The Prince Of Mist

EPILOGUE

The last weeks of summer brought more news of the war – whose days, it was said, were numbered. Maximilian Carver had opened his watchmaker’s business in a small building near the market square and soon there was not a single local who hadn’t visited his shop of marvels. Irina had completely recovered and seemed to remember nothing about her accident on the staircase. She and her mother took long walks along the beach, looking for seashells and small fossils with which they had started a collection that promised to be the envy of Irina’s new school friends that coming autumn.

Loyal to the old keeper’s legacy, Max cycled every afternoon to the lighthouse and lit the lantern so that its beam could guide ships safely until the following morning. He climbed up the tower and from there gazed out at the ocean, just as Victor Kray had done for most of his life.

On one of these afternoons Max realised that his sister Alicia returned regularly to the beach where Roland’s hut stood. She went alone and sat by the water’s edge, her eyes lost in the sea, letting the hours pass by in silence. They no longer spoke the way they had done during the days they had shared with Roland, and Alicia never mentioned what had happened that night in the bay. Max had respected her silence from the first moment. When the last days of September arrived, announcing the arrival of the autumn, the memory of the Prince of Mist seemed to fade from his mind like a dream in the light of day.

Often, when Max watched Alicia down on the beach, he remembered Roland’s words when he had confessed his fear that if he was called up this might be his last summer in the town. Now, although brother and sister barely spoke about it, Max knew that the memory of Roland and of that summer in which they had discovered magic together would stay with them, uniting them forever.