Chapter One
There was once an old sea captain who lived in a small room above a tailor shop. The captain’s name was Spelhorst, and he had no wife, no children, no family. He was alone in the world and took his meals at a café down the street from the tailor shop. There, the old man would sit at a table and stare past everything and everyone as if he were on the prow of a ship, looking out to sea.
One of the captain’s eyes was clouded over with cataracts, but the other eye was a bright and astonishing blue.
On good days, days when his knees did not ache and the weather was fine, Spelhorst walked around the city for hours at a time.
On bad days, he stayed abed, staring at the ceiling, studying its cracks and water stains and spiderwebs. He listened to the door of the tailor shop as it opened and closed. He could hear the murmur of voices, the sound of people requesting things, demanding things. Sometimes he could hear the tailor shouting at his wife in Italian. Sometimes he could hear the tailor’s wife weeping.
The pigeons on the windowsill of Spelhorst’s room looked in at the old man with bright, disdainful eyes. The birds arrived and departed and returned, and their wings sounded like someone shuffling a deck of cards.
The sea captain paid the pigeons no mind.
He did not even look in their direction.
He kept his eyes on the ceiling.
He tried to think of nothing at all.
**
And then there came a day—a good day—when Spelhorst’s knees did not ache and the weather was clear, and the old man walked and walked. He ended up very far from the tailor shop, in a part of the city that he did not know, in an alley that was dark and winding.
He came upon a toy shop, and in the window of the shop, he saw displayed a king and a wolf and a girl and a boy and an owl.
The puppets were hanging from fishing line. They were turning slowly in the gust of air made by the opening and closing of the shop door.
Spelhorst stopped. He took his cap from his head and stared at the puppets.
There he was: a man without family, a man without children or grandchildren, a man utterly devoid of whimsy or wonder, staring at a toy store window, bewitched entirely by puppets.
But Spelhorst was not staring at all of the puppets. He was staring at one puppet only—the girl with the cloak and the shepherd’s crook.
The girl had the heart-shaped face and violet eyes of someone Spelhorst had loved long ago.
Loved and lost.
Loved and lost, loved and lost, the ever-repeating story of the world.
“I must have her,” Spelhorst said aloud to no one.
He put his hat on his head, went into the store, and announced to the clerk that he wished to purchase one of the puppets on display in the window.
“You cannot buy just one,” said the clerk. “They belong together.”
“I want the girl puppet only,” said Spelhorst.
“The puppets must be purchased together or not at all,” said the clerk, “for they are in
a story.”
Spelhorst stared at the clerk.
Story? What did a story matter to him?
The door to the shop opened and closed. The puppets danced in the small wind, and the girl puppet twisted about suddenly so that she was facing the captain, looking at him.
Spelhorst closed his eyes and then opened them again. He said, “Very well. All of them.”
He took the puppets with him back to the room above the tailor shop.
He threw the king and the wolf and the owl and the boy into the trunk at the foot of his bed.
But the girl puppet Spelhorst propped up on the table so that he might look into her violet eyes.
He sat on the bed and stared at her. He said, “I am sorry. I am sorry, Annalise. I am sorry.” He put his head in his hands, and then he got up from the bed and sat down at the table and took up a pen and paper. He wrote for a long time.
When he was done, he folded the paper and put it in the trunk, and then the old man sat at the table and wept.
Outside the room, perched on the windowsill, the pigeons looked in at the sea captain and made noises of despair and disapproval.
It grew dark.
Spelhorst did not light the lamp.
He got into bed and cried himself to sleep as if he were a small child.
Copyright © 2023 by Kate DiCamillo; Illustrated by Julie Morstad. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
