HUES THAT I HAD NOT SEEN

In the city they built war machines. The once-blue skies stained gray with the smoke of war: burning coal and smelting iron to build bombs and bombs and bombs. Everything became gray: the quaint little cafes, the mechanics’ garages, and all the bookshops; the books inside and all their pages turned gray. The men and women of the city lost their shades and tones and hues. The doctors turned to war, the writers turned to war, the musicians turned to war: all the best of the city went to killing ways instead of better ways.

There lived in this gray city a young, gray man. His brown hair, once the same shade and tone of a squirrel darting from branch to branch in the spring, was now struck by shades of gray. He used to tuck a pen behind his ear, but it fell into a sewer grate some time ago and he never replaced it. Perhaps he wished to one day become a journalist, but in actuality he worked as an accountant in an office, calculating and tabulating the endless mathematics of death and dying. It did not bother him. The little bakery on the streetcorner where he ate breakfast served only the blandest of stale pastries and coffee without cream or sugar. Perhaps some time ago it may have served the most delicious little buttered treats, thin and airy, and biting into them may have felt like eating a cloud while flying through a blue, blue sky.

The young, gray man moved inelegantly and mechanically through his gray life, as if swimming in an autumn lake while dressed in a full and proper suit. One could not say whether he was happy, because happiness requires from an individual a kind of investment, a risk, and there is no risk in gray. The bombs had not yet exploded, the children had not yet screamed, the soldiers had not yet started marching upon the streets with the pounding of their black, black boots. So one could not say that he was unhappy, either. He simply was.

And then, on an unsuspecting Saturday, in which the old women tended to their ashen gardens and the old men played chess gray-against-gray, the young man went for a walk. It was his habit to walk the city because he had once taken pleasures from such walks before the city began to prepare for war. He never plotted a course or chose a particular direction, but instead simply walked. It was an activity without purpose, self-contained and content to exist as it was: an unpaced progression driven by the whims of a sleeping heart. But this walk was unique because, on this unsuspecting Saturday, he walked into a little club with an ancient piano probably carved from the wood of trees that had been climbed by laughing children, trees that had then gone peacefully into the end of trees.

When he opened the doors to the club, all the gray was obliterated by a rush of colors: hues that he had not seen with his gray eyes in quite some time. The host of the club was an older gentleman who bowed his head respectfully and in the twinkle of his eyes there was something much like the gold of a well-kept watch handed down from father to son at least a half-dozen times. The tables were sturdy and not a single chair had an uneven leg. Young serving girls danced their way through the club, keeping every glass straight and tall on their trays. And then: the piano. Oh, what a grand and stately piano, a beautiful and magnificent piano, a piano beyond all pianos, such was its construction. And then: the sound! Rich and layered, textured like the handiwork of a thousand weavers with a thousand different strands of silk; it filled the comfortable interior of the lively club but never overpowered the hushed conversations of lovers.

Who was it, the young man wondered, who could produce such wonderful sounds from such a wonderful piano? The person must be wonderful as well, he concluded. His hair turned brown again while he searched with his eyes, which were also turning brown again: the color of milk chocolate left out in the sun for fourteen minutes too long. And as his gaze forced its way past the swirling rush of music and color and life that was pushing its way outward from the piano, he found the source. It may be enough to say that she had pale yellow hair and blue eyes. Or it may not be enough. For the young man, it would have not been enough, because he did not see pale yellow hair: he drank with his eyes a perfect blend of lemonade, with just the right balance of lemon and sugar and water, and exactly six ice cubes suspended like fanciful marionettes; he drank with his eyes the blue of the ocean as perceived for the first time by a boy of seven years who for all of his seven years has read textbooks and picturebooks and fairy tale books about the ocean. She was tall and slim, with long fingers, and she played the piano.

