Zachary moves around the edge. Dancers twirl so close that gowns brush against his legs. He reaches the looming fireplace and finds it covered in candles, piled in the hearth and lined along the mantel, dripping wax into pools on the stone. In between the candles there are bottles filled with gold sand and water containing small white fish with fanned tails glowing like flames in the light. Above the flames and the fish there are painted sigils. A full moon flanked by crescents, waxing and waning.
A motion near Zachary’s hand draws his attention and when he looks down he finds that someone has pressed a folded piece of paper into his palm. He glances at the partygoers around him but they are all absorbed in their own world.
He unfolds the paper. It is covered in handwritten text scrawled in gold ink.
The moon had never asked a boon of Death or Time but there was something that she wished, that she wanted, that she desired more than she had ever desired anything before.
A place had become precious to her, and a person within it more so.
The moon returned to this place as often as she could, in stolen moments of borrowed time.
She had found an impossible love.
She resolved to find a way to keep it.
Zachary looks up at the sea of people surrounding him, dancing and drinking and laughing. He cannot see Dorian anywhere but he must have written this so he must be nearby. Zachary refolds the paper and tucks the fragment of story in his pocket and continues through the ballroom.
Beyond the fireplace there are tables covered in bottles. A woman wearing a suit stands behind them, pouring and mixing liquids and handing them out to passersby in delicate glasses. Zachary watches as she works, combining liquids that smoke and foam and change color from clear to gold to red to black to clear again.
He hears the mixologist wish someone a blessed lunar new year as she hands them a coupe glass covered in a layer of gold leaf that would have to be broken in order for the drink to be consumed. Zachary walks on before the surface is disturbed.
In a quiet corner a man pours sand on the floor in tones of black and grey and gold and ivory in intricate patterns, mandala-like circles depicting dancing figures and balloons and a large fire, with an outer circle of cats and a far outer circle of bees. He carves the details into the sand with the edge of a feather. Zachary moves closer to get a better view but as soon as it is complete the man brushes it all away and begins again.
Nearby, a woman dressed in ribbons and nothing else lounges on a settee. The ribbons have poems on them, circling her throat and her waist and curling down between her legs. She has many admirers reading her but she reminds Zachary too much of the bodies in the crypt and he starts to turn away when one of the lines of text catches his eye.
First the moon went to speak with Death.
Zachary moves closer to read the story as it continues down the woman’s arm and around her wrist.
She asked if Death might spare a single soul.
Death would have granted the moon any wish within her power for Death is nothing if not generous. This was a simple gift, easily given.
The ribbon ends there, curling around the woman’s ring finger. Zachary reads other ribbons but there is nothing more about the moon.
Zachary walks on to find another part of the ballroom with hundreds of books suspended from the ceiling, spines flung open and hovering. He reaches up to touch one of the books just above his head and its pages flutter in response. The entire flock of books rearranges itself, changing formation like geese.
He thinks he sees Dorian on the other side of the dance floor and tries to make his way in that direction. He moves with the crowd. There are so many people. No one does more than glance at him though he feels less like a ghost, the space and the people around him seeming more solid. He almost feels the fingers that graze his.
“There you are,” a voice says next to him but it is not Dorian, it is the ginger-haired young man from before. He has lost his jacket and his arms are covered in gold down to his fingertips. Zachary thinks he has misheard and the man is addressing someone else but he is looking directly at him. “When are you?” the man asks.
“What?” Zachary asks, still not certain the man is talking to him.
“You’re not now,” the ginger-haired man remarks, lifting a golden hand to Zachary’s face and gently brushing his cheek with his fingers and Zachary feels it, really feels it this time, and he is so surprised he cannot answer. The ginger-haired man moves to draw him onto the dance floor but the crowd shifts around them, pulling them apart and then the man is gone again.
Zachary tries to find the edge of the room, away from the crowd. He’d thought the musicians were behind him but now the flute is in front of him and there are drums somewhere to his left. The lights are lower, maybe the balloons are sinking, the space getting smaller as he moves toward the periphery. He passes a golden dress abandoned on an armchair, shed like a snakeskin.
When Zachary reaches the wall he finds it covered in text, written in brushstrokes of gold on the dark stone. The words are difficult to read, the metallic pigment catching too much or too little of the light. Zachary follows the story as it unfolds along the wall.
The moon spoke with Time.
(They had not spoken in a great while.)
The moon asked Time to leave a space and a soul untouched.
Time made the moon wait for an answer. When she received it there was a condition.
Time agreed to help the moon only if the moon in turn aided Time in finding a way to hold on to Fate.
The moon made this promise, though she did not yet know how to unbreak that which had been broken.
And so Time consented to keep a place hidden away, far from the stars.
Now in this space the days and nights pass differently. Strangely, slowly. Languid and luscious.
