning.
He’d forgotten: in fairylands there is evil, too. Monsters and curses. Dangers lurking in disguise. Demons, dragons, rats as big as oxen. Things that could destroy you with a glance. He thinks of the man at the Common. He thinks of his father, his broad shoulders and strong hands, lifting him back to his feet. But his father is far away, cocooned in the soundless library, where the outside world cannot reach. He has no idea where Bird is, and this more than anything makes Bird feel terribly alone.
He stays there for a long while, trying to smooth his breathing, trying to steady his hands, which won’t stay still. When he’s finally ready, he rises on shaky feet and picks his way back to the corner. He’s run backward, several blocks off course. When he reaches Park Avenue, he moves quickly and cautiously, scanning the streets. He feels conspicuous now; he notices people noticing him. He understands, as he hadn’t before. Perhaps he’d been invisible once, but the spell has worn off—or maybe it had only ever been in his imagination. People can see him, and at last he understands how small he is, how easily the world could shred him to pieces.
It’s late afternoon by the time he finally reaches the address: a big brick building, flowered window boxes, a huge green door. Not an apartment building—a single-family townhouse, a thing he had not known existed here. The Duchess’s castle. Cautiously, he studies it from across the street. In stories you might find anything inside a castle: riches, an enchantress, an ogre waiting to devour you. But this is it, the place his mother has sent him. Street name and numbers written in her own hand. A leap of faith, then.
He climbs the marble steps and reaches for the brass knocker and raps it, three times, against the green-painted wood.
It feels an eternity, but it’s really only a minute or two before an older white man answers the door. He’s a bit stout, in a uniform: shiny brass buttons on navy-blue wool, like the captain on a ship. He eyes Bird coldly, and Bird swallows twice before he can speak.
I am here to see the Duchess, Bird announces, and as if by magic, the captain nods, and steps aside.
A foyer of sunny yellow, a fireplace with a fire lit, even though it’s only October. Cream-colored tiles on the floor, studded with squares of ambery brown. A marble-topped table with scrolled legs squats in the middle of the room, its only apparent purpose to hold the biggest vase of flowers Bird has ever seen. All around him the lights are haloed with gold.
I’m here to see the Duchess, Bird repeats, trying to sound surer than he is, and the captain squints down at him.
I’ll have to call up, he says. Who may I say is here, please?
And because he is hungry and thirsty and exhausted, because he has walked for miles on an empty stomach, because his head feels uncannily detached from his body, like a balloon floating just over his shoulders, because he feels slightly unreal and he’s not sure this place is real, let alone this city, nor the Duchess he’s come to see, Bird answers as if he were in a fairy tale, too.
Bird Gardner, he says. Margaret’s son.
If you will wait here, the captain says.
Bird hovers uncertainly by one of the chairs near the fireplace. It is covered in sandy velvet and reminds him of a throne. With his fingertips he traces the chiseled grooves on the arms, and words his father has taught him float back: Mahogany. Alabaster. Filigree. He clears his throat. On the mantel is a little gold clock, a little golden woman gesturing decorously toward the time. Almost five. Soon his father will head home and discover that he is gone.
The captain returns. If you’ll follow me, he says.
He strides through an archway and down the hall and Bird trails behind him, cautious, peering around corners, waiting for a monster to spring. But all they pass is a palaceworth of luxuries. A paneled silk screen, stitched with cypress trees and cranes and a pagoda in the far-off distance. A sofa of yellow silk with cushions shaped like candy rolls; a huge oval dining room, its floor a dizzying parquet. Everything here seems to be touched with gold: the handles of the urns and vases on the mantelpieces, the twisted tassels on the drapes, even the claws of the lions’ feet on which the tables and chairs rest. Then they are at the foot of a grand swooping staircase spiraling up and up and up, a lush tawny carpet spilling down its center. He has never seen such a staircase. A delicate chandelier dangles on a chain swathed in velvet. Bird counts: one story, two, three, four, and far above them a compass-shaped skylight, a blue crystal pool of sky.
This way, please, the captain says. And then Bird sees it: just beside the staircase, a little elevator, wood-paneled and parquet-floored. An elevator in a house, he thinks in awe. The captain gestures with one hand and Bird steps inside, feels as if he’s climbing into a polished nutshell.
She’s waiting for you upstairs, the captain says. He pulls a brass grate shut, caging Bird inside.
As the elevator shudders upward, Bird’s mind whirls. Around him the brass bars of the grate rattle, as if something is trying to get out, or in. He has no idea what he is heading toward. What will the Duchess be like? Will she be kind, or will she be threatening? He pictures the evil queens from storybooks, all malice sheathed in charm. Trust, he thinks to himself: in the stories you had to trust strangers on your quest. Even this elevator is decorated, as befits a palace. Miniature golden frames around sketches of ancient buildings and winged women. A small white telephone. On the back wall, a round mirror bulges and flexes, bending his face back to him in distorted form: an ogre’s, or maybe a dwarf’s.
