The Starless Sea

by Erin Morgenstern

  He could.

  But he won’t.

  As Dorian stands in the snow with shaking, near-frozen fingers and scotch-warmed thoughts, watching Zachary through the glass, he isn’t thinking about everything that’s inevitably about to happen.

  He’s thinking, Let me tell you a story.

  There is a stag in the snow.

  Blink and he will vanish.

  Was he a stag at all or was he something else?

  Was he a sentiment hanging unspoken or a path not taken or a closed door left unopened?

  Or was he a deer, glimpsed amongst the trees and then gone, disturbing not a single branch in his departure?

  The stag is a shot left untaken. An opportunity lost.

  Stolen like a kiss.

  In these new forgetful times with their changed ways sometimes the stag will pause a moment longer.

  He waits though once he never waited, would never dream to wait or wait to dream.

  He waits now.

  For someone to take the shot. For someone to pierce his heart.

  To know he is remembered.

  ZACHARY EZRA RAWLINS descends a narrow staircase beneath a statue, a Persian cat following at his heels. The stairs below his feet are ragged and irregular, one crumbles as he steps on it and he slips down three more, reaching out to the sides to catch his balance.

  Behind him the cat mews and gracefully navigates its way over the remains of the broken stair, stopping again when it reaches him.

  “Show-off,” Zachary says to the cat. The cat says nothing.

  Show-off, a voice repeats from somewhere below. An echo, Zachary thinks. A clear, delayed echo. That’s all.

  He almost believes it, too, but the cat’s ears fold back and it hisses at the shadows and Zachary goes back to not knowing what to believe.

  He descends the remaining stairs carefully, relieved when the cat continues with him.

  On a ledge at the bottom is a lamp, the handled kind that might once have contained a genie but is currently occupied only by burning oil. Strings and pulleys surround it along with a mechanism that looks like a flint near the flame. It must have been lit automatically when the door opened.

  The lamp is the only light in the space so Zachary picks it up by its curved handle. As he lifts it, a golden disk beneath raises and the strings and pulleys move. Muffled clanking comes from within the walls and then there is a spark in the shadows. Another lamp lit at the far end of a dark hall, a bright spot like a firefly guiding the way forward.

  Zachary walks down the hall with the lamp, the cat following.

  Halfway down the hall the light catches on a key on a ring hanging from a hook on the wall.

  Zachary reaches out and takes the key.

  “Meoowrrr,” the cat remarks, in approval or dissent or indifference.

  Zachary brings the key and the lamp farther down the hall and the cat and the darkness follow.

  Near the end of the hall is an alcove with a lamp that matches the one in his hand.

  Beyond the lamp is an arched door of smooth stone, unmarked save for a keyhole.

  Zachary slides the key on its ring into the keyhole and it clicks and turns. Zachary pushes on the stone and opens the door.

  His lamp and the one on the wall flicker.

  The cat hisses at the space beyond the door and bolts back down the hallway.

  Zachary listens as the cat flies back up the stairs, hears the crumbling stone of the broken steps crumbling further, and then nothing.

  He takes a deep breath and steps into the room.

  It smells like dirt and sugar, like Mirabel’s perfume.

  The lamplight falls on pieces of stone columns and carved walls.

  In front of him is a pedestal, a podium, with a golden disk on it.

  Zachary places the lamp on the disk and it lowers with the weight. A clanking sound follows.

  Around the room lamps hanging from the columns spark to life. A few remain unlit, their lanterns missing or perhaps just out of oil.

  Beyond the columns the room is lined with long horizontal alcoves. Zachary wonders why the space seems familiar, and then he sees a single skeletal hand at the edge of one of the shadowed spaces.

  It is a crypt.

  For a moment Zachary wants to flee, to follow the cat up the stairs.

  But he doesn’t.

  Someone wanted him to see this.

  Someone—or something—thinks he should be here.

  Zachary closes his eyes and collects himself and then he investigates the room.

  He starts with its occupants.

  At first he thinks they might be mummified but as he moves closer he can see that the strips of cloth wrapped loosely around the bodies are covered in text. Most have dried and decayed along with their wearers but some of them are legible.

  sings to herself when she thinks no one is listening

  reads the same books over and over again until each page is intimately familiar

  walks barefoot through the halls, quiet as a cat

  laughs so easy and so often as though the whole universe delights him

  They’re wrapped in memories. Memories of who they were when they were alive.

  Zachary reads what he can without disturbing them. The unraveling sentences and the sentiments that catch the light.

  he did not wish to be here any longer

  one strip of text reads, wrapped around a wrist that is now no more than bone, and Zachary wonders if it means what he thinks it likely means.

  In one alcove there is an urn. It has no memories with it.

  The others are empty.

  Zachary turns his attention to the rest of the room. Some of the columns have carved indentations, sloped surfaces like podiums beneath their lamps.

  One podium holds a book. It looks extremely old. It has no cover, only loosely bound pages.

