“It has stopped raining. Shall we go to the Terrace? Shall we have a black cherry sundae?”

  Moi did not answer him. He walked slowly, unsteadily, shielding his face as if the sun, though shyly peeking through the clouds, was too bright for his eyes.

  “Hm?” Luoth pressed again. It must have been at least a month since he had dragged his friend out for a breath of air. And when he wasn't keeping up with him, the professor tended to slack off, all home and school...

  Look at the way he moved now, like someone who had just been released after twenty years in prison.

  “Ice cream... I don't know,” Moi murmured, his voice little more than a modulated breath.

  “Did you eat something today?” asked Luoth more quietly.

  Finally, the professor looked him in the face. Tightening his whitened lips, he regained his composure, his gaze colliding once more with his friend's.

  “Not much,” he admitted. He sniffed.

  Seluma had been ready to go from superficial concern about the professor's altered state of mind to full-blown irritation, and had wasted no time in throwing them out under the pretext of going to the city hall.

  Luoth flashed a broad, wide-eyed smile at Moi, at the day that had brightened again after the brief sprinkle of rain, at the normal traffic in the square. A lady in a wide purple dress raised a gloved hand in response, a graceful twinkle in her eye. Two barefoot boys, backpacks slung over their shoulders, waved their caps frantically like flags at a parade.

  “If you have time, I'd like to take you to my place,” the banker suggested. “How long has it been since you came to see me? My maid has just been overhauled, and now she knows many new recipes, and before they steal her away like the rector's cook, you must take advantage of that, eh! Have you heard the news?”

  Moi blinked his reddened eyes. He did not seem to be fully present.

  “Who hasn't heard it? The whole university knows the tale. The rector even offered a reward. But it's old news now. They won't find it anymore.”

  “You know what? Serves him right!”

  Luoth blew between his lips. Those who do not take care of their possessions do not deserve them.

  “You don't send a sophisticated machine like that around to run mundane errands. Serves him right for that cheapskate who didn't want to pay a deliveryman to bring his food home! But then, are we going or not?”

  Moi shook his head, staring at the toes of his own shoes.

  “Thank you. I actually have little appetite. I'll have a sandwich...”

  He would not fall for it. If Moi had really wanted to be alone, he would not have shown up at the Coneshell in the first place.

  “Terrace, then! I'll keep you company.”

  As expected, the professor had no further objections and was already walking down the footbridge with newfound energy. It was Luoth who lagged behind for a moment, lost in observing an argument between dog owners on the level below. As the two owners raised their voices and waved their leashes like whips, the animals sniffed and wagged their tails happily.

  Such a beautiful day. Luoth felt the warmth of the sun on his face, an energy that should restore him, lift his heart.

  He almost had to run to keep from losing sight of Moi and following him up the stairs.

  The ramp wound around the outside of the massive red brick keep in a gentle curve, but running too fast up it meant risking dizziness. Luoth forced himself to keep a steady pace; it wasn't as if Moi was going to run away anyway.

  The Terrace was just at the top, a wide, open, airy space dotted with lemon-yellow cloth umbrellas to shield from the direct sun.

  If Seluma knew that her friends sometimes cheated on her by going there, she had never mentioned it. But then again, she didn't make ice cream!

  The professor chose the first free table and dropped into the small wrought-iron chair, not caring that his jacket and pants would crease. Luoth ordered for both of them on the fly from the waiter who hurried past them.

  While they waited for the sandwiches, Moi danced in his chair, moving back and forth while his eyes followed an invisible insect in the air above the tables. Luoth waited. There was no point in pushing. If there was something bothering the professor, it would come out in due time.

  “The end of the academic year is near,” was his neutral remark after all this agony.

  “Worried about not passing your exams?” he teased him with a wink.

  Moi leaned back against the small chair and finally allowed himself a little giggle.

  “You have a little more free time now. Or did you take an outside assignment?” asked Luoth again.

  “No, no. My projects are enough. Maybe in a few years...”

  He withdrew his gesticulating hands just in time to avoid hitting the tray of food the waiter had placed in the middle of the small square table.

  Luoth gestured for his friend to serve himself first.

  “Maybe in a few years, to gather new material.”

  Moi attacked the sandwich with a hint of awe, unconvinced of what might really be between the slices of pale bread.

