Dorian takes his arm again, pulling him closer, leaning his forehead against Zachary’s. He feels warm yet cold and real yet not real, all at once.
This person is a place Zachary could lose himself in, and never wish to be found.
It starts to snow again.
“You’re down here too now, aren’t you?” Dorian asks. “The world beneath the world beneath the world?”
“I took the elevator with Max—Mirabel, I mean—after you fell. I’m farther down than that now, somewhere past a lost city of honey and bone. I went through a door. I should stop doing that. I lost my owl.”
“Do you think you could find the inn from where you are?”
“I don’t know,” Zachary says. “I must be getting close to the Starless Sea. You and I might not even be in the same time anymore. If…if anything happens—”
“Don’t you dare,” Dorian interrupts him. “Don’t you dare make this goodbye. I am going to find you. We are going to find each other and we are going to figure this out together. You may be by yourself but you are not alone.”
“It’s dangerous to go alone,” Zachary says, almost automatically and at least partly to stop the tears that are stinging his eyes along with the snow. He replaces the sword in its scabbard and removes it from his back. “Take this,” he says, offering the sword to Dorian. It feels like the thing to do. Dorian probably knows how to use it.
Dorian accepts the sword and starts to say something else but then he vanishes, quicker than a blink. He is there and then he is not. There aren’t even footprints left in the snow. No indication that he was ever there.
Except the sword is gone. Along with the moon who has vanished behind the clouds.
The snow is lighter now, the flakes almost floating. Snow-globe snow.
Zachary reaches out just to be certain there is nothing to touch. The snow wraps around his outstretched hand and slips under the cuff of his inherited coat.
Dorian was here, he thinks to himself in an affirmation. He’s down here somewhere and he’s alive and I am not alone.
Zachary takes a deep breath. The air is not so cold anymore.
There is a soft noise nearby. Zachary turns and here is the stag, staring at him. Close enough to see its breath clouding in the air.
The stag’s antlers are gold and covered with candles, twisting and burning like a crown of flame and wax.
Zachary stares at the stag and the stag stares back, its eyes like dark glass.
For a moment neither of them moves.
Then the stag turns and walks toward the trees.
Zachary follows.
They reach the edge of the woods sooner than he expects. Moonlight or starlight or imaginary artificial light filters in through the trees though most of the space stays in shadow. The snow looks more blue than white and the trees themselves are gold. Zachary pauses to inspect the trunk of one more closely and finds its bark covered in delicate gold leaf.
Zachary follows the stag through the trees as closely as he can though sometimes it is no more than a light guiding him onward. He loses sight of the field quickly, consumed by this gilded forest that is both deep and dark.
The trees grow larger and taller. The ground feels uneven and Zachary brushes the snow away with his shoe to find it is not earth but keys, piles of them shifting beneath his feet.
The stag guides Zachary to a clearing. The trees here part, revealing a stretch of star-filled sky above. The moon is gone and when Zachary returns his attention to the ground the stag has abandoned him as well.
The trees surrounding the clearing are draped wit
h ribbons. Black and white and gold, wound around branches and trunks and tangled in the snow.
The ribbons are strung with keys.
Small keys and long keys and large heavy keys. Ornate keys and plain keys and broken keys. They rest in piles in boughs and swing freely from branches, their ribbons crossing and tangling, binding them to one another.
In the center of the clearing is a figure seated in a chair, facing away from him. Looking off into the woods. It is difficult to see in the light but Zachary catches the barest hint of pink.