Adelia Cathcart has an illness of the spirit—perhaps an illness of the soul. No one can scry the secret of her malady. Until someone notices Adelia seems for a moment to come back to life as someone tells a story. We should read her stories, he says. Beautiful, beautiful stories. And these are the stories that bring Adelia back from her stories like the tale of the Light Princess, the tale of a cursed girl like Cinderella or Sleeping Beauty who weighs no more than a breeze. She has an illness of the spirit, too—an illness both like and unlike Adelia's...
