The Paper Girl and the Stilt-Walker

The Widow's Song

Outside, the cold was coming. Winter had begun to lay hold of the city in a matter of weeks, clearing the clouds and even thinning out the immovable haze. The nights were longer and darker, the air was like ice, and the clock loomed above the city with its round face glowing like the copper moon.

The arrival of winter also left Mina with a kind of dull, sinking feeling. She had now been living away from the clock and all of its safety for an entire season. Somehow, it felt as though she'd lived down here with Monk and the others forever, but she also felt the lingering sadness of having lost such a warm, cheerful life behind from the moment she cloistered herself in the clock tower. It was like waking up from a very good dream and finding yourself in the bleak, macabre situation that you were always destined for.

Mina's depression deepened with the darkness of the winter nights, which arrived before she closed the shop every day. Eventually, when the shadows lengthened and the chocolate shop filled with darkness, she and Pip would have to light all the candles, which made the shop look more like a funeral parlor than a sweet shop.

Lettuce noticed Mina's gloom when she visited.

"You're wilting," she speculated, basking in the deep blue light of the stained glass Jordan River above her.

Mina nodded. "You seem to be thriving," she noticed.

Lettuce beamed, her many leaves splayed out in the colorful light. "It's getting cold outside, but there's a fire elemental that lives in the choir box," she said, pointing one sapling-white hand up to the place high above their heads. "He keeps it warm."

Mina looked behind her at the choir box high above, but it was obscured by darkness. "It must be nice, having someone to keep you warm," she said dully.

That had been her mood lately. She thought of Monk, who said very little, and Marie-Élise, who was either as moody as she was or crying or confused. Pip was a good friend, but he was very awkward. She suspected that it had something to do with the fact that he hid his tail and his horns. Lettuce was the only person (or plant, whichever she was) who she could talk to extensively.

Well, except for Richelieu.

A week after Halloween, Mina had visited him as he'd instructed her to do. It had been raining when she came to the impressive front doors, and she was greeted somberly by Coppelia, who silently led her to the courtyard. Pip had accompanied her, as he said he would, and waited in the foyer for a long time with a cup of tea.

Mina looked around the enormous house and its spacious corridors, feeling very small. Out a pair of huge French doors, she was led to the courtyard by Coppelia, who left her at the door before Mina could wonder where Richelieu was. By now, silvery winter rain still fell in dismal sheets over an expansive lawn, lined with very orderly hedges and flowers. The gardens were all dead now, but the faintest traces of blood red could be seen on a few petals that clung to the gnarled bushes. In the very center sat a huge black fountain, spewing ice-cold water and drenched by the rain. Mina edged closer to it and looked inside. There were fish swimming under the rippling surface, slender and skeletal, but strangely pretty. Mina examined them with interest for a while, lost in the constant swimming of the boney fish until a shadow passed over them.

"You're soaked," a velvet voice remarked, and Mina noticed that the rain had stopped falling on her. She looked up to see Mr. Richelieu holding a large old-fashioned umbrella over her head. As usual, he wore his formal frock coat and cravat, his hair tied back in a silvery-blond ponytail.

"Is it okay for you to be outside?" Mina asked at once, startled into beginning a conversation. "With your health, I mean."

Richelieu nodded. "It's dark today," he explained, gesturing at the falling winter rain. "And an umbrella helps, too. Shall we?"