“Why?” Zachary asks. “Are they trying to get there, too?”
“Not that I’m aware of,” Dorian says. “But they don’t want us going there, they don’t want anyone going there anymore. Do you know how simple it is to destroy a door made of paint?”
“How simple?”
“As simple as throwing more paint on it, and they always have paint.”
Zachary looks out the window at the buildings passing by and the snowflakes starting to stick to signs and trees. He glimpses the Empire State Building, bright and white against the sky, and he realizes that he has no idea what time it is and doesn’t care enough to check his watch.
The TV screen in the cab chatters away about headlines and movies and Zachary reaches over to mute it, unconcerned about anything else going on in the world, real or fictional.
“I don’t suppose we have time to stop and get my bag,” he says, already knowing the answer. His contact lenses are beginning to war with his eyeballs.
“I’ll make certain you are reunited with your belongings as soon as possible,” Dorian says. “I know you have a lot of questions, I will do my best to answer them once we’re safe.”
“Are we not safe now?” Zachary asks.
“Frankly, I’m impressed that you made it out of there,” Dorian says. “You must have caught them at least partially by surprise. Otherwise they wouldn’t have let you go.”
“Under any circumstances,” Zachary mutters to himself, recalling the overheard phone call. They hadn’t planned on letting him go. There probably wasn’t tea, either. “They knew who I was the whole time,” he tells Dorian. “The one who answered the door was in Vermont pretending to be a student, it took me a while to recognize her.”
Dorian frowns but says nothing.
They sit in silence as the cab speeds up streets.
“Is Mirabel the one who paints the doors?” Zachary asks. It seems relevant enough to ask.
“Yes,” Dorian says. He does not elaborate. Zachary glances over at him but he is staring out the window, one of his knees bouncing restlessly.
“Why did you think I knew her?”
Dorian turns and looks at him.
“Because you danced with her at the party,” he says.
Zachary tries to recall his conversation with the woman dressed as the king of the wild things but it is fragmented and hazy in his mind.
He is about to ask Dorian how he knows her but the cab slows to a stop.
“At the corner here is fine, thank you,” Dorian says to the driver, handing him cash and refusing change. Zachary stands on the sidewalk, attempting to orient himself. They’ve stopped next to Central Park, near one of the gates pulled closed for the night, and across from a large building he recognizes.
“Are we going to the museum?” he asks.
“No,” Dorian says. He watches the cab drive off and then turns and jumps the wall into the park. “Hurry up,” he says to Zachary.
“Isn’t the park closed?” Zachary asks, but Dorian is already walking ahead, disappearing into the shadows of the snow-covered branches.
Zachary awkwardly climbs over the icy wall, almost losing his footing on the other side but regains his composure at the expense of getting his hands covered in dirt and ice.
He follows Dorian into the park, looping around deserted paths and leaving tracks in unblemished snow. Between the trees he can make out something that looks like a castle. It is easy to forget that they are in the middle of the city.
They pass a sign declaring part of the frosted foliage the Shakespeare Garden, and then they cross a small bridge over part of the frozen pond and after that Dorian slows and stops.
“It appears the night is moving in our favor,” Dorian says. “We got here first.” He gestures at an archway of rock, half hidden in the shadows.
The door painted on the rough stones is simple, less ornate than the one that Zachary remembers. It has no decorations, only a gleaming doorknob of brass paint and matching hinges around a plain door that looks like wood. The rock is too uneven for it to fool anyone’s eye. At the top there are letters that look carved, something Zachary can’t distinguish that might be Greek.
“Cute,” Dorian says to himself, reading the text over the door.
“What does it say?” Zachary asks.
“Know Thyself,” Dorian says. “Mirabel is fond of embellishment, I’m amazed she had the time in this weather.”
“That’s half the Rawlins family motto,” Zachary says.
“What’s the other half?”
“And Learn to Suffer.”
“Maybe you should look into changing that part,” Dorian says. “Would you like to do the honors?” he adds, gesturing at the door.
Zachary reaches toward the doorknob, not certain he truly believes this isn’t all some elaborate prank, part of him expecting to be laughed at, but his hand closes over cold metal, round and three-dimensional. It turns easily and the door swings inward, revealing an open space much larger than it should possibly be. Zachary freezes, staring.
Then he hears something—someone—behind them, a rustling in the trees.
“Go,” Dorian says and pushes him, a sharp shove between his shoulder blades and Zachary stumbles forward through the door. At the same second something wet hits him, splashing over his back and up his neck, dripping down his arm.
Zachary looks down at his arm, expecting blood but instead he finds it covered in shimmering paint, droplets falling from his fingers like molten gold.
And Dorian is gone.
Behind him, what had been an open door moments before is now a wall of solid rock. Zachary bangs his hands against it, leaving metallic smudges of gold paint on smooth, dark stone.
“Dorian!” he calls but the only response is his own voice echoing around him.
