The Starless Sea

by Erin Morgenstern

  “She is not your friend,” Simon says, disrupting Zachary’s thoughts, disrupting his entire being. “The mistress of the house of books. If she left you, she meant to do so.”

  “What?” Zachary says but Simon continues on, pacing around statues and pulling at more ropes and ribbons, the pages and objects strung above swirling into a storm. The owl cries from the balcony and flies down, perching on Zachary’s shoulder.

  “You should not have brought the story here,” Simon admonishes Zachary. “I stay away from where the story is, I am not supposed to be in it any longer. When I tried to return before, it brought only pain.”

  Simon looks at the empty space where his left hand should be.

  “Once I went back into the story and it ended in flames,” he says. “The last time I moved closer a woman with one sky-bright eye took my hand and warned me never to return.”

  “Allegra.” Zachary remembers the hand in the jar. Maybe it was insurance, to keep part of Simon lost forever, or just her standard intimidation technique carried out beyond intimidating.

  “She is gone now.”

  “Wait, gone-gone or lost gone?” Zachary asks, but Simon does not clarify.

  “You should come with me,” he says. “We must leave before the sea claims us for its own.”

  “Does that say I go with you?” Zachary asks, pointing up at the ribbons and gears and keys, using his right arm so as not to jostle the owl on his left shoulder. Following instructions woven into a giant moving story sculpture doesn’t seem much better than taking them from book pages.

  He isn’t about to go back into the darkness but there is more than one way to go from here.

  Simon stares up at the story, gazing at it like he is searching for a particular star in a vast sky.

  “I do not know which one you are,” he says to Zachary.

  “I’m Zachary. I’m the son of the fortune-teller. I need to know what to do next, Simon, please,” Zachary says. Simon turns and looks at him quizzically. No, not quizzically. Blankly.

  “Who is Simon?” he asks, returning his attention to the gears and the statues, as though the answer to his question is there in the starless expanse and not within himself.

  “Oh,” Zachary says. “Oh.”

  This is what it is to be a man lost in time. To have lost one’s self to the ages. To see but in the seeing to not remember, not even one’s own name.

  Not without being reminded.

  “Here,” Zachary says, fumbling around in his bag. “You should have this.”

  He holds out The Ballad of Simon and Eleanor.

  Simon stares at the book, hesitating, as though a story still neatly fitted in its binding is an unusual object to encounter, but then he accepts the offering.

  “We are words on paper,” he says softly, turning the book over in his hands. “We are coming to the end.”

  “Reading it might help you remember,” Zachary suggests.

  Simon opens the book and quickly closes it again.

  “We do not have time for this. I am going up, it will be safer to be higher once it starts.” Simon moves to one of the other looming doors and pulls it open. The path beyond is lit but he returns to take a torch from the hand of a statue anyway. “Will you come with me?” he asks, turning back to Zachary.

  The owl digs its tiny talons into Zachary’s shoulder and Zachary cannot tell if the gesture is meant to encourage or discourage.

  Zachary looks up at the story he has found himself in with the moon missing at its center. He looks at the statues of Mirabel and the Keeper and at many other figures that he does not have names for that must have played their roles in this tale at some point or another. He wonders how many people have passed through this space before, how many people breathed in this air that smells of smoke and honey and if any of them felt the way he feels now: unsure and afraid and unable to know which decision is the right one, if there is a right decision at all.

  Zachary turns back to Simon.

  The only answer he has is a question of his own.

  “Which way is the Starless Sea?”

  DORIAN STANDS IN the darkness in the snow, shivering due to more than the cold.

  He has dropped his matches.

  He can see nothing and he can still see the owl eyes looking at him. He did not know it was possible to feel so naked when fully dressed in the dark.

  Dorian takes a breath and closes his eyes and holds out his empty trembling hand, palm up. An offering. An introduction.

  He waits, listening to the steady breathing sound. He keeps his hand extended.

  A hand takes his in the darkness. Long fingers curl over his, gripping him gently but firmly.

  The hand leads him onward.

  They walk for some time, Dorian taking each snow-slowed step one after another, following where the owl-headed man leads, trusting that this is the way forward. The darkness seems endless.

  Then there is a light.

  It is so soft that Dorian thinks he might be imagining it, but as he walks on the light grows brighter.

  The steady sound of breathing near him stops, taken by the wind.

  The fingers clutched in his vanish. One moment there is a hand holding his and then nothing.

  Dorian tries to articulate his gratitude but his lips refuse to form words in the cold. He thinks it, as loudly as he can, and hopes that someone will hear.

  He walks toward the light. As he gets closer he can tell there are two.

  Lanterns glowing on either side of a door.

  He cannot see the rest of the building but there is a door knocker in the shape of a crescent moon in the center of the night-blue door. Dorian lifts it with a nearly frozen hand and knocks.

  The wind pushes him inside as the door opens.

  The space Dorian enters is the antithesis of what he has left, warm brightness erasing the dark cold. A large open hall filled with firelight and books, dark wood beams and windows covered in frost. It smells of spiced wine and baking bread. It is comforting in a way that defies words. It feels like a hug, if a hug were a place.

