I had seen the princess and let her lie there unawakened, because the happily ever after was so damnably much work.

― Orson Scott Card

When Novavik showed me the pictures of the French castle, excitement flooded me. Nope, it wasn't like the first time, but it was excitement after weeks of sulking.

I quit my job making portraits of happy families and couples, bought a plane ticket and boarded the plane to France.

Call it rush, call it crazy, but if I couldn't have Matteo, I had to get inside that castle and get my fix.

Paris. I can't believe it's Paris! I'm finally free of Menlo Park, CA; my parents' beige walls and inoffensive inquiries into the nature of my 'emergency'. This is enough to fill me to the brims with happiness, but also...it's Paris!

Paris is more than the icing on the cake, even if it's creamy, mouthwatering, three-inch thick layer of icing; even if I wanted my first trip to Europe to be Florence. I brush it all aside, because Paris is the cake.

The crowd at the Charles-de-Gaulle airport carries me away from the airplane in a bubbly wave of tourists, tourists, and more tourists. Good golly, it's May, and I'm in Paris!

The desire to do trivial things, like rolling my head all the way back till my neck hurt staring at the Eiffel Tower, rubbing shoulders at the Champs-Élysées, swiping a tear next to Notre Dame glues my sensible shoes to the tarmac, but I point them toward Rue St.Claire, the favorite layover street according to the guidebooks. For the first night when I need to get over the jet lag, I can splurge on a hotel there.

Despite nearly zonking out in the metro from the time difference, I freeze once I'm back on the Paris' streets. The backpack weighs down my shoulders, I'm dizzy, my skin itches like it's covered in hives after the cross-Atlantic flight, but I can't move an inch. Pedestrians dodging me speak French with its long, nasal, sing-song flow like it's the easiest thing in the world.

Like all good things in life since the funeral of Rosario Tangorello, I stubbornly hope that it has something to do with Scali. It's an idiot's hope, but I'm still pining, despite Scali's incognito avatar never gracing my inbox again. Even silent, he's in my life. It's like he's just outside my field of vision. If I would only turn around at the right moment, I would spot him leaning against his orange hell-car. Except I never turn around at the right moment.

I expel an exasperated sigh. What am I doing, standing in the middle of the street, daydreaming about Scali and irritating the French people? I must go to this hotel, and sleep, not dream about touristy things. My castle awaits me. Next to it, the exhilarations of a tourist aren't worth a single minute of my hard-earned trip. And Scali... It's past time to forget about Scali!

But how can I forget him in Paris from all places? The city where every lust is valid? The City of Light and vivacious art that hits my squarely brain just right.

I break all my resolutions, leave the backpack at the hotel and stroll along to the River Seine in gathering twilight. The clouds thicken. The sun, I had already seen set over the Atlantic, sets again. The air cools down, sending shivers through my spine.

I dry-swallow, suddenly panicking from the unfamiliar speech and people crowding me. Unkind glances stick to the back of my head. Figures zigzag into alleys when I meet their eyes. They are just rushing to get back to their hotels, I cajole myself. Look, they are jogging, sightseeing, making out...

Gosh, nobody is going to shoot me in France, I don't know anyone here. In faded jeans and a hoodie, with my limp brown hair matted by the flight, I probably look like a bum. It's a wonder the other tourists don't give me a wide berth.

But I can't shake off the sticky sensation that an unfriendly glance follows me. With a furtive glance from under the rim of my hood, I palm my phone. There, that's how I get back to the Rue St. Claire, even in the dark.

Should I just go to sleep?

Nonsense! Who goes to bed early on their first night in Paris?

I snap pictures of the smothering crowd overtaking the elegant gray buildings in the circles of the electric light; the splotches of cheap paintings; the plentiful forgeries sold under the guise of treasures.

The images soak through with indigo, lilac and gold of the impressionist's sketches. It's beautiful, but the arrow on my mood-o-meter inches from freedom to solitude. My cynical rationality gives ground.

I want Scali's cocky presence to tell me that the black eye of a rifle barrel is not staring down at me from the top of a historic building. It's a stupid idea, because Matteo is who makes me the target in the first place.

Let it be stupid then. I want Scali with me, no matter how dangerous it is.

I want that fat dude over there to take a pointless touristy picture of us, one of those pictures that devour digital cloud space purposelessly. Scali and me, hugging and grinning at the camera like idiots. Then there is a sound of a shot, and a red splotch appears on his tanned forehead, under the tousled hair...

No! Please, no!

I want my dream to be only about Scali and me, grinning into the camera like two tourists.