  Zachary picks up the book as carefully as he can.

  The parchment breaks to pieces in his hands, crumbling into fragments over the podium.

  Zachary sighs and the sigh carries more of the fragments from the podium to the stone at his feet.

  He tries not to feel too badly about it. Maybe the book, like the people around it, was already gone.

  He looks down at the former book fallen around his feet and attempts to read but there are only bits and pieces.

  He makes out a single word.

  Hello

  Zachary blinks and glances at another fragment of paper.

  Son, it reads.

  He reaches for another piece, large enough to pick up.

  of the fortune-

  The paper turns to dust in his fingers but the words remain burned into his eyes.

  Zachary looks at another broken piece of ancient paper, though he knows what it will say before he reads it.

  tell

  er

  Zachary closes his eyes, listening for the this is not happening voice in his head but the voice in his head remains silent. The voice knows that this is happening and so does he.

  Zachary opens his eyes. He bends down and sifts through the broken book on the ground, focusing on the first fragment with text that he finds and then another and another.

  there are three

  things lost

  in time

  Zachary continues to search as the book continues to deteriorate. The only pieces he can discern are single words.

  sword

  book

  man

  The words vanish almost as soon as they are found until only two remain in the dust.

  find

  man

  Zachary searches through the pile of crumbling paper for additional clarification but the bibliomancy sessi
on is over. This book that is no longer book-shaped has nothing more to say.

  Zachary brushes the dust of prophetic paper from his hands. Find man. He thinks about the man lost in time from Sweet Sorrows. He has no idea how to go about finding someone who has been lost in time at the behest of the ghosts of former books. He stares at corpses who do not bother staring back at him, their staring days long past.

  Zachary takes the lamp from its pedestal and the rest of the lights extinguish themselves.

  He walks out the door pausing to pull the key from its lock.

  The door swings shut.

  The hallway outside feels longer.

  Zachary hangs the key on its hook and replaces the lamp on its shelf. It sinks into place and the light at the other end of the hall vanishes.

  Zachary glances down the hallway. It disappears into darkness but the farthest reach of the lamplight finds a shape in the shadows, someone standing in the center of the hall, staring at him.

  Zachary blinks and the figure is gone.

  He runs up the crumbling stairs, not daring to look back and nearly tripping over the Persian cat who has been patiently waiting for him at the top.

  Nightmare number 113:

  I am sitting in a very big chair and I cannot get out of it. My arms are tied to the chair arms but my hands are gone. There are people without faces standing around me feeding me pieces of paper that have all the things I am supposed to be written on them but they never ask me what I am.

  ZACHARY EZRA RAWLINS is halfway to the elevator, halfway to returning to Vermont and his university and his thesis and his normal, halfway to forgetting any of this ever happened, and hey, maybe he’ll take the cat with him and someday he’ll convince himself that the whole underground library wonderland was an elaborate fantasy backstory about where the cat came from that he told himself so many times he started to believe it when the cat was only ever a squish-faced stray who followed him home, wherever home is.

  Then he remembers the door he entered through last time in the basement of the Collector’s Club was burned and likely rendered useless.

  So halfway to the elevator with the cat still following, Zachary turns and heads back to his room instead.

  In the center of his door is a Post-it Note. The paper is a muted blue rather than the traditional yellow.

  In small, neat letters it reads: All you need to know has been given to you.

  Zachary takes the note from the door. He reads it four times and turns it over, finding nothing on the reverse. He reads it again not believing its statement as he enters the room, the fireplace crackling and waiting for him.

  The cat follows him inside. Zachary locks the door behind the cat.

  He sticks the Post-it Note to the frame of the bunny pirate painting.

  He looks down at his wrists.

  He did not wish to be here any longer.

  He tries to remember the last time he talked to someone who wasn’t a cat. Was drunken-Dorian story time a few hours ago? Did that even happen? He doesn’t know anymore.

  Maybe he is tired. What’s the difference between tired and sleepy? He puts on pajamas and sits in front of the fireplace. The Persian cat curls up at the foot of the bed, quietly making him feel a little better. All this comfort shouldn’t feel so uncomfortable.

  Zachary stares at the flames, remembering the shadowed figure in the hallway, staring at him in a space filled with nothing but corpses.

  Maybe your mind is playing tricks on you, the voice in his head suggests.

  “I thought you were my mind,” Zachary says aloud and on the bed the cat stirs and stretches and settles again.

  The voice in his head does not respond.

  Zachary suddenly desperately wants someone to talk to but also doesn’t want to leave the room. He thinks of texting Kat because Kat is usually up at all hours though he doesn’t know what he would write. Hey K, stuck in an underground library dungeon, how’s the snow?

  He finds his phone and it has a partial charge, not as high as it should be given the length of time its been plugged in but enough to turn it on.