Here the words on the wall cease. Zachary looks out at the party, watching balloons drift past the chandeliers and dancers spinning and a girl nearby painting lines of prose onto another girl’s bare skin in gold paint likely borrowed previously to inscribe the wall. A man passes by with a tray full of small cakes, frosted with poems. Someone hands Zachary a glass of wine and then it is gone and he does not recall where it went.
Zachary scans the crowd, searching for Dorian, wondering if somehow he’s managed to get himself lost in time that is currently passing strangely and slowly and how he should go about getting unlost and then his gaze falls on a man across the room, also leaning against the wall, a man with elaborate pale braids that have been dipped in gold but otherwise the Keeper looks exactly the same. Not a day younger or older. He is watching someone in the crowd but Zachary cannot see who. He looks for clues as to what year this might be but the fashions are so varied it is difficult to guess. Twenties? Thirties? He wonders if the Keeper would be able to see him, wonders how old the Keeper is, anyway, and who he is staring at so intently.
He tries to follow the direction of the Keeper’s stare, walking through an archway that leads to a stairway covered in candles and lanterns that cast shimmering, shifting golden light over the waves that stretch out into darkness.
Zachary stops and stares at the glimmering surf of the Starless Sea. He takes a step toward it and then another and then someone pulls him back. An arm reaches around his chest and a hand closes over his eyes, calming the swirling movement and dimming the golden firelight.
A voice he would know anywhere whispers in his ear.
“And so the moon found a way to keep her love.”
Dorian leads him backward, onto the dance floor. Zachary can feel the sea of revelers around them even though he cannot see them, truly feel them with no delays of sensation though at the moment his senses are completely attuned to the voice in his ear and the breath against his neck, letting Dorian take him and the story wherever he wishes to go.
&nb
sp; “An inn that once sat at one crossroads now rests at another,” Dorian continues, “somewhere deeper and darker where few will ever find it, by the shores of the Starless Sea.”
Dorian removes his hand from Zachary’s eyes and turns him now, almost a spin, so they stand face-to-face, dancing in the center of the crowd. Dorian’s hair is streaked with gold that trails down his neck and over the shoulder of his coat.
“It is there, still,” he says and pauses for so long that Zachary thinks perhaps the story has concluded but then he leans closer. “This is where the moon goes when she cannot be seen in the sky,” Dorian slowly breathes each word against Zachary’s lips.
Zachary moves to close the fraction of distance left between them but before he can there is a cracking noise like thunder. The floor beneath their feet shakes. Dorian loses his balance and Zachary grabs his arm to steady him, to prevent him from crashing into any of the other dancers but there are no other dancers. There is no one. No balloons, no party, no ballroom.
They stand together in an empty room with a carved door that has fallen from its hinges, the celebration depicted upon it frozen and broken.
Before Zachary can ask what happened another explosion follows the first, sending a shower of rock over their heads.
The Starless Sea is rising.
The owls watch as the tides shift, slowly at first.
They fly over waves that break upon long-abandoned shores.
They call out warnings and exaltations.
The time has come. They have waited so long.
They screech and celebrate until the sea is so high that they too must seek shelter.
The Starless Sea continues to rise.
Now it floods the Harbor, pulling the books from their shelves and claiming the Heart for itself.
The end has come.
Here now is the Owl King bringing the future on his wings.
ZACHARY EZRA RAWLINS tumbles through a curtain of cashmere and linen, pulling down sweaters and shirts as he and Dorian crash back through the wardrobe, the tunnel behind them collapsing, sending up a cloud of dust.
In Zachary’s chamber most of the books have toppled from their shelves. The abandoned bottle of wine has fallen, spilling its contents over the side of the desk. The bunny pirates are shipwrecked on the floor by the fireplace.
Another tremor brings the wardrobe crashing down and Zachary runs for the door with Dorian at his heels. Zachary grabs his bag and slings it over his shoulder.
Zachary heads for the Heart, not knowing where else to go, wondering where exactly one is supposed to go during an earthquake when one is underneath the earth.
The tremors cease but the damage is evident. They trip over fallen shelves and furniture, pausing to free a tabby cat from under a collapsed table. The tabby flees without thanking them.
“I didn’t think she’d actually do it,” Dorian says, watching the cat jump over a fallen candelabra pooling beeswax on the stone before disappearing into the shadows.
“Do what?” Zachary asks but then there is a crash ahead of them and they continue on, in the opposite direction from the cat, which Zachary silently notes as a bad sign.
Just before they reach the Heart, where someone is shouting but Zachary cannot make out the words because of a clanking metallic noise, Dorian pulls him back and puts his arm out against the wall, blocking Zachary’s path forward.
“I need you to know something,” Dorian says. From the Heart there is another crashing sound and Zachary looks off in the direction it came from but Dorian reaches up and turns Zachary’s face to his own, tangling his fingers in Zachary’s hair.
So quietly Zachary can barely hear him against the continuing clamor, Dorian says, “I need you to know that what I feel for you is real. Because I think you feel the same. I have lost a lot of things and I don’t want to lose this, too.”
