The Starless Sea

Inside the cavern, Zachary Ezra Rawlins finds himself in the snow, standing in front of his mother’s farmhouse during a holiday party. He sees a stag in the woods, but it quickly disappears. Zachary is confused when someone who looks like Dorian appears, asking about his lack of an ugly Christmas sweater. Zachary asks Dorian questions, but despite the reasonable answers, Zachary is certain it this is not the real Dorian.

Dorian claims that for the last year, Zachary has had difficulty separating fantasy from reality. Zachary insists that he does not have “episodes,” but he is confused and it is hard to breathe. Dorian assures him that they will get through it, leaning in to kiss him in a habitual way, but Zachary insists “this is a story that I’m telling myself” (407). Dorian feels real as Zachary pushes him away. Zachary sees the moon in the sky and tells it and himself that they are not supposed to be there at that moment.

Zachary tells Dorian that he has to leave. He walks away from the house and wonders if it is a test. He walks back to the field, but the door is gone. He tries to remember the map he saw and did not take, but ultimately decides it does not matter: “If this is a story he is telling himself, he can tell himself to go forward” (408). He yells at the moon that they are not supposed to be there. The moon does not answer, but watches, waiting to see what will happen.

Kat convinced the IT department to check Zachary’s emails when the police did not bother. The Collector’s Club deleted any trace of emails between them in the month of January. She broke into his room and found an odd slip of paper under a sock under the bed; in the middle, she saw a drawing of a bee, a key, and a sword.

Frustrated by the confusing clues, Kat researched the charity that threw the ball—the Collector’s Club—and discovered it was a subsidiary of another charity, which was a part of itself. She discovered an address and learned that the building burned down around the time of Zachary’s disappearance. When Kat walked around the building, she noticed the iron gate had a sword at the center.

Kat registered on a dark net conspiracy theory site, posting, “Looking for info: Bee/Key/Sword” (413). She received a response from an admin, reading “don’t.” When she replied saying that it was not spam, just a question, the admin responded, “I know. Don’t. You don’t want to get into that” (413). She received another message from a new account: “Crown/Heart/Feather/The Owl King is coming” (413).

No matter how far Zachary Ezra Rollins walks, the woods do not get any closer. He puts Sweet Sorrows in his coat pocket and abandons his bag of equipment, taking only the books. Zachary informs the moon, “If Dorian is down here somewhere I want to see him. Right now” (415). Suddenly, someone is running toward him. He draws the sword only to find it is Dorian, who assures him that it is really him. Zachary asks where the moon goes when she is not in the sky, but Dorian’s smile reassures him that it is not a fantasy even before Dorian answers that she goes to the inn that was once at the crossroads. Dorian is both there and somewhere else at the same time.

Dorian says he thinks he may have fallen asleep in the inn as he does not remember leaving it. They embrace and Zachary realizes that he would be perfectly pleased to lose himself in Dorian. Dorian asks if Zachary is in the “world beneath the world beneath the world” (415). Zachary explains that he arrived in the elevator with Mirabel, and Dorian suggests he try to make it to the inn. Zachary acknowledges that they might not be in the same time anymore, but Dorian insists that they will find each other and figure it out together. Zachary gives the sword to Dorian, who suddenly vanishes. Zachary now stands alone in the snow, with no sword and no moon.

A stag, with golden antlers covered in candles, stares at Zachary. Their eyes meet, then the stag turns and walk toward the trees. Zachary follows it. They make it into the woods more quickly than expected, and Zachary notices that the bark on the trees is actually gold leaf. The stag guides him to a clearing. He looks up at the sky, noticing the moon is gone; when he looks back down, the stag is missing, too. The trees are covered in ribbons with keys strung on them.

In the center of the clearing, he sees a seated figure he thinks is Mirabel, but it is actually a carved figure made of ice. Her gown’s fabric ripples are waves with ships, sailors, and sea monsters. The face is a precise likeness of Mirabel. A red light glows from within her chest, the ice making it look pink. Her hands hold a torn ribbon without a key. She gazes at an empty chair across from her. Zachary sits on it. He imagines her voice as she asks the pirate to tell her a story. Like the pirate, Zachary obliges her.

