Henry Day. No matter how many times uttered or written, those two words remain an enigma. The faeries had called me Aniday for so long that I had bee the name. Henry Day is someone else. In the end, after our months of watg him, I felt no envy for the man, only a sort of restrained pity. He had bee so old, and desperation bowed his shoulders and marked his face. Henry had taken my name and the life I could have lived, a run through his fingers. How passing strao settle on the surface of the world, bound to time and lost to orue nature.
I went bay book. Our enter outside the library spooked me, so I waited ht, and before dawn, through the y, I slid into the old darkened room and lit a single dle to show the way. I read my story and was satisfied. Tried to sing the notes of Henrys song. Into one bundle went my manuscript, papers from when I first arrived, and the letter from Speck; and into another, Henrys score. The last of these I plao leave at his er table. Our mischief over, the time had e to make amends. Above me, glass crashed, as if a window broke and shattered. An obse exclamation, a thud to the floor, then the sound of footsteps approag the hidden trapdoor.
Perhaps I should have run away at the first ce. My emotions drifted from dread to excitement, a sensation not unlike waiting at the door long ago for my fathers daily return from work to me in his arms, or those first days in the forest when I expected Speck to show up suddenly and relieve my lonesomeness. No such illusions with Henry Day, for he would doubtless not befrieer all these years. But I did not hate him. I planned my words, how I would five him, present his stolen music, give him my name, and bid him farewell.
He sawed away at the carpeting to figure out how to get into the crawl-space, while I paced beh, p whether to e to his aid. After ay, he found the door and swung it ba its hinges. A spotlight flooded in from above, like sunshine pierg a dark forest. A perfect square separated our two worlds. All at once, he stuck his head in the frame and peered into the blaess. I darted over to the opening and looked him straight in the eyes, his six inches from my own. The sight of him discerted me, for no sign of kindness nition marked his features, no expression but raw disgust, which twisted his mouth into a snarl, and rage beat out of his eyes. Like a madman, he clambered through the hole into our world—a tor one hand, a knife iher, a coil of rope unspooling across his chest—and chased me into the er. "Keep your distance," I warned. "I send you from this world in a single blow." But he kept ing. Henry said he was sorry for what he was about to do and lifted the lantern above my head, so I ran right past him. He threw the fire at my back.
The lantern glass broke and a blaze spilled out like water over a pile of blas, and the wool smoldered and burned, flames rag straight for my papers. We faced each other in the sm light. As the fire roared and burned brighter, he rushed forward and picked up all the papers. His eyes wide the sight of his score and my drawings. I reached for the book, anxious only for Specks letter, ahrew it into the er for me to retrieve. When I turned around, Henry Day was gone, and his ons—the rope, the khe iron bar—were on the floor. The trapdoor banged closed, and a long, thin crack opened overhead. The flames burst upward, brightening the room as if sun bore through the walls.
On the ceiling a picture began to em