Villon-sur-Sarthe, France July 29, 1714 A girl is running for her life.

"Il était une fois," he will say, before sliding into stories of palaces and kings, of gold and glamour, of masquerade balls and cities full of splendor. Once upon a time. This is how the story starts.

Estele, who believes that the new God is a filigreed thing. She thinks that He belongs to cities and kings, and that He sits over Paris on a golden pillow, and has no time for peasants, no place among the wood and stone and river water. Adeline’s father thinks Estele is mad. Her mother says that the woman is bound for Hell, and once, when Adeline repeated as much, Estele laughed her dry-leaf laugh and said there was no such place, only the cool dark soil and the promise of sleep. "And what of Heaven?" asked Adeline. "Heaven is a nice spot in the shade, a broad tree over my bones."

Her mother wishes she was more like Isabelle Therault, sweet and kind and utterly incurious, content to keep her eyes down upon her knitting instead of looking up at clouds, instead of wondering what’s around the bend, over the hills. But Adeline does not know how to be like Isabelle. She does not want to be like Isabelle. She wants only to go to Le Mans, and once there, to watch the people and see the art all around, and taste the food, and discover things she hasn’t heard of yet.

"Addie." The old woman says her name without looking up. It is autumn, and the ground is littered with the stones of fruit that didn’t ripen as it should. Addie nudges them with the toe of her shoe. "How do you talk to them?" she asks. "The old gods. Do you call them by name?" Estele straightens, joints cracking like dry sticks. If she’s surprised by the question, it doesn’t show. "They have no names." "Is there a spell?" Estele gives her a pointed look. "Spells are for witches, and witches are too often burned." "Then how do you pray?" "With gifts, and praise, and even then, the old gods are fickle. They are not bound to answer." "What do you do then?" "You carry on." She chews on the inside of her cheek. "How many gods are there, Estele?" "As many gods as you have questions," answers the old woman, but there is no scorn in her voice, and Addie knows to wait her out, to hold her breath until she sees the telltale sign of Estele’s softening. It is like waiting at a neighbor’s door after you’ve knocked, when you know they are home. She can hear the steps, the low rasp of the lock, and knows that it will give. Estele sighs open. "The old gods are everywhere," she says. "They swim in the river, and grow in the field, and sing in the woods. They are in the sunlight on the wheat, and under the saplings in spring, and in the vines that grow up the side of that stone church. They gather at the edges of the day, at dawn, and at dusk."

Addie has had three hundred years to practice her father’s art, to whittle herself down to a few essential truths, to learn the things she cannot do without. And this is what she’s settled on: she can go without food (she will not wither). She can go without heat (the cold will not kill her). But a life without art, without wonder, without beautiful things—she would go mad. She has gone mad. What she needs are stories. Stories are a way to preserve one’s self. To be remembered. And to forget. Stories come in so many forms: in charcoal, and in song, in paintings, poems, films. And books. Books, she has found, are a way to live a thousand lives—or to find strength in a very long one.

Two blocks up Flatbush, she sees the familiar green folding table on the sidewalk, covered in paperbacks, and Fred hunched in his rickety chair behind it, red nose buried in M is for Malice. The old man explained to her once, back when he was on K is for Killer, how he was determined to get through Grafton’s entire alphabet series before he dies. She hopes he makes it. He has a nagging cough, and sitting out here in the cold doesn’t help, but here he is, whenever Addie comes by. Fred doesn’t smile, or make small talk. What Addie knows of him she has pried out word by word over the last two years, the progress slow and halting. She knows he is a widower who lives upstairs, knows the books belonged to his wife, Candace, knows that when she died, he packed up all her books and brought them down to sell, and it’s like letting her go in pieces. Selling off his grief. Addie knows that he sits down here because he’s afraid of dying in his apartment, of not being found—not being missed. "I keel over out here," he says, "at least someone will notice." He is a gruff old man, but Addie likes him. Sees the sadness in his anger, the guardedness of grief.

He laughed, and she didn’t, but there was something old-fashioned in his manner. Only twenty-six, but when he talked, he had the easy cadence, the slow precision, of a man who knew the weight of his own voice, belonged to the class of young men who dressed like their fathers, the charade of those too eager to grow old.

A secret kept. A record made. The first mark she left upon the world, long before she knew the truth, that ideas are so much wilder than memories, that they long and look for ways of taking root.

Henry wonders, as they wait in the queue, if some people have natural style, or if they simply have the discipline to curate themselves every day.

He wants to feel lighter, to feel brighter, but the room darkens, and he can feel a storm creeping in. He was twelve when the first one rolled through. He didn’t see it coming. One day the skies were blue and the next the clouds were low and dense, and the next, the wind was up and it was pouring rain. It would be years before Henry learned to think of those dark times as storms, to believe that they would pass, if he could simply hold on long enough.

She met a boy, back in ’65, and when she told him that, he drove her an hour outside of L.A., just to see them. The way his face glowed with pride when he pulled over in the dark and pointed up. Addie had craned her head and looked at the meager offering, the spare string of lights across the sky, and felt something in her sag. A heavy sadness, like loss. And for the first time in a century, she longed for Villon. For home. For a place where the stars were so bright they formed a river, a stream of silver and purple light against the dark.

