Tthor felt extremely tired. His legs and arms hurt. And he remembered absolutely nothing of what had happened that night. It was clear to him that he had had another of his sleepwalking episodes.

   "Every time it seems like I go further and do more things."

   "I'm worried that's the case," Noel confessed when they passed through the shadow cast by the Cretan tree, under the moonlight.

   Tthor dragged the cart, trying to remember some details, but no matter how hard he tried, the last thing that came to mind was having gone to bed in his room in Warghost.

   "You're wearing the same clothes as yesterday," Noel told him. "You didn't even change." We'll have to find a way to keep you from going out there at night. It's dangerous, you could trip over some baldander.

   Tthor smiled. How many had already warned him of the same thing? He was already beginning to feel curious about those living statues.

   "... Or worse than a baldander, you can meet Spike Shannut and there you will have a serious problem," said Noel, while he opened a package of choco-spiderwebs.

   He offered it to Tthor but he rejected them. Noel bit off a large piece and, chewing it, continued to express his fear:

   " The Civil Guard is not something to take lightly. They are spoiled, disrespectful and annoying boys but they can make your life miserable if they take you seriously."

   "Who is that Spike...?"

   "Shannut… he is the son of the Mayor of Meaghdose. The father seems to be quite competent at his job; he is rigid but fair. On the other hand, his son...," Noel looked like he had bitten into something rotten. " is frankly disgusting."

   It sounded pretty convincing but when Tthor looked at her, he noticed that she had turned red as a tomato. He was about to comment on it but, in time, he changed the topic of conversation:

   "How is your uncle doing?"

   Christmas's Uncle, Warghost's official shoemaker, had been suffering from the flu that prevented him from working at one hundred percent. With each passing day, he seemed to get worse. His fever rose at night, he sneezed all day and complained of severe pain in his legs.

   "Pretty bad...," the young girl responded. "But the healer who treats him has said that it is normal. That kind of flu completes a lunar cycle and goes away. The mixtures he has been given help him and the pain is lessened but he still has not been able to get out of bed and he becomes more nervous every day."

   "Why's that?"

   "Because he can't work. He had, the day before he became ill, taken an extra order of shoes. This is when he has the most work. We live from that. I help him but I can't cope and there are arrangements that I don't know how to make. What are we going to do if my uncle loses his orders?" Noel's voice broke and thick tears wet his round face.

   Tthor patted him on the shoulder a few times, somewhat awkwardly. He didn't know what to do to comfort her.

   "I have no idea how to fix shoes but he counts on me for whatever you need. Somehow, we are going to help your uncle. Mr. L'Vois is very good and he deserves to come out of all this well, you'll see."

   Noel blew his nose with a white handkerchief he had taken out of his pocket.

   " If you want, you can explain to me what to do and I'll help you with the arrangements," Tthor offered when she saw her a little more animated.

   "Thank you, Tthor, but even so, we won't be able to cope. Just that we're lucky enough to have a shoe elf show up," Noel joked, wiping his face.

   Tthor looked at her out of the corner of his eye. He had heard those stories before, in the children's stories that Mrs. Nogg used to tell him at afternoon tea at her house, years ago. And he knew they were just stories. But he was having an idea that, if he discussed it with Lee-Won, he believed could work.

   They both sat on a stone bench on the side of the road. And Tthor waited, patient, until Noel had calmed down. He only allowed her to leave when his face had regained its usual cheerful expression. He insisted that he return to his uncle, that he would arrive safely at Warghost.

   "Lee-Won!" Tthor called, entering the kitchen.

   The women who were there, without stopping bustling, informed him very rudely, as they always did when they spoke with him, that they had not seen him yet. Tthor ran out through a side door and, before reaching a spiral staircase, he ran into Lee-Won who was also running.

   "Tthor!"

   "Lee-Won! I have to talk to you."

   "Okay...but me first. We have a problem!"

   Lee-Won practically dragged Tthor to the third floor landing.

   "The tremor has caused the water from the lower levels to rise and flood the east wing."

   "The tremor?" Tthor was quite confused.

   He noticed that the entire hallway was flooded with dark, foul-smelling water. Tthor wrinkled his nose at the smell rising from the ground.

   "The tremor last night. Haven't you felt it? How odd! It was quite strong. I went to your room this morning and I couldn't find you. You had already gotten up..."

   Tthor said nothing.

   "What happens is that there are several bedrooms in this wing that were flooded. But the worst happened here...," Lee-Won said, standing in front of the attic door.

   Tthor opened the door with quite curiosity. He suppressed an exclamation of surprise at what he saw: the entire attic was filled with more than six inches of rotten water; and the air was quite unbreathable, much more stuffy than that in the hallway. But before he could observe any other details, a desperate scream came from a corner.

   "Asmodeus!" the two young men exclaimed.

   The demon was crouching, squatting, with his arms around his body and his head hidden between his legs. He was shaking violently. And he was rocking back and forth at a rather worrying rate. Tthor had never seen him like this.

   "Asmodeus! What happens? Are you hurt?" Tthor reached him at a slow pace, so as not to slip in that rotten water.

   "I'm dying! I'm dying!"

   "You can't die...because you're already dead...well almost...," Lee-Won replied from the door.

   Tthor looked at him with a frown.

   "That?! "It's true," Lee-Won defended himself, lowering his voice.

