The Starless Sea

The elevator takes Zachary Ezra Rawlins so far into the earth that he wonders whether it is really moving, but it eventually stops, opening into a lavish chamber with a curved, paneled ceiling. The door leading out of the chamber will not open. He finds a hidden alcove with a basin, and a black bag sitting in the basin. Inside the bag are dice and beneath the bag, in the basin, the word “roll” is carved. The dice have symbols instead of numbers: the familiar bee, key, and sword but also a crown, a heart, and a feather. He rolls the dice, each of the six landing on the same symbol: the heart. Immediately, the bottom of the basin falls out, and the dice and the bag disappear.

Zachary walks to the opposite wall and finds a matching alcove. Inside this one, he finds a glass with a tiny stem and a lid, and beneath it, the word “drink.” The liquid is sweet and fragrant—with a lot of alcohol. Zachary is wracked with momentary dizziness, but recovers, his headache and grogginess gone. The door opens, and he enters the next room.

Zachary sees an architectural wonder resembling a cathedral. Through the wooden doorway, he finds “a cluster of glowing globes hung amongst brass hoops and bars” (120). The bars are stylized with golden hands at the ends pointing outward. The tiles above them are “laid out in a pattern of numbers and stars” (120). In the center of it all, a swaying pendulum hangs from the ceiling. He thinks it may be a model of the universe or a clock but is at a loss as to how to tell, let alone how to read it. Instead, he calls out, “hello.” Someone answers him, asking whether he can be of assistance.

The man, who has a cat and who eyes Zachary’s sword pendant, informs Zachary that the facility is closed and that he is not supposed to be there. Zachary says that he was helping a man who called himself Dorian and that he doesn’t know “who the sword people are” (122), though he suspects they are guardians. The man wishes him good luck and escorts him the elevator, but pressing the button does nothing. The man asks if the door Zachary used was painted. When Zachary says yes, he mutters that he had “warned her that this would be problematic” and asks what Zachary rolled (122). Zachary answers truthfully—all hearts—causing the man to stare at him before directing him to follow.

The man says he knows that Zachary is there because he wishes “to sail the Starless Sea and breathe the haunted air” (123). He explains that they are in a Harbor, not the sea itself, and guides Zachary to his office, where a sword is displayed on the wall. The man asks about the location of the painted door. Zachary volunteers information about polar-bear lady, Dorian’s possible danger, and the book he took on Dorian’s behalf. As the man inspects the book, the Arabic text suddenly appears to be English. He thanks Zachary for bringing it back where it belongs, but says he may keep it for Dorian if he wants.

The man states that while someone certainly should rescue Dorian, Zachary will not be able to leave until Mirabel returns to escort him. In the meantime, he offers Zachary a room if he will give his name. The man identifies himself as “the Keeper.” The Keeper hands Zachary “a round, gold locket on a long chain” with a bee on one side and a heart on the other (125). He also gives Zachary a compass which will lead him back to that spot—the “Heart.” The Keeper guides Zachary to a room, gives him a key, and instructs him to ask if he needs anything.

There is a man who collects keys—old, new, lost, stolen, skeleton—but he is not greedy about them. He carries them in pockets and around chains, but gives them to those who ask, as he usually has a replacement key for whatever key they had broken or lost. For his kindness, people bring him keys from their travels, or they give him both spare and found keys as gifts. When his collection grows too large to wear, he displays them in his house. The house overflows with keys, which hang on the outside walls and the eaves of the roof.

One day, a woman knocks on his door, wearing a fine cloak with golden star-shaped flowers embroidered on it. She announces that she is hoping that one of his keys will unlock something that she seeks. After searching the house, she moves to the garden, finding a key hanging from a blooming tree. When the collector asks if the key will work for her lock, she answers that it is her key, which she lost long ago. She says she must repay him in some way, but he insists there is no need—he is glad to help reunite her with whatever locked-away thing she seeks. She corrects him: “It is not a thing. It is a place” (131).

The woman takes the key and holds it in front of her as if placing it into a keyhole, unlocking an invisible door in the garden. She opens it into a gilded room with high arched windows and countless candles. Beyond the door, music plays. The woman steps through the doorway, collects the key from the lock, and raises a hand to beckon the collector in. He follows, the door closes, and he is never seen again.

Zachary Ezra Rawlins awakens and find himself in the Harbor. He sees more items than he remembers in his room, including a painting of a ship crewed by bunnies. He opens a wardrobe, which is full of handmade clothing in his preferred natural fibers. It all fits alarmingly well, down to the shoes. Despite his blurry vision due to his less-than-ideal contact lenses, he can clearly see the book he pulls from the shelves. He opens the brown leather book he stole from the Collector’s Club. Thanks to the Keeper, the words are in English and each one is legible: Fortunes and Fables.

