“You knew who we were,” he says, looking again at the painting version of Dorian, remembering the way the Keeper had scrutinized him when they brought him down.
“I knew your faces,” the Keeper says. “I have looked at that painting every day for years. I knew you might arrive someday but I did not know if someday was months or decades or centuries away.”
“You would have been here even if it was centuries, right?” Zachary asks.
“I may only depart when this place is gone, Mister Rawlins,” he says. “May we both outlive it.”
“What happens now?”
“I wish I could say. I do not know.”
Zachary looks back at the painting, at the bees and the sword and the keys and the golden heart, his gaze first avoiding and then inevitably finding its way back to Dorian.
“He tried to kill me once,” Zachary says, remembering Mirabel on a snow-covered sidewalk a lifetime ago and what she’d said later when he’d asked about it.
It didn’t work.
“I’m afraid I don’t follow,” the Keeper says.
“I think something changed,” Zachary says, trying to tie his bubbling thoughts together.
There is a sound in the doorway and the Keeper looks up. His eyes widen. A wordless gasp escapes his lips and his ring-covered hand rises to cover it.
Zachary turns, expecting what he sees but Mirabel is still a surprise, standing in the doorway covered in dust and holding the ginger cat in her arms.
“Change is what a story is, Ezra,” Mirabel says. “I thought I already told you that.”
DORIAN IS FALLING.
He has been falling for some time, long past the duration suitable for any calculable distance.
He has lost sight of Allegra. She was a weight on his coat and then a blur of white and then gone in a shower of stone and tile and gilded metal. A passing ring that might have been lost by a planet hit his shoulder with such force he is certain it is broken but after that there was only darkness and rushing air and now he is alone and somehow still falling.
Dorian doesn’t recall exactly what happened. He remembers the floor cracking and then there was no floor, only crashing chaos.
He remembers the look on Zachary’s face which was likely mirrored on his own. A mixture of surprise and confusion and horror. Then it was gone, in an instant. Less.
Dorian thinks this would all feel stranger were it not an almost familiar feeling, as he has been falling for more than a year now and it only just became literal.
Or maybe he has always been falling.
He does not know which direction is up any longer. The free-fall is dizzying and his chest feels as though it might burst if he does not remember how to breathe but breathing feels so complicated. Must be getting somewhere near the center of the earth, he Alice-thinks.
Then there is light in a direction that is likely below. It is dim but approaching at a faster rate than he thought possible.
Thoughts clutter his mind, too many to focus on one, as though they are all vying to be final. He thinks that if he is about to die he should have begun collecting his final thoughts earlier. He thinks about Zachary and regrets a lot of things he didn’t say and didn’t do. Books he didn’t read. Stories he didn’t tell. Decisions he didn’t make.
He thinks about the night with Mirabel that changed everything but he’s not certain he regrets that, even now.
He thought he would have figured out what he believes before it all came to an end but he has not.
The light below grows closer. He is falling through a cavern. Its floor is glowing. Dorian’s thoughts become flashes. Images and sensations. Crowded sidewalks and yellow taxis. Books that felt truer than people. Hotel rooms and airports and the Rose Room at the New York Public Library. Standing in the snow looking at his future through the window of a bar. An owl wearing a crown. A gilded ballroom. An almost kiss.
The last thought that crosses Dorian’s mind before he reaches the illuminated ground below, as he tries to move so that he might hit it bare-feet-first, the thought that wins its place as the final thought of a long, thoughtful fall is: Maybe the Starless Sea isn’t just a children’s bedtime story.
Maybe, maybe beneath him there will be water.
But as the fall reaches its end and Dorian crashes into the Starless Sea he realizes no, it is not water.
It is honey.
ZACHARY EZRA RAWLINS stares at Mirabel as she stands impossibly in the doorway. She is covered in dust, powdered stone that blankets her clothes and her hair. Her jacket has a rip along one sleeve. Blood blooms red over her knuckles and in a line down her neck but she seems otherwise unharmed.
Mirabel puts the ginger cat down. It rubs against her legs and then walks back to its preferred chair.
The Keeper murmurs something under his breath and then he walks toward her, navigating his way through the piles of books without taking his eyes off of Mirabel.
Watching them look at each other Zachary feels suddenly that he is trespassing in someone else’s love story.
When the Keeper reaches Mirabel he pulls her into such a passionate embrace that Zachary turns away but turning away puts him face-to-face with the painting again and so he closes his eyes instead. For a moment he can feel, sharply and strongly, within the air in his lungs, precisely what it is to lose and find and lose again, over and over and over.
“We don’t have time for this.”
Zachary opens his eyes at the sound of Mirabel’s voice to see her turn and walk back through the door to the office. The Keeper follows.
Zachary hesitates but then follows them. He hovers in the doorway, watching Mirabel kick the desk chair toward the fireplace. One of the jars on the mantel topples, scattering its keys.
“You didn’t think I had a plan,” Mirabel says, climbing up on the chair. “There has always been a plan, people have worked on this plan for centuries. There have simply been some…complications in its execution. Are you coming, Ezra?” she asks without looking at Zachary.