  “Other sources, you see,” he continued, mouth full. “News, records, legends about the other Pipers' nests. There were many, you know. In ancient times our winged friends lived in small communities scattered across the territory...”

  Luoth let him talk. It was getting better. Nothing relaxed Moi more than illustrating his work, his studies. His eyes sparkled, a real passion made his voice vibrate, and he radiated so much enthusiasm that he won over even those who understood nothing about it, those who had never before been interested in scientific research or would have stopped to think about it.

  The banker nodded, enjoying his own olive sandwich, refreshed to see the other smiling and present again. Had the trolley episode really upset him that much? Academics were so sensitive sometimes, he thought. Locked up in their castle, they seemed unreachable and superior to all, and then all it took was a little jolt and they would collapse, unable to defend themselves.

  Moi worked too hard.

  A mushy mouthful forced Luoth to take a long sip of lemonade to swallow. When he put the glass down, he found a mask of concern staring at him.

  Could it be?

  Moi had not stopped talking. Now he was hinting at the progress of his book, the essay he had been working on for ten years, between ups and downs. Ah, it must have been a moment of crisis, a slowdown in writing. The professor named some colleagues.

  “Iliqualoti is a leading scholar, I trust him... most of all he is a fair man. You'd be surprised how many dishonest people there are in the profession, brilliant people who may excel in their own work but don't disdain to steal someone else's... and people moved by simple envy who will belittle anything without even making a reasonable criticism. I have seen scholars ridiculed for the way they dress! Put down because of their shyness! It's a terrible environment, Luoth,” he said, sighing and looking into his sandwich. “Sometimes I wonder what difference there really is between faculty and students.”

  Luoth sighed.

  “But even Iliqualoti disappointed me at our last meeting. He admits that the study of the Pipers is outside his field, but he still dares to question some of my conclusions. Artifacts, he said! Fantasies! That's all he needed to ask me if I smoked! Now I don't know how he dares...”

  “Keep your voice down, Moi!”

  “Sorry.”

  To calm his nerves, the professor poured himself a full glass from the jug and drank it greedily.

  Luoth saw the raised veins on his throat twitch, his fist clawing at the napkin. The sandwich had not been much appreciated, randomly bitten around the circumference.

  The mug returned to the coffee table with a resounding thud.

  “And to add insult to injury, Seluma was very reticent the last time I interviewed her, as if she's tired of talking to me by now!”

  “Reticent? Come on, Moi, you know how she is. You must have caught her at a bad moment.”

  Moi pressed his lips together until they were white.

  “I don't understand why. She doesn't like to talk about the Pipers, even though they are the main attraction of her club. I have to pry the words out of her!”

  Luoth started to laugh.

  “The main attraction, the Pipers? When you tell her that, no wonder she resents it! Seluma is the best cook in town. If she were greedy she could charge three times as much for her specialties... and you go and tell her that people go to the Coneshell just to see those grumpy flying creatures?”

  The professor shook his head vigorously.

  “No, Luoth, of course I did not say it in those terms. But why else would she let them come? They eat rare food that she has to procure only for them, and they don't even pay her!”

  Luoth choked on his lemonade in a fresh fit of laughter.

  “They don't pay her...” he gasped, tears in his eyes.

  Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

  “What a nice opinion we have of her,” he commented when he had calmed down.

  Moi lowered his eyes.

  “Don't get me wrong, I love her as much as you do. But she doesn't do anything for nothing, we know that."

  As much as I do? protested an indignant voice inside Luoth’s mind. In a moment he was serious and sober again. A painful blaze burned his insides, anger like a waving curtain before his eyes. I don't think so.

  He had to restore a grain of objectivity to the discussion, even if it meant being partially unfaithful to an oath. Just barely. In an indirect way.

  “Maybe there is an emotional reason instead. Don't be so inflexible in judging people.”

  He took another sip, leisurely, as Moi attempted a final attack on the sandwich.

  “It's something that happened so long ago,” he continued. “You know how uncomfortable you feel when you're talking to someone much younger than you, alluding to something you lived through, something you saw happen, something you remember like it was yesterday, and yet to him it's the stuff of history books, from a time when his parents didn't even exist... It must have happened to you.”

  The professor nodded.

  “I deal with people like that every day,” he reminded him.

  Exactly.