Yup, I am officially a crazy lonely lady. I'll start adopting cats immediately upon my return. Too bad I don't have sisters, I would make a superb Auntie Bryn.

But this is not the truth... I'm not lonely. I have never been lonely. The only absence I feel is Scali's. There is a difference.

Or is there?

I shift uncomfortably from foot to foot, throwing furtive glances at every tree and passerby.

Flee, flee Paris! Paris is a trap.

Nobody follows me to the Rue St. Claire, no shadows dash for cover each time I check over my shoulder. Yet, I snap together the dusty blackout blinds on my window as tightly as possible and check the lock on the door three times before climbing into a narrow bed. I am overtired and excited, I can't bear undressing, shivering from both the night's chill and unwinding anxiety.

Tomorrow will be better, I promise myself. Tomorrow my nerves won't be live wires, charged by fatigue and lust.

Tomorrow...

After a night of crappy sleep, I show up at the car rental place ten minutes before they open. My reward for this feat is heating the ring road, then the highway to Loire Valley before the traffic picks up.

The drive is trivial by North American standards, but I see what they mean about the miles stretching out in Europe. The speed limits are low, and the highway winds. The wooded areas alternate with the vineyards. The pale sunlight's hints to Dorothy that she's no longer in Kansas. Or, maybe, I just imagine that sunshine is brighter in California. After all, it's not even lunchtime yet locally.

After a few hours, my nondescript rental VW Polo slips away from the highway onto the country roads, adjusting to the unhurried French pace. I keep my foot on the breaks, searching for the turnoff point. My insides quiver with excitement. Any minute now. Any minute...

Even though my eyes are practically glued to the miles counter and the GPS on my phone, I nearly miss my castle.

The undergrowth is chopped back from the once-gravel path, but the trees grow close. There is no tourist sign enticing them to come and see the attraction. The gate, some ways further up the gravel road, needs a fresh coat of paint, preferably in a striking color, because I nearly crush into it in my impatience to be there already.

So far, there isn't much evidence in favor of the owners being serious about developing their ruinous property as an attraction. Good, good...

The gate opens without a screech, instead of being rusted shut, something that sets my teeth on edge. Perhaps adventurous tourists come this way after all. Perhaps the owner is more keen on the redevelopment than I've just guessed. But it doesn't matter. I'm not trespassing... not yet...

I drive through, shut the gate soundlessly behind the car, then avoid slamming the car door, and roll the window down. The trees around me screen the noise of the highway. The birds are chirping in the branches... and nothing else.

The further I venture inside the grove, the quieter it becomes. Eerie even. If my VW had a tiptoe gear, I would put it in tiptoe gear.

Since the German engineers are yet to invent it, I settle for crawling through the freshly leafed-out forest at maybe 5 miles per hour. The pink stars of wild carnations, the white lacy umbrellas and the omnipresent yellow dandelions stud the roadsides.

The wooded path ends at a clearing, with some of the undergrowth freshly cut back from the gray walls of the castle. So, the owners are actually serious about attracting tourists. Good thing I didn't hesitate before the place got overrun.

The grass over the smoothed curve of the once-moat's was cut maybe a week ago, shortish, but without the velvet quality of a golf course. Red clover and dandelions are already lifting their heads in triumph over the blade.

The Motteciel Castle itself is at least three times smaller than the famous chateaus like d'Amboise or Chenonceau.

It doesn't have any striking features to recommend it. It's a serviceable chateau, if a chateau could be called that. Even fully restored, it would only draw enthusiasts set on a thorough exploration of the Valley.

Whatever grounds Motteciel once had, they are long consumed by the unkempt parkland sloping toward a stream at its back, a tributary to the Loire. The walls are light gray, topped with the black slate roofs in a better state than the rest of it.

Only one tower survives, at the east end of the main two-story building. A wing, started in better times, crumbled either before the construction could be finished or it was demolished to avoid the collapse.

Windows are boarded up on the lower floor, but part of the building adjoining the unfortunate wing is yet to be abandoned and sealed off. There are a few gaping black squares of unfinished windows there.

Since my actions are still that of an innocent tourist, I circle the chateau openly, making the pictures of the exterior. My camera zooms on the occasional surviving sections of the white balustrades around the upper floor windows, the walls looking like they are ready to slough. Overall though, the building looks salvageable if money is no object.

The most important discovery for me is that save for my VW and two rusted out carcasses from the seventies or eighties, there are no other cars next to the castle. Just in case, I drive it out of the way, under the overhanging branches of centennial willows. Not concealed exactly, but not immediately obvious either. Mademoiselle Bryn Williams wants a bit of shade, that's all.

