If he thought he was dreaming such shocking cold might wake him up, but Dorian knows he isn’t dreaming. Knows it down to his toes.
After he removes as much honey as he can he puts his clothes back on, leaving his star-buttoned coat hanging open. Fortunes and Fables rests in the inside pocket, having somehow survived its travels unharmed and un-honeyed.
Dorian runs a hand through his still-sticky, greying hair, feeling too old for all of these marvels and wondering when he went from young and faithful and obedient to confused and adrift and middle-aged but he knows exactly when it was because that moment haunts him, still.
Dorian returns to the deck. The boat has sailed into a different system of caverns now, the stone threaded with crystal that looks like quartz or citrine. The stalactites have been carved with patterns: vines and stars and diamonds. The whole space is lit by the lights from the boat and the soft luminescence of the sea.
As the ship drifts along he can see through to other caverns, glimpses of connected spaces. Stairways and tall crumbling arches. Broken statues and elaborate sculptures. Underground ruins gently illuminated by honey. In the distance a waterfall (honeyfall) foams and spills over the rocks. There is a world beneath the world beneath the world. Or at least there used to be.
Eleanor is on the quarterdeck, adjusting a series of instruments that Dorian doesn’t recognize but navigating such a vessel likely takes some creativity. One looks like a string of hourglasses. Another a compass shaped like a globe, indicating up and down as well as the standard directions.
“Better?” she asks, glancing up at his wet hair as he approaches.
“Much, thank you,” Dorian answers. “May I ask you a question?”
“You may, but I might not have an answer, or if I have an answer it might not be the right one or a good one. Questions and answers don’t always fit together like puzzle pieces.”
“I didn’t have this, up there,” Dorian says, indicating the sword tattooed on his chest.
“That’s not a question.”
“How do I have it now?”
“Did you think that you did?” Eleanor asks. “Those things can get confused down here. You probably believed it should be there so now it’s there. You must be a good storyteller, usually it takes a while. But you did spend a fair amount of time in the sea, that will do it, too.”
“It was only an idea,” Dorian says, remembering how he felt reading Zachary’s book, reading about what guardians once were, trying to guess what his sword would have looked like if he were a real guardian and not a poor imitation of one.
“It’s a story you told yourself,” Eleanor says. “The sea heard you telling it so now it’s there. That’s how it works. It usually has to be personal, a story you wear against your skin, but I can manage it with the ship now. It took a lot of practice.”
“You willed this ship into existence?”
“I found parts of it and told myself the story of the rest of it and eventually they were the same, the found parts and the story parts. It can steer itself but I have to tell it where to go and nudge it back in the right direction sometimes. I can change the sails but they like being this color. Do you like them?”
Dorian looks up at the deep red sails and for a moment they brighten and then settle back into burgundy.
“I do like them,” Dorian says.
“Thank you. Did you have the tattoo on your back up there?”
“Yes.”
“Did it hurt?”
“Very much,” Dorian says, recalling session after session spent in a tattoo parlor that smelled of coffee and Nag Champa incense and played classic rock at volumes high enough to cover the buzzing of needles. He had copied the single-page illustration on a photocopier years earlier to hang on a wall, never thinking that he would lose the book and during the time when it was all he had left of Fortunes and Fables he wanted it closer than the wall, where no one could take it from him.
“It’s important to you, isn’t it?” Eleanor asks.
“Yes, it is.”
“Important things hurt sometimes.”
Dorian smiles at the statement, despite the truth of it or because of it.
“It’ll take us a while to get there,” Eleanor says, adjusting the compass globe and looping a rope over the ship’s wheel.
“I don’t think I understand where we’re going,” Dorian admits.
“Oh,” Eleanor says. “I can show you.”
She checks the compass again and then leads him down to the captain’s cabin. There is a long table in the center covered in beeswax candles. Leather armchairs are tucked into the corners next to a potbellied stove with a pipe that leads up and out through the deck. Along the back there are multicolored stained-glass windows. Ropes and ribbons and a large hammock covered in blankets hang from the beams in the ceiling. A stuffed bunny with an eye patch and a sword sits on a shelf, along with various other objects. An antlered skull. Clay mugs filled with pens and pencils, jars of ink and paintbrushes. Strings of feathers hang along the walls, drifting as the air changes around them.
Eleanor walks to the far end of the table. In between the candles there is a pile of paper, all different textures and sizes and shapes. Some of it is transparent. Most pieces have lines and annotations.
“It’s hard to map a place that changes,” she explains. “The map has to change along with it.”
She picks up one corner of the pile of paper on the table and attaches it to a hook hung from a rope on the ceiling. She does the same with the other corners and turns a pulley on the wall and the map pieces lift up, attached to each other with ribbons and string. It rises in layers, fluffing up like a multitiered paper cake. The topmost levels are filled with books, Dorian finds the ballroom and then the Heart (a small red jewel of a heart hangs there along with the remains of a watch) and a tall empty space below, cutting through multiple layers. Below there are caverns and roads and tunnels. Looking closer he can see paper cutouts of tall statues, stray buildings, and trees. Gold silk snakes in and out of the lower layers, a tiny boat pinned onto one near the center. The silk trails all the way down to the surface of the table where it pools in waves surrounded by paper castles and towers.