  “Here, and we are normal people. I'm sixty-three years old and you're... fifty-six? Here. Seluma is at least two-hundred. I completely understand if she prefers to forget.”

  Moi's expression had changed again. After this more relaxed interlude, he returned somber, almost hostile. He let out an exasperated hiss between clenched teeth.

  “And I don't! All the things she could tell us, teach us!”

  He looked at Luoth with sudden suspicion, his hand turning the nearly empty glass.

  “She told you more,” he claimed, and it was not a question.

  Luoth spread his arms wide, flashing his best matter-of-fact smile. It always worked with clients, disarming them with his open, conciliatory face, the demeanor of a seasoned and shrewd professional who still shared his knowledge out of sheer generosity.

  “I know very little, believe me. That it was her acquaintances who had domesticated, if you can call it that, the Pipers. With the help of a few trinkets they had taught them to come and feed on the terrace of the house, and so when Seluma built the restaurant she thought of luring them there... She must have told you how many months it took them to get used to moving a few yards at a time with the help of pinwheels and various toys, right? Besides, you being the expert, can you find out why Pipers are so attracted to mechanical trinkets while they pay no attention to humans?”

  The professor ignored the question, stubborn in his way of thinking.

  “But why did she do it?” he blurted out, slapping his open hand on the table.

  The waiter turned to look.

  That was enough.

  “Excuse me, Moi, but is your essay about the Pipers or Seluma's private life?” burst out Luoth, unable to hide his irritation even as he continued to wear the bank manager's smile. “Why does it matter?”

  Moi ducked suddenly as if his friend had hit him. He stared at the plate of leftovers for so long that Luoth began to feel a tingle in his stomach and regretted not having gone to his house for lunch.

  When the other returned to the conversation, he had decided to change the subject entirely.

  “Do you know the mayor well? Are you close?”

  Luoth hesitated for a moment, confused. Three large wasps flew past him, their striped bodies vibrating, their legs stretched out.

  A sting of pain from the left lobe. His fingers ran to touch the earring, to twist it in the hole. It pinched his skin. Strange. He usually forgot he had it.

  He squared his shoulders.

  “No. I know him—like everyone else. He likes it when the citizens come to talk to him; he welcomes everyone when he has the time. We deal, you understand, in the city council, but we don't go to dinner together, if that's what you wanted to know.”

  Moi scratched his chin with his fingernail, as if he could feel a pustule forming under his skin.

  “How old do you think he is?”

  Why had this topic been brought up so abruptly?

  “Well, I really don't know. He looks young, but it's really hard to tell. He's been working in Nelatte for many years, making a name for himself and all, so he can't be that young.”

  The olives danced wildly in his stomach. He had never found them indigestible; maybe it was the chewy bread. It was better to eat only ice cream at the Terrace.

  A ray of sunlight hit him in the face. Luoth blinked and shrugged a little to the right, the reflection on the glass door of the small bar. Was there not even a cloud left in the sky? Singular...

  “Why do you care?”

  “What do you think he will do?”

  “He will investigate, rest assured.”

  “He has so many duties, and the preparations for the carnival must keep him busy.”

  “He has never been distracted. He may look unconcerned, but he remembers everything, believe me!”

  Indeed. That one was a real smart-ass...

  With a sigh, Luoth pushed his chair away to stretch his legs under the table. He barely resisted the impulse to stretch out his arms and yawn loudly.

  Moi did not imitate him. In fact, he had retreated with his arms crossed, his face once again somber.

  “What species is he?” he muttered. “Where does he come from?”

  Luoth burst out laughing.

  “The race expert is you! Anyway...” And he came closer again, leaning over the coffee table to chat. “Go over and ask him, it seems like a legitimate question from a scientist.”

  “My specialty is linguistics and the study of nonverbal forms of acoustic communication. I'm not a biologist.”

  The waiter came over to ask if they wanted anything else. Or perhaps to ask if they were finished with their show. Luoth drew back, smacking his full lips.

  “Then introduce yourself as a mere inquisitive citizen.”

  °°°

  She waits.

  She has all the time and confidence in the world.

  He will come. They will come, both of them. And then the others. The music, the voices, the games.

  The gardens will not stay deserted for long.

  She waits, and the sun makes two, three, five rounds. The wind caresses her back, cold raindrops wash her metallic face, temperature changes tickle the structure in which she is trapped, making it groan and creak.