Dorian wakes up, still feeling the snow and the sword, though he is in his warm bed at the inn with his blankets in his hand. He dresses and tells the innkeeper he needs to leave. He opens the door, but instead of the snowy forest, he sees a shadowy cavern. He thinks he can see a castle in the distance. The innkeeper tells him to close the door, saying that the inn “can only send you where you are meant to go, but that is a depth where only the owls dare to fly, waiting for their king. You cannot go there unprepared” (420). Dorian asks what he needs, but before the innkeeper answers, the door opens, revealing the moon. She walks straight to Dorian, gives him the sword, and asks if he is ready.

Dorian confirms where Zachary is and announces that he is going. While the innkeeper fetches his bag, the moon tells Dorian that the inn is a “tethered space” unaffected by the sea’s tides. Once he leaves, he will be untethered and unable to trust anything he encounters. She explains that things in the shadows will use his own thoughts to frighten, confuse, or seduce him; because they are at the edges of story/myth, he may have difficulty navigating. She urges him to hold tight to his beliefs. When Dorian asks what happens if he doesn’t know what he believes, the moon kisses his hand in answer.

The innkeeper returns his bag, heavier now with Fate’s heart in it, and blesses him, giving him a light kiss. Dorian sets off, unable to understand the warnings the wind tries to give him.

Kat was not sure of where she heard of the Owl King. When she asked Elena what she talked to Zachary about after the class, she said the books were still missing, so Zachary might have them. Elena also gave Kat the name of the donor: J. S. Keating. Through research, Kat found Jocelyn Simone Keating, born in 1812, possibly disowned, with no marriage records or records of children. Her brother was married with no children, only a “ward” who was listed as dead as a teenager.

Kat was both confused by and interested in the prospect of a woman born in 1812 somehow leaving books to multiple universities in different countries, some of which had not existed before the woman must have died—and there was no record of her death. Elena helped Kat find the other donated books, and she realized that they were all too modern to belong to a woman from the 1800s. Elena could not find any information on the Keating Foundation but knew that one of the books had the bee, key, sword combination drawn on the back cover.

Kat received a text from an unknown number reading, “Stop snooping, Miss Hawkins” (423). She did not reply, but all texts to and from Zachary disappeared from her phone.

Zachary is uncertain where to start, but the ice statue’s request that he tell her a story has no specifics. He tells his own story, beginning with the painted door he did not open, his sense of not belonging anywhere, his fears that none of it matters, his bad relationships, the university library becoming his haven, finding Sweet Sorrows. He reads Sweet Sorrows to her, and recites stories from Fortunes and Fables. He tells her how he had always been searching for something and was disappointed that the Harbor did not make the feeling go away—but nearly kissing Dorian did. He tells her about crashing in the elevator, the voices in the darkness, finding Simon, the fake holiday party at his mother’s house, the stag, and everything until he has run out of story. Then, he makes it up.

Zachary wonders about where one of the ships on her gown is going, watching it move as he does. Around it, the forest changes as the ship sails through the trees, making them fade. He continues the story about the ship as the snow melts around it. Zachary imagines himself, Dorian, his owl, and the Persian cat on the ship as it takes them to undiscovered lands. He sees an unopened door marked with a crown, a heart, and a feather. The door leads to “another Harbor on the Starless Sea, alive with books and boats and waves washing against stories of what was and what will be” (426). When he runs out of the story, he brings it back to the present moment. He stops and the ship returns to the gown.

Leaning in, Zachary whispers in her ear: “Where does it end, Max?” (426). Her head turns toward him, and she takes the key from around his neck that had once fallen out of the binding of Fortunes and Fables. She stands, pushes her palm and the key against Zachary’s chest, then draws him in for a kiss. It is overwhelming and agonizing, but when he cannot take it anymore, he opens his eyes and she is gone, along with the forest and its keys. He has the image of the key burned into his skin.

Zachary now stands in an alley with a new ice figure of a boy staring at a wall with a painted door. In the center, Zachary sees a bee above a key above a sword. He touches the paint and turns to see the boy is gone. He grasps the doorknob, turns it, and steps through to the Starless Sea.