The young man was afraid. For the first time in his life he was confronted by a presence that he could not tabulate or calculate. She existed beyond the scope of his figures and equations. He perspired, slightly, while standing in the club, letting the music pick him up with its fingers and place him neatly into an envelope without causing a single papercut. Such splendid music! he thought to himself, or perhaps he whispered it out into the air, knowing that this was a place of reverence and so all whispers were sacred. Such a splendid girl! he whispered, definitely. He ordered coffee to calm his nerves. It did not at all diminish the shock to his system that he had suffered. He wiped at his brow with a handkerchief, which he then replaced in his pocket. He was still standing. At this time he must have been incapable of sitting, or moving to any great degree. But then his knees buckled, and he reached for the closest chair, and heaved himself into it, feeling as if an amazing burden had been lifted from his shoulders, the freedom nearly suffocating in its lack of weight. He realized that the blue-eyed girl had stopped playing, but was not smiling. She is not smiling! he whispered. He decided, right then and there, two concrete things: first, that he was in love with the blue-eyed girl; second, that he must make a gift of a smile to her. The young man remained seated and drained the last of his coffee. He repeated these two decisions to himself, whispering, over and over and over again, while the blue-eyed girl played piano, perfectly, through the night.

The young man went back to work the following Monday. He felt dissipated, as if his constituent particles had decided to loosen their bonds to each other. He went to his gray desk and seated himself in his gray chair with piles of figures, stacks of paper sheets and files arrayed in front of him. He could not summon forth the effort to tabulate, or calculate. He spent the rest of his day in this fashion, trapped in gelatin. But when the clocks rang at precisely 5 o’ clock, the gray men stood up all at once, taking their gray briefcases in hand and donning their gray hats, and swooped through the exits as a migratory flock of clockwork birds. The young man watched, in awe. I was one of them! he thought to himself. He left the office, also leaving behind his hat and briefcase. He walked past the little bakery on the streetcorner, and he walked past his residence which was an unadorned apartment in an unadorned building, unassuming and completely unremarkable. He went, again, on this most gray of Mondays, to the club with the piano, and the girl.

When he opened the doors to the club — actually, he did not open the doors to the club. He tried to open the doors to the club. They were locked, and refused to give way. The young man became immediately furious. He took two steps back then lunged forward with a mighty kick. The doors did not move, and a terrible bolt of pain sparked through the young man’s leg. He cursed very loudly. The street was gray and empty. He closed his eyes, trying to drag up the memory of the music from the dusty crevices and compartments of his mind. Or he may have been trekking through the forest of memory, pushing through dense foliage, brushing back the tree branches closing in on his path, and holding his hands to his mouth to call out for the music. But he was not searching for the music, really. He sought the blue-eyed girl. Perhaps she was the music, and the music was her. He vaguely recalled an old, sentimental teacher saying something of the sort in his school days: we define our deeds, and our deeds define us, piece-by-piece. But he had not been a very scholarly boy. And so he stood on that street, hands held up to his mouth to carry his straining voice, calling out for the blue-eyed girl through a gray, gray night.

***

The blue-eyed girl was not so much a girl, in fact. She was quite the capable young woman. If the young man could have seen her at that moment from his street, instead of calling out her name, he would have closed his eyes and opened his nose and inhaled quite deeply, for she was frying sausages in a little pan. The aroma of the sizzling meat filled her tiny apartment, which was somewhat cramped, but also warm, and cozy. It was not gray: she lived there, after all. The apartment was its constituent colors: its brown walls, and green rugs, and yellow curtains, and white linens, and cream countertops. There was a tiny kitchen and a tiny sitting room that had one tiny chair and a tiny bedroom with two tiny beds. One bed was hers and the other belonged to her younger brother, who was the only family she had left. The brother, like her, had pale blonde hair, but his was tousled and downy, as if a golden goose rested upon the top of his head. His eyes, like hers, were blue, and they were constantly darting around like tiny fish looking for tasty crumbs to nibble on. He had a very small frame for his age and his legs hung uselessly from his waist. He was paralyzed, and she loved him deeply.

Each day, she carefully dressed him: trousers, shirt, socks and shoes. If it was a particularly cold day, she helped him put on his coat, which was made from wool and very warm and comfortable. He also had a dashing flat cap that had been given to him by their grandfather, who was now dead, had died while crossing the street. He had not been hit by an automobile. On the day of his death he was walking at a regular, crisp pace. He was a healthy old gentleman, holding a wooden cane capped in unadorned silver in his right hand, and when he walked he often closed his hand into a fist without realizing it. At the time of his death he was recalling: the grassy hill upon which he laid out a blanket for his wife, whom he believed to be the most beautiful woman who lived and who had ever lived (and he may very well have been correct); the taste of the cheese which he sliced with a pocketknife; the taste of the white wine which he had purchased with the wages of the previous month; the taste of his wife’s mouth, which he believed to be the most perfect mouth in all of Germany; and so on, and so forth. He went peacefully into death, remembering all that had been great in his life. He collapsed on the street and never awoke.

