The Starless Sea

by Erin Morgenstern

  The man frowned but then nodded.

  “It is not a treasure in the traditional sense,” he said, and kissed the sculptor on her hand knowing he would never be able to pay for such a service, and he left her to her work.

  The sculptor toiled for her year. She refused all other requests and commissions. She created not one story but many. Stories within stories. Puzzles and wrong turns and false endings, in stone and in wax and in smoke. She crafted locks and destroyed their keys. She wove narratives of what would happen, what might happen, what had already happened, and what could never happen and blurred them all together.

  She combined her work with permanence and stone with the work she had created when she was young, blended elements that would withstand the test of time with those that might vanish as soon as they were completed.

  When the year was up the man returned.

  The sculptor handed him an elaborately carved and decorated box.

  The man placed the precious object that he needed to hide inside. The sculptor did not show him how to close it, or how it might open again. Only she knew that.

  “Thank you,” the man said and he kissed the sculptor on her lips this time as payment—the most he could give—and she took the kiss in exchange and thought it fair.

  The sculptor did not hear anything of the man after he departed. The story remained in place.

  Many years later those who sought what had been hidden found the sculptor.

  When they realized what she had done they cut off her hands.

  a now forgotten city, a very, very long time ago

  The pirate (who remains a metaphor yet also a person and sometimes has difficulty embodying both at once) stands on the shore, watching the ships that sail the Starless Sea near this Harbor.

  He allows his mind to picture himself and the girl at his side aboard one of these ships, sailing farther into the distance and further into the future, away from this Harbor and toward a new one. He imagines it so clearly that he almost believes it will happen. He can see himself, away from this place, free from its rules and constraints, bound to nothing but her.

  He can almost see the stars.

  He pulls the girl close to keep her warm. He kisses her shoulder, pretending he will have her for a lifetime when in truth they have only minutes left together.

  The time the pirate sees in his mind is not in the city now. It is not soon.

  The ships are far from the shore. The bells behind them are already ringing in alarm.

  The pirate knows, though he does not wish to admit it even to himself, that they have so far yet to go.

  The girl (who is also a metaphor, an ever-changing one that only sometimes takes the form of a girl) knows this as well, she knows it better than he does but they do not discuss such things.

  This is not the first time they have stood together on these shores. It will not be the last.

  This is a story they will live over and over again, together and apart.

  The cage that contains them both is a large one that does not have a key.

  Not yet.

  The girl pulls the pirate away from the glow of the Starless Sea and into the shadows, to make the most of what moments remain between them before time and fate intervene.

  To give him more of her to remember.

  After they are found, when the girl meets her death with open eyes and her lover’s screams echoing in her ears, before the starless darkness claims her once again, she can see the oceans of time that rest between this point and their freedom, clear and wide.

  And she sees a way to cross them.

  The small girl stares with wide brown eyes at each person who comes to observe her. A dark cloud of frizzy hair surrounds her head, stray leaves hiding within it. She holds a door knocker the way a smaller child might handle a rattle or a toy. Tightly. Protectively.

  She has been placed in an armchair in one of the galleries, as though she is herself a piece of art. Her feet do not touch the ground. Her head has been examined and some concern has been raised over injury, though she is not bleeding. A bruise blooms near her temple, a greenish hue spreading over light brown skin. It does not seem to bother her. She is given a plate of tiny cakes and eats them in small, serious bites.

  She is asked her name. She appears not to understand the question. There is some debate over how translations might work for someone so young (few recall the last time there was a child in this place) but she understands other inquiries: She nods when asked if she is thirsty or hungry. She smiles when someone brings her an old stuffed toy, a rabbit with thinning fur and floppy ears. Only when the rabbit is presented does she relinquish the door knocker, clutching the bunny with equal intensity.

  She does not recall her name, her age, anything about her family. When asked how she got there she holds up the door knocker with a pitying look in her large eyes, as the answer is terribly obvious and the people peering down at her are not very observant.

  Everything about her is analyzed, from the make of her shoes to her accent as they begin to coerce single words or phrases, but she speaks rarely and all anyone can agree on is that there are hints of Australia or possibly New Zealand, though some insist the slight accent on her English is South African. There are a number of old doors left uncatalogued in each country. The girl does not give reliable geographical information. She remembers people and fairies and dragons with equal clarity. Large buildings and small buildings and forests and fields. She describes bodies of water of indiscernible size that could be lakes or oceans or bathtubs. Nothing to point clearly toward her origin.

  Throughout the investigations it remains an unspoken truth that she cannot easily be returned to wherever she has fallen from if her door no longer exists.

  There is talk of sending her back through another door, but no one in the dwindling population of residents volunteers for such a mission, and the girl appears happy enough. Does not complain. Does not ask to go home. Does not cry for her parents, wherever they might be.

  She is given a room where everything is too big for her. Clothes that fit reasonably well are found and one of the knitting groups provides her with sweaters and socks spun from colorful yarn. Her shoes are cleaned and remain her only pair until she outgrows them, the rubber soles worn through to holes then patched and worn through again.