Dorian is surprised by the behavior of the things in the dark. Even the moon’s warnings did not prepare him for their vicious cruelty as “they use his own stories against him” (429). Fortunately, he is armed with a sharp sword and has skill in using it. He finds himself in different places, under attack, but he understands what is happening and refuses to allow the things in the darkness to win.

Kat knew they were watching her, even as she wrote in her notebook at the Noodle Bar. She noticed a man in line behind her drop something into her bag. He pretended to read while he watched her. His behavior reminded her of the man who watched Zachary at the bar. Eventually, the covert operative left, and Kat found a small, sticky transmitter stuck to the inside of her purse. She knew she would not have found it if she had not seen it planted.

When Kat returned home, she cried and admitted that she thought Zachary was dead: “I think at some point I stopped looking for him and started looking for why and now the why is messing with me” (433). She put the transmitter on a cat in the park.

Zachary walks through a door and into a cavern, though he wonders whether he has actually been in the cavern the whole time. The Persian cat pushes against his ankle, nudging him toward the ridge ahead. Zachary finds himself standing on the shore of the Starless Sea. It glows in an amber tone. He breathes in, but instead of the expected scent of salt, the air is sweet. He walks to the edge and takes off his shoes. He runs a hand over the waves and licks it, finding it not salty but unexpectedly saccharine.

Zachary wonders what happens next but then dismisses the idea. For the moment, the Starless Sea is his whole world and nothing else matters. Looking up into the darkness, the structure above him looks vaguely like a castle. He thinks about how far he has come. Hearing footsteps, he expects the newcomer to be Mirabel, but he discovers that it is actually Dorian. They stare at each other and Zachary considers how he cannot breathe and maybe this actually is love—except he literally cannot breathe. He looks down toward his chest and sees Dorian’s hand wrapped around a hilt of a sword just before all goes dark. 

Kat sat at the Gryphon in a secluded booth. Allegra sat down across from her. Kat quickly identified the woman as the “big guns.” After picking at Kat’s missing friend and recent breakup, Allegra pitched her on the Collector’s Club, claiming that it would give Kat an opportunity to belong. When Kat declined, Allegra attacked her academic career and future chances. Although tempted, Kat held firm. Something did not feel right about Allegra, who dodged Kat’s questions about Zachary.

Kat asked whether Zachary worked for Allegra or burned her clubhouse down. Allegra responded that she can give Kat answers, but first Kat must agree to the terms. She asks if Kat was curious. Kat was curious, and she knew that if she said no, she would never see the mysterious woman again. She said no anyway.

Allegra asked if there was anything she could say to change Kat’s mind. Kat asked what happened to her eye. Allegra told the truth, saying that she sacrificed it to be able to see “the whole story” (441), though it no longer worked. Kat looked into her eye, startled to see a stormy sky with lightning instead of the expected cataracts. Kat stood up, saluted, and left with her things. The business card lay abandoned on the table. Allegra said that she was disappointed and Kat knew what came next: “We’ll be keeping an eye on you” (442).

Zachary Ezra Rawlins is dead, surrounded by a quiet, empty darkness. Somewhere, a faraway voice greets him. Suddenly, he is in his body—or a version of it. He is still wearing his pajama pants without shoes and has his key brand, but no wound or heartbeat. His vision is perfect, despite his having no glasses.

Zachary is frustrated by death, realizing that he found what he was looking for in Dorian only to lose it. He considers that Dorian may not have known that it was really him, the way he did not know it was really Dorian in the snow. By giving Dorian the sword, Zachary set his own death in motion: “It feels as though all of the pieces were put in place to lead to this moment and he put half of them there himself” (444). He is angry with himself for the things he regrets doing, the things he regrets not doing, and the wasted time he will never have back. Most of all, he is angry at Fate. He remembers what Mirabel said about his purpose: “You’re here because I need you to do something that I can’t” (444). Mirabel always knew that he was going to die.

