People around me were starting to look at me funny, I was standing too close to the phone for anyone else to get it.
So I picked it up.
“I’m guessing your name isn’t Sarah,” I said once I had the receiver at my ear.
“It’s not,” she said. Her voice came through the phone a second after her lips moved up in the window. She paused for a long time but she stayed on her phone. We just stood there looking at each other. She had this weird sad almost smile.
“Is there something you wanted to tell me?” I asked when I couldn’t take the silence anymore.
“She asked you to join us and you said no, didn’t she?”
I didn’t have to ask who or what she was talking about.
“I decided to keep my options open,” I said.
“You were smart.”
She sounded bitter. I waited for her to say something else. Someone in one of the farmers’ market tents was selling Manhattan rooftop honey and I got distracted wondering about city bees versus country bees and worrying over whether or not Manhattan bees have enough flowers.
“I wanted to belong to something, you know?” not-Sarah said but she didn’t wait for me to answer. “Something important. I wanted to do something that had purpose to it, something…something special. Upper management dismantled the whole organization. We all got dismissed. No one knows what happened. I don’t know what to do now.”
I said, “Sounds like that sucks for you,” which was kinda mean even though it did actually sound like it kinda sucked. She took it pretty well.
“I know this has been hard for you,” she said. “I didn’t want you to be on edge all the time. I wanted to let you know that no one’s watching you anymore.”
“You were.”
She shrugged.
“What happened to the place you were supposed to be protecting?” I asked.
“I don’t know. I’ve never been there. Maybe it’s gone. I don’t even know if it exists.”
“Why don’t you look for it?” I asked her.
“Because I signed an agreement that stated if I did they could terminate me, literally. I was assured that clause was intact when they paid me off and gave me a new identity. They’d kill me if they knew I was talking to you now.”
“Seriously?” I asked, because really now.
“All of it is serious,” she said. “They talked about eliminating you but decided it was too risky in case it resulted in more people looking into the Rawlins case.”
“Where’s Zachary?” I asked and then I kind of wished I hadn’t in case she was going to confirm that he was dead because no matter what I think I’ve gotten accustomed to that tiny piece of hope that sits in the middle of the not knowing.
“I don’t know,” she said, quickly, more panicky. She looked over her shoulder. “I…I don’t know. I do know it’s all over now. I thought you should know.”
I think she wanted me to say thank you. I didn’t.
I said, “Who’s the Owl King?”
And she hung up on me.
She turned from the window and walked away into the bookstore.
I knew I wouldn’t be able to find her. Really easy to disappear in a five-floor bookstore in the middle of Manhattan.
I texted the number again but it said Delivery Failure.
I don’t know how to start looking for a place that maybe doesn’t even exist.
THE SON OF THE FORTUNE-TELLER stands in the doorway of a life-size dollhouse filled with larger-than-life-size honeycomb and occupied by bees the size of cats. Bees crawl down the stairs and across the windows and the ceiling, over armchairs and sofas and chandeliers.
All around Zachary the bees are buzzing, elated by his arrival.
Hello hello Mister Rawlins thank you for visiting no one has visited us in such a long long time we have been waiting.
“Hello?” Zachary answers, not meaning it to sound quite so much like a question but it is a question, he is nothing but questions as he enters the dollhouse. His feet sink into the honey that coats the floor as he steps into the entrance hall.
Hello Mister Rawlins hellohellohello.
The giant bees move this way and that over the honeycomb-encased rooms, traveling up and down the stairs, flitting from room to room, going about their business whatever their business might be.
“How…how do you know my name?” Zachary asks.
It has been told to us many times Mister Zachary Ezra Rawlins sir.
“What is this?” he asks. He walks farther into the house, each step slow and sticky.
This is a dollhouse a house for dolls a house to keep the story in it doesn’t all fit in the house most stories don’t most stories are bigger this one is very big.
“Why am I here?”
You are here because you are dead so now you are here in between places also because you are the key she said she would send us a key when it was time to end a key to lock the story away when it was finished and here you are.
Zachary looks down at the key-shaped scar on his chest.
“Who told you that?” he asks, though he knows.
The story sculptor, comes the buzzing answer, not the one that Zachary expected. The one who sculpts the story sometimes she is in the story sometimes she is not sometimes she is pieces sometimes she is a person she told us you were coming very long ago we have waited for you a long long time Mister Rawlins.
“For me?”
Yes Mister Rawlins you have brought the story here thank you thank you the story has not been here in a very long time we cannot lock away a Harbor story that has wandered so far away from us we usually go up up up and this time we came down down down we came down here to wait and now we are here together with the story would you like a cup of tea?