  “Welcome, traveler,” a deep voice says.

  Behind him a heavyset man with an impressive beard bolts the door against the wind. If the place were a person it would be this man, comfort made flesh, and it is all Dorian can do not to sink into his arms and sigh.

  He attempts to return the greeting and finds he is too cold to speak.

  “Terrible weather for traveling,” the innkeeper remarks and whisks Dorian over to an enormous stone fireplace that covers almost the entire far wall of the grand hall.

  The innkeeper settles Dorian into a chair and takes his knapsack from him, placing it on the floor within sight. He looks like he might try to take Dorian’s coat but thinks better of it and settles on removing his snow-covered boots and leaving them to dry by the fire. The innkeeper disappears, returning with a blanket that he lays over Dorian’s lap and a contraption filled with glowing coals that he places under the chair. He drapes a warmed cloth around Dorian’s neck like a scarf and hands him a steaming cup.

  “Thank you,” Dorian manages to say, taking the cup with shivering hands. He takes a sip and cannot taste the liquid but it is warming and that is all that matters.

  “We’ll have you thawed soon, not to worry,” the innkeeper says, and it is true, the warmth of the drink and fire and the place soak into Dorian. The chill begins to lift.

  Dorian listens to the wind howl, wondering what it is howling about, wondering if it is a warning or a wish. The flames dance merrily in the fireplace.

  It is strange, Dorian thinks, to sit in a place you imagined a thousand times. To have it be all that you thought it might be and more. More details. More sensations. It is stranger still that this place is filled with things he never imagined, as though the inn has been
pulled from his mind and embellished by another unseen storyteller.

  He is becoming accustomed to strangeness.

  The innkeeper brings another cup and another warmed cloth to replace the first.

  Dorian unbuttons the stars on his coat to better keep the warmth close to his skin.

  The innkeeper glances down and notices the sword on Dorian’s chest and steps back in surprise.

  “Oh,” he says. “It’s you.” His eyes flick back to Dorian’s and then back to the sword. “I have something for you.”

  “What?” Dorian asks.

  “My wife left something for me to give to you,” the innkeeper says. “She gave me instructions in case you arrived during one of her absences.”

  “How do you know it’s meant for me?” Dorian asks, each word heavy on his tongue, still defrosting.

  “She told me someday a man would arrive bearing a sword and dressed in the stars. She gave me something and asked me to keep it locked away until you got here, and now here you are. She mentioned you might not know you were looking for it.”

  “I don’t understand,” Dorian says and the innkeeper laughs.

  “I don’t always understand, either,” he says. “But I believe. I admit I did think you would have an actual sword and not a picture of one.”

  The innkeeper pulls a chain from beneath his shirt. A key hangs from it.

  He moves one of the stones from the hearth in front of the fire, revealing a well-hidden compartment with an elaborate lock. He opens it with the key and reaches inside.

  The innkeeper takes out a square box. He blows a layer of dust and ash from it and polishes it with a cloth taken from his pocket before he hands it to Dorian.

  Dorian accepts the box, bewildered.

  The box is beautiful, carved in bone with gold inlayed into elaborate designs. Crossed keys cover the top surrounded by stars. The sides are decorated with bees and swords and feathers and a single golden crown.

  “How long have you had this?” Dorian asks the innkeeper.

  The innkeeper smiles.

  “A very long time. Please don’t ask me to attempt to calculate it. I no longer keep any clocks.”

  Dorian looks down at the box. It is heavy and solid in his hands.

  “You said your wife gave this to you to give to me,” Dorian says and the innkeeper nods. Dorian runs his fingers over a sequence of golden moons along the edge of the box. Full and then waning and then vanished and then returned, waxing and then full again. He wonders if there is any difference between story and reality down here. “Is your wife the moon?”

  “The moon is a rock in the sky,” the innkeeper says, chuckling. “My wife is my wife. I’m sorry she’s not here right now, she would have liked to meet you.”

  “I would have liked that, too,” Dorian says. He looks back at the box in his hands.

  There does not seem to be a lid. The gold motifs repeat and encircle every side and he cannot find a hinge or a seam. The moon waxes and wanes along its edges, over and over again. Dorian trails his chilled fingertips over each one, wondering how long it will be before the moon is new and dark and the innkeeper’s wife is here again and then he pauses.

  One of the full moons on what he assumes is the top of the box has an indentation, a six-sided impression concealed in its roundness, something he can feel more than see.

  It is not a keyhole, but something could fit there.

  He wishes Zachary were here with him, because Zachary might be better at such puzzles and for a multitude of other reasons.

  What’s missing? he thinks, looking over the box. There are owls and cats hidden in the negative space between the gold designs. There are stars and shapes that could be doors. Dorian thinks over all of his stories. What isn’t here that should be?

  It strikes him, sudden and simple.

  “Do you have a mouse?” he asks the innkeeper.

