On Kingdom Road, Charlie passes a gray, hostile man on crutches and a boy who warn him away from the “haunted city.” Worried about his father yet driven to save Radar, Charlie presses on. Radar collapses with painful hind legs, and Charlie carries her, determined to reach Lilimar’s sundial.

He sights Lilimar’s walls and gate, then meets Claudia, Woody’s deaf cousin, riding a large tricycle. She leads Charlie to her round shack near a pond strewn with wolf carcasses. Inside, she recognizes Bowditch’s gun, soothes Radar’s inflamed joints with a potent liniment, eases Charlie’s blistered hands, and feeds them.

Claudia lays out the plan: spend the night in a storage shed by the main gate marked by a red wagon without wheels, bolt the door, and leave at the morning bell. Use “Leah of the Gallien” to open the locked gate. If Adrian’s marks are present, follow them in silence through the maze, ignoring voices and shifting sights. Reach a square with a dry fountain near a huge yellow house with brown shutters—Hana’s house with a central passage. Hide, wait for two bells, slip through while Hana eats, then find the sundial along wide walkways. Turn it backward only, keep off it yourself, and return the same way, listening for Hana’s thunderous snores. Be out of Lilimar soon after three bells to avoid the night soldiers.

Wolves batter Claudia’s house, but she reveals Adrian’s “Noisemaker”: a car battery, converter, switch, and six speakers that unleash deafening blasts, scattering the pack. She asks Charlie to bring another battery someday.

At dawn, Claudia forbids the clattering cart and lends her trike fitted with quiet rubber tires from Charlie’s world. After the first bell, a vast migration of giant monarch butterflies darkens the sky. Claudia hails Empis and the Gallien, and Charlie, awed, accepts Empis as real as he sets out toward Lilimar.