The brother had the brilliant grin of his grandfather. The grin had skipped a generation, passing over the boy’s father, who by the time he passed away was missing most of his teeth. The brother enjoyed chess greatly, and had enjoyed it before he lost the use of his legs, but enjoyed it even more now that he could enjoy little else. He was very tolerant of others, though at first there had been name-calling and insults from his peers. He often asked his sister to sing to him, and to tell him stories, though she was not an adroit storyteller. She forgot details, and sometimes lost her place, or would begin to discuss something entirely removed from the story, something she had seen or heard outside, during her regular work as a laundress. He chastised her for these narrative missteps, although he secretly treasured them as he treasured awkward half-songs of adolescent birds performed just before morning. Such songs were the best, the brother decided, though he loved her other songs almost as much. She really had quite a voice.

The blue-eyed girl worked all week long, moving through the gray city as a quiet blur of warmth and color, smelling mostly of soap and a little bit of something else, something unknown and irreplaceable and very pleasant. A man on the street might see her pass and wonder for the briefest of moments: what are the odds of such a girl existing in our city, a city who holds such powerful explosives close to its bosom? But then he lowers his head, and goes to the shop to purchase a replacement pipe for his kitchen sink, and if you asked him the next day if he had seen anything out of the ordinary recently, he would shake his hand, and stroke his moustache, and then hold forth for thirty minutes on the joys of our modern age while you hastily sought the closest exit and pretended to be interested in what he had to say. But if you could spare a moment for the blue-eyed girl, why, she would take your hand in hers, both of her hands, soft, and warm, and she would laugh with delight as she spoke of hot-air balloons traversing the Himalayas, and Chinese emperors masquerading as dragons or dragons masquerading as emperors, and massive black bears eating every tree in the great northern expanse of Canada until it resembled the dark, bare shoulder of a Greek dancing girl. She would sing, if you had an ear, and so that is why she went to the little club every Saturday. Or it might be more appropriate to say that the little club existed for her, every Saturday.

And so Saturday arrived without fanfare, and without much aplomb. Among the ranks of all Saturdays in the history of the day, this was not an extremely anticipated Saturday, except by the young man whom we understood to no longer be gray. Just before dawn, a very short man with very large, black eyebrows walked up to the doors of the little club. He wore very plain clothes. He fished a bronze key-ring out of his jacket pocket and unlocked the great bronze lock on the doors of the little club. He walked into the club and closed the doors behind him. One might have heard the metallic click-clock of an extremely well-made lock, if one had stood a few paces down the street. And from that street came a procession of men and women of varying heights and weights and shapes and sizes: the elderly gentleman with golden eyes who was the host of the club; a stocky middle-aged woman with frizzed red hair; a tall, whip-thin man of indeterminate age with small green eyes. Each person walked up to the doors of the little club, retrieved a key-ring, unlocked the doors, walked inside, closed the doors, and then locked them. This procedure was repeated until every member of the procession had entered the club. And then they set themselves to the hard work of cooking food, washing glasses, scrubbing floors, tuning the piano, filling the cooler with ice, setting tables. They went about these tasks with the great care and attention of an exquisite dilettante executing her toilette. Outside, the young man nervously scrubbed a hand through his brown hair and approached the streetcorner.

