Alex and Lisette were awake well before I was willing to leave the comfort of bed. They sat giggling and whispering in their adjoined room for the better part of an hour before before Julia climbed out of bed and asked them to take Bessie outside.

When they returned a half hour later, it was with a dog wearing a flower necklace and Lisette carrying a tray of breakfast sweets and tea.

"There's a note," Lisette said.

Alex snatched it away and proudly read aloud, "To our honored guests, the Kire Family. Compliments of The Golden Hen Inn."

"Your father's sweet tooth is known in the furthest corner's of France," Julia teased.

I sat back in my chair by the window, cup of tea and tray of shortbread cookies in hand, and considered my unexpected fortune as a composer.

Deserved, my boy, I heard my uncle's voice in the back of my head.

I smiled inwardly and took a bite of my breakfast.

"When do we leave for the Batiste farm?" Lisette asked.

"As soon as we finish breakfast," Julia answered. "A real breakfast, not simply sweets," she added.

Real breakfast was delivered to our room by the wife and daughter of the inn owner twenty minutes later, and by ten in the morning, we collectively decided to forgo the comfort of a carriage ride and simply walk the half mile to the Batiste farm.

Alex asked dozens of questions about the birds we saw in the trees or the land between the village and the farm.

"What sort of wildlife do you think they have here?" he asked.

"Lions!" Lisette exclaimed.

"Highly improbable," Alex answered.

"Bears," I offered.

Alex furrowed his brow. "The terrain isn't suitable for bears," he corrected me. I took his word for it.

A handful of people passed us, including a man with a cart pulled by two mules and six children in the back, singing a folk song while they dangled their bare feet off the open end of their wagon. Alex and Lisette chased them for a short distance, jumping and waving in delight of seeing other children their age.

"When we move to the country, can we have a pair of donkeys?" Lisette asked as she tugged on my sleeve.

"What would you do with two donkeys?" Julia asked.

"Kiss them and hug them," Lisette said. "And teach them tricks like Madame Amelie taught Eclipse!"

"Are we truly moving to the country?" Alex asked as he squinted up at me.

"We will decide once our holiday comes to an end," I answered.

Alex frowned and looked away. Before I could ask what was wrong, the farm came into view and Lisette challenged Alex to a race. I unhooked Bessie's leash and allowed her to accompany the two of them down the rest of the dirt road.

"The Kire children!" Amelie greeted them. "Alone with no one but Bessie to protect them?"

"Mother and Papa are slow," Lisette told Amelie.

"Ah, well, they had best make haste. There are goblins and elves in the fields."

I could only imagine the wide-eyed looks of astonishment on their faces as we approached.

"Goblins?" Lisette asked with a hint of excitement in her voice. "What do they look like?"

I saw Amelie smile as we approached. "Marie has seen them before, not me," she explained. "She was nearly snatched by a goblin as a child. Marie!" she turned and yelled over her shoulder. "How old were you when the goblin found you in the woods?"

"The goblin?" Marie shouted back. It was quite evident Marie had no idea what her sister meant.

"Alex and Lisette want to know."

Marie appeared a moment later. "Oh. The Goblin. Yes. I forgot about that."

"When you were nine years of age, wasn't it?" Amelie asked.

Lisette's eyes widened. "I am nine years of age," she gasped.

Amelie met my eye and winked. "A wart covered, smelly goblin with long fingernails and green flesh like a lizard."

"It was a very nice goblin," Marie added hastily. "Despite what my sister says."

Lisette shook her head. "Goblins are the worst," she said. "Oh! Do you think we might find one?"

Marie narrowed her eyes. "Do you want to find a disgusting goblin?"

"We do!" Lisette exclaimed, but Alex wasn't particularly sold on the thought of a wart covered, lizardy creature. He stood quietly beside Lisette with his hands linked behind his back and brow skeptically furrowed.

"Alex, what about you?" Amelie asked.

"What do goblins do to children?" he asked.

"They eat them!" Lisette shrieked in delight. "With butter and bread."

"Lissy, my goodness, that's quite enough," Julia scolded.

"If you don't want to look for goblins, I have work for you, Alexandre Jean Kire," Amelie said. "But only for a strong boy."

Alex's pride forced him to puff up his chest. "I am very strong."