“Am I what?” Zachary says at the same time that the Keeper asks “Where are you going?” and the questions overlap into What are you? which Zachary thinks is also a very good question.
“We have to rescue Ezra’s boyfriend because apparently that’s what we do,” Mirabel says to the Keeper. She yanks the sword from its display over the fireplace. Another container of keys shatters and spills.
“Mirabel—” the Keeper starts to protest but she lifts the sword and points it at him. It is obvious from the way she holds it that she knows how to use it.
“Stop, please,” she says. A warning and a wish. “I love you but I will not sit here and wait for this story to change. I am going to make it change.” She holds his gaze over the length of the sword and after a long wordless conversation she lowers the sword and hands it to Zachary. “Take this.”
“ ‘It’s dangerous to go alone,’ ” Zachary quotes in response as he takes it, even though the completed quote is out of order, addressing it partly to her and partly to himself and partly to the sword in his hand. It is a thin, double-edged straight sword that looks like it belongs in a museum though he supposes that’s where it’s been, in a way. The hilt has elaborate scrollwork and the leather on the grip is worn and Zachary can tell that it has been held many times before by many other hands. It’s still sharp.
It is the same sword he is holding in the painting, though the painting version has been polished. It is heavier than it looks.
“I need something else to wear,” Mirabel says, climbing down from the chair and brushing dust off her sleeves, frowning at the torn one. “Give me a minute and meet me at the elevator, Ezra.”
She doesn’t wait for Zachary to respond before she leaves. She doesn’t say another word to the Keeper.
The Keeper stares out the door after Mirabel even though she’s m
oved out of sight. Zachary watches him watching the space where she had been.
“You’re the pirate,” Zachary says. All of the stories are the same story. “In the basement. From the book.” The Keeper turns to look at him. “Mirabel’s the girl who rescued you.”
“That was a very long time ago,” the Keeper says. “In an older Harbor. And pirate is not a proper translation. Rogue might be closer. They used to call me the Harbormaster until they decided Harbors should not have masters.”
“What happened?” Zachary asks. He has been wondering ever since he read Sweet Sorrows for the first time. This is not where their story ends. Clearly.
“We did not make it far. They executed her in my place. They drowned her in the Starless Sea. They made me watch.”
The Keeper reaches out and rests a ring-covered hand on Zachary’s forehead and the touch is that of someone—something—much more ancient than Zachary could possibly have imagined. The sensation moves like waves from his head down to his toes, rippling and buzzing over his skin.
“May the gods bless and keep you, Mister Rawlins,” the Keeper says after he takes his hand away.
Zachary nods and takes his bag and the sword and walks out of the office.
He avoids the parts of the floor that are still diligently repairing themselves, keeping to the edge of the Heart, not looking back, not looking down, only looking ahead at the broken door that leads to the elevator.
Mirabel stands in the middle of the antechamber, shaking out her tangled hair, the pinks returning to more vibrant hues. She’s wiped most of the dust from her face and changed into the same fuzzy sweater she was wearing the first time Zachary met her dressed as herself.
“He blessed you, didn’t he?” she asks.
“Yes,” Zachary answers. He can still feel the buzzing against his skin.
“That should help,” Mirabel says. “We’re going to need all the help we can get.”
“What happened?” Zachary asks, looking around at the chaos. The glowing amber walls are cracked, some of them shattered completely. The elevator is smoking.
Mirabel looks down at the rubble and pushes something with the toe of her boot. The dice at her feet roll but do not settle. They fall into a crack in the floor and disappear.
“Allegra got desperate enough to try to close the door from the other side,” she explains. “Do you like this place, Ezra?”
“Yes,” Zachary answers, confused, but even as he says the word he realizes he does not mean this place now the way it is with its empty halls and broken universe. He means the place it was before, when it was alive. He means a crowded ballroom. A multitude of seekers looking for things they do not have names for and finding them in stories written and unwritten and in each other.
“Not as much as Allegra does,” Mirabel says. “My mother vanished from this place when I was five and after she disappeared Allegra raised me. She taught me to paint. She left when I was fourteen and commenced her attempts to seal all of this away. When I started painting doors hoping to let someone, anyone in again she tried to have me killed, many times, because she saw me as a danger.”
She pauses and Zachary doesn’t know what to say. His head is still reeling with too many stories and too many complicated feelings.
There is a moment here. A moment when Zachary could say that he’s sorry because he is, but the sentiment feels too small, or he could take her hand and say nothing and let the gesture speak for him but her hand is too far away.
So Zachary does nothing and then the moment is gone.
“We have to go now, we have things to do,” Mirabel says. “What is it your mom calls points like these? Moments with meaning? I met her once, she gave me coffee.”
“You what?” Zachary asks but Mirabel doesn’t answer, she walks to the elevator. The doors part for her. The elevator sits several inches below the floor and moves an inch lower as Mirabel steps into it.
“You did say you trusted me, Ezra,” she says, watching him hesitate.
“I did,” Zachary admits as he steps carefully into the elevator next to her, the floor unsteady beneath his feet, the sword heavy in his hand. The buzzing feeling has ceased. He feels oddly calm. He can handle being a sidekick for whatever comes next. “Where are we going, Max?” he asks.