Throughout the existence of mankind there have been a number of extraordinary confluences of unassuming events which have then led to great things. Antony and Cleopatra happened to meet on a dusty road in Egypt when she dropped a bundle of grapes which she had been saving for after supper, and when she leaned over to pick up the grapes, so did Antony, and their hands touched briefly, but for enough of a duration to transmit a surge of electricity powerful enough to fill Tesla’s dreams nearly two thousand years in the future. As for Romeo and Juliet, well: never has the masquerade ball had more reason to be proud of itself. And in the great wide gray of this city, with all its gray men and women working day-and-night, even on Saturday, to launch forth into inglorious war, it is quite possible that an entire city block lost all power for almost an entire minute. The minute-in-question passed as such: the young man nervously scrubbed a hand through his brown hair and approached the streetcorner; the blue-eyed girl also approached the streetcorner; the young man, having just decided to not bother at all with knocking on the doors of the little club, turned around slightly more quickly than was expected by the blue-eyed girl and promptly took one step without looking; the young man stepped straight into the blue-eyed girl, who reacted in the method that first came to mind, which was to shriek; the blue-eyed girl continued to shriek for some five to ten seconds; the young man — chagrined and apologetic and hoping to somehow stop the blue-eyed girl from shrieking, which was nothing at all like her singing and was, in fact, hurting his ears a great deal — grabbed her hands with his hands. Every perfectly-tuned clock in the city marked the turn of a minute. He looked into her blue eyes. She stopped shrieking, and blinked at him. And they remained like this for another minute, in silence.

My name is Bastian- the young man said finally. He smiled, briefly, as it was somewhat impossible not to smile in the presence of the blue-eyed girl. He shifted some of his weight to the back of his right heel, though he knew his left side was stronger.

My name is Freja- the blue-eyed girl said as she curtseyed. Her curtsey was a gesture dense with meaning: she had a particular way of clutching lightly the sides of her plain cotton dress such that if a blind man were to hear her curtsey he would believe himself to be in the presence of an empress. The young man forgot to breathe for nearly twenty seconds.

Do you like croissants? the young man, our Bastian, asked. It was the first thing that came to mind. Actually, it was the second thing that came to mind; the first was, of course, Freja, the blue-eyed girl. The croissants crowded for mental attention, pushing and shoving and shouldering their way past the other thoughts waiting at the train station inside Bastian’s head. They were conjured by a French baker who might have been a magician and they smelled of freshly-churned butter and a gentle brook. Get out! the young man shouted inside his head at the croissants, even though they were probably very delicious.

I actually quite enjoy them, yes- Freja said, gesturing at the doors. In fact, would you like to-

I would love to! Bastian said. She managed a radiant smile over her shoulder as she led him into the club, even though she had invited him into her retreat away from the overwhelming and ever-encroaching grayness of the city mostly out of politeness. Bastian was oblivious, and followed without another thought. All rationality had evaporated from his head with the haste of dew under the spears and swords of summer heat. She closed the doors behind them, and the click-clock of the bronze lock floated out, and away, just like that.

***

Before the city had turned gray, Bastian had often dreamed the same dream. He was walking through a forest; he could not say which one. It was daylight, and slightly cloudy, so that the sun fell like arrowshafts through the branches and leaves of the great and grand trees above. And then it was dark. He had a sudden sensation of being irrevocably lost, a terrible fear that climbed hand-over-hand from a deep and unclear place into the fore of his conscious mind. To escape the fear he scrambled up the nearest tree and sat upon an outstretched branch, leaning back against the trunk as if it were the bosom of his mother whom he did not remember. He closed his eyes in the dream and the fear wrapped its arms around him. The dark, the fear, the great grand tree: they swept around him until he awoke, gripping tightly at his blanket. But except for that detail one might have seen him for a cadaver until he burst free of the dream.

The dream came to him again when he walked into the club for the second time. He was staring at the small of Freja’s back and then he saw the dream like an improperly-set film reel, scattershot in its images. She gestured to an empty stool at the bar. He sat on the stool, smiling nervously while he pushed away the forest inside his head. She explained to him that she had to help with preparations for the club’s opening. She explained to him that she had to fix supper for her brother and then bring her brother to the club. She explained to him that she could not attend to him as a host ought attend to her guest but that she had no choice in the matter, as her duties prevented her from sparing any substantial length of time for socializing. She explained to him that she loved to play the piano and to sing and she explained to him that although he seemed like a nice fellow she did not think he should expect anything more than a place on a stool in the club every Saturday night. During these series of explanations Bastian nodded once, adjusted his cuffs twice, crossed his legs once in the fashion of gentlemen then immediately uncrossed them, and raked his right hand through his hair three times. He was not aware of any of these actions. Freja smiled, satisfied that he understood, and disappeared.

