The Starless Sea

by Erin Morgenstern

  “Ready?” he asks and Rhyme nods.

  The Keeper looks around the office once more but takes nothing save the glass of wine as they move into the next room, the ginger cat following.

  “Could you give me a hand with this, please?” the Keeper asks, placing his wine on a shelf and together he and Rhyme move the large painting of Zachary and Dorian aside, revealing the door set into the stone wall behind it.

  “Where shall we go?” the Keeper asks.

  Rhyme hesitates, looking at the door and then back over her shoulder. The sea has reached the office, lapping at the desk and the candles and toppling the broom that had been resting in a corner.

  “We are past the time for vows,” the Keeper adds and Rhyme turns back to him.

  “I’d like to be there, if we can,” she says, each word careful and slow, sitting strangely on a tongue she has not used for speaking in years. “Wouldn’t you?”

  The Keeper considers this suggestion. He takes a watch from the pocket of his suit and looks at it, turning the hands this way and that before he nods.

  “I suppose we have the time,” he says.

  Rhyme picks up the ginger cat.

  The Keeper places his hand on the door and the door listens to its instructions. It knows where it is meant to open, though it could open anywhere.

  Waves of honey sweep into the room as the Keeper opens the door.

  “Quickly now,” he says, ushering Rhyme and the cat through the door and out into the cloud-covered daylight.

  The Keeper turns back and lifts the glass of wine from the shelf.

  “To Seeking,” he says, raising his glass to the approaching sea.

  The sea does not answer.

  The Keeper drops the glass, letting it spill and shatter on the floor by his feet, and then he steps out of this sinking Harbor and into the world above.

  The door closes and the Starless Sea crashes into it, flooding the office and the room beyond. It smothers the fire and the smoldering braids within it and slides over the painting, pulling measures of time and depictions of fates under its surface.

  This space that was once a Harbor is now part of the Starless Sea again.

  All of its stories returned to their source.

  Far above, on a grey city sidewalk, the Keeper pauses to glance in the window of a bookstore while Rhyme stares up at the tall buildings and the ginger cat glares at nothing and everything.

  They continue walking and when they reach the corner Rhyme looks at the sign informing her that they are leaving Bay Street and turning onto King.

  Perched on the street sign there is an owl, staring down at her.

  No one else seems to notice it.

  For the first time in a long time, Rhyme doesn’t know what it means.

  Or what will happen next.

  DORIAN SITS ON the stone shore next to Zachary’s body at the edge of the Starless Sea.

  He has sobbed himself numb and now he simply sits, not wanting to see the unchanging tableau in front of him and unable to look away.

  He keeps thinking about the first thing he encountered in this place that looked like Zachary. He doesn’t know how long ago it was, he only remembers how unprepared he was, even after multiple Allegras and greater nightmares wearing the skin of his sister who died when he was seventeen.

  It was snowing. Dorian only believed for a moment that it was really Zachary and that moment was enough. Enough for the thing that was not Zachary even though it wore his face to disarm him. To bring him to his knees and Dorian does not remember how he managed to dodge the claws that came for him in the blood-soaked snow quickly enough to retrieve the sword and get to his feet again.

  The moon had warned him but Dorian does not believe anyone could truly be prepared for what it feels like to wield a sword in deepest darkness and cut through all that you ever cared for.

  With all the Zacharys that followed he did not hesitate.

  He had thought he would be able to tell the difference when he finally found the real one.

  He was wrong.

  Dorian replays the moment over and over in his mind, the moment when Zachary remained while the previous creature-worn guises had vanished once they were struck only to be replaced by someone or something or someplace else, followed by the slow, terrible comprehension that this moment and everything held within it was all too real.

  And now this moment stretches on and on, interminable and awful, when everything had been constant, dizzying change before, moving too fast for him to catch his breath. Now there are no false cities, no haunted memories, no snow. Only a cavernous emptiness and a seashore littered with the wreckage of ships and stories.

  (The darkness-lurking things that hunted him have fled, in fear of such grief.)

  (Only the Persian cat remains, curled by his side, purring.)

  Dorian thinks that he deserves this pain. He wonders when it will end. If it will ever end.

  He doubts that it will.

  This is his fate.

  To have his story end here in this ceaseless anguish surrounded by broken glass and honey.

  He considers falling on the sword himself but the presence of the cat prevents him.

  (All cats are guardians in their own right.)

  Dorian has no way to mark the time that passes with dreadful slowness but now the edge of the Starless Sea is approaching, the luminous coastline moving closer. He thinks at first that it is only his imagination but soon it becomes clear that the tide is rising.

  Dorian has resigned himself to slowly drowning in honey and sorrow when he sees the ship.

  excerpt from the Secret Diary of Katrina Hawkins

  I thought about giving this notebook to Z’s mom but I didn’t. I feel like I’m not done with it, even though it’s a bunch of pieces and not a whole anything.