Henry Strauss has never been a morning person. He wants to be one, has dreamed of rising with the sun, sipping his first cup of coffee while the city is still waking, the whole day ahead and full of promise. He’s tried to be a morning person, and on the rare occasion he’s managed to get up before dawn, it was a thrill: to watch the day begin, to feel, at least for a little while, like he was ahead instead of behind. But then a night would go long, and a day would start late, and now he feels like there’s no time at all. Like he is always late for something.

David Strauss cares about a lot of things. He cares about his status as the youngest head surgeon at Sinai. He cares, presumably, about his patients. He cares about making time for Midrash, even if it means he has to do it in the middle of a Wednesday night. He cares about his parents, and how proud they are of what he’s done. David Strauss does not care about his younger brother, except for the myriad ways in which he’s ruining the family reputation.

This is one of the things she loves about Sam, one of the first things she ever noticed. Sam lives and loves with such an open heart, shares the kind of warmth most reserve only for the closest people in their lives. Reasons come second to needs. She took her in, she warmed her up, before she thought to ask her name.

"Let go," she says, lowering her voice a measure when she speaks, which only seems to please him more, even as he frees her arm with all the speed of someone grazing fire. "Sorry," he says again, "I forgot myself." And then, a mischievous grin. "It seems you have, too." "Not at all," she says, fingers drifting toward the short blade she’s kept inside her basket. "I have misplaced myself on purpose."

"It does," he admits, before nodding at her attire. "And yet," he says with an impish grin, "you strike me as someone not easily restrained. Aut viam invenium aut faciam, and so on." She does not know Latin yet, and he does not offer a translation, but a decade from now, she will look up the words, and learn their meaning. To find a way, or make your own.

Nervous, like tomorrow, a word for things that have not happened yet. A word for futures, when for so long all she’s had are presents. Addie isn’t used to being nervous. There’s no reason to be when you are always alone, when any awkward moment can be erased by a closed door, an instant apart, and every meeting is a fresh start. A clean slate.

Remy Laurent is laughter bottled into skin. It spills out of him at every turn. As they walk together through Montmartre, he tips the brow of Addie’s hat, plucks at her collar, slings his arm around her shoulders, and inclines his head, as if to whisper some salacious secret. Remy delights in being part of her charade, and she delights in having someone to share it with.

"La Trémoille. Mais non!" says Madame Geoffrin, but there is no disbelief in the words, only surprise. "I shall have to chastise Charles for keeping you a secret." "You must," says Addie with a sheepish grin, knowing it will never come to that. "Well, madame," she continues, holding her hand out for the book. "I should go. I would not want to hurt your reputation, too." "Nonsense," says Geoffrin, eyes glittering with pleasure. "I am quite immune to scandal." She hands Addie back her book, but the gesture is not one of parting. "You must come to my salon. Your Diderot will be there."

When his first dog dies, Henry cries for a week. When his parents argue, and he cannot bear the violence in their words, he runs away from home. It takes more than a day to bring him back. When David throws away his childhood bear, when his first girlfriend, Abigail, stands him up at the dance, when they have to dissect a pig in class, when he loses the card his grandfather gave him before he passed, when he finds Liz cheating on him during their senior trip, when Robbie dumps him before junior year, every time, no matter how small, or how big, it feels like his heart is breaking again inside his chest. Henry is fourteen the first time he steals a swig of his father’s liquor, just to turn the volume down. He is sixteen when he swipes two pills from his mother’s cabinet, just to dull the ache. He is twenty when he gets so high that he thinks he can see the cracks along his skin, the places where he’s falling apart. His heart has a draft. It lets in light. It lets in storms. It lets in everything.

And Henry thinks it must be a trick of the light, but she comes back the next day, and there it is again. The absence. Not just an absence, either, but something in its place. A presence, a solid weight, the first steady pull he’s felt in months. The strength of someone else’s gravity. Another orbit.

"Dance with me," she says, and Henry tries to tell her that he doesn’t dance, even though she was there, at the Fourth Rail, when they flung themselves into the beat, and he says that is different, but she doesn’t believe him, because times change, but everyone dances, she has seen them do the waltz and the quadrille, the fox-trot and the jive, and a dozen others, and she is sure that he can manage at least one of them.

"My uncle had cancer, when I was still in college. It was terminal. The doctors gave him a few months, and he told everyone, and do you know what they did? They couldn’t handle it. They were so caught up in their grief, they mourned him before he was even dead. There’s no way to un-know the fact that someone is dying. It eats away all the normal, and leaves something wrong and rotten in its place. I’m sorry, Addie. I didn’t want you to look at me that way."

He has not slept well in days, and it has made his legs heavy, his mind too slow, the minutes speeding up around him, and he wishes the music were louder, wishes the sky were lighter, wishes he had just a little more time. No one is ever ready to die. Even when they think they want to. No one is ready. He isn’t ready. But it is time. It is time.

"Listen to me." Her voice is urgent now. "Life can feel very long sometimes, but in the end, it goes so fast." Her eyes are glassy with tears, but she is smiling. "You better live a good life, Henry Strauss."

He doesn’t know yet what that is, but for the first time, it doesn’t scare him. The world is wide, and he’s seen so little of it with his own eyes. He wants to travel, to take photos, listen to other people’s stories, maybe make some of his own. After all, life seems very long sometimes, but he knows it will go so fast, and he doesn’t want to miss a moment.