The breakfast the Kitchen provides is decadent. Zachary turns his attention to the book, a collection of fairy tales. He glances at a story of “a Girl and a Feather” before going back to the beginning, at which point a skeleton key falls out from the book’s spine. Zachary wonders whether Dorian was seeking the book, the key, or both. The first story has another version of the story of Time falling in love with Fate. Zachary puts the skeleton key on the same chain as his room key and sends his clothes to be laundered. The Kitchen sends back the items he left in them: his wallet, his hotel key, and two scraps of paper, one from Dorian, the other ticket to the masquerade. With Fortunes and Fables in tow, he locks his room and ventures toward the Heart.

Zachary realizes that this place is not what he imagined after Sweet Sorrows: it’s bigger. It feels infinite beyond what he can see, with a sense of “studiousness underlying a place of learning and stories and secrets” (139). The place has several cats, but he seems to be the only human besides the Keeper. He finds his way back to the universe clock. The Keeper confirms that Zachary is the only guest at present and offers him a selection of glasses. Mirabel has not returned, and mentioning this fact seems to make the Keeper unhappy.

As Zachary wanders down a different hallway, he notices several more paintings by the same artist as the painting of the bunny pirates. He wonders if he’ll find the dollhouse mentioned in Sweet Sorrows, then sees a doll that looks like a woman with a calm expression on her face, eyes closed and smiling, “wrapped in a robe of stars” (141). Zachary continues his journey and finds a garden with a life-size statue of a woman sitting on a stone chair. Bees are tucked into every curl, crease of her gown, in her lap, and on her arms. By her feet, a glass is half-filled with wine, surrounded by bees.

Mirabel, now without the wig from her Max costume, has pink hair ranging from deep at the roots to pale at the tips of her shoulders. She informs Zachary that someone always leaves the statue a glass of wine around that time of year. She promptly informs Zachary that she knows exactly who he is, and they strike a deal that she will call him Ezra and he will call her Max. Mirabel is amused to learn that their mutual friend told Zachary to call him Dorian, observing that he must like him better as she was instructed to call him “Mr. Smith.” Zachary informs Mirabel that Dorian never made it through the door and that the Collector’s Club has him. 

There is a princess who refuses to marry a prince. Her family disowns her and she leaves her kingdom, selling her jewelry and hair to travel to a land far away. She asks an old woman whether the land has a king only to learn that the land is home to the Owl King. The princess becomes a seamstress and marries a blacksmith, eventually telling him the truth, but he thinks she is joking and playfully calls her “Princess” from then on.

The princess gives birth to a daughter, a screaming baby born on a night without the moon, an omen of bad luck. Worried about the baby’s future, she asks the old woman what to do. The old woman tells her to take the baby to the Owl King and have him see her future. They climb the mountain to find the ruins of a castle. The princess tells her daughter to wait and goes up the stairs. The girl sees a golden feather. The ghosts are amazed by her ability to wield the magical talisman. The girl tries to eat the feather, then puts it in her pocket.

The Owl King demands to meet with the daughter alone, and her mother agrees. Later, the princess is allowed back inside, where only the girl sits in the light. The Owl King speaks from the darkness, announcing that the child “has no future” (148). The princess is displeased but unsure of what she would have preferred to hear instead; she wishes that she could go back in time and make different choices.

The Owl King asks the princess to bring the child back when she is grown, and the princess agrees. The years pass, allowing the princess to both forget and remember her promise many times, sometimes questioning whether it ever happened. The child has a mark between her waist and her hip in the shape of a feather. The princess dies before her daughter is grown, leaving her promise unfulfilled. The daughter soon disappears.

There are different versions of the next events: The girl either finds the castle empty, or she enters it but can no longer see the ghosts. In the rarest version, the girl finds her way back to find it lit and waiting for her. The Owl King acknowledges her return and they exchange greetings. The Owl King tells the girl to stay three nights in the castle. Then, she will have no desire to leave. 

Mirabel leads Zachary Ezra Rawlins back to the Heart, where the Keeper looks on. As they wait for the elevator, Mirabel explains that the dice and the drink were an “entrance exam,” which she never took as she was born there. She offers him a candy from her cigarette case; the candy is a story. When asked if she knows the story, Mirabel answers that she does not, but she recognizes the patterns since all stories are about change. When he asks what “this” is, she answers that she will not have an answer that will satisfy him, but tells him that the secret to surviving after going down a rabbit hole is to be a rabbit.