  The picture from the party at the Algonquin he had saved is still there and now it is obvious that the masked woman in the photograph is Mirabel, and even more clear to him that the man speaking with her is Dorian. He wonders what they were whispering about a year ago and can’t decide whether or not he wants to know.

  There are no missed calls and three text messages. A photo of his finished scarf from Kat, a reminder from his mother that Mercury is going into retrograde soon, and a four-word message from an unknown number:

  Tread carefully, Mr. Rawlins.

  Zachary turns his phone off. There isn’t any service down here anyway.

  He goes to the desk and picks up a pen and inscribes two words on a card.

  Hello, Kitchen.

  He places it in the dumbwaiter and sends it on its way and he has almost convinced himself that the Kitchen and the story-covered corpses and the place itself and Mirabel and Dorian and the room he’s standing in and his pajamas are all figments of his imagination when the bell dings.

  Hello, Mr. Rawlins, how may we help you?

  Zachary thinks for a long time before he inscribes a reply.

  Is this real?

  He writes. It sounds too vague but he sends it anyway.

  The dumbwaiter dings a moment later and inside along with another card there is a mug with a curl of steam rising from it and a plate covered with a silver dome.

  Zachary reads the note.

  Of course it is real, Mr. Rawlins. We hope you feel better soon.

  The mug is filled with warm coconut milk with turmeric and black pepper and honey.

  Beneath the silver dome there are six small, perfectly frosted cupcakes.

  Thank you, Kitchen.

  Zachary writes.

  He takes his mug and his cupcakes and sits in front of the fire again.

  The cat stretches and comes to sit with him, sniffing at the cupcakes and licking frosting from his fingertips.

  Zachary doesn’t remember falling asleep. He wakes curled up in front of the dying fire on a pile of pillows, the Persian cat nestled into his arm. He doesn’t know what time it is. What is time, anyway?

  “What is time, anyway?” Zachary asks the cat.

  The cat yawns.

  The dumbwaiter dings, the light on the wall glowing, and Zachary can’t remember it dinging on its own before.

  Good morning, Mr. Rawlins.

  The note inside reads.

  We hope you slept well.

  There is a pot of coffee and a rolled omelet and two toasted slices of sourdough bread and a ceramic jar of butter drizzled with honey and dusted with salt and a basket filled with mandarin oranges.

  Zachary starts to write a thank-you but inscribes a different sentiment instead.

  I love you, Kitchen.

  He doesn’t expect a reply but there is another chime.

  Thank you, Mr. Rawlins. We are quite fond of you as well.

  Zachary eats his breakfast (he shares the omelet with the cat, forgetting the rule about feeding the cats and having already broken it with buttercream frosting the night before) and thinks, his head clearer than it had been.

  “If you were a man lost in time where would you be?” Zachary asks the cat.

  The cat stares at him.

  All you need to know has been given to you.

  “Oh, right,” Zachary says as the realization dawns. He sorts through the books near the fireplace to find the one that Rhyme gave him and flips to the page where he left off. He takes the book to the desk and moves a lamp so he can see better and the cat sits in his lap, purring. Zachary peels and eats a mandarin orange in small segments of sunshine as he reads.

  He reads and frowns and r
eads more and then he turns a page and there is nothing else. The rest of the pages are blank. The story, history, whatever it is, stops mid-book.

  Zachary remembers the man lost in time wandering cities of honey and bone in Sweet Sorrows and the mention of the Starless Sea in Fortunes and Fables and wonders if all of these stories are somehow the same story. Wonders where Simon could be now and how to go about finding him. Wonders about the burned place and the broom in the Keeper’s office. Wonders what, precisely, happens to the son of the fortune-teller.

  On the corner of the desk is an origami star that he had pocketed. He picks it up and looks closer. There is writing on it.

  Zachary unfolds the star. It stretches out into a long strip of paper.

  It contains words so tiny they seem whispered:

  Nightmare number 83: I am walking in a dark dark place and something big and slithery is slithering in the dark so close I could reach and touch it but if I touch the slithery thing it will know I am here and it will eat me very slowly.

  Zachary lets the nightmare flutter onto the desk and picks up the book again. He turns to the last written page and rereads it, pausing at the final word in the unfinished book.

  Zachary gently removes the cat from his lap. He puts the cat on the floor and the book in his bag along with a cigarette lighter so he doesn’t end up stuck in the dark again and he slips on his shoes. He pulls a maroon sweater on over his pajamas and goes to look for Mirabel.

  Once in a long while an acolyte chooses to give up something other than their tongue as they take their vows.

  Such acolytes are rare. One will not remember the last exception that came before. They will not serve long enough to meet the one who follows.

  The painter has lost her way.

  She thinks (she is wrong) that choosing this path (a path, any path) will bring her closer to this place she once loved, this place that has changed around her as time changes all things.

  She wishes to rekindle flames long extinguished.

  To find something she has lost that she cannot name but feels the absence of within her like a hunger.