That summer, twelve years old and long past the point of carrying soft toys around with me, even if I had wanted the reassurance of such mementos of childhood, it wouldn’t have mattered because I had Ailbe, and Ailbe meant far more to me than any stuffed animal.
Once more, we were sitting in the bell tower, as we were wont often to do, and on this occasion, Ailbe had dredged up a large, dusty book from somewhere or other with pictures of fairy tale knights, the colors of the illustrations faded by sunlight and time. I remember this book clearly because it was the same book, two weeks beforehand, that we had discovered a postcard slipped in-between the yellowing pages, and that, at first, Ailbe wouldn’t let me look at it, until angrily I snatched it from him, almost tearing it, and realize
