Saturday again, early morning, and Caroline had been gone a week. Sam didn't bother with the kitchen light. He reached for the cereal box in the cabinet to stuff a handful into his mouth, then opened a can of tuna and dumped it onto Night Cat's plate.
In the workroom, he shoved up the windows. Outside, the air was still, and warm. Sam flexed his fingers. His hands were beginning to look like Mack's, to feel the way Mack's must feel. A callus had formed on his thumb from holding the plane. There was a small cut from a sharp edge of glass, paint under his nails; and a blue blister, perfectly round, had appeared on one finger.
He took the cover off the castle and picked up the medieval woman, angling her inside Caroline's tangerine-colored room. He placed the pieces of roof over the towers and glued them carefully, one after another, circling the top of the castle; they fit well.
It was light now. A rim of sun appeared over the edge of the river. He rummaged through the small cans of paint, finding a charcoal color, and one a lighter shade. He experimented with them, painting on a piece of wood, then swiping at the wood with cloth so the color would look less flat, more like old stone.
Taking short, even strokes, he began to paint. The wood was smooth, and the pieces he had joined were tight and even.
It was soothing work, and he found himself humming the way Mack always did, stopping to touch the small trees he and Caroline had fashioned from bits of soap pads dipped in green paint, the gravel that made the path around the castle, and the small mirror that had become the moat.
He half-listened to the sounds around him, the call of two mourning doves outside, pots banging into each other at Onji's. And over Sam's head, Mack moved around, the bed creaked, a shoe dropped.
Sam stepped back. The first coat of paint was dry already. He went over to the sink to wash out the brush and had begun the second, lighter coat when he heard Mack at the workroom door, the intake of his breath. “Sam?”
Mack walked over to Sam's table. He reached out and touched the castle with one finger: the towers, the tiny windows, the smooth face. “Beautiful work,” he said at last, his voice thick. “The work of a craftsman.”
Sam looked up.
“It's Boldt Castle,” Mack said.
“Yes.” Sam thought of the day he and Caroline had named it. “How did you know?”
“How could I not know?” Mack said, almost as if he were talking to himself. He raised his hand to run it through his thick hair. “You've made it look like stone, and I can almost see water in the moat. But how did you remember? So long ago.”
Remember. Sam stood still. Remember a castle?
Mack touched one of the tower roofs. “How did you know how to do this? To cut the pieces this way?”
“Anima's book,” Sam said absently. “But, Mack—”
The back door opened, and Onji's footsteps came down the hall toward them.
Sam wanted to reach out and close the workroom door. He wanted to ask Onji to go away, to please not be there just now, because he was so close to finding out what he needed to know. And the rest of the story would take only a few minutes. He saw it in Mack's face, in Mack's blue eyes that were clouded with tears.
But Onji stood in the doorway. Onji, who talked, who always talked, didn't say a word. It was Mack who said, “The first time I put a hammer into his hand, I knew how it was going to be. The same for me—”
Onji came closer. “He remembered the castle.”
Sam took one step, and then a second, backing up against the wall with the shelves. He didn't make a sound; he was entirely still even inside himself, except for the pulsing in his throat and in his chest.
“It's so much like Boldt Castle. The windows, the towers…” Onji's voice trailed off.
Mack nodded with the barest movement of his head.
“So, Mack, I'm going back to my place,” Onji said. “Maybe you'll want to talk now. Maybe you'll want to say things to Sam.”
So Onji had known the whole story.
There was no sound in the workroom after Onji's footsteps died away, only that coo of the mourning doves outside, and the quick la-la-lee of a red-winged blackbird.
Night Cat must have felt the silence too. He jumped off the windowsill, onto Sam's table, and made himself a place next to the castle.
“I don't remember. Not all of it.” Sam's voice sounded strange to himself. “Please—”
Mack's sigh was so loud it seemed to take up all the space in the room. He picked up one of the knights. “I should have told you before, but I thought you didn't remember, and I didn't want to tell you what a mess—” He began again. “What a terrible mess I made of everything.”
Sam didn't move, even though the sharp corner of the shelf was digging into his shoulder.
“So much began because I was angry,” Mack said.
“A long time ago.”
Mack touched the castle again. “I built a sailboat when I was young. I bought the wood, pieces at a time, I cut and sanded, fitted it all together. It took years.”
“In the Thousand Islands,” Sam said before he could stop himself.
Mack bent his head. “It was a perfect boat to sail through the waters of the St. Lawrence, to maneuver around those islands, around Heart Island. A narrow boat that responded so quickly in the mist—”
Sam closed his eyes. Freighters’ horns back and forth, one after the other, warning in the fog. And hadn't that woman who'd come into the shop asked about Heart Island?
“Some of those islands were so large you couldn't see where they began or ended. And there was one that had only enough soil to fly a flag.”
A little tuft of land. A flag whipping in the wind.
“We'll go back now. Today. Back to the Thousand Islands, back to the castle.” He touched Sam's shoulder. “Back to where it all began.”