"Is that Alex's voice I hear?" Madame Batiste called from inside the house. She appeared in the doorway a moment later, a shawl around her shoulders. Her eyes appeared brighter than the day before, her posture straighter.

"It is!" Alex exclaimed.

"What's all this I hear about goblins?" Madame Batiste groused.

"Alex doesn't want to go with Marie and Lisette, so I have work for him," Amelie said.

"What about my walk?" Madame Batiste questioned. "It's a nice day."

"We can take a walk later," Amelie suggested.

Madame Batiste gave a heavy sigh. "I suppose."

Alex glanced from Amelie to her mother. "I could walk with Madame Batiste," he offered.

"You would walk with me?" Madame Batiste asked.

Alex readily nodded. "I know you cannot see me, Madame, but I am nodding like a gentleman."

It was all a ploy to occupy the children for a handful of hours, but Alex and Lisette could not have been more delighted. Marie ran inside to grab a satchel she said contained supplies for their goblin hunt while Alex quite proudly took Madame Batiste's arm in preparation for a late morning walk.

"You'll warn me of ruts and roots that may cause me to stumble?" Madame Batiste asked my son.

"I will," he vowed.

"I talk quite a bit," Madame Batiste warned. "I do hope you are interested in hearing an old woman's stories."

"I would like to know more about the birds so that I may tell my uncle what species I saw on holiday," Alex said. "I will write a paper about my visit."

"Then together we will listen to their songs as long as you lead the way."

Amelie leaned toward me and whispered, "She sees better than she lets on. Reading and sewing are beyond her capabilites now, but she can still see well when it's light out. That's not to say Mother won't allow Alex to feel like he's doing the most important job in the world."

Alex had always prided himself on helping Meg and Madeline from the time he was quite small. He insisted on carrying packages or bags back from the market, even if it was merely a loaf of bread that he was given. I had no doubt he would consider walking Madame Batiste around the farm as the sworn duty of a proper gentleman.

"Shall we?" Amelie asked once Marie led Lisette off in one direction and Alex started in the other with Madame Batiste on his arm.

Julia placed her hand on my shoulder. I took a deep breath and nodded, unsure if I was truly prepared to see the spot where I had buried my uncle so many years before.

oOo

We traveled along the main road in the opposite direction of Tormage under a sweltering August sun without the shelter of trees for an hour. The air was still and flies biting, but I ignored my discomfort and examined the road before us.

It had been quite a long time since I had ventured out during the daylight under such oppressive heat that my mind wandered while Julia and Amelie discussed gardening and the latest fashion in Paris, none of which interested me in the least.

I thought of the Persian desert and the smell of jasmine within the palace and blood and sweat in the prisons. I thought of the long roads my uncle had guided me down for a summer, how he whistled to fill the silence as I traveled beside him, unaccustomed to conversation but still desperate to interact with someone.

I was not certain of the month he had first approached me or the exact date of his death, but I estimated we had been together less than eight months before he passed. The first few months were wasted with my wariness of strangers, but he had won my trust and I was forever grateful.

And yet in those eight months, he had kept secrets from me that he took to his grave. He had not mentioned that I had been in his care from the time I was weeks old until I was three and a half years old. He did not tell me I had wandered off and my father had taken me back. And Phelan? He had told me my own brother was my cousin.

"Erik?"

Amelie stood some twenty paces ahead of me holding back a branch that she and Julia had already ducked under. I had not realized we had turned from the road and into the woods.

The temperature seemed to have dropped several degrees on account of the shade provided by the trees. Heaviness settled in my chest as I looked around, hoping for some familiarity of the past.

We walked a short distance-two hundred meters at most-to a clearing where the light streamed down unhindered by the leaves and branches.

I came to a sudden stop, my eyes drawn to the wooden cross and two stones marking the final resting place of my uncle. The space was cleared of weeds and undergrowth, the sticks we had trampled over along a game trail removed from his burial sight. Flowers grew beneath the cross, delicate purple and white petals of a plant I didn't recognize.

The grief rose with unexpected speed that stole my breath and momentarily blurred my vision. I felt as though I had been struck in the gut by some unseen force. My throat tightened and eyes pricked with tears I wished to hold at bay, but the emotions bearing down on me could not be contained. I had held onto this sadness for nearly thirty years and it would not be denied a moment longer.

"Uncle Alak," I whispered, my voice hollow.