The sea in front of him is not the same Starless Sea: This one is made of confetti and streamers. The castle behind him is made of cardboard and the stars above it are folded paper. He sees an entire paper universe, including a city across the sea with a twinkling light emanating from it. Suddenly calm, Zachary spots a rowboat and picks up an oar. Dead or not, he understands what is next: “Apparently he isn’t finished with his quest […] Fate isn’t done with him, even in death” (446).

Kat decided to focus on work after meeting with Allegra. Someone left a brass, feather-shaped key in her campus mailbox. It had a tag reading, “For Kat when the Time comes” (447). She put it on her keychain. Despite Kat’s expectations, Allegra never returned.

Kat worked on a new project and came up with a game-based format for storytelling. It was a genre-spanning, branching story with multiple options and plots, an attempt to incorporate the things possible in a game but not in a book.

Kat found Simone Keating through a friend in London. The Keating Foundation seemed to be an underground, unofficial library society “for people who were not allowed in the standard societies” (448). Since it was unofficial, there were no “proper” records, just notebook fragments and a few photographs.

The journal snippets mentioned catalogued doors, missed contacts, being between incarnations, spending time below, and J. moving papers to the cottage. Other fragments mentioned six doors, a place existing “outside of time,” and a “final incarnation” (449). She saw a picture of a blonde woman labeled “Simone” and a blurry group photo. One of the names on the back of the group photo was “J. S. Keating,” connected to a blonde woman who was clearly “Simone.” A caption was written below the names: “meeting of the owls” (450). 

Zachary Ezra Rawlins rows across the paper sea toward a lighthouse made from a wine bottle. From farther away, the castle looks real, complete with a dragon’s shadow around a tower. He finds the city and walks through it to a town, crossing a key bridge and a book-paper meadow. Some of the pieces of his surroundings are obviously repurposed objects, but others are exact miniatures.

Zachary realizes he is in the dolluniverse. He makes his way to the house that looks more real than everything else. Its lanterns are lit, waiting for him. There is a buzzing sound and the door opens. There is a sign above the door with the Rawlins family motto: “Know thyself and learn to suffer” (453). The buzzing increases until it forms words of greeting.

Over a year after Zachary disappeared, Kat had learned no more about Jocelyn Keating or the Owl King or the feather key. She had all of Zachary’s belongings in her apartment and a history of “phone tag” with Madame Rawlins. A few months ago, she had seen a photograph from the masquerade party of a woman and a man. The man was Zachary, but when she tried to load a larger version and save the file, it was deleted.

Her thesis project took her to a meeting in Manhattan. While there, she received a text from an unknown number. It told her to go to the northeast corner of Union Square at 1 p.m. and was followed by emojis for a bee, a key, and a sword. The location was in a farmer’s market; she looked up to see her knitting former student, Sarah, standing in the window of a bookstore. Kat remembered that they had had a conversation on overlapping narratives, “how no single story is ever the whole story” (456).

The pay phone next to Kat rang, and the text message to her phone prompted her to answer. On the line, Sarah admitted her name was not Sarah and confirmed that Kat turned down Allegra’s offer. “Sarah” explained that she joined to belong to something but that the organization was dismantled and no one knew why. She said she contacted Kat to let her know that they were not watching her anymore.

Kat asked why Sarah did not look for the place they supposedly protected, and Sarah answered that her contract said they could kill her if she tried. She also said that they would kill her if they knew she was talking to Kat. Kat asked what happened to Zachary. Sarah answered that she did not know; she sounded panicked and looked over her shoulder. She said she knew that it was all over now. When Kat asked who the Owl King was, Sarah hung up and walked away. When Kat texted Sarah’s number, the phone displayed a delivery failure. Kat did not know how to begin to search for a place that might not even exist.

Zachary Ezra Rawlins stands in a doorway of a life-size dollhouse filled with a huge honeycomb and cat-sized bees. He asks why he is there, and the bees answer that it is because he is dead, so he is between places. They also say he is the key that she said she would send—the key to lock the story away when it was finished.