When the echo fades the quiet is heavy. No rustling trees, no distant cars rushing over damp pavement.
Zachary calls out again but the echo sounds halfhearted, knowing that somehow no one can hear him, not here. Wherever here is.
He turns from the gold-smudged wall and looks around. He stands on a stretch of rock in a space that looks like a cave. A spiral stair is carved into the round space leading downward and somewhere below something is casting a soft, warm light upward, like firelight but steadier.
Zachary moves away from the space where the door had been and walks slowly down the stairs, leaving a trail of gold paint along the stone.
At the bottom of the stairs, seamlessly fitted into the solid rock, is a pair of golden doors flanked with hanging lanterns suspended from chains that is undoubtedly an elevator. It is covered in elaborate patterns including a bee, a key, and a sword aligned along the center seam.
Zachary puts out his hand to touch it, half expecting it to be a clever illusion like the painted doors but the elevator is cool and metal, the designs embossed and clearly defined beneath his fingertips.
This is a significant moment, he thinks, hearing the words in his head in his mother’s voice. A moment with meaning. A moment that changes the moments that follow.
It feels like the elevator is watching him. To see what he will do.
Sweet Sorrows never mentioned an elevator.
He wonders what else Sweet Sorrows never mentioned.
He wonders what has happened to Dorian.
On the side, beneath one of the lanterns, is a single unmarked hexagonal button surrounded by gold filigree and set into the rock like a jewel.
Zachary presses it and it comes alight with a soft glow.
A loud, low rumble starts from somewhere below, growing louder and stronger. Zachary takes a step backward. The lanterns shudder on their chains.
Abruptly, the noise stops.
The button light extinguishes itself.
A soft chime sounds from
behind the doors.
Then the bee and the key and the sword split down the center as the elevator opens.
The pirate tells the girl not the single story she requested but many stories. Stories that fold into other stories and wander into snippets of lost myths and forgotten tales and yet to be told wonderments that turn back around again into each other until they return to two people facing each other through iron bars, a storyteller and a story listener with no more whispered words left between them.
The post-story silence is heavy and long.
“Thank you,” the girl says softly.
The pirate accepts her thanks with a silent nod.
It is almost dawn.
The pirate untangles his fingers from the girl’s hair. The girl steps back from the bars.
She places a hand over her chest and gives the pirate a low, graceful bow.
The pirate mirrors the gesture, the bowed head, the hand near his heart, the formal acknowledgment that their dance has ended.
He pauses before he lifts his head, holding on to the moment as long as he can.
When he raises his eyes the girl has already turned from him and walked silently to the opposite wall.
Her hand hovers above the key. She does not look over at the guard or back at the pirate. This is her decision and she needs no outside assistance in making it.
The girl slips the key from its hook. She is careful not to let it rattle against its ring or clatter against the stone.
She walks back across the room with the key in her hand.
The click as the key unlocks the cell, even the creak of the door does not wake the guard.
There are no words exchanged as the girl gifts the pirate his freedom and he accepts it. As they ascend the dark stairs, nothing is spoken about what might happen next. What will occur once they reach the door at the top. What uncharted seas wait for them beyond it.
Just before they reach the door the pirate pulls the girl back to him and catches her lips with his. No bars between them now, twined together on a darkened stair with only fate and time to complicate matters.
This is where we leave them—a girl and her pirate, a pirate and his savior—in a kiss in the darkness before a door opens.
But this is not where their story ends.
This is only where it changes.
New Orleans, Louisiana, fourteen years ago
It is almost dawn. A greyish haze pushes the darkness from night to not quite day but there is light from the street pouring into the alley, more than enough light to paint by.
She is accustomed to low-light painting.
The air is colder than she had expected and her fingerless gloves are better for brush-holding than warmth. She pulls the sleeves of her sweatshirt farther down her wrists, leaving traces of paint, but the cuffs were already well paint-smudged, in various shades and finishes.
She adds another line of shadow down the faux-wood panels, giving them more definition. The bulk of the work is done, has been done since the night was still night and not even considering becoming dawn, and she could leave it as it is but she does not want to. She’s proud of this one, this is good work and she wants to make it better.
She switches brushes, pulling a thinner one from the fan of painting tools sticking out from her ponytail, thick black hair streaked with blue that disappears in this particular light. She rummages quietly in the backpack by her feet and changes her paints from shadow grey to metallic gold.
The details are her favorite part: A shadow added here and a highlight there and suddenly a flat image gains dimension.
The gold paint on its tiny brush leaves gilded marks over the hilt of the sword, the teeth of the key, the stripes on the bee. They glitter in the darkness, replacing the fading stars.
Once she is pleased with the doorknob she switches brushes again, finishing touches now.
She always saves the keyhole for last.
Maybe it feels like something close to a signature, a keyhole on a door that has no key. A detail that is there because it should be, not out of any necessity of engineering. Something to make it feel complete.
