Far, far away in the North, where the sea was as gray as if the sky had dropped its old cloak into it, there stood a castle. Its walls were thick, built to keep out both enemies and the North Wind, but the wind was slyer: it slipped through the keyholes and whistled sorrowful songs down the chimney flues.
In this castle lived a King. He wore a crown of pure gold, so heavy that by evening it always gave him a headache, and a velvet mantle embroidered with pearls. And he had a High Advisor — a clever man who wore horn-rimmed spectacles and knew the names of every star in the sky.
It would seem, what did they lack? Mountains of silver lay in the storehouses, and wine that remembered their grandfathers’ grandfathers aged in the cellars. But the King and the Advisor shared a single misfortune, one quiet sorrow for two, which sat with them at the dinner table and lay down in their beds.
They had no children.
«Look at me,» the King would say, gazing into an antique Venetian mirror. «A gray hair has appeared at my temple. Soon I shall be as white as the peaks of our mountains, and who will take up my scepter? To whom shall I explain how to trim the sails in a storm?»
The Advisor would only sigh, polishing his spectacles with a handkerchief.
«Your Majesty,» he would reply, «my home is empty, too. The silence in the nursery sounds louder than a cannon shot. You and I are like old books that no one will ever open to read the end of the story.»
The Queen and the Advisor’s wife often wept at night, and their tears were saltier than the seawater beneath the castle windows. But tears cannot help grief, just as pouring a cup of tea into the ocean will not fill it.
And then came the longest night of the year. The stars in the sky shivered with cold, and the moon looked like a slice of lemon left forgotten on a blue tablecloth. The King and the Advisor sat by the fireplace. The fire crackled, devouring dry logs, and shadows danced in the corners.
Suddenly, there was a knock at the gate.
It was not the loud, demanding knock of a messenger, nor the timid knock of a petitioner. It was a knock that made the heart stand still.
The servants opened the heavy oak doors, and along with clouds of frosty vapor, a Stranger entered the hall. His cloak was tattered, as if stitched from autumn mist, and his feet were bare despite the snow. But when he threw back his hood, the King saw not the face of an old ma