Zachary asks who told them that, not expecting them to answer that it was the “story sculptor.” The bees explain that she is sometimes but not always in the story, that she is sometimes pieces and a person at other times. The bees are eager for Zachary’s company and have awaited him for a long while. They thank him for bringing the story here as they “cannot lock away a Harbor story that has wandered so far away” (460). He asks how to get out, and they answer that there is no out, only in, nor is there a next because this is the end. The bees are concerned that he is not happy because he likes the story and the bees; he is their key and friend and he said he loves them. When he protests, the bees remind him that he did say so after they gave him cupcakes. Zachary realizes the bees are also the Kitchen.

In the library, he sees a brick dollhouse surrounded by a moat made of honey. The bees tell Zachary that it is the next story since “this one” is ending now and the key will “lock it up and fold it and put it away to be read or told or stay where it was tucked away” (461). The bees are not sure of what will happen after it ends, but they are glad to have company for the ending as they do not always have that luxury.

At the back of the house, he sees the cracked porcelain doll sitting in a chair looking out the window. Zachary announces that the story cannot end yet because Fate still owes him a dance. The bees offer to build a place where he could speak to the story sculptor or dance with her for a short time as they cannot talk to her themselves since she is not dead. The bees go to work building “the story of a space within this space” (463).

Kat remembered she heard of the Owl King at a party a few months before Zachary disappeared. A pink-haired woman offered her a drink and told her a fairy tale about a hidden sanctuary of a land that called out to people in their dreams, singing a siren song, and sometimes presenting them with a door. The land had a port on the Starless Sea.

Kat remembered that the hidden kingdom was a temporary space, meant to vanish because it had a beginning, a middle, and an end. It had been moving toward the end but it “got stuck,” repeatedly starting over. Some parts of the story were trapped outside of the story space and other pieces got lost, but worse, “someone was trying to keep the story from ending. But the story wanted an ending. Endings are what give stories meaning” (466).

Although Kat was not certain if she believed that endings were the only things that give a story its meaning, she thought that a story needed to have some kind of place for the reader, player, or viewer to leave it—“a goodbye.” Kat also believed that the best stories were the ones that felt as though they would always continue. She wondered if the story were a metaphor for learning to let go of things, or if other people would ascribe a different meaning to it.

In the pink-haired woman’s story, the secret story space not only sang to people who needed sanctuary but also called for someone who would destroy it: “The space found its own loopholes and worked its own spells, so it could have an ending” (466). Kat remembered asking if it worked. Mirabel, the pink-haired woman, answered that it had not yet, but someday would. Kat also remembered a sad knight, something with a broken heart, a “Persephone-esque lady” who was perpetually leaving and returning, and a bird king whom she could swear was an owl. She did not remember what it meant in the story.

The bees escort Zachary Ezra Rawlins to the newly made ballroom so that he may dance with Fate. He finds Mirabel waiting in a fairytale Max costume, this time with pink hair instead of a wig. As they dance, Zachary accuses her of making all of it happen, but she answers that she only gave opportunities: “I gave you doors. You chose whether or not you opened them. I don’t write the story, I only nudge it in different directions” (469). He says it’s because she is the story sculptor, but she answers that she is only a girl who is looking for a key.

Mirabel recalls one of her many deaths, this one drowning in the Starless Sea. While she drowned, she saw everything: all the harbors, the stars, the dance, and the end, but she did not know how they would get to it. She asserts that he asked for her because she could not really be there since she is not dead. When Zachary asks whether or not she is able to do anything and everything, Mirabel answers that she is a vessel—an immortal one this time, unsure of what, precisely, she is and what she can do.

Mirabel thanks Zachary for finding Simon and putting him back on his path. She laments that for all the conspiring to make her birth possible, no one considered her parents. Zachary observes that Allegra wanted to keep the book and cut off Simon’s hand to prevent the story from ending. Mirabel agrees, explaining that Allegra did not want anything to change, but things became complicated:

The story kept fading and the bees wandered back down to where they started. They followed the story for a very long time through Harbor after Harbor but if things don’t change the bees stop paying as much attention. The story had to end closer to the sea in order to find the bees again. I had to trust that someday someone would follow the story all the way down. That there could be one story to tie all of the others together (470).