Mirabel admits that she painted the door in the alley. She calls it a “litmus test” because if someone can believe enough to attempt to open a door which is painted, they will be more likely to believe in the place that it leads to, wherever that may be. The elevator opens “in between”—not in New York, and not there. It is an extension of the elevator, “like a tesseract except for space instead of time” (155).

After Mirabel takes him through a door, they open another incognito door into the Strand. They make their way outside and into a Starbucks at Mirabel’s insistence. The normalcy jars Zachary. Mirabel orders “a grande honey stardust, no whip” (157). When asked, she tells Zachary she has ordered information. The drink is an Earl Grey tea with soy milk, honey, and vanilla, but it comes with six digits written on the bottom of the cup: 721909.

Zachary asks how Mirabel knows Dorian. She answers that Dorian once tried to kill her. Before he can ask more questions, they’ve arrived at the Collector’s Club, and Mirabel inputs the numbers into the alarm’s keypad. Looking at the doorknobs, Mirabel says that most of the doors were “lost before they were closed” (159). Now, they are tying up loose ends. She says that there are boxes of the less decorative knobs—all that is left after the doors are burned. They climb up the stairs to see a shadow in the hallway on the second floor. Dorian’s body hangs from the ceiling just like the doorknobs, “tied and tangled in a net of pale ribbons” (160).

A widowed innkeeper’s inn lies at a “particularly inhospitable crossroads” (161). While his inn was busy in the summer, he is in the depths of a long, harsh winter. One night, he falls asleep in his chair by the fire only to be awoken by a knock at the door. He opens it, letting in a woman.

The next morning, the traveler explains that she is supposed to meet someone there. The innkeeper warns her that there are no other travelers, but agrees to let her stay, insisting on no payment. They talk by the fire, and the wind listens as the innkeeper’s world shrinks to the size of this inn—and the woman inside.

The next day, the traveler teaches the innkeeper how to make crescent-shaped buns. The innkeeper tells the story of how the wind travels up and down, searching for something it lost and howling its grief. In some of the stories, it is a lake; in others, a person whom it loved. In that case, the wind howls “because a mortal cannot love the wind the way the wind loves it in return” (166). The innkeeper asks if the traveler has any stories from her homeland. The traveler tells the story about when the moon and sun are missing from the sky. Every so often—100 years, 500 years, 1,000 years—the sun and the moon disappear at the same time. They coordinate their departure and meet in a secret location to discuss the world and compare what they have seen during that time. They meet, talk, and part until their next meeting.

The traveler for whom the woman is waiting arrives, dark in complexion, with light eyes and golden hair. The two talk for some time. Eventually, the innkeeper falls asleep. He wakes to the sound of the second traveler rising from her chair. The first traveler announces she has to leave in the morning. The innkeeper kisses her hand and asks her to “stay with” him and “be with” him. The traveler takes the innkeeper into her room and her bed as “the wind howled around the inn, crying for love found and mourning for love lost. For no mortal can love the moon. Not for long” (169).

Zachary Ezra Rawlins awakes with an aching head, tied to a chair. A voice greets him from a speaker. The knitting girl from the Innovative Storytelling class brings in a tray with a teapot, not even looking at him. The polar-bear lady enters the room, her white suit and different-colored eyes reminding him of David Bowie. She introduces herself as Allegra Cavallo. After confirming that Zachary is right-handed, she cuts the bonds on his left hand. She warns him that if he tries to untie his hand or escape, he will lose his left. He drinks the tea she gives him.

Allegra says that Zachary has already decided that she is the villain given his “superior meet-cutes” with Dorian and Mirabel. She tells him about her charity, which threw the masquerade ball, and discusses her other charitable works. Zachary is unconvinced, arguing that she is closing “one library to open others” (173). Allegra sternly informs him that the place is not a library. When told that she destroys doors, she retorts that she protects things—that she is protecting there from the world that is “too much” for it. She circles back to the stolen book, mentioning the tests of the guardians and implying that Dorian is causing a fuss over not being given the first book he ever protected. Recognizing the test from its description in Sweet Sorrows, Zachary says “you’re guardians,” surprising Allegra.

Allegra places an egg on the table, says the guardians protect the egg from breaking, and alludes to a changing order of things, from the guardians to her own system. She demands to know the location of Sweet Sorrows. She threatens Zachary (who thinks that Dorian had the book last), telling him that if he does not give her every detail he can remember about the book, leave Manhattan forever, and speak to no one about recent events, she will have her operative kill Zachary’s mother. To prove her point, Allegra shows him a picture of his mother’s farmhouse.