A cup of coffee, black and lacking an accompanying spoon or even a saucer, appeared on the bar-top. Without thinking Bastian reached for it and took two sips, looking with his brown eyes at where Freja had once been. The tall, whip-thin bartender with small green eyes smiled at the back of Bastian’s head. No one was counting but that was how Bastian passed the afternoon: two sips every thirty minutes. He did not eat the proffered food and he did not watch the people of the club go about their work. He stared at the small of Freja’s back and from somewhere inside the forest there came an exhalation that shook the branches and the leaves: inside his head a beast of mythical proportions had come to life. He did not know it. Would it have wings, or claws, or a whip-like tail; would it have horns, or razor-sharp fangs; would it breathe fire, or sling forth venom from its maw? Or perhaps it would be a gentle beast. And then: a pounding at the door, staccato, with barely-constrained ferocity. The bartender looked at the doors. All the others looked at the doors. And Bastian sipped two more sips.

***

As Bastian’s coffee went from hot to lukewarm to cool to the touch, Freja went out into the city. What a fool- she thought to herself, of Bastian, whom she was at first hesitant to speak to but had judged as harmless shortly after meeting him. Flecks of gray had clung to his person. She was not impressed, and she was too busy to spare time for unimpressive young men, or young men at all, really. In her plain cotton dress she moved swiftly until she arrived at her home. She swung open the doors and climbed the stairs and unlocked the door to her apartment and pulled at the handle. She paused, though these movements and actions had long become rote for her. Exactly four hairs, pale and blonde and nearly-translucent, stood straight up from the nape of her neck. These four hairs said to Freja in a whispered chorus: run, run far away, stay away from what is inside the place that was once your home, that place is no longer your home, there is a darkness inside that place and it will consume you, it will destroy you unless you save yourself. Freja bristled. The four hairs said amongst themselves: it’s no use, you know; she has no sense and too much courage for her own sake. And so they went quiet, like reprimanded soldiers. She opened the door to her apartment.

First she saw her brother, sitting in his wheelchair, his beautiful face somehow resolute and cold and brave. There was not even a single drop of sweat on his forehead. But his knuckles were pale from how tightly he gripped the arms of his wheelchair. A miasmatic cloud of gray seemed to be hanging in the air, billowing out and around the three men whom she had not initially seen. They wore trenchcoats and trousers and unpolished leather shoes. They did not seem to have faces in the proper sense of the term; that is to say, they certainly had eyes and noses and mouths and ears and eyebrows and chins, all the constituent parts of a regular face, but their faces were not regular faces, they were perhaps the faces of men who had long ago given up the ability to see or be seen in anything but monochrome. They were not sinister men. They did not appear to be evil men. But Freja knew they were not to be trusted: she knew even before one of the three faceless men gripped her brother’s shoulder and another of the three faceless men stood behind the wheelchair to push her brother out and the last of the three faceless men, a tall and broad-shouldered man without any distinguishing features, held his black gloved hand out to her. Between his thumb and index finger he held a card. The card was black, as if dipped into a vat of ink and frozen, and had no markings or writing on its surface. She did not take the card. The last faceless man dropped the card on the floor and gestured to the others.

The anger inside Freja’s head began as a spark. It was a very dim spark, the cast-off from a struggling match struck in wind. She did not immediately realize the presence of her anger or the gravity of the situation unfolding in front of her. But in the brief span of time between the gesturing of the last faceless man to the others and the actual leaving of the faceless men — perhaps no more than one minute, a full turn of a perfectly-wound clock — in this minute Freja’s anger went through a tremendous change. At ten seconds through the minute, Freja’s anger crossed the Sahara, summoning to it all the burning sands and suns of that majestic desert. At twenty-five seconds through the minute, Freja’s anger traveled to the depths of the ocean and pulled out from the cracks in the earth all the heat of a million sailors dead and drowned. By the end of the minute, Freja’s anger could have set fire to all the skies in a way that only a scant few scientists could have predicted. The scientists succeeded, eventually, but Freja’s anger was bound by her body. When she rushed forth at the faceless men with fists and screaming and all that love and anger, she was brushed aside. She was pushed down, turned away, and eventually ignored, even as she leapt at the back of the last faceless man and clawed and bit and scratched and threw her fists again, and again. The last faceless man did not spare her a glance, nor did he show any pity, or any emotion at all. He did not even seem perturbed by her assault. He simply ensured that the other two faceless men had escorted her brother away, then closed the door in her face. She twisted the handle; the door was barred.

