The stag is a shot left untaken. An opportunity lost.
Stolen like a kiss.
In these new forgetful times with their changed ways sometimes the stag will pause a moment longer.
He waits though once he never waited, would never dream to wait or wait to dream.
He waits now.
For someone to take the shot. For someone to pierce his heart.
To know he is remembered.
ZACHARY EZRA RAWLINS descends a narrow staircase beneath a statue, a Persian cat following at his heels. The stairs below his feet are ragged and irregular, one crumbles as he steps on it and he slips down three more, reaching out to the sides to catch his balance.
Behind him the cat mews and gracefully navigates its way over the remains of the broken stair, stopping again when it reaches him.
“Show-off,” Zachary says to the cat. The cat says nothing.
Show-off, a voice repeats from somewhere below. An echo, Zachary thinks. A clear, delayed echo. That’s all.
He almost believes it, too, but the cat’s ears fold back and it hisses at the shadows and Zachary goes back to not knowing what to believe.
He descends the remaining stairs carefully, relieved when the cat continues with him.
On a ledge at the bottom is a lamp, the handled kind that might once have contained a genie but is currently occupied only by burning oil. Strings and pulleys surround it along with a mechanism that looks like a flint near the flame. It must have been lit automatically when the door opened.
The lamp is the only light in the space so Zachary picks it up by its curved handle. As he lifts it, a golden disk beneath raises and the strings and pulleys move. Muffled clanking comes from within the walls and then there is a spark in the shadows. Another lamp lit at the far end of a dark hall, a bright spot like a firefly guiding the way forward.
Zachary walks down the hall with the lamp, the cat following.
Halfway down the hall the light catches on a key on a ring hanging from a hook on the wall.
Zachary reaches out and takes the key.
“Meoowrrr,” the cat remarks, in approval or dissent or indifference.
Zachary brings the key and the lamp farther down the hall and the cat and the darkness follow.
Near the end of the hall is an alcove with a lamp that matches the one in his hand.
Beyond the lamp is an arched door of smooth stone, unmarked save for a keyhole.
Zachary slides the key on its ring into the keyhole and it clicks and turns. Zachary pushes on the stone and opens the door.
His lamp and the one on the wall flicker.
The cat hisses at the space beyond the door and bolts back down the hallway.
Zachary listens as the cat flies back up the stairs, hears the crumbling stone of the broken steps crumbling further, and then nothing.
He takes a deep breath and steps into the room.
It smells like dirt and sugar, like Mirabel’s perfume.
The lamplight falls on pieces of stone columns and carved walls.
In front of him is a pedestal, a podium, with a golden disk on it.