“We’re going down,” Mirabel says. She takes a step back and then lifts her boot and kicks the side of the elevator, hard.
The elevator shakes and sinks a few more inches and then the calm drops out of Zachary’s stomach as they abruptly plummet downward.
DORIAN SINKS INTO a sea of honey, a slow-moving current pulling him downward. It is too thick to swim through, pulling at his clothes and weighing him down. Drowning him in sweetness.
This is not even in the top one hundred ways he expected to die. Not even close.
He cannot see the surface but he reaches out, stretching his fingers as far in the direction he believes is up as he can manage but he cannot feel if there is air around them, if he is anywhere near the surface.
What a stupid, poetic way to die, he thinks, and then someone grabs ahold of his hand.
He is pulled from the sea and over something that feels like a wall, and someone settles him onto a smooth, hard surface that does not feel steady.
Dorian tries to articulate his gratitude but he opens his mouth and chokes on sticky sweetness.
“Stay down,” a voice says near his ear, the words muffled and far away. He still can’t open his eyes but the owner of the voice pushes him down, his back against a wall. Every breath is a sugary gasp and the surface he is on is moving. The sounds beyond his clogged ears are irregular and screeching. Something hits his shoulder, grasping and clawlike. He covers his head with his arms but that makes it too difficult to breathe. He wipes at his face and removes some but not all of the honey and his breath loosens. There is something above him, hovering.
The surface he sits on tilts suddenly and he slips sideways. When it settles the screeching noise has subsided. Dorian coughs and someone puts a piece of cloth in his hand. He wipes his face with it, enough to open his eyes and start to put together what, exactly, he is looking at.
He is on a boat. A ship. No, a boat. A boat with aspirations of being a ship, with dozens of tiny lanterns strung along its multitude of dark sails. Maybe it is a proper ship. Someone is helping him remove his honey-soaked coat.
“They’re gone for now, but they’ll be back,” a voice says, clearer now. Dorian turns to get a better look at his rescuer as she shakes his star-buttoned coat over the rail of the ship, letting the drops of honey return to the sea.
Her hair is a complicated tangle of dark waves and braids tied back in a scrap of red silk. Her skin is light brown with a distinctive pattern of freckles over the bridge of her nose. Her eyes are dark and ringed with lines of black and shimmering gold that look more war paint than makeup. She wears strips of brown leather tied like a vest over what might once have been a sweater but it is now more a looping neckline and cuffs strung together by loose stitches and stray yarn, leaving most of her shoulders and the tops of her arms exposed, a large scar visible as it curves around her left tricep. Beneath the vest her skirt is voluminous and tied up in fluffy loops like a parachute, pale and almost colorless, a cloud over her dark boots.
She hangs the coat over the rail to continue its dripping unaided, making certain it is secure enough that it won’t fall.
“Who’s gone?” Dorian starts to ask but only gets out the who before choking on honey again. The woman hands him a flask and when he puts it to his lips the water is better than anything he has ever tasted.
The woman looks at him in a pitying way and hands him another towel.
“Thank you,” he says, trading the flask for the cloth, the thanks sticky-sweet on his lips.
“The owls are gone,” the woman says. “They came to investig
ate the commotion. They like to know when things change.”
She walks away across the deck, leaving Dorian to collect himself. Strings of glowing lanterns loop around and up the mast, over sails the color of red wine. The lights continue along the railing like fireflies, going to a higher level by the bow, where there is a carved figurehead of a rabbit, its ears running back along the sides of the ship.
Dorian takes long, deep breaths. Each one less sweet than the last. So, not dead yet. His shoulder doesn’t hurt anymore. He looks down at his bare chest and arms, certain he should have some residual injuries, some scrapes and scratches at least, but there is nothing.
Well, not quite nothing.
On his chest, over his breastbone, is a tattoo of a sword. A scimitar-style sword with a curved blade. Its hilt is impossibly gold, metallic ink shimmering beneath his skin.
Breathing is suddenly difficult again and Dorian pulls himself to his feet. He steadies himself against the rail and looks out at the Starless Sea. Pieces of the model universe sink slowly into the honey. A single golden hand points desperately upward, disappearing as he watches. The cavern extends into the shadows, the sea softly glowing. In the distance shadows are moving, fluttering like wings.
The honey drips from his hair and his trousers, pooling around his bare feet. He steps out of it, the deck warm beneath his toes.
He walks toward the bow of the ship, following where the woman he assumes is its captain has gone.
He finds her sitting beside something covered in silk that matches the sails laid out on the deck.
“Oh,” he says when he realizes what it is.
It is difficult for him to process everything he feels, looking at Allegra’s body.
“Did you know her?” the captain asks.
“Yes,” Dorian answers. He does not add that he has known this woman for half of his life, that she was the closest thing to a mother he ever had, that he loved her and hated her in equal measure, that moments ago he would have killed her with his own hands and yet standing here now he feels a loss the depths of which he cannot explain. He feels untethered. He feels lost. He feels free.
The Starless Sea Page 33