“What?” Zachary asks, not certain he’s heard correctly and wanting way more information about what kind of feelings he’s referring to and also curious as to why, exactly, Dorian has chosen a particularly inopportune time to have this conversation but it turns out it is not a conversation at all, because Dorian holds his gaze for only a moment more before releasing him and walking away.
Zachary remains against the wall, dazed. More books tumble from shelves nearby as the floor trembles again.
“What is happening right now?” he asks aloud and no one, not even the voice in his head, has an answer.
Zachary adjusts his bag on his shoulder and follows Dorian.
As they reach the Heart the cause of the clanking sound is clear: The clockwork universe has collapsed, its pendulum swinging freely and tangling around large loops of metal, something above futilely attempting to move them and they rise and fall at irregular intervals, hammering against the floor, smashing already cracked tiles into dust. The golden hands are intact but one now tilts toward the cracking tile below and the other points accusingly at the pile of rock where the door to the elevator used to be.
The shouting grows louder, coming from the Keeper’s office. Dorian stares up at the collapsing clockwork and Zachary realizes Dorian never got to see the Heart the way it was and everything unfolding around them feels acutely unfair and upsetting and for a moment—just a moment—he wishes they had never come here.
The Keeper’s voice is the first one that becomes distinguishable.
“I did not allow anything,” he says—no, yells—at someone Zachary cannot see. “I understand—”
“You don’t understand,” a voice interrupts and Zachary recognizes it more because Dorian freezes beside him than he actually recalls what Allegra sounds like. “I understand because I have seen where this will lead and I will not let it happen,” Allegra says and then she appears in the office doorway in her fur coat, facing them with her red lipstick twisted into a grimace. The Keeper follows her, his robes covered in dust.
“I see you are still alive, Mister Rawlins,” Allegra remarks calmly, casually, as though she were not yelling a moment before, as though they are not standing amongst broken, clanking metal and fluttering pages liberated from their bindings. “I know someone who would be pleased about that.”
“What?” Zachary says even though he means who and the question is muffled by the din behind him and Allegra doesn’t answer.
For a second her eyes flick back and forth between him and Dorian, the one blue eye brighter than Zachary remembered, and he has an impression of being looked at, being truly seen for the first time, and then it is gone.
“You don’t even know,” she says and Zachary cannot tell if she’s speaking to him or to Dorian. “You have no idea why you’re here.” Or both, Zachary thinks, as she turns her attention squarely on Dorian. “You and I have unfinished business.”
“I have nothing to say to you,” Dorian tells her. The universe punctuates his statement with a clanging thud on the tiled floor.
“What makes you think I want to talk?” Allegra asks. She walks toward Dorian and only when they are almost face-to-face does Zachary see the gun in her hand, partially obscured by the fur cuff of her coat.
The Keeper reacts before Zachary can process what’s happening. He grabs Allegra’s wrist and pulls her arm back, taking the revolver from her hand but not before she pulls the trigger. The bullet travels upward instead of where it had been aimed, directly at Dorian’s heart.
The shot ricochets off one of the golden hands hanging above them, sending it swinging, twisting backward, and smashing into the gears.
The bullet comes to rest in the tiled wall, in the center of a mural that was once a depiction of a prison cell with a girl on one side of the bars and a pirate on the other but it has cracked and faded and the damage added by the small piece of metal is indistinguishable from the damage done by time.
Above, the mechanism swinging the planets strikes
down again and this time the tiled floor succumbs to its pressure, cracking the stone below the tiles in a fissure that opens not into another book-filled hall as Zachary expects but into a cave, a gaping cavern of rock that stretches farther down, much, much farther down into shadows and darkness.
You forget that we are underground, the voice in his head remarks. You forget what that means, it continues and Zachary is no longer certain the voice is in his head after all.
The pendulum breaks free from the tangled metal and plummets.
Zachary listens for it to hit the bottom, remembering Mirabel’s champagne bottle, but hears nothing.
The fissure moves from crack to rift to chasm quickly, pulling stone and tiles and planets and broken chandeliers and books with it, approaching the spot where they stand like a wave.
Zachary takes a step back, into the office doorway. The Keeper puts a hand on his arm to steady him and it feels like everything that follows happens slowly though in truth it takes only a moment.
Allegra slips, the floor crumbling beneath her heels as the edge of the opening finds her feet and she reaches out for something, anything, to grasp as she falls.
Her fingers settle on the midnight blue wool of Dorian’s star-buttoned coat and she pulls both the coat and the man within it backward and they tumble together into the chasm.
For a split second as they fall Zachary’s eyes meet Dorian’s and he remembers what Dorian said minutes, seconds, moments before.
I don’t want to lose this.
Then Dorian is gone and the Keeper is holding Zachary back from the edge as he screams into the darkness below.
The son of the fortune-teller walks through the snow.
He carries a sword that was crafted by the finest of sword smiths, long before he was born.
(The sword’s sisters are both lost, one destroyed in fire in order to become something new and the other sunken in the seas and forgotten.)
The Starless Sea Page 31
