He believes in books, he thinks as he leaves the room. That much he knows for sure.
There is a door in the back of a teahouse. A pile of crates blocks it and the common thought amongst the staff is that the door leads to a disused closet that is likely occupied by mice. Late one night a new assistant attempting to make herself useful will open it to see if the crates will fit inside and she will discover that it is not a storage closet at all.
There is a door at the bottom of a star-covered sea, resting in the ruins of a sunken city. On one dark-as-night day a diver armed with portable breath and light will find this door and open it and slip into a pocket of air along with a number of very confused fish.
There is a door in a desert, covered in sand. Its worn stone surface loses its detail in sandstorms as the time passes. Eventually it will be excavated and relocated to a museum without ever being opened.
There are numerous doors in varying locations. In bustling cities and remote forests. On islands and on mountaintops and in meadows. Some are built into buildings: libraries or museums or private residences, hidden in basements or attics or displayed like artwork in front parlors. Others stand freely without the assistance of supplemental architecture. Some are used with hinge-loosening frequency and others remain undiscovered and unopened and more have simply been forgotten, but all of them lead to the same location.
(How this is accomplished is a matter of much debate and no one has of yet discovered a satisfying answer. There is much disagreement on this and related subjects, including the precise location of the space. Some will argue passionately for one continent or another but such arguments often result in impasses or admissions that perhaps the space itself moves, the stone and the sea and the books shifting beneath the surface of the earth.)
Each door will lead to a Harbor on the Starless Sea, if someone dares to open it.
Little distinguishes them from regular doors. Some are simple. Others are elaborately decorated. Most have doorknobs waiting to be turned though others have handles to be pulled.
These doors will sing. Silent siren songs for those who seek what lies behind them.
For those who feel homesick for a place they’ve never been to.
Those who seek even if they do not know what (or where) it is that they are seeking.
Those who seek will find.
Their doors have been waiting for them.
But what happens next will vary.
Sometimes, someone finds a door and opens it and peers inside only to close it again.
Others when faced with a door will leave it undisturbed, even if their curiosity is piqued. They think they need permission. They believe the door awaits someone else, even if it is in fact waiting for them.
Some will find a door and open it and pass through to see where it leads.
Once there they wander through the stone halls, finding things to look at and things to touch and things to read. They find stories tucked in hidden corners and laid out on tables, as though they had been there always, waiting for their reader to arrive.
Each visitor will find something or someplace or someone that catches their fancy. A book or a conversation or a comfortable chair in a well-curated alcove. Someone will bring them a drink.
They will lose track of time.
Occasionally a visitor will become overwhelmed, disoriented, and dazed by all there is to explore, the space closing around their lungs and their heart and their thoughts, and they will find their way back before much time has passed, back to the familiar surface and the familiar stars and the familiar air, and most will forget that such a place exists, much less that they set foot in it themselves. It will fade like a dream. They will not open their door again. They may forget there was a door at all.
But such reactions are rare.
Most who find the space have sought it, even if they never knew that this place was what they had been seeking.
And they will choose to stay awhile.
Hours or days or weeks. Some will leave and return, keeping the place as an escape, a retreat, a sanctuary. Living lives both above and below.
A few have built their residences on the surface around their doors, keeping them close and protected and preventing others from utilizing them.
Others, once they have passed through their respective door, wish never to return to whatever it was that they left. The lives they left behind become the dreams, waiting not to be returned to but to be forgotten.
These people stay and take up residency and these are the ones who begin to shape what the space will become while they inhabit it.
They live and they work. They consume art and stories and create new art and new stories to add to the shelves and the walls. They find friends and lovers. They put on performances and play games and weave community out of camaraderie.
They throw elaborate festivals and parties. Occasional visitors return for such events, swelling the general population, enlivening even the quieter halls. Music and merriment ring through the ballrooms and the far corners. Bare feet are dipped in the Starless Sea by those who descend to its shores, emboldened by giddiness and wine.
Even those who keep to their private chambers and their books emerge from their solitude on such occasions, and some are persuaded to join the revelry while others content themselves with observation.
Time will pass unmeasured in dancing and delights and then those who choose to leave will begin to find their way to the egress, to be taken back to their respective doors.
They will say their goodbyes to the ones who remain.
The ones who have found their haven in this Harbor.
They have sought and they have found and here they choose to remain, whether they choose a path of dedication or simply a permanent residency.
They live and they work and they play and they love and if they ever miss the world above they rarely admit it.
This is their world, starless and sacred.
They think it impervious. Impenetrable and eternal.
Yet all things change in time.
ZACHARY EZRA RAWLINS arrives at the Algonquin approximately four minutes after he leaves his hotel room. It would have taken even less time if he hadn’t had to wait first for the elevator and then for a cab to pass by on the street.
