“The air is bad up there and it’s cold, and he’s not well enough. I’m not throwing my life away so he can get sick and die anyway.”
Pain razored through Judah. She didn’t know if it was Gavin’s or her own. Elly didn’t seem to know, either; her eyes darted back and forth between them. Then she left the room abruptly, closing the bedroom door firmly behind her.
Contemplating the closed door, Theron said, “What did she mean, throwing away her life away?”
“Nothing,” Gavin said. “She didn’t mean anything.”
“Oh,” Theron said.
* * *
Elly was giving up the most, and she had the right to insist that what little remained of Theron be kept healthy. But his vagueness and puzzlement were driving Judah mad. Intelligent, acerbic Theron: this was not the way he was supposed to be, and so she went to the workshop herself. It felt strange to be there alone. The cluttered workbench and damp stone walls felt expectant, as if waiting for their usual occupant; the air smelled like Theron, char and sweat and metal. She sat down on the high stool, just where Theron would, with all of his tools and bits of brass spread out in front of her. His notebook was open to two pages filled with narrow, precise writing, but nothing she could understand. She flipped back a few pages and found sketches matching the half-built thing on the bench: a compact sort of box, with a cavity in the middle. The sketches showed the thing from each side and pulled apart and even in slices like bread. This was how Theron’s brain had once worked: he found a thing, took it apart, and saw what was missing. Tucked to the side, Judah found a misshapen rectangle made out of clay that matched the cavity in the device’s center. The edges crumbled at her touch.
Theron, too, had been taken apart and put back together. Theron, too, was missing something central. She had waited too long and it had slipped away.
Nearly immobilized with sadness, she stared at the wall curving in front of her. A strip of wood circled the wall just above the level of the workbench, marks carved along the bottom of it like the minutes of a clock, with other marks above in some script she didn’t recognize. The door leading to the stairway was propped open; she could almost sense the tower lying in wait above the cobwebbed darkness, as empty as Theron. She had a sudden urge to climb the stairs, broken or not: to get away from all of this, up into the unknown. Nobody would bother her there. Nobody would even know where she was. She would be safe. All she had to do was slide down off the stool, let her feet carry her upward—
She heard a noise behind her and knew instantly who it was. “Are you going to take over for him? Judah the Foundling, Rebuilder of Lost Objects.” Gavin pointed to the device. “We had the same idea, you and I. Think it will help?”
Judah tore her thoughts away from the tower. “I don’t know if anything will help,” she said, “but it’s worth a try.”
They found a box filled with broken glass in one of the cupboards. After they emptied it carefully onto a shelf (the glass was probably garbage, but might be important) they loaded it with everything from the workbench except the clay shape, which Judah carried in her hand so it wouldn’t break. Down in the parlor, Elly was gone; Theron stood on the terrace, gazing at the top of the Wall. They let him be and cleared off the dressing table in Gavin’s room. Pushing it in front of the window, where the light would be good, the two of them laid out all of Theron’s things, as near as they could remember to where they’d been in the workshop. It felt good to do all of this. It felt good to have a project, to work together, to feel like they were accomplishing something. For the few minutes it took, Judah felt an ease she had almost forgotten.
Gavin led Theron in, and they showed him what they’d done. Judah didn’t know what she’d expected. She knew it was too much to hope that whatever was missing in Theron would suddenly find itself; more likely, he would merely say, “Oh,” and drift away.
Instead, he said nothing. His hands dropped, limp, to his sides, and for a moment Judah was afraid