Freja could have given up. She contemplated it for the briefest of moments. Shortly thereafter she began to direct her hatred at herself. How could I have let them take my brother, the most important person in my life, away from me? she asked herself, inside her head, which was like a furnace. But then she tossed it all aside, like the paper used to wrap a sandwich at the lunch counter, and she climbed out of her apartment’s window, down the side of the building, to the street. The street was empty but if anyone should have happened to glimpse her at that precise and exact time, just after she straightened herself and dusted off the front of her dress, then that person might have seen the reincarnation of Joan of Arc, dressed in full armor, holding a mighty lance, with the visor of the helm pulled up to show the justice in her eyes. She hefted the lance over her shoulder and went down the streets to go a-hunting. If this city could go to war, and for what, then why not a girl, for love of her brother?

***

Bastian concluded his two sips of coffee as the bartender went over to the doors and, tentatively, opened them as if knowing what lay out in the dark. And Freja strode in, bristling with a strange and terrible confluence of love and rage, that force which drives men to brave burning buildings to save their families, until scarred and scorched and clutching loved ones to their chests they burst out of the flames. She nearly bowled the bartender over and in doing so she spared the briefest nod of apology, for she was never one to completely lose her manners. The bartender was never one to begrudge a woman her incongruities and so he simply stood and brushed off his shirt. Freja moved swiftly to Bastian and tapped him on the shoulder.

Do you fancy yourself to be a clever young man? she asked. Bastian blinked three times.

I am quite skilled at tabulating and calculating- he began.

Then come with me, and calculate for me the path by which I may find my brother- she said. Bastian was no blacksmith but he knew the steel in her voice and he loved her all the more for it. What else could he do but abide?

All right- he said, and he raked a hand through his brown hair as if he could predict that it would be mussed by other forces soon enough. Without acknowledgement Freja walked out into the city and without argument Bastian followed.

By some trick of the waning light the buildings seemed taller, almost looming over their heads like great old trees in a darkening forest. The streets seemed wider, as if the city were yawning, and the streetlights flickered like fangs. They walked, Freja slightly ahead of Bastian, and Bastian did not know where they were going. He felt like a hunted fox, and he adjusted his collar to prove to himself that he was a capable young man. After all, he knew his multiplication tables, and he knew how to dress himself, and it was these things that set men apart from beasts.

Where are we going? he asked. Freja paused, and answered without turning.

To my home, so that you might prove yourself to be as clever as your numbers- she said.

And they walked on.

***

When Freja opened the door to her apartment, gray seeped out around its frame to fall into the hallway, and though it was but another hue, a shade that had once enveloped Bastian entirely, he could not help but take a step backward. Now that he held color again in his limited grasp he could not let it go, not for anything. But Freja was guided by her purpose and her heart and so she pushed through the clouds that had gathered in her home. Bastian recovered himself- what sort of man am I if I cannot suffer loss for the woman whom I love? he asked himself. And he was but two or three steps behind her.

In the tiny sitting room, Bastian immediately noticed the black card upon the floor, and he was about to remark upon it when Freja leaned over to pick it up. She held it as if holding a spider by two of its legs, unwilling to kill it but unwilling as well to embrace it. She turned toward Bastian and offered it to him.

This is all that was left behind- she said. There were three men, in trenchcoats, trousers, and unpolished shoes, men without faces like you or I, and they kidnapped my brother for reasons I cannot fathom, and I must have him back or else I have nothing- she said, all in a rush, like water under winter ice, not stilled by the unrelenting cold.

Bastian took the card and examined it, both sides, three times, and then a fourth, because he had always been taught to be cautious in one’s calculations: missteps cost time or money or both alike, and above all else a calculated figure must not lie; if men and women could no longer believe in numbers then there was nothing left to believe in. But then he looked up, at Freja, and saw in her the sum of beauty: passion, courage, wit, and a perfect waist around which to place his arm when dancing a perfect waltz. Regret and elation touched the edges of his mind as he realized that he knew something about this black card.

They have taken your brother to teach him how to build bombs- he said, and as he said it, he knew that he was breaking her heart. Her expression did not change save for the slightest downturn at the corners of her mouth, and this was heartbreak at its purest, one millimeter away from disappointment and two millimeters away from chagrin. But Bastian had mended his own shirts and trousers and so he thought he might be able to mend her once-consummate heart.