“No, thank you,” Zachary says. He peers at a grandfather clock dripping with honey in the front hall, its decorative face depicting an owl and a cat in a small boat, its hands paused in wax a minute before midnight. “How do I get out of here?” he asks.
There is no out there is only in.
“Well then what happens next?”
There is no next not here this is the end do you not know what end means?
“I know what end means,” Zachary says. The calm he felt before is gone, replaced by a humming buzzing agitation and he cannot tell if it is coming from the bees themselves or from somewhere else.
Are you all right Mister Rawlins what is the matter you should be happy you like this story you like us you are our key you are our friend you love us you said you did.
“I did not.”
You did you did we gave you cupcakes.
Zachary remembers writing his eternal devotion in fountain pen on paper sent down a dumbwaiter that feels long ago and far away.
“You’re the Kitchen,” he says, realizing that he has already had several conversations with bees before though they seem to be more articulate in writing.
In that place we are the Kitchen but here we are ourselves.
“You’re bees.”
We like bees. Would you care for a refreshment we can turn honey into anything anything anything you can imagine we are very good at it we have had a lot of practice we can give you the idea of a cupcake and it would taste very real exactly like real cake only smaller. Would you like a cupcake?
“No.”
Would you like two cupcakes?
“No,” Zachary repeats, louder.
We know we know you would like a cocktail and a cupcake yes yes that would be better.
Before Zachary can reply a bee nudges him over to a small table upon which now sits a frosted coupe glass filled with lemon-bright liquid and a small cupcake decorated with a much smaller bee.
Out of curiosity Zachary picks up the glass and takes a tiny sip, expecting it to tast
e like honey and it does but it also tastes familiarly of gin and lemon. A bee’s knees. Of course.
Zachary returns the glass to the table.
He sighs and walks farther into the house. Some of the bees follow him, muttering something about cake. Most of the furniture is honey-covered but some of it remains untouched. His bare feet sink into honey-drenched carpets as he walks.
Beyond the front hall there is a parlor and a study and a library.
On a table in the library there is a dollhouse. A different dollhouse than the Victorian structure Zachary currently occupies, a miniature building composed of tiny bricks and many windows. It looks like a school or maybe a library of the public sort. Zachary peers in one of the windows and there are no dolls and no furniture but there are pictures painted on the walls inside.
A pool of honey surrounds the building like a moat.
“Is this supposed to be the Starless Sea?” Zachary asks the bees.
That is the next story this one is ending now the key has come to lock it up and fold it and put it away to be read or told or to stay where it is tucked away we do not know what will happen after it ends but we are glad to have company we do not always have company for endings.
“I don’t understand.”
You are the key you have brought the end it is time to lock it up and say goodbye good night farewell we have been waiting for you a very long time Mister Rawlins we did not know you would be the key we cannot always see keys for what they are when we meet them sometimes they are surprises hello surprise.
Zachary continues walking through the house, into a formal dining room set for a nonexistent dinner party. There is a cake on the sideboard with a single slice missing though the cakeless void has been filled with beeswax.
He wanders through a butler’s pantry that leads to the kitchen. This is a space meant for living that is currently occupied only by bees and a solitary dead man.
At the back of the house is a sunroom, its sprawling windows clouded with honey. Here he finds a single doll. A girl doll, painted and porcelain. Cracked but not broken. She sits in a chair, her legs not quite bent properly, staring out a window as though she is waiting for someone to arrive, someone sneaking in through the back garden.
There is a book in her hand. Zachary takes it from her but it is not a real book. It is a piece of wood made to resemble a book. It cannot open.
Zachary looks out the honey-covered window. He wipes it as clear as he can with the palm of his hand and looks out over the garden, over the city and the paper sea. So many stories within the story and here he is at the end of them all.
“This story can’t end yet,” Zachary says to the bees.
Why Mister Rawlins why not it is time for the end now the story is over the key is here it is time.
“Fate still owes me a dance.”
An indiscernible buzzing follows the statement before it settles into words.
Oh oh oh hrmmm we do not know why she did that we do not always understand her ways would you like to speak with her Mister Rawlins sir we can build you a place to speak to the story sculptor a place in the story where you can talk to her and she can talk to you we cannot talk to her ourselves because she is not dead right now but we can build a place for talking or dancing we are good at building places for the story there is not a lot of time left it won’t last very long but we could do that if you would like would you like that?
“Yes, I would like that, please,” Zachary says. He continues to stare out the window at the world as he waits, with an unfinished idea of a book in his hands.
The bees begin to build the story of a space within this space. A new room inside the dollhouse.
They hum as they work.
excerpt from the Secret Diary of Katrina Hawkins
I remembered where I’d heard of the Owl King before.
I don’t know why it took me so long.