“This is the sea?” Dorian asks, touching the golden silk.
“Sea is easier to say than ‘complicated series of rivers and lakes,’ isn’t it?” Eleanor answers. “It’s all connected but there are different pockets. We’re in one of the higher ones. It goes down here,” she points to the lower levels that are not as detailed as the rest of the map. “But it’s not safe down there if you’re not an owl, it changes too much. This is only what I’ve seen for myself.”
“How far does it go?” Dorian asks.
Eleanor shrugs. “I haven’t found out yet,” she says. “We’re here,” she touches a minuscule boat on one of the golden waves in the center. “We’ll follow along here and turn here,” she indicates two swirls of silk that move upward, “and then I can leave you here.” She points at a series of paper trees.
“How do I get back here?” Dorian asks, pointing up to the Heart.
Eleanor considers the map and then moves to the other side of the table. She gestures toward the opposite side of the forest.
“If you come out here and then go this way,” she points to a path that leads up from the trees, “you should be able to find the inn.” Here there is a building with a tiny lantern. “From the inn you should be able to change roads to get up here.” She brings him around the corner of the map and shows him the paths closest to the Harbor. “Once you’re there your compass should work again and that always points you back here.” She indicates the Heart.
Dorian looks at the chain around his neck that holds the key to his room and the locket-size compass. He opens it and a small amount of honey drips out but the needle spins wildly, unable to find its way.
“Is that what this does?” he asks. No one had explained it to him before.
“It won’t be the same when you get back,” Eleanor says. “Sometimes you can’t go back to the same old place, you have to go to the new ones.”
“I’m not trying to get back to the place,” Dorian says. “I’m trying to get back to a person.” Admitting it aloud feels like an affirmation.
“People change, too, you know.”
“I do know,” Dorian says, nodding. He doesn’t want to think about it. He had always wanted to be in the place but he didn’t understand until he was finally there that the place was merely a way to get to the person and now he has lost them both.
“You might have been gone for a long time already,” Eleanor says. “Time is different down here. It passes slower. Sometimes it doesn’t stop to pass at all and it just skips around.”
“Are we lost in time?”
“You might be. I’m not lost.”
“What are you doing down here?” Dorian asks. Eleanor considers the question, looking at the layers of map.
“For a while I was looking for a person but I didn’t find them and after that I was looking for myself. Now that I’ve found me I’m back to exploring, which is what I was doing in the first place before I was doing anything else and I think I was supposed to be exploring all along. Does that sound silly?”
“That sounds like a great adventure.”
Eleanor smiles to herself. She and Mirabel have the same smile. Dorian wonders what happened to Simon, now that he understands how much space and time there is to be lost in down here. He tries not to think about how much time might have passed above already as Eleanor collapses the map, folding the Heart down into the Starless Sea.
“We’re near a good place for the goodbye,” she says. “If you’re ready.”
Dorian nods and together they return to the deck. They have traveled into another cavern, this one carved with massive alcoves, each alcove containing a towering statue of a person. There are six of them, each holding an object though many of them are broken and all of them are covered in crystallized honey.
“What is this place?” Dorian asks as they walk toward the bow.
“Part of one of the old Harbors,” Eleanor answers. “The sea level was higher the last time I passed through. I should update my map. I thought she’d like it here. She told me once that people who died down here were supposed to be returned to the Starless Sea because the sea is where the stories come from and all endings are beginnings. Then I asked her what happens to people who are born down here and she said she didn’t know. If all endings are beginnings, are all beginnings also endings?”
“Maybe,” Dorian says. He looks down at Allegra’s body, draped in silk and tied with ropes to a wooden door.
“It was all I had that was the right size,” Eleanor explains.
“It’s appropriate,” Dorian assures her.
Together they lift the door and lower it over the rail and down to the surface of the Starless Sea. The edges dip into the honey but the door stays afloat.
Once the door has moved a distance from the ship Eleanor stands up on the rail and tosses one of the paper lanterns onto the door. It lands over Allegra’s feet and tips, the candle inside catching first on its paper shell and then on the silk, working its way over the ropes.
The door and its occupant, both aflame, drift farther from the ship.
Dorian and Eleanor stand side by side at the rail, watching.
“Do you want to say something nice?” Eleanor asks.
Dorian stares at the burning corpse of the woman who took his name and his life and made him a thousand promises that were never kept. The woman who found him when he was young and lost and alone and gave him a purpose and set him on a path that has proved to be more surprising and strange than he was led to believe. A woman he had trusted beyond all others until a year ago and a woman who would have shot him in the heart very recently had time and fate not intervened.