Where? she asked. Casual observation would never have indicated that anything was amiss. Her voice was steady. At the same time her heart was breaking, it was readying its arms, for hearts, like men and women, build weapons in times of war.

There are factories where the bombs are built, and offices where the bombs are counted, but before all that, there is a laboratory where men dream of bombs. I believe that we can find your brother before the dreams take hold- he said. In a moment of unforeseen bravery, Bastian looked into her eyes, and he took one of her soft hands in his, and he felt so coarse in comparison.

Was it cleverness, or chance, that permitted you this knowledge? she asked, and her blue-eyed gaze was unwavering. For the briefest of moments Bastian considered a lie, but he dismissed it. His heart could not brook the lie.

By chance I am a young man whose profession is the counting of the city’s bombs- he said. And her gaze remained still, and now it was Bastian’s turn: his heart began to break apart like a crust of bread in a hot bowl of soup, and the corners of his mouth shifted, one millimeter away from disappointment and two millimeters away from chagrin. His heart was breaking because he saw in her eyes that she would never love him. She removed her hand from his grasp.

Take me to him- she said. He bowed his head, and now she followed him.

***

Over the years, the city’s buildings had grown taller and taller, and now as Bastian and Freja walked beneath the endless rows of windows, some well-lit and others dark or with curtains drawn, Bastian wondered if they could grow any taller. He walked a route that he had walked only once before, upon being instructed to deliver a large envelope with sheaves of printed numbers. He had carried out this task and returned to his regular work without complaint or question and it had never occurred to him that he would be contributing to the construction of more perfect bombs. He looked up at the windows and he saw the lighted windows as breadcrumbs left behind, a trail to follow, and the darkened windows were crows, waiting for him to stumble, so that they might snatch away the path. He remembered that he had once had an imagination and he wished for it now as respite against the burdening night.

They came to a building that might have once been a library. Perhaps, a long time ago, boys and girls had come to this building to seek the fairy tales that carried their dreams, and perhaps some of the children felt they ought to be too old for fairy tales and so went to the library in secret, making sure that neither the neighborhood tailor nor a comrade from school could espy their scouring for that which they should not abandon, such fuel for beautiful things. Now this proud edifice housed only dreams of formulae and physical and chemical reactions through which other dreams might be suffocated. Men and women, young and old, toiled through the day and the night toward that end. Bastian stopped in front of it and Freja stood a few paces behind him. He turned to face her.

I have identification that will allow me to enter the outlying hallways without raising undue concern- he said. From there I will go to a side entrance on the west. I will let you in, and then we must proceed with the utmost care. I am not entirely familiar with the interior of the building, where the scientists perform their work. There are guards who might find our wanderings amiss should we tarry.

Freja nodded and walked into the alleyway to find the side entrance. She was surprised to discover that she was wholly unafraid.

Bastian watched her for a moment, then entered the building. A man in a gray uniform looked up from his desk and asked for identification. Bastian provided the folded papers which vouchsafed his presence. The man in the gray uniform spared the documents only the briefest of glances before returning them. He was reading a novel. Perhaps it had been left behind when the bookshelves were torn down.

Bastian made his way through innumerable hallways which to him shared even the most miniscule of details insofar as appearance was concerned. He was thankful for his acute memory and his navigational skills. He might have made a decent sailor, but the age of exploration was long over, and he had no queen for whom he might plant his flag in foreign soil. After some minutes of traversing the illusory hallways he arrived at the correct door. First glancing back the way he came and then the way he had not come, Bastian opened the door and Freja filled his sight. Her cheeks were flush both from the slight cold and the anticipation of seeing her quest come to its successful end. She looks something like Joan of Arc- he thought to himself.

Thank you- she said. He gestured for her to enter, and she did so. He closed the door behind her.

Now we shall continue inward, where prior knowledge cannot lead the way- he said. She nodded, and they walked down the hallway, now side-by-side. From appearances it would seem he was who he was, a bomb-counter, a patriotic young man dedicated to his work, but she cut a far more conspicuous character, a beautiful young woman in a plain dress, and so Bastian was somewhat concerned. But there was nothing for it but to press on.