I was at this party a couple of years ago, maybe a few months before Z disappeared. I don’t remember. I think it was summer. It must have been summer because I remember humidity and mosquitoes and that nighttime heat haze. One of those house parties at a friend of a friend’s and I wouldn’t have been able to pick the house or the friend’s friend out of a lineup afterward, because all the houses look blue-grey-brown in the light and on certain streets they all look the same, one blending into another, and sometimes the friends of friends do, too.
This house had those cool string lights out back. The hard-core ones with proper lightbulbs that look like they’re on loan from some French café.
I was getting some air or something, I don’t remember why I was outside. I remember being in the yard looking up at the sky and trying to remember my constellations even though I can only ever pick out Orion.
I was alone out there. Maybe it was too humid or there were too many bugs or it was late enough that there weren’t that many people left and everyone was inside. I was sitting on a picnic table that was too big for the size of the yard, just kind of staring up at the universe.
Then this girl—no, woman. Lady. Whatever. This lady came out and offered me a drink. I figured she was a grad student or an assistant professor or somebody’s roommate or something but I couldn’t guess her age. Older than me. Not by a lot.
It’s funny how that works. How for so long a single year of difference matters and then after a certain point a year is nothing.
She gave me an opaque plastic cup identical to the one I’d abandoned inside but with better bourbon in it, on the rocks.
I accepted because mysterious ladies offering bourbon under the stars is very much my aesthetic.
She sat next to me and told me that we were the people that the narrative would have followed out from the party if we were in a movie or a novel or something. We were where the story was, the story you could follow like a string, not all the overlapping party stories in the house, tangled up with too many dramas soaked in cheap alcohol and stuffed into not enough rooms.
I remember we talked about stories, and how they work and how they don’t and how life can seem so slow and weird when you expect it to be more like a story, with all the boring bits and everyday stuff edited out. The sort of stuff Z and I used to talk about.
We talked about fairy tales and she told me one I’d never heard before even though I know a lot of fairy tales.
It was about a hidden kingdom. Like a sanctuary place and no one knew where it was exactly but you found it when you needed it. It called out in dreams or sang siren songs and then you found a magic door or a portal or whatever. Not always but sometimes. You had to believe or need it or just be lucky, I guess.
It made me think of Rivendell, someplace quiet and away to finish writing a book in, but this hidden kingdom was underground and had a seaport, if I’m remembering it right. It probably did because it was on something called the Starless Sea and I know I’m not misremembering that part because it was definitely underground, thus the no stars. Unless that whole part was a metaphor. Whatever.
I remember the space more than the story that went with it but I think the story part had to do with this hidden kingdom being a temporary space. And how it was meant to end and vanish because vanishing fairy kingdoms are a thing, and the place had a beginning and a middle and was moving toward an end but then it got stuck. I think maybe it started over a bunch of times, too, but I don’t remember.
And some parts of the story got trapped outside of the story space and other bits lost their way. Someone was trying to keep the story from ending, I think.
But the story wanted an ending.
Endings are what give stories meaning.
I don’t know if I believe that. I think the whole story has meaning but I also think to have a whole story-shaped story it needs some sort of resolution. Not even a resolution, some appropriate place to leave it. A goodbye.
I t
hink the best stories feel like they’re still going, somewhere, out in story space.
I remember wondering if this story was an analogy about people who stay in places or relationships or whatever situations longer than they should because they’re afraid of letting go or moving on or the unknown, or how people hold on to things because they miss what the thing was even if that isn’t what that same thing is now.
Or maybe that’s what I got out of it and someone else hearing the same story would see something different.
But anyway, this hidden kingdom was kept alive in that magical fairy-tale way and in the same way that it would sing to people who needed to find it for sanctuary purposes it started whispering for someone to come and destroy it. The space found its own loopholes and worked its own spells, so it could have an ending.
“Did it work?” I remember asking, because she stopped the story there.
“Not yet,” she said. “But it will, someday.”
We talked about something else after that but there was more to the story. It had, like, a whole cast of characters and felt like a proper fairy tale. There was a knight, maybe? I think he was sad? Or there were two of them, and one of them had a broken heart. And some Persephone-esque lady who kept leaving and coming back and there was a king and I remembered before that it was a bird king but I’d forgotten what kind of bird and now I swear it was an owl. Maybe. Probably.
But I forget what it means, what it meant in the story.
It’s weird, I can remember so much of it now. I remember the lights and the stars and the opaque plastic cup in my hand and the melting ice watering down my bourbon and that pot-mixed-with-incense scent coming from the house and I did find Orion and two different cars went by playing that song that was everywhere that summer but I don’t remember the whole story, not exactly, because the story didn’t seem as important as the teller or the stars in that moment when it was being told. It seemed like something else. Not something you could hold on to like an opaque plastic cup or someone else’s hand.
The Starless Sea Page 45
