The old woman laughed. “You help her more than you know.”

“Not as you do. They tell me you brew teas that ease her pain.”

“And love eases pain that teas help not.”

I sighed. “Would that I knew what afflicted her. If I did, then I would take it away. I would make her as strong in body as she is in spirit.”

The old woman’s gaze moved across the hall. “It runs more truly in some. ’Tis their blessing, and their curse, for they feel all things more keenly.” Her green eyes turned to me. “Yet in the end, all such folk will feel the same burden.”

These words sent a chill through me, though I did not understand them. Or did I?

“You know something,” I said, moving closer to her. “That’s how you can help her as you do. Tell me, please, what’s wrong with her?”

“Nothing is wrong with her. ’Tis the world that’s wrong. This Earth. ’Tis harming her as it harms all like her. In the end it shall be too great. It cannot be defeated.”

I staggered. These words were a knife to my heart. At last I managed to speak. “That day I first came to the gates, you said she favored sun. But I found her in fog.”

“Favors it, yes. But bears it? Not well, I fear. Not well at all. It burns her, the sun of this world. She is like a figment born of the night mists, one that can only vanish in the light of dawn.”

A sickness filled me. I had taken her outside because the day was fine. What a fool I was! What a miserable fool. Yet despite my agitation I felt a spark of curiosity, and for the first time in many days I remembered I was a Seeker. Who was this old woman? How did she know such things?

“I must go make Miss Faraday’s tea,” Sadie said, and before I could speak she turned and vanished through the doorway.

Alis was soon resting comfortably, and I made my farewell, which she was too weary to protest. When I returned the next morning she was sitting up in bed, and the day after that I found her wrapped in a blanket in a chair in the hall. She continued to grow stronger, even as outside the weather turned chill and gloomy, wet with the rains of March.

All the while, I could not forget the words spoken by Sadie. Did she know something of Alis’s true nature? I had not gained another opportunity to speak to the old servingwoman, but all the same I was sure of it.

This world. It’s harming her, as it harms all like her. . . .

Were there others in London like Alis? If so, perhaps they would know a way to help her.

A scheme came to me. I knew it was an utter violation of the Desiderata to do what I intended, but I hardly cared. Damn the Seekers to hell, and damn the Philosophers with them. Alis was not a thing to be watched: an insect to be caught in a jar and observed as it perished. I would find others like her, and I would make them help her.

Except, even as I began my search, I said nothing of it to Alis; I gave no hint that might reveal her true nature to her. Was this some concession to the Seekers still? Or perhaps I only wished to protect her from knowledge that would trouble her already frail health.

Even I did not know the reason, for by then a madness had begun to come over me. I could not eat, I could not sleep. I could do nothing but think of Alis and search for those like her, those who could help her.

I passed my days with Alis as before, but now by night I descended into the vaults beneath the Seeker Charterhouse, as though I were a ghoul again—just like in Edinburgh as a boy, when I slept in the family crypt of the Gilroys. Only I did not come to these vaults to rest, but instead to work, and I did so feverishly, poring over old books, sifting through stacks of crackling parchments whose faded words I strained to read even in the light of a dozen candles. As a master, nothing in the library of the Seekers was forbidden to me; surely I would find some answers there. After all, the Philosophers had to know something about those of fairy heritage, else they would never have given me the assignment to observe Alis.

I was right. After many nights of searching I came upon a missive. It was addressed to the Philosophers, though it was unsigned. But no doubt they had known who it came from, and the information in it fascinated me even as it chilled my blood.

The missive spoke of a tavern—though it gave neither name nor location for this establishment— describing it as a place where those with “most peculiar and unearthly heritage” often gathered in secret. How the author of the missive came to know of this place, he did not write, but it became plain as I read that the patrons of this tavern were like Alis: people with the blood of fairies in their veins.

The missive was maddening in its brevity, but after many nights of searching I discovered a box lost in a corner, and in it found many more letters, all unsigned, but written in the same slanted hand as the first. I read them all, and by the time the candles were burned to stumps I knew not everything I wished to, but much all the same.

To be a fairy on this mundane Earth was an agony that could not long be borne; such an ethereal creature would soon perish here. Those who possessed some measure of fairy heritage also inherited this affliction, though to a lesser degree. To dwell on this world for such a person was often painful, though not always fatal, and the folk of the tavern had created various remedies that eased their suffering.

That was it—that was the knowledge I needed—though I was still frustrated by the anonymous author’s lack of detail as to the name and location of this tavern. The final missive began to glow in my hands as a shaft of gold light fell upon it. I looked up at a window, high in the wall of the vault; it was bright with the dawn. A new day had come, and hope with it. I spirited the letters back into their hiding place, then ascended the stone steps that led from the vaults, back to the world of the living.

“Hello there, Marius,” Byron said. He was sitting in the hall of the Charterhouse, a book and a cup of tea on the table before him. “So was it a long night at the pub, then? Forgive my saying so, but you look absolutely wretched.”

I lifted a hand to my temple, only realizing then how it throbbed. Lately, I had begun having frequent headaches. But it was only from the long nights of research, and what did I care anyway? This pain was nothing next to what Alis suffered.

“I must away,” I said.

“Nonsense, Marius.” Byron pushed aside his book. “Come, sit with me and have a cup. It’ll do you good.”

I shook my head. “I have things . . . I must away.” And before Byron could protest further, I was out the door of the Charterhouse.

I believed I would tell Alis everything that night—about myself and the Seekers, and about her own true nature. Only I didn’t. She was too weary, and I was weary as well from so many sleepless nights spent in the Seekers’ vaults. Nor did I tell her the next morning, or the morning after that. I remained silent, and each day her face grew paler, though if possible more lovely.

She was stronger some days than others, and on the Ides of March, on a fine spring afternoon, we at last ventured together to London’s new cathedral, St. Paul’s.

The old St. Paul’s, after much abuse and several attempts at restoration, had perished in the great London fire of 1666, and Christopher Wren had been commissioned to erect a replacement. By the look of things, Wren had much work left to do, for the cathedral was far from completed. The earth was open and raw all around, and much of the structure was no more than a stone skeleton cocooned by scaffolding. However, the dome, while not completely faced, soared toward the sky.

“I imagine you can see the whole world from up there,” Alis said, eyes shining, as I helped her down from the carriage.

I laughed. “Perhaps not the whole world, but certainly much of London at least.”