He had taken his final breath in this spot. After all the months we had spent together, I had finally told my uncle I loved him, but I never knew if he heard my words. I could still recall how his grasp weakened and his features grew still. At the age of twelve, I had watched life leave his frail body, and the loss I had suffered in that moment left a wound so deep and painful that I could not imagine living without the magnitude of pain I carried. Losing him had carved something out of me that would never be filled.

I had wished for death that day. Not to take his place, but to join him, to stay forever with the only person who had not simply shown me kindness, but who had loved me despite my ugliness and awkwardness, who had seen worth in me when the world had seen worthlessness.

A shiver rattled up my spine, and I looked to Amelie and my wife. Julia nodded and took Amelie by the arm, and the two of them silently walked away, allowing me a moment of privacy.

They were barely out of earshot when I inhaled sharply and pursed my lips. I stood for a long moment at a distance, unsure of what to do or say now that I stood alone at his grave. Eventually I exhaled and walked to the cross where I knelt beside the cross in a small bed of flowers. The ground was cool and soft beneath my knees and shins, the grass and leaves slightly damp. I flattened my hand against the surprisingly warm surface of the stone to the left of the cross and leaned forward, kissing the wooden marker. There was no name or date to identify my uncle, but he didn't need to be announced.

I could feel him.

Eyes closed, I imagined his hand palming my head and giving a gentle shake. I could picture his solemn expression as he knelt beside me and quietly apologized for his abrupt departure.

"You told me to continue walking south," I whispered so quietly I could not hear my own voice. My lips trembled and skin prickled as I searched deeper for his presence. Abandoned, I wanted to say in a moment of fleeting anger, but I silently grappled with my emotions.

I know, he answered in my thoughts.

The tears streamed down my face and I covered my mouth with my hand, but the sob could not be contained. I wept as I had as a boy digging a shallow grave in the rain.

"I loved you," I said aloud once I caught my breath. "I still love you."

My son, he quietly rasped.

I smiled to myself at his fond greeting. Every time he called me his son or his boy, he reassured me that I was loved and wanted.

"I found my way to Paris," I said as I maneuvered myself toward the nearest tree and leaned back, settling into a familiar position near him. I sat like a tailor and looked around the clearing, attempting to remember the walk from the road to where we had set up camp, but the details were a distant blur.

I had died here that day in ways no one knew. My innocence-if I had possessed any at all-had been ripped away the moment I had been placed in chains and forced from his grave.

"It took me ten months, but I reached Paris. I don't know if you were…" I pulled up my mask and wiped my eyes, the anguish raw and resonating. "I don't know if you were still with me in those months. I...I almost wish you were not. I am afraid of how disappointed you would be in my cowardice if you saw me then, with the gypsies."

I hadn't thought of my uncle much in those ten months as I struggled to survive. Purposely I left the pack I carried closed, too ashamed of the life forced upon me and the humiliation I endured day after day. I could not bear to think of the months I had traveled with my uncle, well fed and protected. I missed our conversations, the music, and being treated like a human being instead of an oddity.

The tears streamed freely down my cheeks and I was forced to remove my mask again. "There is so much," I told him quietly. "Far too much," I said, hoping he would understand what went unspoken.

Far too much grief, my boy.

Not simply grief, but anger and resentment that had fueled a lifelong hatred for myself. I picked apart every hardship I had endured for no other reason than I did not look like everyone else, and the more I thought about each cruel word or action against me, the darker my thoughts became and the more anger I held.

No more, my boy. It's been far too long.

I lowered my mask into place and took a deep breath. "I can scarcely recall a time when I was not...this way."

Tell me about them.

I scrubbed my chin with my hand. "My wife and children are here with me," I explained. "I have known Julia for almost six years now and she has yet to come to her senses and realize she is far better than I deserve." I smiled to myself, imagining my uncle readily nodding in agreement.

Ah, but my son, she knows. They always do. And yet she stays because she loves you.

"I wrote her an opera. We saw it performed recently."

I have no doubt she loved it.

I grunted. "Julia deserves more."

Then by all means, give her more.

"With our marriage I gained a daughter, Lisette, and my son Alex received the mother he deserved."

Alex?

"What else would I name him, Uncle?"