Most of the doors they passed by were closed. However, some were wide-open or slightly ajar, and Bastian chanced a look as they walked. What he saw did not quite surprise him, but it unnerved him in his current state. In rooms that might have otherwise been classrooms, there were people planning and plotting how best to destroy, equations derived for the sake of more efficient explosions, models construed for burning everything away. And all of these people were uniform in hue: they wore gray uniforms, no matter their age or gender.

***

As Bastian watched a young, gray woman measuring a clear fluid in a cylinder through a doorway, Freja stopped.

Something the matter? he asked. She held up a hand; she knew this feeling; exactly four hairs, pale and blonde and nearly-translucent, stood straight up from the nape of her neck.

That door, at the end of the hallway- she said. My brother is there and so are the faceless men.

Bastian looked at the door of which she spoke, then back at her. Logic bore against the course he was going to take. There was very little probability that the two of them could overpower three men and escort a wheelchair-bound boy out of the building and to safety without being pursued and eventually caught. But he did not have a choice — or rather, he had chosen quite some time ago. Though he felt made of tin, and his heart a leaden lump of coal, he was yet entwined in an irrevocable love, and there was nothing for it but to press on.

They walked, side-by-side, to the door at the end of the hallway. It was a very plain wooden door with an unostentatious doorknob of brass. Bastian turned the doorknob and pushed it open.

The rush of gray was overwhelming and dense. The three faceless men moved forward as if one, an implacable wall of monochrome. Bastian acted on the instinct of schoolyard fights and tackled the man in the middle. They went down in a tumble in the middle of the room, a nearly-empty laboratory with countertops against its walls. Freja saw her brother in his wheelchair, blue eyes wide, blonde hair only just slightly tousled, in a corner of the room. She was pleased to see that his color remained. And then she was locked in a grapple with one of the faceless men while the other watched.

Though she was tall and agile, the faceless man was taller and stronger. By all rights she should have been on the ground in but half a minute of struggle. The faceless man she wrestled with and the faceless man who watched seemed sure of this outcome, though their eyes, unseen, betrayed nothing. Yet she knew something of how to fight, and this, of all occasions, was surely her burning building, and she was ready for it. As the faceless man pushed against her, she leveraged his weight to swing him onto the ground, and she braced her arms and all the weight of her body against his neck. Though gray and lacking a face he was yet a living, breathing man, and without air he began to weaken, and then he ceased to breathe at all.

The third faceless man came to a decision: this encounter was no trifle, no passing entertainment. He drew a pistol from within his trenchcoat and aimed it at Freja. A glass cylinder whirled through the air and crashed into his wrist, knocking the pistol out of his grasp. He turned, seeing its trajectory: Freja’s brother had thrown it with perfect aim. The faceless man looked to the first for aid, but Bastian had him yet engaged in something of a dirty fist-fight. The two were trading wild punches and tumbling on the ground. Freja lunged for the pistol and retrieved it while the third faceless man was distracted. She pointed it at his heart and her grip was steady.

I am taking my brother out of this place and you will never come for him again- she said. From over her shoulder she heard a crack, and the first faceless man went silent. Bastian brought himself to his feet, slowly and unsteadily, then joined Freja at her side. The third faceless man nodded silently. She walked to her brother, keeping the gun trained on the faceless man. Shifting the gun to one hand, she touched her brother’s shoulder. He smiled wanly up at her.

With Bastian leading the way, and Freja’s brother behind him, and Freja watching the faceless man, they went out of the laboratory together.

***

He raked a hand through his squirrel-brown hair three times. He rubbed his right wrist. The station platform was rather breezy and he wished for a thicker coat. There were no trains, neither arriving nor departing. The last train had left long ago. It was a favor unasked for but he had purchased the two tickets for them and she had accepted after a brief argument.

I cannot take these- she had said. He had barely heard her, still so entranced by her very blue eyes. But eventually he responded.

You must, and you must go straightaway. You might as well take these, or they’ll go to waste- he had replied. Please-

He closed his eyes and remembered the feel of her hands as he pushed the tickets into her palms. She turned to go, and then:

Bastian- she had said.

What is it? he had asked.

I think you’ve got quite a nice color to your complexion- she had said, and then she was helping her brother board the train, and then they had vanished altogether. Perhaps she had smiled, just a small smile.