The Starless Sea

by Erin Morgenstern

  “Most of them were lost before they were closed, if you know what I mean,” Mirabel says. “Forgotten and locked away. Time did as much damage as they did, they’re tying up loose ends.”

  “This is all of them?”

  “They have similar buildings in Cairo and Tokyo, though I don’t think there’s any order to which remains end up where. These are decorative, there are more in boxes. All the bits that can’t be burned.”

  She sounds so sad that Zachary doesn’t know what to say. They start to climb the stairs in silence. The last of the light sneaks in through the windows above them.

  “How do you even know he’s here?” Zachary asks, suddenly wondering if this is a rescue mission or if Mirabel has other reasons for being in this space under cover of darkness. The emptiness is starting to feel conspicuous. Too convenient.

  “Are you concerned that this might be a trap, Ezra?” Mirabel asks as they turn onto the landing.

  “Are you, Max?” he retorts.

  “I’m sure we’re much too clever for that,” Mirabel says but then she stops in her tracks as they near the top of the stairs.

  Zachary follows her eyes upward to something ahead of them in the second-floor hallway, a shadow in the fading light. A shadow that is quite clearly Dorian’s body, suspended from the ceiling and displayed like the doorknobs below, tied and tangled in a net of pale ribbons.

  An innkeeper kept an inn at a particularly inhospitable crossroads. There was a village up the mountain some ways away, and cities in other directions, most of which had better routes for traveling toward or away from them, particularly in the winter, but the innkeeper kept his lanterns lit for travelers throughout the year. In summers the inn would be close to bustling and covered in flowering vines but in this part of the land the winters were long.

  The innkeeper was a widower and he had no children so he now spent most of his time in the inn alone. He would occasionally venture to the village for supplies or a drink at the tavern but as time passed he did so less frequently because every time he would visit someone well-meaning would suggest this available woman or that available man or several combinations of eligible village dwellers at once and the innkeeper would finish his drink and thank his friends and head back down the mountain to his inn alone.

  There came a winter with storms stronger than any seen in years. No travelers braved the roads. The innkeeper tried to keep his lanterns lit though the wind extinguished them often and he made certain there was always a fire burning in the main hearth so the smoke would be visible if the wind did not steal that away as well.

  The nights were long and the storms were fierce. The snows consumed the mountain roads. The innkeeper could not travel to the village but he was well supplied. He made soups and stews. He sat by the fire and read books he had been meaning to read. He kept the rooms of the inn prepared for travelers who did not come. He drank whiskeys and wine. He read more books. After time and storms passed and stayed he kept only a few of the rooms readied, the ones closest to the fire. He sometimes slept in a chair by the fire himself instead of retreating to his room, something he would never dream of doing when there were guests. But there were no guests, just the wind and the cold, and the inn began to feel more like a house and it occurred to the innkeeper that it felt emptier as a house than as an inn but he did not dwell on that thought.

  One night when the innkeeper had fallen asleep in his chair by the fire, a cup of wine beside him and a book open on his lap, there came a knock at the door.

  At first the now woken innkeeper thought it was the wind, as the wind had spent much of the winter knocking at the doors and the windows and the roof, but the knocking came again, too steady to be the wind.

  The innkeeper opened the door, a feat that took longer than usual as the ice insisted on keeping it shut. When it relented the wind entered first, bringing a gust of snow along with it, and after the snow came the traveler.

  The innkeeper saw only a hooded cloak before he set his attention to closing the door again, fighting with the wind which had other ideas. He made a remark about the weather but the wind covered his voice with its indignant howling, enraged at not being allowed inside.

  When the door was closed and latched and barred for good measure the innkeeper turned to greet the traveler properly.

  He did not know, looking at the woman who stood in front of him, what he had expected from someone brave or foolish enough to traverse these roads in this weather but it was not this. Not a woman pale as moonlight with eyes as dark as her night-black cloak, her lips blue from the cold. The innkeeper stared at her, all of his standard greetings and affable remarks for new arrivals vanished from his mind.

  The woman began to say something—perhaps a greeting of her own, perhaps a comment on the weather, perhaps a wish or a warning—but whatever she meant to say was lost in a stammer and without a word the innkeeper rushed her to the fireside to warm her.

  He settled the traveler into his chair, taking her wet cloak, relieved to see she wore another cloak layered beneath, one as white as the snow she escaped from. He brought her a cup of warm tea and stoked the fire while the wind howled outside.

  Slowly the woman’s shivering began to ease. She drank her tea and stared at the flames and before the innkeeper could ask her any of his many questions she was asleep.

  The innkeeper stood and stared at her. She looked like a ghost, as pale as her cloak. Twice he checked to be certain she was breathing.

  He wondered if he was asleep and dreaming, but his hands were chilled from opening the door, a small cut stinging where one of the latches had bit into a finger. He was not asleep, though this was as strange as any dream.