I get out of the car, and walk toward the castle. Grass steals the sounds of my footfalls.

For a while, I study the walls, looking for the best entry point. In the end, I take the path of the least resistance and climb through the gaping window on the second floor. There are no remnants of the wooden frame or shards of glass—I don't think there had ever been anything there but masonry.

The interior disappoints me almost immediately after the first flush of the Aha! I'm inside, go me! elation.

Compared to the industrial buildings in the Rust Belt that I'm used to, the chateau is downright hollow.

Where are the sagging bits of piping and wiring, the bits of racy posters clipped to the walls with indestructible pins, the piles of garbage and abandoned bits of equipment speaking of some forgotten purpose?

It's all pretty much one large room, most of the former dividing walls taken out for some long ago renovation, though some are still clinging to load-bearing columns. The wallpaper is bleached to an ugly yellow.

I photograph the emptiness and a few sections of the floor that look too iffy to step on next to a star-burst-shaped hole.

Then there is a giant mantelpiece with defaced carvings and graffiti devoid of any artistic expression next to it: a French swear word, an inevitable hairy penis and a splash of piss.

What did you expect? DaVinci's forgotten frescoes?

The garbage consists of bird shit, old leaves and crumbling plaster. There are no artifacts apart from a poisonous-green stomped-on beer can, likely the property of the penis-art-creator.

I capture more interesting images with the slanting light pouring out of the windows, but the exterior with its crumbling masonry offers more of the derelict ambiance.

Staying to the walls, since I don't trust the middle's structural stability, I creep to the far wall with a secure door.

Finally, a workout for my ninja skills!

I pull out my lock-picking kit, and stick the most likely candidate inside, rotating and shaking little by little, feeling my way through... until there is a click and a tumble.

The door opens into the darkened realm...bingo!

This section is lived-in. It's a Sleeping Beauty castle, if Miss Aurora felt a little drowsy circa 1975.

The plastic hides the overstuffed furniture, but a TV set in a mahogany case with a rotating dial sits by the wall unprotected. Dusty three layered curtains—the heavy velvet folds, the ties with brushes at the ends and the once white, transparent cloth—still adorn a boarded-up window.

Weird. Weird and awesome.

Then there's the wallpaper... the seventies wallpaper is a testimony to humanity's madness if nothing else. Oh my god, someone, gouge my eyes out! Those gold and silver swirls... eek, so perfectly ugly next to the stark gray stone.

My camera's speed-clicking beats the record set by that one Japanese tourist in Florence. I'm drifting in a pleasant haze of picture-taking through three bedrooms and a den.

Then I come upon another locked door.

Tongue stuck between my teeth, sweaty hair spilling from under the bandanna, I dig into the lock. It's trickier than the first. Shit.

My brain, too engaged with breaking the lock, is too slow to identify the ambient noise of the approaching car, the bang of the closing door and the footfalls on the staircase as real.

Shit, shit, shit...

I jump up, dash away from the door like a panicked sparrow, but my foot catches on some plastic covering the furniture, and I tumble. Some burglar!

I crawl as fast as I can behind a couch. The footsteps come closer, trying to form excuses in my head. Can I pass for an idiot American who didn't realize you couldn't go inside? Uh-huh, and I picked the lock because... because...?

"Freeze," a gruff male voice says above my head.

It's familiar, really familiar, most particularly that note of brassy arrogance. But it cannot be him, not in France. I'm just imagining Matteo everywhere because I'm besotted. I imagined he was in Paris. Now I think he's here, when I should be thinking about how to sweet-talk the owners into not handing me over to the police.

A gun clicks. Turning off safety, I presume. Oh, shit.

"Arrete-toi. Leve-toi," the man belatedly switches to French.

My innards and knees turn to jelly. I do as he orders: freeze on the musty orange carpet; then climb to all fours; then straighten up. Finally, I fold my hands behind my head, and turn toward my captor. Slowly. No threatening moves, apart from trembling like a leaf in the wind.

He's pointing a gun at my forehead.

Impossible. Bloody impossible. But here we are...

"M-matteo Scali." With a tiny shake of my head, I let my hood slip down.

The sweaty bandanna falls off too, releasing an avalanche of my frizzy curls. The chattering of my teeth is almost as loud as my words. Sheesh, if I stutter for the rest of my life, it's going to be Scali's fault. Pulling a gun on me like that!

"Matteo, do you remember me? I'm Bryn. Bryn with the white carnations? Yes?"