“No, I don’t want to say anything,” he tells Eleanor and she turns and looks at him thoughtfully, but then she nods and returns her attention starboard, considering the now distant flames for a long time before she speaks.
“Thank you for seeing me when other people looked through me like I was a ghost,” Eleanor says and an unexpected sob catches in Dorian’s throat.
Eleanor puts a hand over Dorian’s on the rail and they stay like that in silence, watching long after the flame fades out of sight and the ship continues to steer itself to its destination.
The burning door illuminates the faces of the ancient statues as it passes.
They are only stone likenesses of those who dwelt in this space long before but they recognize one of their own and pay their silent respects as Allegra Cavallo is returned to the Starless Sea.
ZACHARY EZRA RAWLINS stares upward toward a dim light that shines (not brightly) at a distance he had already thought of as deep from a spot very, very far below it.
What’s the opposite of a fear of heights? Fear of depths?
There is a cliff, a shadow that stretches up to the dim light from the city. He can sort of see the bridge. There’s only the barest amount of light where he’s landed, like warm-toned moonlight.
He does not remember landing, only slipping and continuing to slip and then having already landed.
He has landed on a pile of rocks. His leg hurts but nothing seems broken, not even his indestructible glasses.
Zachary reaches out to pull himself up and his fingers close over a hand.
He yanks his arm back.
He reaches out again, tentatively and the hand is still there, frozen, extending out from the pile of rocks that is not a pile of rocks at all. Next to the hand is a leg and a round shape like half a head. As Zachary pulls himself up he rests his hand on a disembodied hip.
He stands in a sea of broken statues.
An arm nearby is holding an unlit torch, a real one from the looks of it, not one carved from stone. Zachary moves slowly toward it and takes it from the statue’s hand.
He puts the sword down by his feet and fumbles around in his bag for the cigarette lighter, grateful to past Zachary for including it in the inventory.
It takes a few tries but he manages to light the torch. It gives him light enough to navigate, though he doesn’t know which way to go. He lets gravity dictate his way forward, following the sloping surface in whichever direction is easiest to step. The statues shift beneath his feet. He uses the sword to balance himself.
It is difficult to manage both sword and torch over the uneven surface but he dares not leave either behind. He needs the torch for light and the sword feels…important. The broken statues shift, creating miniature avalanches of body parts. He drops the sword and puts his hand out to steady himself and he hits something softer than stone.
The skull beneath his fingers is not carved from ivory or marble. It is bone, clinging to the last of the flesh that once surrounded it. Zachary’s fingers tangle in what is left of its hair. He pulls his hand back quickly, stray hairs chasing after his fingers.
Zachary rests the torch in the awaiting hand of a nearby statue so he can get a closer look that he’s not certain he wants.
The corpse that is almost a skeleton is concealed amongst the broken statues. Had Zachary been walking a few paces to either side he never would have noticed it, though now he can smell the decay.
This body is not wrapped in memories. It wears scraps of disintegrating clothing. Whoever it once contained is gone, and they have taken their stories with them, leaving their bones and their boots and a leather scabbard wrapped around their torso, fit for a sword it does not contain.
Zachary pauses, torn between the obvious usefulness of the scabbard and the amount of corpse contact it will take to obtain it, and after an internal debate he holds h
is breath and clumsily unhooks the belt from its former owner, collapsing bones and rot and unidentifiable liquids in the process.
He has a sudden thought that this is what will become of him down here and he pushes it from his mind as forcefully as he can, focusing on the bits of leather and metal.
When he frees the scabbard and its leather straps it does fit the sword, not perfectly but well enough that he will not have to carry it. It takes him a minute to figure out how to wear it over his sweater but eventually the sword stays in place on his back.
“Thank you,” Zachary says to the corpse.
The corpse says nothing, silently grateful to be of assistance.
Zachary keeps moving, stumbling over statues. It is easier now. He switches the torch from one hand to the other to rest his arm.
The pieces of broken statues grow smaller, eventually there is only gravel beneath his feet. The expanse of marble resolves into something that might be a path.
The path turns into a tunnel.
Zachary thinks the torch might be getting dimmer.
He does not know how long he has been walking. He wonders if it is still January, if somewhere far above it is still snowing.
He can hear only his footsteps, his breath, his heartbeat, and the crackling flame of the torch that is definitely getting dimmer which is disappointing because he had hoped it would be a magic endless-light torch and not a regular extinguishable one.
There is a sound nearby that he is not causing. A movement along the ground.
The sound continues, growing louder. Something large is moving nearby. Behind him and now beside him.
Zachary turns and looks up as the torchlight illuminates a single large, dark eye surrounded by light fur. The eye stares at him placidly and then blinks.
Zachary reaches out and touches softest fur. He can feel each breath beneath his hand, the thunder of a massive heartbeat, and then the creature blinks again and turns away, allowing the torchlight to catch the length of its long ears and the fluff of its tail before it disappears.
The Starless Sea Page 35