  I hope there’s a missing piece, maybe even a small one, something that will make all the other pieces fit together but I have no clue what it is.

  I told Z’s mom some things. Not all the things. I brought bee cookies because I figured she’d say something if it meant anything to her and also because they’re delicious because honey-lemon icing but she didn’t say anything so I didn’t bring it up. I didn’t feel like dealing with secret societies and places that may or may not exist and it was nice to talk to someone for once. To be somewhere else and sit and have coffee and cookies. Everything felt brighter there. The light, the attitude, everything.

  She also just *knew* things. I think she broke me down a little bit. Or put a crack in my psychic armor that wasn’t there before. That’s how the light gets in and all that.

  At one point I asked her if she believed there was magic in the world and she told me, “The world is magic, honeychild.”

  Maybe it is. I don’t know.

  She slipped a tarot card into my coat pocket when I was leaving, I didn’t notice until later. The Moon.

  I had to look it up, I don’t know tarot stuff. It reminded me that Z had a deck and read for me once and kept insisting he wasn’t very good but everything he said was pretty much on point.

  I found stuff that said the Moon card was about illusions and finding your way through the unknown and secret otherworlds and creative madness.

  Madame Love knows what’s up, I think.

  I put the card on my dashboard so I can see it while I drive.

  I feel like something’s coming and I don’t know what.

  I’m trying to let all of this go and something keeps holding on.

  No, something keeps building. Keeps leading me to something new and something next.

  If this hadn’t happened I wouldn’t have started building my game, I wouldn’t have gotten this job, I wouldn’t be on my way to Canada right now.

  It’s like I’m following a string Z left for me through a m
aze but he might not even be in this maze. Maybe it’s not my job to find him. Maybe it is my job to see where the string goes.

  It felt weird to leave his scarf. I’ve had it for so long.

  I hope he gets it someday.

  I hope he has a really, really good story to tell me over dinner at his mom’s place and I hope he’s there with his husband and I’m there with someone or by myself and fine with that and I hope we stay up so late that late turns into early and I hope the stories and the wine go on and on and on and on.

  Someday.

  There is a ship upon the Starless Sea, sailing as the tides rise.

  Below the deck a man whose name is now Dorian keeps his vigil over the corpse of Zachary Ezra Rawlins while the ship’s captain whose name is not and will never be Eleanor navigates the stormy seas.

  There is a commotion above, a howling wind as the boat rocks, lilting to one side and then to the other. The flames on the candles falter and recover.

  “What’s going on?” Dorian asks when Eleanor returns to the cabin.

  “There are owls perching along the sails,” Eleanor says. One of them has followed her, a small owl who swoops through the cabin and perches on a beam. “They’re making it difficult to steer. They’re trying to stay afloat, you can’t blame them with the sea rising this fast. It’s fine, I’ll need new maps now anyway.”

  She makes this remark regarding the table with the maps where they have laid out Zachary’s body, blood seeping through paper and golden ribbons and obscuring both the known paths and the unmapped territories where the dragons be, all of it now lost beneath the sea.

  Dorian starts to apologize but Eleanor stops him and they stand in shared silence.

  “How high will it rise?” Dorian asks to break the silence though he finds he does not care. Let it continue to rise until they crash into the surface of the earth.

  “There are many caverns to sail through,” Eleanor assures him to his dismay. “I know the ways no matter how high it rises. Can I get you anything?”

  “No, thank you,” Dorian says.

  “This is your person, isn’t it?” she asks, looking down at Zachary.

  Dorian nods.

  “I knew someone once who had a coat like that. What are you reading?” Eleanor gestures toward the book in his hands though Dorian is holding it as a talisman more than he is actually reading it.

  He hands Sweet Sorrows to her.

  Eleanor frowns at the book and then the joyful recognition of an old lost friend spreads across her features.

  “Where did you find this?” she asks.

  “He found it,” Dorian explains. “In a library. On the surface. It’s yours, I believe.” The look on her face almost makes him smile.

  “The book was never mine,” Eleanor says. “Only the stories in it. I stole the book from the Archive. I didn’t think I’d ever see it again.”

  “You should have it back.”

  “No, we should keep it for sharing. There is always room for more books.”

  Only then does Dorian notice the sheer volume of books around the cabin, tucked into spaces between beams and on windowsills, piled on chairs and propping up table legs.

  The ship tilts, a particularly rough wave tipping the cabin on an angle before it rights itself. A pencil rolls from a table and disappears beneath an armchair.

  The Persian cat that has been napping in the armchair slides grumpily off and goes to investigate the case of the disappearing pencil, as though that was its intention all along.