At last the elevator opens. A living room, as big as their apartment back home. Another table; another bowl billowing with flowers. In the polished surface he can see his own face peering back up at himself. Underfoot the carpet is gold patterned. The home of nobility, for sure.
And then there she is, gliding through French doors at the end of the room: the Duchess. Younger than he’d expected: regal, tall, blond hair clipped short around her head. Pearls. A blue drapey pantsuit instead of a gown, but it is clear to him she is a woman of power. For a moment Bird’s voice deserts him, and he simply stares up at her. She doesn’t break the silence, just looks down at him in bemusement.
Are you the Duchess? he finally asks. But he already knows she is.
And who do we have here? she asks. One eyebrow raised. Skeptical.
Bird, he says, trembling. Margaret’s son.
For a moment he fears she will say, who? But she doesn’t. Instead she says, rather coldly, Why are you here?
My mother, he says, the answer so obvious it feels ridiculous to say it. I came here to find her.
What makes you think she’s here? the Duchess asks. The smallest tendril of curiosity curling the edge of her voice.
Because, he says, and pauses. Feeling for the answer inside himself. Because I want to know why she left me. Because I want her back. Because I want her to want me back, too.
She sent me a message, he says.
The Duchess purses her lips, and he can’t tell if she is perplexed or pleased or angry. For a moment she’s like a teacher, weighing the answer he’s given, deciding between praise and punishment.
I see. So your mother—she asked you to come here?
Bird hesitates. Wonders if he should lie, if this is a test. His chest tightens.
I’m not sure, he admits. But she left me this address. A long time ago. I thought—I thought you might know where she is.
From his pocket he pulls the scrap of paper, or what remains of it. Tattered and crumpled, edges smudged with blue dye from his jeans. But there it is, in his mother’s handwriting: the very address in which they stand.
I see, the Duchess says again. And you came here alone? Where’s your father?
How does she know about his father, Bird thinks with a jolt.
He doesn’t know I’m here, he says, and as the words pass his lips, it hits him again how alarmingly true this is. His father has no idea where he is; his father cannot help him or save him.
The Duchess leans closer, scrutinizing him, her eyes needle-sharp. Up close he can see that her face is only just beginning to wrinkle, that her hair is not yet gray. She’s maybe the age, he realizes, that his mother would be.
So who does know you’re here? she demands. A steel glint of menace in her tone.
Bird’s throat swells. No one, he says. I didn’t tell him. I didn’t tell anyone. I came alone.
You can trust me, is what he wants to say. A sweaty panic slithers over him, that he might have come so far and in the end be turned away. That this dragon of a Duchess and her gilded palace might swallow him and trap him forever.
Interesting, the Duchess says. She turns away, and to Bird it feels like a very bright light being switched off. Wait here, she says, and without another word she sweeps out, leaving him alone.
Bird circles the room, unable to be still. Dusty-gold drapes at the windows, through which he can see the glitter of traffic on the street below. A grand piano in the corner. On the end table, a silver-framed photograph of a woman and a man: the Duchess, much younger and with longer hair, hardly more than a girl, and someone who might be her father. The old Duke, he decides, though the man in the picture is wearing a polo shirt and khakis, and they seem to be on the deck of a sailboat, blue sky and bluer water colliding at the horizon behind them. A stern, almost angry expression on his face. He wonders where the old Duke is. He wonders how the Duchess knows his mother. He wonders what his mother has been doing all these years, away from him. If she will recognize him when she sees him. If she’s sorry, if she ever thinks about him. If she regrets.
Outside the sky has darkened, hardening to flat, steely gray. To his amazement, he isn’t hungry at all anymore. He imagines his father arriving at home to their tiny cinderblock dorm, finding the apartment dark and deserted. Searching for him. Calling his name. It’s okay, Dad, he thinks, I’ll be back soon. He feels oddly alert and alive, his veins electrified. He is almost there. After all this time.
Far off in the recesses of the house, a clock strikes, a deep sonorous chime. Five o’clock. And then, as if it is a signal, the Duchess returns.
If you really are who you say, she says, then prove it. What color is your bicycle?
What?
You should be aware, she adds, that if you aren’t who you claim, I have no compunction at all about calling the authorities.
I— Bird stops, bewildered. His father has not let him ride a bike since that day he fell off and the neighbor called the police.
I don’t have one, he blurts out. The Duchess’s face remains calm and impassive and blank.
What kind of milk do you put on your cereal in the morning? she asks.
Again Bird is too baffled to speak. He hesitates, but the only thing to do is tell the truth, however odd it seems.