Zachary looks at the egg and informs Allegra that the egg is filled with gold. Just as Allegra asks what he said, the lights go out.

A sword maker makes an unexpectedly fine sword. As it is not commissioned, he is unsure of what to do with it. He takes it to the local seer to see the sword’s future. The seer informs the sword maker that the sword will kill the king. The sword maker does not want to be responsible for creating the means of regicide, but neither can he destroy such a fine blade. Instead, he decides to make two more identical swords. Even he is unable to tell them apart: to tell which one will kill the king. He gives one sword to each of his three children, convinced that none of them will kill the king, “and if any of the swords fell into other hands the matter was left to fate and time and Fate and Time can kill as many kings as they please, and will eventually kill them all” (Page 179).

The youngest son takes his sword on his adventures, rarely taking it out of its scabbard. He falls in love with a man and has the sword melted down and turned into rings. He gives a ring to his love each year they are together. The man receives many rings.

The eldest son stays home and uses the sword for dueling. His skill earns him money, which he uses to sail. One day, he practices his swordsmanship on the deck. A sailor disarms him by the rail and the sword falls into the ocean, where it still sits.

The middle child, a daughter, keeps her sword in her library. She claims that it is only there as a decorative homage to her late father, but at night, she practices with it. She knows every inch of the sword, which is like an extension of her arm, appearing in her hand even in her dreams. One night, she dreams it is in her hand as she walks through a forest. She feels she is being watched, but sees no one. She finds a stump with books on top of it, and on top of the stack of books, a beehive with honey but no bees. Atop the beehive, there is a large owl, white and brown and wearing a crown. The Owl King surprises the girl by stating that she has come to kill him. He says that “they” always find a way to find him and kill him, even in dreams. She asks who finds and kills him, but he does not answer. Instead, the Owl King says: “A new king will come to take my place. Go ahead. It is your purpose” (Page 181). Though she has no wish to kill the Owl King, it seems like she is supposed to, so she beheads the owl in one stroke. His crown falls by her feet, but when she tries to touch it, it disintegrates into golden dust. When she wakes, a white and brown owl perches on the empty case where the sword once was. The owl stays with her for the rest of her life.

Mirabel rescues Zachary and guides him to a room where Dorian’s unconscious but living body is slumped. The relief Zachary feels is annoying; it implies an attachment to Dorian.

Mirabel locates a door, and they work together to drag Dorian to it. As they pull him along the corridor, Zachary sees a painting and recognizes the setting as the Harbor. As they make it to the elevator, Mirabel asks if Zachary trusts her. He answers that he does. Mirabel says, “someday I’m going to remind you that you said that” and produces a small handgun (185). She shoots the lantern on top of the cardboard on the other side of the doorway. The cardboard, wallpaper, and paintings all catch fire as the elevator doors close.

There is a sculptor who sculpts stories out of all kinds of things: snow, smoke, clouds, the space between raindrops. Her stories are fleeting due to the media chosen and too short-lived to be critiqued or questioned. Because people want her to sculpt using more permanent media, she begins to sculpt using materials like wax, arranged limbs of participants, knits, honeycombs. As she works with sturdier media, she discovers that she does not mind that her stories linger or that some enjoy them and some do not, because that is the nature of a story. Eventually, when she is much older, she agrees to work with stone.

After one show, a nervous, mouse-like man stays to speak with her. He tells her people are searching for something he has concealed and asks if she will hide it in a story for him. After three nights, the sculptor agrees to the man’s request but asks not to know what he hides. She says that she will provide a box for it. For a full year, she works on nothing else, producing something unlike anything else:

She created not one story but many. Stories within stories. Puzzles and wrong turns and false endings, in stone and in wax and in smoke. She crafted locks and destroyed their keys. She wove narratives of what would happen, what might happen, what had already happened, and what could never happen and blurred them all together (189).

A year later, the mouse-man returns. He places a mysterious, precious object in the ornate box the sculptor has created. She shuts the box, remaining the only one who knows how to close or open it. He kisses her lips as payment. She considers it fair. The sculptor does not hear from the man again, but many years later, those who seek what he has concealed find her. When they learn what she has done, they cut off her hands.

The pirate and the girl stand by the shore of the Starless Sea. The pirate imagines the life they could have had together if they made it onto a ship. He imagines it clearly, himself, free, “bound to nothing but her” (190). They pretend they have time as the alarm bells sound behind them, knowing that though death is imminent, their stories have much farther left to go.

They are found. The pirate screams as the girl faces her death, but she is not afraid: “She can see the oceans of time that rest between this point and their freedom, clear and wide. And she sees a way to cross them” (191).