“That’s very pretty,” a voice says behind her and the girl jumps, the paintbrush tumbling from her fingers and landing by her feet, pausing to smear her shoelaces with keyhole-dark black on its way down.
She turns and a woman is standing behind her.
She could run but she’s not certain which direction to run in. The streets look different in the almost-light.
She forgets how to say hello in this particular language and is not certain if she should say hello or thank you so she says nothing.
The woman is considering the door and not the girl. She wears a fluffy robe the color of an under-ripe peach and holds a mug that says Real Witch on it. Her hair is tied up in a rainbow-printed scarf. She has a lot of earrings. There are tattoos on her wrists: a sunshine and a line of moons. She’s shorter than the girl but seems bigger, takes up more room in the alley despite being a smaller person. The girl shrinks farther into her hooded sweatshirt.
“You’re not supposed to paint on there, you know,” the woman says. She takes a sip from her mug.
The girl nods.
“Someone’s going to come and paint over it.”
The girl looks at the door and then back at the woman and shrugs.
“Come have a cup of coffee,” the woman says and turns and walks down the alley and around the corner without waiting for an answer.
The girl hesitates, but then she sticks her paintbrush in her ponytail with the rest and collects her bag and follows.
Around the corner is a store. A neon sign in the shape of an upraised palm with an eye in the middle rests unlit in the center of the large window, surrounded by velvet curtains obscuring the inside. The woman stands in the doorway, holding the door open for the girl.
A bell chimes as it closes behind them. The inside of the store is not like any store the girl has seen before, filled with candles and mismatched furniture. Bundles of dried sage tied with colorful strings hang from the ceiling, surrounded by twinkling lights on strings and paper lanterns. On a table there is a crystal ball and a pack of clove cigarettes. A statue of an ibis-headed god peers over the girl’s shoulder as she tries to find a place to stand out of the way.
“Sit,” the woman says, waving her at a velvet couch covered in scarves. The girl knocks into a fringed lampshade on her way toward the couch, the fringe continuing to dance after she is seated, holding her bag in her lap.
The woman returns with two mugs, the new one emblazoned with a five-point star inside a circle.
“Thank you,” the girl says quietly as she takes the mug. It is warm in her cold hands.
“You can speak,” the woman says, settling herself into an ancient Chesterfield chair that sighs and creaks as she sits. “What’s your name?”
The girl says nothing. She sips the too-hot coffee.
“Do you need someplace to stay?” the woman asks.
The girl shakes her head.
“You sure about that?”
The girl nods this time.
“I didn’t mean to startle you out there,” the woman continues. “Have to be a little wary of teenagers outside at odd hours.” She takes a sip of her coffee. “Your door is very nice. Sometimes they paint not so nice things on that wall, because people say a witch lives here.”
The girl frowns and then points at the woman, who laughs.
“What gave it away?” she asks and though the question does not sound serious the girl points at the coffee mug anyway. Real Witch.
The woman laughs harder and the girl smiles. Making a witch laugh feels like a lucky sort of thing.
“Not trying to hide it, obviously,” the woman says, chuckling. “But
some of those kids talk a lot of nonsense about curses and devils and some of the more easily swayed ones believe it. Someone threw a rock through the window not that long ago.”
The girl looks over at the window, covered by the velvet curtains, then down at her hands. She is not certain she understands people sometimes. There is paint underneath her fingernails.
“Mostly I read,” the woman continues, “like a book about a person, only I read it through an object they’ve handled. I’ve read car keys and wedding rings. I read one of my son’s video-game controllers once, he didn’t appreciate that but I read him all the time anyway, he’s written all over the floors and the wallpaper and the laundry. I could probably read your paintbrushes.”
The girl’s hand flies up to the fan of brushes in her hair protectively.
“Only if you want to know, honeychild.”
The girl’s expression changes at the endearment, she translates it a number of times in her head and thinks that this woman must be a witch to know such things, but she says nothing.
The girl puts her mug down on the table and stands up. She looks toward the door, holding her bag.
“Time to go already?” the woman remarks but does not protest. She puts down her own coffee and walks the girl to the door. “If you need anything you come back here, anytime. Okay?”
The girl looks as though she might say something but doesn’t. Instead she glances at the sign on the door, a hand-painted piece of wood on a ribbon that says Spiritual Adviser, with little stars painted around the edges.
“Maybe you can paint me a new sign next time,” the woman adds. “And here, take these.” Impulsively she plucks a pack of cards from a shelf, high enough to discourage shoplifters, and hands them to the girl. She reads cards only rarely herself but she enjoys giving them as unexpected gifts when the moment feels right, as this moment does. “They’re cards with stories on them,” she explains as the girl looks curiously at the cards in her hand. “You shuffle the pictures and they tell you the story.”
The girl smiles, first at the woman and then down at the cards which she holds gently, like a small living thing. She turns to walk away but stops suddenly after a few steps and turns back before the door has closed behind her.
The Starless Sea Page 11
