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From the highest window in the brothel, in the small, cramped room that Griffith is allowed to sleep in sometimes when Mom is working all night, you can see the castle.
The window is round like the porthole of a ship, glass smudged and dusty in between the glazing bars, and it’s too high for Griffith to reach. He has to prop a chair by one of the wooden dressers and climb to perch uncomfortably on top of it if he wants to be able to look out, but it’s worth it to see the stark outline of the silvery towers, spires as white as freshly fallen snow gleaming in the sunlight.
The room is quiet and dry enough, and it’s far enough away from the noise and the smell of the men downstairs that he can almost forget about them, at times. When Mom sits with him in the evenings before the sky turns fully dark, he can almost pretend that this is a home.
There’s a drawing of a castle on the first page of the book that Mom is using to teach him to read, but when Griffith asks her if it’s the same one he can see from the window, she shakes her head.
“This one is the Fairy King’s castle,” she tells him, very seriously, pointing at the page. “It appears on the night of the solstice, and you can only pass through the gates if you’re pure of heart, and walking backwards under a bright moonlight. In the light of day, you wouldn’t be able to see it.”
They only have the one book, and it’s old and battered, with a few pages missing here and there, and you have to turn all the other pages really slowly so that they don’t tear. They always crackle like dry leaves when Griffith grips a corner a little too tightly, creasing the paper.
It’s his, though, so Griffith doesn’t mind.
“Do they really have more books up at the castle?” he asks, and Mom pauses her reading to look at him.
She always reads slowly, a little haltingly, struggling over some of the longer words. Griffith knows that she makes parts of the book up sometimes, and mixes up the words when she gets tired of following them and starts to recount passages from memory. He can always tell, because he’s already a better reader than she is and he knows all of the stories by heart.
But her voice is warm and musical, and he never tires of listening to her.
“Of course they do,” she tells him, hushed and leaning in close like she’s sharing a wonderful secret, and Griffith presses his lips together to hide a smile. This one isn’t really a story, but it’s his favourite nonetheless.
“They have so many books they don’t even know where to put them,” she goes on. “They’re stacked on shelves that cover the walls and go all the way up to the ceiling, so high that you can only reach the ones at the very top by climbing a ladder.”
“Do you think they have more stories in those books?” Griffith presses, heart racing with the thought of a library so big you could spend your whole life trying to learn everything in it. “Ones that we don’t know?”
“I think we already have all the stories in the world,” Mom says, smiling. She flicks his forehead with her finger. “Right in here.”
Outside, the sun has already disappeared behind the tallest rooftops, and the sky is tinged a vibrant pink. Slanted blades of light cut across the floorboards at the foot of the bed.
“Tell me more?” Griffith says, voice rising like on a question, even though he knows she will.
And she does.
Griffith lets her voice guide him through familiar, impossible fantasies, through hidden passages and rose gardens that are evergreen, inside ballrooms built with ceilings of clear glass, so that if you look up while dancing you will see a kaleidoscope of colours swirling and blurring with every spin, the ladies’ gold and silver jewels twinkling like fairy dust.
Into the war room, where tables are set and huge maps are spread over them, drawn in such fine detail that you can see the outline of every tree in every forest, and the king’s knights sit with swords always ready at their side, sheathed in their scabbards, and talk about tournaments and battle strategies and the future of the kingdom.
Up in the tallest tower where the royal astronomers live, in their studies full of ink pots and mathematical instruments like big brass insects that they use to trace their own maps and measure the distance between the stars.
“Can we go one day?” Griffith asks, wriggling in place under the covers. “To see the maps and all the books.”
“If I’m good,” he adds hastily after a moment, voice solemn.
Mom smiles.
She looks tired, but her eyes are kind and full of warmth, blue like the sky at midday.
She’s beautiful.
“Of course, my love,” she says, leaning down to kiss the bridge of his nose. “If you’re very good.”
She takes the candle with her when she leaves, and Griffith listens intently as she makes her way downstairs until her faint light has disappeared under the doorway, and all that remains is the echo of footsteps and the sound of someone shouting from the lower floors.
He crawls out of bed then, and climbs over the dresser, curling into a ball with his arms laced around his knees and his blanket wrapped around him.
There are lights up in the castle, and he tries to imagine what each of them must be illuminating. One for the scribe poring over his scrolls. One for the princess poring over her many books. One for the king standing at his window, looking down on his kingdom at Griffith, barefoot in his chilly room, at Mom working downstairs.
He falls asleep like that, forehead pressed against the dirty glass, and dreams.