The party is not quite in full swing but already lively. A line of people waiting to check in crowds the lobby. The hotel is a more classic style than the one Zachary is staying in and feels particularly old-fashioned with the formally dressed crowd, rich dark wood, and potted palms artfully but dimly lit.
Zachary puts on his mask while he waits in line. A woman in a black dress hands out white masks to guests who have not brought their own and Zachary is glad that he did, the white ones are plastic and do not look particularly comfortable, though the effect of them scattered around the room is striking.
He gives his name to the woman at the desk. She does not ask to see his ticket and he tucks it in the pocket of his suit jacket. He checks his coat. He is given a paper wristband that looks like the spine of a book, printed with the date instead of a title. He is informed about the bar (open, tips appreciated) and then he is set free and does not know what to do with himself.
Zachary wanders the party like a ghost, grateful for the mask that allows him to hide in plain sight.
In some respects it is like any number of dressy parties, with chatter and clinking glasses and music that bubbles up from beneath the conversations, carrying the rhythm of everything along with it. Partygoers draped over armchairs and milling in corners in one room, a fairly well-occupied dance floor in another where the music takes over the conversation and insists upon being heard. A party scene from a movie, though a movie that can’t quite settle on issues of time period or hem length. There is an undertone of awkwardness that Zachary recalls
from weddings with a majority of unacquainted guests, and in his experience it fades as the evening and the alcohol progress.
In other respects, this particular party is unlike anything he’s ever experienced. The bar off the main room is lit entirely in blue. There are not a great number of obvious literary costumes, but there are scarlet letters and dictionary-page fairy wings and an Edgar Allan Poe with a fake raven on his shoulder. A picture-perfect Daisy Buchanan sips a martini at the bar. A woman in a little black dress has Emily Dickinson poems printed on her stockings. A man in a suit has a towel draped over his shoulder. A number of people could easily fit into works by Austen or Dickens.
Someone in the corner is dressed as a highly recognizable author or, Zachary thinks as he gets a closer look, it might actually be that highly recognizable author and Zachary has a panicked realization that some of the people who write the books on his bookshelves are actual people who go to parties.
His favorite costume is worn by a woman in a long white gown and a simple gold crown, a reference he can’t quite place until she turns around and the gown’s draped back includes a pointed pair of ears hanging from a hood and a tail trailing along with the train. He remembers dressing as Max from Where the Wild Things Are himself when he was five, though his costume was nowhere near as elegant.
Zachary looks for golden necklaces but finds none with bees or keys or swords. The only key he spots is rigged to appear as though it is disappearing into the back of someone’s neck, but that key he recognizes as a clever comic-book reference.
He finds himself wishing the proper people to talk to would light up or have hovering indicator arrows over their heads or dialogue options to choose from. He doesn’t always wish that real life were more like video games, but in certain situations it would be helpful. Go here. Talk to this person. Feel like you’re making progress even though you don’t know what it is you’re trying to do, exactly.
He is increasingly distracted by the details when he should be focusing on jewelry. He orders one of the literary cocktail creations at the bar, a Drowning Ophelia made with gin and lemon and fennel syrup, served with a spring of rosemary and a napkin with an appropriate Hamlet quote printed on it. Other guests sip Hemingway Daiquiris and Vespers garnished with complicated curls of lemon. Flutes of sparkling wine are served with ribbons that read “Drink Me” wrapped around their stems.
Bowls on tables are filled with escaped typewriter keys. Candles illuminate glass holders wrapped in book pages. One hallway is festooned with writing implements (fountain pens, pencils, quills) hanging from the ceiling at various heights.
A woman in a beaded gown and matching mask sits in a corner at a typewriter, tapping out tiny stories on scraps of paper and giving them to guests that pass by. The one she hands to Zachary reads like a long-form fortune cookie:
He wanders alone but safe in his loneliness.
Confused but comforted by his confusion.
A blanket of bewilderment to hide himself under.
He hasn’t managed to escape attention, even pretending to be the ghost at the feast. He wonders if the masks make people braver, more likely to strike up conversations with the hint of anonymity. Other wandering ghosts approach with remarks about the drinks and the atmosphere. Sharing typewriter stories is a popular conversation starter and he gets to read a few different tales, including one about a stargazing hedgehog and another about a house built over a stream with the sound of the water echoing through the rooms. He overhears someone mention that there are people doing private storytelling sessions in other rooms but speaks to no one who has yet been on the receiving end of one. He gets confirmation that yes, it is indeed that famous author across the room and by the way there’s another one just over there that he hadn’t even noticed.
In the blue-tinged bar he finds himself conversing about cocktails with a man in a suit wearing one of the house-provided masks and a Hello, My Name Is tag with “Godot” written on it stuck to his lapel. Zachary notes the name of a Godot-recommended bourbon on the back of his printed-out ticket.