Zachary asks what happens next, and Mirabel answers that she doesn’t know. She planned to get to this moment, but not for after. Zachary considers that nothing exists in this moment except for Max and that this moment matters, possibly more than all the others. Honey seeps up through the floors as the walls shake. Mirabel thanks Zachary, who again asks what happens now. Mirabel answers that it is not up to her; she provides doors, but others have to open them. She draws a door to a starlit forest. The rising flood of honey does not go through the door. She gives him an end-of-dance bow and he returns the gesture. When he looks up, she kisses his cheek and then leaves through the door.

The bees tell Zachary that it is time to go. He asks “where,” but the buzzing has stopped. He goes up the stairs into the dollhouse, but both the bees and the porcelain doll are gone. The front door is sealed with wax. He climbs up the stairs and out of the attic onto the ceiling. Zachary watches from the widow’s walk as honey bubbles up from under the confetti sea. The bees swarm above him, telling him goodbye, thanking him for being the key, and wishing him luck in the future. Zachary asks what future they’re talking about, but they fly away into the darkness. The sea rises. He dives for the boat and falls into the honey. This Starless Sea pulls Zachary under and keeps him: “He gasps for a breath his lungs do not require and around him the world breaks. Open. Like an egg” (473).

Rhyme is prepared for the end. She knows this story’s every word and twist. She walks up to the Archives, noting the two empty spaces, and considers two missing books out of thousands to be an adequate performance. She still hears both the low hum of the past stories that have already been recorded and a small buzzing of the next few minutes, but there is no loud, demanding high-pitched future story as this place has no stories left. All of them are being reclaimed by the Starless Sea. She hopes that whoever recorded the last moments of the end has done a good job, and she knows from the sound that they have been recorded. She leaves the door to the Archive open for the sea, which follows Rhyme up the stairs to the Heart.

The Keeper has cut his hair, throwing his braids into the fire, complete with the pearls he had tied in for each year spent in this place. He continues to write to Mirabel in his notebook. Rhyme wonders whether he knows that Mirabel hears the whispers of what he writes. Before he closes his notebook, he writes, “This is not where our story ends. This is only where it changes” (476).

They move the painting of Zachary and Dorian, exposing a door. The Keeper asks where they should go and reminds Rhyme that the vows no longer matter. She says she would like to be there if they can. He looks at his watch, adjusting the hands, and nods, saying that they have time. The Keeper puts his hand on the door. He raises a glass, saluting the rising sea: “to Seeking.” They go through the door. The sea takes everything returning all stories to their source. The Keeper and Rhyme walk along the sidewalk in a city with tall buildings. On a street sign at the corner of Bay and King, an owl perches and stares at Rhyme. “For the first time in a long time, Rhyme doesn’t know what it means. Or what will happen next” (478).

Dorian sits, staring at Zachary’s corpse, numb from sobbing. He thinks about the first forms of the darkness that looked like Zachary. Believing it was him for only a moment was almost enough for the monster to kill him. Dorian did not hesitate to kill the following Zacharies, assuring himself that he would be able to tell when he saw the real person. He replays the moment of realization over and over in his mind. Now, there is nothing but grief, pain, and a Persian cat. He wonders if the pain will ever end and thinks he deserves it. He watches as the sea rises and resigns himself to drowning in honey. Then, he sees the ship.

Kat considered giving the notebook to Madame Rawlins but decided not to. She told her some of the information but not all of it. Madame Rawlins also just knew things. She placed a tarot card in Kat’s pocket, which Kat noticed only later—the Moon. Kat looked it up and learned that it is “about illusions and finding your way through the unknown and secret otherworld and creative madness” (482). She put the card on her dashboard, so it stayed in view when she drove.

Kat tried to let go of everything, but she sensed something building, leading her to something new and next. Kat recognized that if things had not happened the way they did, she would not have started building her text game, gotten a new job, and launched a move to Canada. She felt as if she were following a string left for her by Zachary through a maze he might not even be in. She hoped he got his Ravenclaw scarf and that one day they would have dinner at his mom’s place, with his husband, and that the good stories would keep them up late—“that the stories and the wine go on and on and on and on and on. Someday” (482).