And Addie marvels a moment, despite herself, at the strange magic of it, the proof that in one way, the shadow kept his word. Twisted it, yes, warped her wishes into something wrong and rotten. But granted her this, at least.
To live.
A small, mad sound escapes her throat, and there is relief in it, perhaps, but also horror. For the truth of her hunger, which she is only just discovering. For the ache in her feet, though they do not cut or bruise. For the pain of the wound in her shoulder, before it healed. The darkness has granted her freedom from death, perhaps, but not from this. Not from suffering.
It will be years before she learns the true meaning of that word, but in this moment, as she walks into the thickening dusk, she is still relieved to be alive.
A relief that flickers when she reaches the edge of the city.
This is as far as Adeline has ever gone.
Le Mans looms at her back, and ahead the high stone walls give way to scattered towns, each one like a copse of tress, and then, to open field, and then, to what, she does not know.
When Addie was young, she would surge up the slopes that rose and fell around Villon, fling herself to the very edge of the hill, the place where the ground fell away, and stop, heart racing as her body leaned forward, longing for the fall.
The slightest push, and weight would do the rest.
There is no steep hill beneath her now, no slope, and yet, she feels her balance tilt.
And then, Estele’s voice rises to meet her in the dark.
How do you walk to the end of the world? she once asked. And when Addie didn’t know, the old woman smiled that wrinkled grin, and answered.
One step at a time.
Addie is not going to the end of the world, but she must go somewhere, and in that moment, she decides.
She is going to Paris.
It is, beside Le Mans, the only city she knows by name, a place that played so many times across her stranger’s lips, and featured into every tale her father told, a place of gods and kings, gold and majesty, and promise.
This is how it starts, he would have said, if he could see her now.
Addie takes the first step, and feels the ground give way, feels herself tip forward, but this time, she does not fall.
New York City
March 12, 2014
XVII
It is a better day.
The sun is out, the air is not so cold, and there is so much to love about a city like New York.
The food, the art, the constant offerings of culture—though Addie’s favorite thing is its scale. Towns and villages are easily conquered. A week in Villon was enough to walk every path, to learn every face. But with cities like Paris, London, Chicago, New York, she doesn’t have to pace herself, doesn’t have to take small bites to make the newness last. A city she can consume as hungrily as she likes, devour it every day and never run out of things to eat.
It is the kind of place that takes years to visit, and still there always seems to be another alley, another set of steps, another door.
Perhaps that’s why she hasn’t noticed it before.
Set off from the curb, and down a short flight of steps, there is a shop half-hidden by the line of the street. The awning was clearly once purple, but has long faded toward gray, though the shop’s name is still legible, picked out in white lettering.
The Last Word.
A used bookstore, judging by the name, and the windows brimming with stacked spines. Addie’s pulse thrills a little. She was certain she’d found them all. But that is the brilliant thing about New York. Addie has wandered a fair portion of the five boroughs, and still the city has its secrets, some tucked in corners—basement bars, speakeasies, members-only clubs—and others sitting in plain sight. Like Easter eggs in a movie, the ones you don’t notice until the second or third viewing. And not like Easter eggs at all, because no matter how many times she walks these blocks, no matter how many hours, or days, or years she spends learning the contours of New York, as soon as she turns her back it seems to shift again, reassemble. Buildings go up and come down, businesses open and close, people arrive and depart and the deck shuffles itself again and again and again.
Of course, she