  The sky is what it once was, what it always was, arrangements of white wisps dotting its pristine expanse. The sky has never changed. It changes only the gradation of pastel hues that alternate between day and night, all colors that shine without dazzling. The purity of this immensity has shone on forever, unaffected by the upheavals of the earth.

  From above, the higher gods, her masters, watched. They found her guilty. But not even the highest beings can rob her of her love. They have imprisoned and punished her, but they have not won. They can never take away her world, never erase the past and the joy it holds. The time of this place still belongs to her, now that she has found a way to dispose of it at will, to fold it, smooth it, adorn herself with it like a silk scarf.

  She cannot contain her impatience. In her private dimension, she delights in recreating fragments of that music and song she loved so much when she had a voice, fingers, a heart that could beat faster, and eyes which would moisten.

  Now they will come.

  And at last, as the sun broke behind her, and her own shadow became a long black column on the white marble driveway at her feet, at last, as she remembered it, the beloved figure emerged slowly from the bend behind the hedge to the right of the circular pavilion.

  His back. The bent, hunched shoulders of someone walking and holding his breath. The cloak crawling on the ground in the still air has crimson reflections. He comes backwards, slows down more and more as he approaches, and in that fateful moment when he stops, when he is about to turn around, her soul runs to him. In her imagination she embraces him and sweeps him up, they fall together and roll in the grass laughing happily.

  Why have they never done this?

  How many joys have they missed?

  He turns with his head down, his eyelids closed, his long lashes a flickering curtain shading his cheeks. His shoulders are slumped, as if that celestial void up there were the most oppressive blanket of lead for him. His long, forlorn tail crawls lazily along the driveway, its thick fur picking up blades of grass and earth.

  He holds the little one, who has settled on his belly, obedient and resigned. He turns it over between his gloved paws with infinite gentleness —how can you not love him for this thoughtful gesture? He crouches down to place it on the ground next to the pedestal.

  He murmurs something almost inaudible.

  Her mind puts the words back in order.

  “Come with me.”

  What he could not have said to her, to his Queen, imprisoned inside the metal.

  He pats the little one on the head, and it barely squeaks, curling up stubbornly as if defending its position with its life. Twice it reacts by trying to bite.

  Mowr Ees stands up again, only then finding the courage to look at her face. His huge honey-colored eyes, flecked with silver, absorb large drops of water that rise in the hairs of his cheeks. His wide, bat-like ears perk up for a moment as he dares, in an unprecedented fit of madness, to climb onto the marble pedestal, to stand on tiptoe, to stretch out a hand and place it on her face.

  A beloved face of which only a cruel simulacrum remains.

  Mowr Ees says nothing at this moment; he cannot. His gray lips tremble; there are many more white hairs on his muzzle than she remembers.

  But she can tell. Her soul, too, is overflowing with emotion, with joy. She cannot feel this contact except as an indirect pressure through the bronze, but it is enough for her. She clings with all her strength to this faint sensation, to this crumb of contentment, to this promise of completeness.

  Our happy days will now return! She wishes she could shout and laugh and run and spin in a carefree dance.

  He looks up at her now, his arms draped across his body. He wears heavy, practical clothing, devoid of the usual adornments: a rough wool tunic with a hood over his shirt, mud-colored long pants with a green diamond pattern on the outside, even protective gaiters, from which only the claws sprout. He has just returned from a long and dangerous journey. Who knows where they all went, where they found refuge?

  For a moment, she fumbles with the tormenting doubt that none of her beloved subjects were ever saved, that they ran in vain at breakneck speed, pursued by the quaking and ravenous bottomless chasms of the earth that opened like the mouths of hell, only to be swallowed up, like herself, with no escape.

  But she must not think that. She calms her troubled heart, drowning in her lover's gaze.

  He is so sad. Why?

  Today we are together again, she repeats to herself, thinking so hard that it seems impossible for him not to hear her.

  And when he walks away so slowly, almost crushed by a weight, when she sees him still staring at her from farther and farther away as he walks back down the drive towards the hedge wall, she wishes she could call him, say his name again, feel it on her tongue.

  Mowr Ees.

  But she can't. She has no tongue anymore, and her lips are now metallic, eternally smiling, sealed.