  As the woman slept the innkeeper troubled himself with preparing the closest room though it was already prepared. He lit the fire in its smaller hearth and added an extra layer to the bed. He put a pot of soup on to simmer and bread to warm so that the woman might have something to eat if she wished when she woke. He considered carrying her to the room but it was warmer by the fire so he laid another blanket over her instead.

  Then, for lack of anything left to occupy himself with, the innkeeper stood and stared at her again. She was not terribly young, strands of silver ran through her hair. She wore no rings or circlets to indicate that she was married or otherwise promised to anyone or anything but herself. Her lips had regained their color and the innkeeper found his gaze returning there so often that he went to pour himself another cup of wine to keep his thoughts from distracting him further. (It did not work.) After a time he fell asleep in the other chair nearest the fire.

  When the innkeeper woke it was still dark, though he could not tell if it was night or day blanketed by snow and storms. The fire continued to burn but the chair next to him was empty.

  “I did not want to wake you,” a voice said behind him. He turned to find the woman standing there, no longer quite so moonlight pale, taller than he remembered, with an accent to her speech that he could not place though he had heard accents from many lands in his time.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, apologizing both for falling asleep and for failing to live up to his usual high standard of innkeeping. “Your room is…” he began, turning toward the door to the room but he saw that her cloak was already draped by the fire, the bag he had left by her chair at the end of the bed.

  “I found it, thank you. Truthfully I did not think anyone would be here, there were no lanterns and I could not see the firelight from the road.”

  The innkeeper had a general rule about not prying into the matters of his guests but he could not help himself.

  “What were you doing out in such weather?” he asked.

  The woman smiled at him, an apology of a smile and he knew from the smile that she was not a foolish traveler, though he could have guessed as much from the fact that she arrived at all.

  “I am meant to mee
t someone here, at this inn, at this crossroads,” she said. “It was arranged long ago, I do not think the storms were anticipated.”

  “There are no other travelers here,” the innkeeper told her. The woman frowned but it was fleeting, gone in an instant.

  “May I stay until they arrive?” she asked. “I can pay for the room.”

  “I would advise staying in any case, given the storms,” the innkeeper said, and the wind howled on its cue. “No payment will be necessary.”

  The woman frowned and this frown lasted longer this time but then she nodded.

  As the innkeeper began to ask for her name the wind blew the shuttered windows open, sending more snow swirling through the large open hall and annoying the fire. The woman helped him shutter them again. The innkeeper glanced out into the raging darkness and wondered how anyone had managed to travel through it.

  After the windows were shut and the fire returned to its previous strength the innkeeper brought soup and warm bread and wine as well. They sat and ate together by the fire and talked of books and the woman asked questions about the inn (how long had it been there, how long had he been the innkeeper, how many rooms were there, and how many bats in the walls) but the innkeeper, already regretting his previous behavior, asked the woman nothing of herself and she volunteered very little.

  They talked long after the bread and the soup were gone and another bottle of wine opened. The wind calmed, listening.

  The innkeeper felt then that there was no world outside, no wind and no storm and no night and no day. There was simply this room and this fire and this woman and he did not mind.

  After an immeasurable amount of time the woman suggested, hesitantly, that she should perhaps sleep in a bed rather than a chair and the innkeeper bid her a good night though he did not know if it was night or day and the darkness outside refused to comment on the matter.

  The woman smiled at him and closed the door to her room and in that moment on the other side of the door the innkeeper felt truly lonely for the first time in this space.

  He sat by the fire in thought for some time, holding an open book he did not read, and then he retired to his own room across the hall and slept in a dreamless sleep.

  The next day (if it was a day) passed in a pleasant manner. The traveling woman helped the innkeeper bake more bread and taught him how to make a type of little bun he had never seen before, shaped into crescents. Through clouds of flour they told stories. Myths and fairy tales and old legends. The innkeeper told the woman the story of how the wind travels up and down the mountain searching for something it has lost, that the howling is it mourning its loss and crying for its return, so the stories go.

  “What did it lose?” the woman asked.

  The innkeeper shrugged.

  “The stories are different,” he told her. “In some it lost the lake that once sat in the valley where a river runs now. In others it lost a person whom it loved, and howls because a mortal cannot love the wind the way that the wind loves it in return. In the common version it has lost only its way, because the placement of the mountains and the valley is unusual, the wind gets confused and lost and howls because of it.”

  “Which one do you think is true?” the woman asked and the innkeeper stopped to consider the question.

  “I think it is the wind, howling as the wind will always howl with mountains and valleys to howl through, and I think people like to tell stories to explain such things.”

  “To explain to children that there is nothing to fear in the sound, only sadness.”

  “I suppose.”

  “Why then do you think the stories continue to be told once the children are grown?” the woman asked and the innkeeper did not have a satisfying answer to that question, so he asked her another.

  “Do you have stories they tell to explain such things where you are from?” he asked, and again he did not ask where that was. He still could not place her accent and could not think of anyone he had met who put the same lilting emphasis on the local tongue.