  “I should go back up,” Eleanor says, handing Sweet Sorrows back to Dorian. “I forgot to tell you, there’s someone up on one of the precipices. I saw him through my telescope. He’s just sitting there, reading. I’ll stop for him when the sea level reaches that point. I don’t know how he’d get out otherwise, he only has one hand. If the waves get worse hold on to something.”

  Dorian thinks he should throw himself into the waves and let the Starless Sea take him but he suspects Eleanor would rescue him again if he did.

  Eleanor gives Dorian’s shoulder a somewhat awkward pat and then she returns to the deck, leaving him alone with Zachary.

  Dorian brushes a curl from Zachary’s forehead. He doesn’t look dead. Dorian doesn’t know if it would help if he did.

  Dorian sits silently, listening to the crash of the waves against the ship, the howl of the wind and the beating of wings circling through the caverns, and his heart beating in his ears which sounds as though it has an echo because it does and then Dorian realizes where the echoed heartbeat is coming from.

  He takes the box from his pack and holds it in his hands.

  What is the difference, Dorian asks himself, between Fate’s heart and a heart belonging to Fate?

  A heart kept by Fate until it is needed.

  Dorian looks down at Zachary’s body and then back at the box.

  He thinks about what he believes.

  When Dorian opens the box the heart inside beats faster, its moment arrived at last.

  excerpt from the Secret Diary of Katrina Hawkins

  Someone left a note on my car.

  It’s parked in a shopping-mall parking lot outside of Toronto and someone left a note on it. Literally fewer than ten people in the world even know I’m in this country right now and I’ve checked for tracking devices and I should absolutely not be findable or note-able. I didn’t plan on stopping at this mall, I don’t even know what city I’m in, Mississomething.

  * * *

  —

  The note says Come and See with an address below it.

  It’s written on a piece of stationery with “Regards from the Keating Foundation” embossed across the top.

  The back has a little drawing of an owl wearing a crown.

  * * *

  —

  I plugged the address into my GPS. It’s not that far away.

  Dammit.

  * * *

  —

  The address is a vacant building. It might have been a school or a library, maybe. Just enough broken windows to cement the whole “abandoned” look. There aren’t any signs. The front door is boarded up but there aren’t any for sales or no trespassings or beware of dogs. There aren’t even any signs to say what it was, only a number above the door so I know I’m in the right place.

  I’ve been parked here for twenty minutes trying to figure out if I should go in or not. The grounds are all overgrown, like no one’s been here in years. No one’s even driven by.

  There’s some graffiti but not a lot. Mostly initials and abstract swirls. Maybe Canadian graffiti is more polite.

  If I’m going to go in I should do it before it gets too dark. I should probably bring a flashlight.

  It feels like it’s looking at me, in that old-building creepy way. That space that’s had so many people in it but now there’s no one so it feels extra empty.

  * * *

  —

  I’m inside now and it was definitely a library once upon a time. There are empty shelves and card catalogues. No books, just random invoices and packing slips and a few stray cards, the old-school kind you had to write your name on.

  And everywhere, everywhere there are these paintings.

  Like graffiti and Renaissance oil painting had mural babies. All abstract and fuzzy here and there and then hyperrealistic other places.

  There are bees swarming down staircases and a cherry-blossom snowstorm and the ceilings are painted to look like night sky, covered in stars with the moon moving across it from phase to phase.

  There are murals that look like a city and others that look like a library within the library and one room has a castle and there are people. Life-size portraits that are so realistic at first I thought there were actual people in here and I nearly said hello.

  One of them is Z and anothe
r is that guy from the bar (I knew that guy was important I knew it).

  * * *

  —

  And one of them is me.

  I’m on the goddamned wall.

  I’m on the wall in the orange coat that I am currently wearing with this notebook in my hand.

  What the hell is going on here?

  * * *

  —

  On this big wall there’s a huge owl. Not a barn owl, a barred owl maybe? I don’t know my owls. It’s gigantic and takes up most of the wall with its wings spread and there are all these keys in its talons hanging from ribbons and it has a crown above its head.

  Under the owl there’s a door.

  It has a crown and a heart and a feather on it, in a line down the center.

  The door isn’t part of the painting.

  It’s an actual door.

  It’s in the middle of a wall but there’s no door on the other side, I checked. It’s solid wall on that side.

  * * *

  —

  The door is locked but it has a keyhole and hey, I have a key.

  Maybe the Time has come.

  * * *

  —

  I’m sitting in front of the door. There’s a little bit of light beneath it.

  The sun is going down, but the light under the door hasn’t changed.

  I don’t know what to do.

  * * *

  —

  I don’t know what you’re supposed to do when you find what you didn’t know you were looking for and you weren’t even certain it existed anyway and then suddenly you’re sitting on the floor of an abandoned Canadian library face-to-face with it.

  I’ve been huffing that citrus oil that Z’s mom gave me but I don’t feel mentally clear.

  I feel lemony and insane.