  They call her the girl or the child or the foundling, though the more semantic-minded residents point out that she was not abandoned, not as far as anyone knows, so the term foundling is inaccurate.

  Eventually she is called Eleanor, and some say afterward she was named for the queen of Aquitaine, and others claim the choice was inspired by Jane Austen, and still others say she once responded to the request for her name with “Ellie” or “Allira” or something like that. (In truth the person who suggested the name plucked it from a novel by Shirley Jackson but neglected to clarify due to the unfortunate fate of that other, fictional Eleanor.)

  “Does she have a name yet?” the Keeper asks, not looking up from his desk, his pen continuing to move across the page.

  “They’ve taken to calling her Eleanor,” the painter informs him.

  The Keeper puts down his pen and sighs.

  “Eleanor,” he repeats, putting the emphasis on the latter syllables, turning the name into another sigh. He picks up his pen and resumes his writing, all without so much as a glance at the painter.

  The painter does not pry. She thinks perhaps the name has a particular meaning to him. She has only known him a short amount of time. She decides to stay uninvolved in the matter, herself.

  This Harbor upon the Starless Sea absorbs the girl who fell through the remains of a door the way the forest floor consumed the door: She becomes part of the scenery. Sometimes noticed. Mostly ignored. Left to her own devices.

  No one takes responsibil
ity. Everyone assumes someone else will do it, and so no one does. They are all preoccupied with their own work, their own intimate dramas. They observe and question and even participate but not for long. Not for more than moments, here and there, scattered through a childhood like fallen leaves.

  On that first day, in the chair but before the bunny, Eleanor answers only a single question aloud when asked what she was doing out on her own.

  “Exploring,” she says.

  She thinks she is doing a very good job of it.

  ZACHARY EZRA RAWLINS finds himself in an elevator with a pink-haired lady with a gun who he’s pretty sure has just committed arson on top of the already committed crimes of the day and an unconscious man who might be an attempted murderer and his throbbing head cannot decide if he needs a nap or a drink or why, exactly, he feels more comfortable now in present elevator company than he had before.

  “What the…?” Zachary starts and then can’t figure out the rest of the words so he finishes the question aimed at Mirabel with hand gestures indicating both the gun in her hand and the elevator door.

  “It’ll render that door useless, hopefully it will take her a while to locate another one. Don’t look at me like that.”

  “You’re pointing a gun at me.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry!” Mirabel says, looking down at her hand and then placing the gun in her bag. “It’s a single-bullet antique, one-and-done. You’re bleeding.”

  She looks behind Zachary’s ear and takes a handkerchief printed with clocks from her pocket. She pulls it away more bloodied than he had expected.

  “It’s not that bad,” she tells him. “Just keep this on it. We’ll get it cleaned up later. It might scar, but then we’d be twins.” She lifts her hair to show him the scar behind her ear, which he had noticed earlier, and he doesn’t need to ask how she got it.

  “What is going on here?” Zachary asks.

  “That’s a complicated question, Ezra,” Mirabel says. “You’re very tense. I take it teatime was not particularly pleasant.”

  “Allegra threatened my mother,” Zachary says. He has a feeling that Mirabel is trying to distract him. To keep him calm.

  “She does that,” Mirabel says.

  “She meant it, didn’t she?”

  “Yes she did. But that threat was attached to telling anyone about our destination, wasn’t it?”

  Zachary nods.

  “She has her priorities. Maybe stay down here for a few days, I can do some reconnaissance. Allegra won’t do anything unless she feels she has no choice. She’s had opportunities to get rid of all three of us and we’re alive and kicking. Mostly,” she adds, looking down at Dorian.

  “But she actually kills people?” Zachary asks.

  “She hires people to do the wet work. Case in point.” She nudges Dorian’s leg with the toe of her boot.

  “Are you serious?” Zachary asks.

  “Do you need another story?” Mirabel asks, reaching for her bag.

  “No, I do not need another story,” Zachary answers, but as he says it the taste of the knight and his broken hearts comes back to his tongue and he remembers more details: the patterned engraving on the knight’s armor, the summer evening field blooming with jasmine. It is muddled in his mind like a memory or a dream captured in sugar. It calms him, unexpectedly.

  Zachary sits back on the faded velvet bench and leans his head against the elevator wall. He can feel it vibrating. The chandelier above is moving and it makes him dizzy so he closes his eyes.

  “Then tell me a story,” Mirabel says, and it pulls him out of the sleepy dizziness. “Why don’t you begin at your beginning and tell me how we got here. You can skip the childhood prequel part, I know that one already.”

  Zachary sighs.

  “I found this book,” he says, tracing everything backward and landing squarely on Sweet Sorrows. “In the library.”

  “What book?” Mirabel asks.

  Zachary hesitates but then describes the events that led from the book finding to the party. A short sketch of the preceding days and he is annoyed at how little time it takes to relay and how it doesn’t sound like all that much when distilled into individual events.