  “They sometimes tell a story about the moon when it is gone from the sky.”

  “They tell those here, too,” the innkeeper said and the woman smiled.

  “Do they say where the sun goes when it too is missing?” she asked and the innkeeper shook his head.

  “Where I am from they tell a story about it,” the woman said, her attention on the work in front of her, the steady movement of her hands through the flour. “They say that every hundred years—some versions say every five hundred, or every thousand—the sun disappears from the daytime sky at the same time the moon vanishes from the night. They say their absence is coordinated so that they may meet in a secret location, unseen by the stars, to discuss the state of the world and compare what each has seen over the past hundred or five hundred or thousand years. They meet and talk and part again, returning to their respective places in the sky until their next meeting.”

  It reminded the innkeeper of another, similar story and so he asked a question he regretted as soon as it fell from his lips.

  “Are they lovers?” he asked and the woman’s cheeks flushed. He was about to apologize when she continued.

  “In some versions they are,” she said. “Though I suspect if the story were true they would have too much to discuss to have time for such things.”

  The innkeeper laughed and the woman looked up at him in surprise but then she laughed as well and they continued to tell their stories and bake their bread and the wind wound its way around the inn, listening to their tales and forgetting for a time what it was that it had lost.

  Three days passed. The storms raged on. The innkeeper and the woman continued to pass the time in comfort, in stories, in meals, and in cups filled and refilled with wine.

  On the fourth day there was a knock upon the door. The innkeeper went to open it. The woman remained seated by the fire.

  The wind was calmer then and only a small amount of snow entered alongside this second traveler. The snowflakes melted as soon as the door was closed.

  The innkeeper’s comment about the weather died on his lips as he turned toward this new traveler.

  This traveler’s cloak was a worn color that must once have been gold. It still shone in places. This traveler was a woman with dark skin and light eyes. Her hair was kept shorter than any fashion the innkeeper had seen but it too was near gold in color. She did not seem to feel the cold.

  “I am to meet another traveler here,” this woman said. Her voice was like honey, deep and sweet.

  The innkeeper nodded and gestured toward the fire at the opposite end of the hall.

  “Thank you,” this woman said. The innkeeper helped her remove the cloak from her shoulders, the snow melted and dripping from it, and he took it from her to hang to dry. She, too, wore another layered cloak, sensible for the weather, this one faded and gold.

  The woman walked to the fireplace and sat in the other chair. The innkeeper was too far away to hear them but there seemed to be no greeting, the conversation immediate.

  The conversation went on for some time. After an hour had passed the innkeeper put together a plate of bread and dried fruit and cheese and brought it to the women, along with a bottle of wine and two cups. They ceased their conversation as he approached.

  “Thank you,” the first woman said as he placed the food and the wine on the table near the chairs. She rested her hand on his for a moment. She had not touched him so before and he could not speak so he merely nodded before he left them to their conversation. The other woman smiled and the innkeeper could not tell what she was smiling at.

  He let them talk. They did not move from their chairs. The wind outside was quiet.

  The innkeeper sat at the far end of the hall, close enough for either woman to beckon if he was needed but far enough that he could not hear a single word spoken between them. He
arranged another plate for himself but only picked at it, save for the crescent-shaped roll that melted on his tongue. He tried to read but could not manage more than a page at a time. Hours must have passed. The light outside had not changed.

  The innkeeper fell asleep, or he thought perhaps he did. He blinked and outside was darkness. The sound that woke him was the second woman rising from her chair.

  She kissed the other woman on the cheek and walked back across the hall.

  “I thank you for your hospitality,” she said to the innkeeper when she reached him.

  “Will you not be staying?” he asked.

  “No, I must be going,” the woman said. The innkeeper fetched her golden cloak, bone-dry and warm in his hands. He draped it over her shoulders and helped her fasten its clasps and she smiled at him again, a warm, pleasant smile.

  She looked as though she might say something to him then, perhaps a warning or a wish, but instead she said nothing and smiled once more as he opened the door and she walked out into the darkness.

  The innkeeper watched until he could no longer see her (which was not long) and then he closed and latched the door. The wind began to howl again.

  The innkeeper walked over to the fire, to the dark-haired woman sitting by it, only then realizing that he did not know her name.

  “I will have to leave in the morning,” she said without looking up at him. “I would like to pay you for the room.”

  “You could stay,” the innkeeper said. He rested his hand on the side of her chair. She looked down at his fingers and again placed her hand upon his.

  “I wish that were so,” she said quietly.

  The innkeeper raised her hand to his lips.

  “Stay with me.” He breathed his request across her palm. “Be with me.”

  “I will have to leave in the morning,” the woman repeated. A single tear slid down her cheek.

  “In this weather who can tell when it is morning?” the innkeeper asked and the woman smiled.

  She rose from her chair by the fire and took the innkeeper by the hand into her room and into her bed and the wind howled around the inn, crying for love found and mourning for love lost.