  The innkeeper looks at him quizzically for a moment and then he laughs.

  “Can you come with me?” he asks.

  Dorian, substantially warmer than he was when he arrived, nods and gets to his feet, placing the box on a table next to the chair.

  The innkeeper leads him across the hall.

  “This inn was once somewhere else,” the innkeeper explains. “Little has changed within its walls but I once mentioned to my wife that I sometimes miss the mice. They used to chew through sacks of flour and secret seeds away in my teacups, it was infuriating but I was accustomed to it and I found I missed them once they were gone. So she brings them to me.”

  He stops at a cabinet tucked in between a pair of bookshelves and opens its door.

  The shelves inside are covered with silver mice, some dancing and others sleeping or nibbling on minuscule pieces of golden cheese. One wields a small golden sword. A tiny knight.

  Dorian reaches into the cabinet and picks up the mouse with the sword. It stands on a six-sided base.

  “May I?” he asks the innkeeper.

  “Of course,” the innkeeper replies.

  Dorian brings the mouse knight back to the chair by the fireplace and places it into the indentation in the moon on the box. It fits perfectly.

  He turns the mouse and the hidden lid clicks loose.

  “Ha!” the innkeeper exclaims delightedly.

  Dorian places the silver mouse with its sword down next to the box.

  He lifts the lid.

  Inside is a beating human heart.

  ZACHARY EZRA RAWLINS, when he was very young, would play with crystals from his mother’s expansive collection: staring into them, holding them up to lights and gazing at inclusions and cracks and wounds fractured and healed by time, imagining worlds within the stones, entire kingdoms and universes held in his palms.

  The spaces he envisioned then are nothing compared to the crystalline caverns he walks through now, with a torch held aloft to light his way and an owl perched on his shoulder, digging its talons into his sweater.

  When he hesitates at intersections the owl flies ahead, scouting. It reports back with indiscernible signals relayed through blinks or ruffling of feathers or hoots and Zachary pretends to understand even though he does not and thus together they continue forward. Simon warned him that the sea was a far distance but failed to mention that the path was this dark and winding.

  Now this man who is not quite lost in time and his feathered companion come to a campfire, well-built and burning, waiting for them. Next to the fire is a large cloth tent that appears to have sheltered many previous travelers in spaces with more weather. The inside is bright and inviting.

  The tent is massive, tall enough for Zachary to stand up and walk around in. There are pillows and blankets that seem stolen from other places and other times and arranged here to provide respite for the passing weary traveler, too much color for such a monochrome space. There is even a post outside waiting for his torch to rest in, and something else hanging below it.

  A coat. A very old coat with a great many buttons.

  Zachary discards his travel-damaged sweater and carefully puts on Simon’s long-lost coat. The buttons are emblazoned with a crest, though in the light he cannot make out more than a smattering of stars.

  The coat is warmer than his sweater. It is loose in the shoulders but Zachary does not care. He hangs his sweater on the post.

  As Zachary buttons his new ancient coat the owl resettles itself on his shoulder and together they go to investigate the tent.

  Inside the tent is a table set with a modest feast.

  A bowl stacked with fruit: apples and grapes and figs and pomegranates. A round, crusty loaf of bread. A roasted Cornish game hen.

  There are bottles of wine and bottles of mystery. Tarnished silver cups waiting to be filled. Jars of marmalade and honeycomb. A small object carefully wrapped in paper that turns out
to be a dead mouse.

  “I think this is for you,” Zachary says but the owl has already swooped down to claim its treat. It looks up at him with the tail dangling from its beak.

  On the other side of the tent is a table covered with inedible objects, neatly laid out on a gold-embroidered cloth.

  A penknife. A cigarette lighter. A grappling hook. A ball of twine. A set of twin daggers. A tightly rolled wool blanket. An empty flask. A small metal lantern punched with star-shaped holes. A pair of leather gloves. A coiled length of rope. A rolled piece of parchment that looks like a map. A wooden bow and a quiver of arrows. A magnifying glass.

  Some, but not all, of it will fit in his bag.

  “Inventory management,” Zachary mutters to himself.

  In the center of the table of supplies there is a folded note. Zachary picks it up and flips it open.

  when you’re ready

  choose a door

  Zachary looks around the tent. There are no doors, only the flaps he entered through, tied open with cords.

  He takes the torch from its resting place and walks out into the cavern, following the path beyond the tent.

  Here the path stops abruptly at a crystalline wall.

  In the wall where the path should continue there are doors.

  One door is marked with a bee. Another with a key. And a sword and a crown and a heart and a feather though the doors are not in the order he has become accustomed to. The crown is at the end. The bee is in the center next to the heart.

  The son of the fortune-teller stands before six doorways, not knowing which one to choose.

  Zachary sighs and returns to the tent. He puts down the torch and picks up a thankfully already open bottle of wine and pours himself a cup. He has been given a place to pause before he proceeds and he is going to take it, despite its resemblance to similar virtual respites he has taken before. Nothing like too many health potions placed just before a door to signify something dangerous to come.