  “What happened to the book?” Mirabel asks when he’s finished.

  “I thought he had it,” Zachary says, looking down at Dorian. He looks asleep rather than unconscious now, his head resting on the edge of the velvet bench.

  Mirabel goes through Dorian’s pockets, turning up a set of keys, a ballpoint pen, a slim leather wallet containing a large amount of cash, and a New York Public Library card in the name of David Smith along with a few business cards with other names and professions and several blank cards marked with the image of a bee. No credit cards, no ID. No book.

  Mirabel takes a few bills from Dorian’s wallet and puts the rest of his things back in his pockets.

  “What’s that for?” Zachary asks.

  “After all we went through to rescue him he’s paying for our coffee. Wait, we both had tea, didn’t we? Either way, it’s on him.”

  “What do you think they did to him?”

  “I think they interrogated him and I think they didn’t get the answers they wanted and then they drugged him and strung him up for dramatic impact and waited for us to show up. I can help once we get him inside.”

  On cue the elevator stops and the doors open, revealing the antechamber. Zachary tries to pinpoint the feeling the arrival has and can only think that if the apartment above his mother’s store in New Orleans still existed seeing it again might feel like this, but he cannot tell if it is nostalgia or disorientation. He tries not to think about it too much, it is hurting his head.

  Zachary and Mirabel lift Dorian using the same system of careful awkward weight balancing as before. Dorian is no help at all with the forward motion. Zachary hears the elevator close and head off to wherever it lives when not occupied by unconscious men and pink-haired ladies and confused tourists.

  Mirabel reaches out for the doorknob, shifting more of Dorian’s weight over to Zachary. The doorknob doesn’t turn.

  “Dammit,” Mirabel says. She closes her eyes and tilts her head, like she’s listening to something.

  “What’s the matter?” Zachary asks, expecting one of the many keys around her neck might solve the problem.

  “He’s never been here before,” she says, nodding at Dorian. “He’s new.”

  “He is?” Zachary asks, surprised, but Mirabel continues.

  “He has to do the entrance exam.”

  “With the dice and the drinking?” Zachary asks. “How is he supposed to do that?”

  “He isn’t,” Mirabel says. “We’re going to proxy for him.”

  “We’re going to…” Zachary lets the question trail off, understanding what she means before he finishes asking.

  “I’ll do one, you do the other?” Mirabel asks.

  “Sure, I guess,” Zachary agrees. He leaves Mirabel holding Dorian mostly upright and turns back to the two alcoves. He picks the side with the dice, partly because he has more experience with dice than with mystery liquid and partly because he’s not sure he wants to drink more mystery liquid and it doesn’t feel right to spill it.

  “Concentrate on doing it for him and not yourself,” Mirabel says when he reaches the little alcove with its dice reset to roll again.

  Zachary reaches for the dice and misses, grasping the air next to them instead. He must be more exhausted than he’d thought. He tries again and takes the dice in his hand and rolls them around in his fingers. He doesn’t know much about Dorian, doesn’t even know his real name, but he closes his eyes and conjures the man in his mind, a combination of walking in the streets in the cold and the paper flower in his lapel and the scent of lemon and tobacco in the dark in the hotel and the breath against his neck and he lets the di
ce tumble from his palm.

  He opens his eyes. The wobbling dice are hazy in his vision but then they focus.

  One key. One bee. One sword. One crown. One heart. One feather.

  The dice settle and stop and before the last one ceases to move the bottom falls out of the alcove and they disappear into the darkness.

  “What did he get?” Mirabel asks. “Wait, let me guess: swords and…keys, maybe.”

  “One of each,” Zachary says. “I think, unless there are more than six things.”

  “Huh,” Mirabel says in a tone that Zachary can’t decipher as she lets him take hold of Dorian again who suddenly feels much more there with the memory of the storytelling fresh in his mind and that faint lemon scent. It’s warmer down here than Zachary remembers. He realizes he lost his borrowed coat somewhere.

  On the other side of the room Mirabel picks up the covered glass and looks at it carefully before uncovering it and drinking it. She shudders and replaces the glass in the alcove.

  “What did it taste like when you drank it?” she asks Zachary as she takes Dorian’s other arm again.

  “Um…honey spice vanilla orange blossom,” Zachary says, recalling the liqueur-like flavor, though the list of notes does not do it justice. “With a kick,” he adds. “Why?”

  “That one tasted like wine and salt and smoke,” Mirabel says. “But he would have drunk it. Let’s see if it worked.”

  This time the door opens.

  Zachary’s relief is temporary, realizing how far they have to go as they enter the giant hall.

  “Now we get him checked in,” Mirabel says. “Then you and I are having a real drink, we’ve earned it.”

  The walk to the Keeper’s office attracts the attention of a few curious cats who peer out from behind stacks of books and chandeliers to watch their progress.

  “Wait here,” Mirabel says, shifting all of Dorian’s weight to Zachary’s shoulder and again it is surprisingly heavy and more something than Zachary would care to admit. “Straight flush, right?”