I eat my cereal dry, he says.
Once more the Duchess makes no reply. Where in the cafeteria do you eat lunch? she says, and Bird pauses, seeing himself as if from above, a solitary dot perched on the steps with a brown paper sack.
I don’t eat lunch in the cafeteria, he says. I eat outside. By myself.
The Duchess says nothing, but she smiles, and by this he understands that he has passed.
So you want to see your mother, she says.
It is not a question.
Well then. Come with me.
In the hallway she presses a button on the wall and a panel slides away. Magic? No: an elevator, cunningly camouflaged in the hall. The same elevator, in fact, in which he arrived. At a touch of the Duchess’s finger, the button labeled B glows the color of flame. When the doors open again, they are in a dim cave: an underground garage, a sleek black sedan with the engine already running. A mustached man in a suit stands at attention beside the waiting car. The footman, Bird thinks, as they slide into the back seat.
And then they’re off.
The car glides up the ramp and out of the garage and injects itself into the crowded streets: smoothly, liquidly, regally. From inside, Bird can hear nothing at all. Not the voices of the throngs that gather at street corners, thinning and bunching with the rhythm of the crossing lights, like a great snake inching its way downtown. Not the growling engines of the cars that surround them in a pack. Not the honking that he knows must pierce the air, those deafening blares of impotent frustration. There is simply no sound, and through the tinted windows the city scrolls by in sepia, like a silent film. To him they seem to be not driving but floating.
Seat belt, please, the Duchess says beside him. It would be a shame to get this far and then crack your skull open.
Bird opens his mouth and the Duchess shuts it with a glance.
I’m not here to answer questions, she says. That’s your mother’s job, not mine.
After that she says nothing at all, as they weave along the river and down into a long tunnel and then back out again into twilight, the moon just beginning to emerge. Time moves in fits and starts, starting and stopping like the traffic around them, and sometimes Bird dozes and wakes to find they haven’t moved at all, and sometimes he is sure he hasn’t closed his eyes but they seem to have teleported a great distance, nothing outside familiar, and then around them the traffic congeals and clots once more, slowing them to a crawl, and finally—he doesn’t know how much time has passed—the sun has gone down and the streets around them are calm and nearly deserted, lined with brownstones, and the car pulls to the side of the road and stops at last.
Listen carefully, the Duchess says, with new urgency in her voice. As if this is the last time she’ll speak to him, as if the real test is about to begin. Follow these instructions precisely, she tells him. I can’t be responsible for what happens if you don’t.
To Bird, bleary-eyed, half-dizzy with excitement and fatigue, this does not seem strange. In fact, he expects no less: in stories, there are always inscrutable rules to obey. Ignore the golden sword; use the old and rusty one instead. No matter how thirsty you are, do not drink the wine. Do not speak a word, even if you are pinched and beaten, even if they cut off your head. After the car drives away, leaving him standing on the sidewalk, he does exactly what the Duchess has commanded. He walks two blocks over and three blocks up, crosses the street, and there it is, just as she’d said: a big brownstone with a red door, every window covered. It will look deserted, but appearances can be deceiving. As instructed, he ignores the wide front stoop and skirts around to the side of the house. No one must see you enter the gate. Twice a car passes while he’s hunting for the latch, the rough wood of the gate snagging at his fingertips, and then he has it, the metal cool and solid and smooth. He glances over his shoulder at the lighted windows in the houses all around him, and when he’s sure there’s no one watching, he turns the catch and the gate swings open.
At the back of the house is a door. You must be absolutely silent as you approach. With tentative feet, Bird picks his way through the tangle of weeds and grass. This must have been the back garden once, untouched for ages; here and there he stumbles across a sapling, scrappy and saucy, whipping its branches in his face. But in the moonlight he sees the faint glitter of a path, shiny grit embedded in the cement to point the way, and he follows it toward the dark hulk of the house. Enter these five numbers—eight, nine, six, zero, four—and it will open for you. He feels his way along the wall of the house, as if stroking a sleeping dragon with his fingers, looking for the soft spot: brick, brick, brick, and then there is the door, a keypad. Too dark to see, but he counts the buttons, presses the passcode. A faint beep. He turns the knob.
Inside: a narrow hallway leading into a darker gloom. You must shut the door behind you, even though it will be completely dark. You won’t be able to see her until you do.
Slowly he closes it, and the outside world narrows to a wedge, then a sliver, then disappears. The latch clicks, sealing him into darkness.
And then he hears footsteps, hurrying toward him. A small light clicks on, scattering golden sparks across his sight.
His mother, astonished. Holding out her arms. Throwing them around him. Her warmth. Her scent. The shock and wonder and delight on her face.
Bird, she cries. Oh Bird. You found me.
