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.