   Tthor approached Asmodeus and forced him to look at him.

   "You are injured?"

   "No!" He said with a broken voice.

   "You got hurt? Did you cut yourself on something?"

   "No!" He answered again with a sob.

   "What's wrong with you then?"

   " I'm dying!!!"

   "Why do you say that?" Tthor, at that point, was already imagining the worst and was getting nervous, thinking about what to do to help a demon in cases like this. "Asmodeus, why do you say that you are going to die?"

   "Because...I'm all wet!!!"

   Tthor breathed a sigh of relief and Lee-Won let out a laugh. Thor looked at him again with distaste. And the young dark-haired man bit his lip and became serious.

   "Asmodeus, look, I'm all wet too. And I'm not dying for that. And I promise you, you won't either."

   "Why do not you die?"

   "Because... I know the secret to getting wet and not dying," Tthor invented while he leaned next to him.

   Asmodeus looked at him seriously and expectantly. Tthor glanced at Lee-Won to make sure he wasn't laughing at what he was about to hear. But Lee-Won was sensible and had a curious expression on his face.

   "...And you also know that secret...," Tthor whispered to Asmodeus.

   The demon opened his eyes wide.

   "The secret is...knowing how to count..."

   Tthor stared at Lee-Won, thinking about throwing something at him if he mocked again, but his friend watched him with a mixture of curiosity and admiration.

   Asmodeus stopped shaking.

   "I know how to count!" He told Tthor and his face lit up. "Asmodeus knows how to count..." the demon stated. "And Lee-Won knows how to count?" He then asked, with a serious expression, pointing to the boy who was advancing towards them, with the water up to his knees.

   "Five! Ten! Fifteen!" Lee-Won began, helping Tthor to stand up.

   Cleaning the attic again took them all day. It was night, when they managed to remove all the water, since they also had to empty the hallway and block the doors with improvised embankments so that the water would not continue to leak.

   "It's a shame... all this work, after how clean we had left this attic yesterday," said Lee-Won, while he carried the last bucket of water, which he already saw as clear.

   Tthor looked at Asmodeus who was now walking happily around the attic, hugging his jade green plate, counting.

   "Come on!" Lee-Won said.

   "Go ahead. "I'll make sure he's okay," Tthor answered, pointing at the demon.

   "Well, I have to go to the stables, we have dinner there. So if I don't see you later, see you tomorrow."

   Tthor nodded. Lee-Won closed the door behind him and disappeared down a side hallway. The young man stayed with Asmodeus for another half hour. He laid him on an old blanket that he had gotten him, since his had been soaked. And he stayed watching him until he fell asleep.

   Giving a sigh of satisfaction, he walked to the door and made sure that the new line of coarse salt that Lee-Won had drawn was complete. He reached for the doorknob. And then he realized something wasn't right. He tried to open the door but it wouldn't budge. He tried several more times, but the door seemed to be sealed. It had swollen due to the water and had closed with such force that it seemed stuck together at the edges.

   Tthor sighed again, somewhat frustrated. He threatened to hit the door and start yelling for someone to open it but he remembered that they were on the third floor and no one slept in that wing, they didn't even pass by there during the day, much less at night.

   He turned his gaze to Asmodeus and smiled wryly, thinking that he couldn't go a single night without getting into trouble. He settled close to the demon, feeling enormously tired and turning a deaf ear to the roars of his empty stomach.

   He fell asleep almost instantly.

   The next day, he woke up with a start just as the attic door slammed open.

   Outside, with broad smiles, Darius and Lee-Won appeared holding a wooden beam. It had clearly been used to break down the door. Lee-Won was laughing out loud as they walked down the spiral staircase, half an hour after he had put the door back on its hinges.

   "Don't make fun!" Tthor told him, trying not to laugh too. "How did you find me?"

   " I went to your room and you weren't there. The last place I had seen you was there and when I tried to open the door, I noticed that it was swollen."

   "Thank you!" Tthor said, shaking his hand tightly.

   "Tthor!" Chubby arms and long hair came over him and wrapped him in a warm hug. "Thank you, Tthor!!! I can never repay you for what you have done."

   "But... I didn't do anything... What are you talking about, Noel?"

   The girl let him go and explained:

   "The shoes are fixed. All of them. My uncle says that he has never seen work done so well."

   "But…"

   "Thank you, Tthor!" Noel told him. "I must go. I just came to thank my personal shoe elf."

   And leaving a thoughtful Tthor, he skipped away and hummed a song.

   Lee-Won looked at him smiling.

   "Now, in your sleepwalking moments, do you spend your time fixing shoes?" The young dark-haired man joked.

   "...Sleepwalking...," Tthor corrected him, confused.

   " If that. And what did I say?"

   " It was not me. You know I was locked in the attic all night..."

   Lee-Won shrugged and headed towards the kitchen.

   "Are you coming?" He told her, making signs with his hand.

   "Yes, in a minute."

   Lee-Won continued on his way, leaving a serious Tthor in the middle of the hallway. He thought for a moment and, on an impulse, put a hand in his pocket. He was surprised by the feel of his fingers. He grabbed what he had stored there and took it out. Taking a look at it, he was perplexed: a pair of small nails, three laces and a piece of old sole a few centimeters long, appeared in Tthor's trembling hand.

   "How did this get here? Now it turns out that I go through walls...?" was the only thing he managed to stammer...