I tilted my head up and looked at the branches swaying overhead. Beyond the trees was a flawless canvas of medium blue that stood in sharp contrast to my melancholy mood. It was a day we would have found perfect for travel, the sort of afternoon for picking mulberries before they fell from the branches and a peach or two from a tree at the furthest end of an orchard while dogs barked a warning near the farmhouses we passed.

"Do you remember the time you told me to stop feeding the squirrels?" I studied the glint of light against the leaves, recalling how two red squirrels had bravely inched toward me, then darted away only to return again. I tossed little pieces of bread to them while my uncle rested and wrote letters to his son.

You ignored me.

"Eventually the squirrels left with their rewards and I made a small pile of crumbs for them should they return, but they did not. A raccoon did."

I chuckled to myself, thinking of how I had been sitting in the same position: back against a tree and legs crossed as I picked apart leaves and stripped thin branches of their bark.

"You were naming the constellations and telling your stories from across the fire when you asked me if I was listening, and I looked across the clearing and swore I saw a bear."

I had scrambled to my feet, losing my footing as I attempted to escape the rabid beast that had emerged from the dark. Over my shoulder I had stammered that we were under an attack by a bear and had nearly collided with a birch.

"From the corner of my eye I saw you casually look toward where I pointed and stand. You grabbed a branch, thrust it into the fire until the leaves began to burn, and waved it at the raccoon, which turned and ran off."

In the back of my mind, I heard him chuckle to himself. Of course I remember. Served you right.

Once we were no longer in danger and seated again-with me at my uncle's side rather than across the fire from him, he shook his head and snorted with laughter.

"A bear indeed," I said, echoing the words he had spoken that night. "For days, any time we encountered a deer or squirrel, you pointed and told me to watch out for the bear."

If you had seen your expression, my boy.

"Utterly ridiculous."

As all young men should be.

I sat in silence for a long moment, appreciating the silence between us. Many times I had simply sat and observed the way he hunched over a blank sheet of paper and wrote to his son or listened as he hummed to himself while fixing our supper. And equally there were times when I practices restringing his violin or playing a melody in my head that I would catch him smiling at me as though I were someone worthy of adoration.

"If I could have one more day…"

My shoulders shook, the grief I felt fresh and overwhelming. Many times beneath the opera house, on the nights when I allowed myself to think of my uncle, I swore I would give up anything to see him one more time. I'd give up my ability to read and write music for one more conversation, I would never write another symphony if I could walk another road at his side. I would have forfeit my hearing if it meant I could have one last conversation with my uncle before the world went silent.

One more day would not be enough for me either, Erik.

With my eyes closed tight, I I felt him sit beside me. I knew better than most that ghosts were not real. Phantoms were flesh and blood, shadows were attached to living beings, and angels did not truly exist. And yet I didn't dare open my eyes and face my disappointment. The boy I had been, so lost and lonely, wanted to believe that his uncle had returned in spirit to ease the pain and offer quiet comfort. For so long I had denied that part of myself, buried that wounded child beneath the earth and kept him in the dark. That part of me needed to be released once more. That boy who had been denied a childhood deserved to mourn and find peace.

I pictured his thin frame leaning back, legs extended and hands folded as he silently looked me over. He smiled at me, proud and loving as a father should look upon his son. He had been mine and I had gratefully belonged to him, if only for a brief time.

You were good for me, my boy. Better than an old man deserved.

The sun and the breeze were warm and welcomed, and the man sitting beside me, real or imagined, shared in my grief and wept alongside me. There were no words I needed to speak aloud for him to understand the longing and heartache I felt.

I pulled up my mask again and felt the air against my face. The tracks of tears had dried, and the heartache I had carried slowly ebbed. He had come to me one more time, to see the man I had become and the life I had made for myself. He was proud of me. Out of everything in the world I had desired, his approval was still the most coveted.

Be well, my son.

I wanted to reach out, to grasp hold of something that wasn't tangible, but I remained still. His voice echoed in my ears, and when I finally dared to open my eyes, the sun still stretched along his grave, but the air felt different, lighter. His spirit retracted and I climbed to my feet, brushing leaves and dirt from my trousers.

I took one last look at the marker and the stones and bent, gripping the wooden cross, grateful for the moment we had shared and the words I was able to speak to him. The heaviness had lifted, a lifetime of guilt and regret no longer weighing upon me when I thought of the place where I had buried him.

"Thank you, Uncle," I whispered before I turned and walked toward the road to find Amelie and Julia.