“Excuse me,” a lady in an oddly childlike pale blue dress and white knee socks says and then Zachary realizes that she’s talking to him. “Have you seen the cat around here by any chance?” she asks.
“The cat?” Zachary guesses her to be a brunette Alice of the Wonderland variety until she is joined by another lady in an identical ensemble and then it is obvious, if slightly disconcerting, that they are the twins from The Shining.
“The hotel has a resident cat,” the first twin explains. “We’ve been looking for her all night but so far no luck.”
“Help us look?” her doppelgänger asks and Zachary agrees even though it sounds like a potentially ominous invitation given their appearance.
They decide to split up to cover more ground and Zachary wanders back near the dance floor, pausing to listen to the jazz band, trying to place the familiar-sounding piece of music.
He peers into the shadows behind the band even though he thinks it unlikely that a cat would hang around with all the noise.
Someone taps him on the shoulder.
The woman dressed as Max, taller than he expected with her crown, stands behind him.
“Would you like to dance?” she asks.
Say something suave, a voice in Zachary’s head commands.
“Sure,” is what his mouth comes up with, and the voice inside his head throws up its arms in disappointment, but the king of the wild things doesn’t seem to mind.
The details of her costume are even more impressive up close. Her gold mask matches her crown, both cut from leather in simple shapes and treated with a rich metallic finish. Beneath the mask her eyes are lined with gold and even her eyelashes sparkle with the same golden glitter sprinkled throughout her upswept dark hair that Zachary now suspects might be a wig. White buttons lining the front of her gown are practically invisible against the fabric, secured with gold thread.
Her perfume is even perfectly suited to the costume, an earthy blend that somehow smells like dirt and sugar at the same time.
After a minute of silent not quite awkward dancing, once Zachary has remembered how to lead and found the rhythm of the song (some jazz standard he recognizes but couldn’t name), he decides he should probably say something, and after mentally grasping for ideas he settles on the first thing he thought when he saw her earlier.
“Your Max costume is far superior to my Max costume,” he says. “I’m relieved I didn’t wear mine, it would have been embarrassing.”
The woman smiles, the type of knowing almost smirk Zachary associates with classic film stars.
“You wouldn’t believe how many people have asked who I’m supposed to be,” she says, with a clear hint of disappointment.
“They should read more,” Zachary responds, echoing her tone.
“You are yourself with a mask on, aren’t you?” the woman asks, dropping her voice.
“More or less,” Zachary answers.
The king of the wild things who might possibly be wearing a wig smiles at him. A real smile this time.
“More, I think,” she says after considering him. “What brings you here this evening, beyond fondness for literature and cocktails? You seem like you’re looking for someone.”
“Sort of,” Zachary admits. He’d almost forgotten. “But I don’t think they’re here.”
He pulls her into a turn mostly to avoid bumping into another couple but the flutter of her gown makes the move look so impressive that several people nearby pause to watch them.
“That’s a shame,” the woman says. “They have deprived themselves of a lovely party and lovely company, I think.”
“Also I was looking for the cat,” Zachary adds. The woman’s smile brightens.
“Ah, I saw Matilda earlier in the evening but I don’t know where she went off to. It is some
times more effective to let her find you, in my experience.” She pauses but then adds, in a wistful whisper: “How lovely to be a hotel cat. We should all be so lucky.”
“What brings you here tonight?” Zachary asks her. The music has changed and he loses his footing momentarily and thankfully recovers without stepping on her feet.
But before the woman can answer, something beyond Zachary’s right shoulder catches her eye. She stiffens, a shift he can feel more than see, and he thinks perhaps this is a woman who is good at wearing many different kinds of masks.
“Excuse me for a moment,” she says. She rests a hand on Zachary’s lapel and someone to the side snaps a photograph. The woman starts to turn away but then stops and bows at Zachary first, or something between a curtsey and a bow that seems at once formal and silly, especially since she is the one with the crown. Zachary returns the gesture as best he can and as she disappears into the crowd someone nearby applauds, as if they were part of a performance.
The photographer comes up and asks him for their names. Zachary decides to request that they simply be listed as guests if the photos are posted anywhere and the photographer reluctantly agrees.
Zachary wanders the lobby again, more slowly due to the tighter crowd, a growing disappointment tugging at him. He looks again for jewelry, for bees or keys or swords. For a sign. He should have worn them himself, or drawn them on his hand or found a bee-patterned pocket square. He does not know why he ever thought he could find a single stranger in a room filled with them.
Zachary looks for anyone he has talked to already, thinking perhaps he could inquire nonchalantly about…he’s not sure what anymore. He can’t even find his Max in the crowd. He encounters a particularly dense knot of partygoers (one in impressive green silk pajamas holding a rose in a glass cloche) and ducks behind a column, moving closer to the wall to get around them, but as he does someone in the crowd grabs his hand and pulls him through a doorway.
The Starless Sea Page 7
