He collapses on the bed without clearing the books from it, Sweet Sorrows clutched in one hand.
It falls to the floor as he sleeps.
Simon wakes disoriented with book-shaped bruises along his back. He does not remember where he is or how he got here. The morning light peeks in through the gaps in the ivy. A still-open window squeaks on its hinges as the wind tugs at it.
The memory of the key and the cottage and the train seeps back into his cloudy thoughts. He must have fallen asleep. He had the strangest dream.
He tries the door at the back of the cottage but it sticks, probably held shut by the brambles outside.
He builds a fire in the hearth.
He doesn’t know what to do with this space and these books, these things that his mother presumably left for him.
He finds a long, low trunk behind the bed. The lock is rusted shut but so are the hinges and a good kick with the heel of his boot manages to break them both. Inside there are faded papers and more books. One of the documents is the deed to the cottage made out in his name and including a great deal of the surrounding land. He looks through the rest for some missive from his mother, annoyed that she would have anticipated his eighteenth birthday and his finding this place without addressing him personally, and he finds most of the other papers inscrutable: snippets of notes and papers that seem like fairy tales, long rambling things about reincarnation and keys and fate. The only letter is not one from his mother but one written to her, a rather ardent missive signed from someone named Asim. The thought crosses Simon’s mind that this might well be from his father.
He wonders, suddenly, if his mother knew she was going to die. If she was preparing this in anticipation of her absence. It is not a thought he has entertained before and he does not like it.
He has an inheritance. A dusty, book-filled, ivy-infested one. It is something to call his own.
He wonders if he could live here. If he would want to. Perhaps with carpets and better chairs and a proper bed.
He sorts through books and stacks myths and fables on one side of the table, histories and geographies on the other, and leaves volumes he cannot differentiate in the middle. There are books of maps and books written in languages he cannot read. Several are marked with annotations and symbols: crowns and swords and drawings of owls.
He finds a small volume by the bed that is not as dusty as the others and when he recognizes it he drops it again. It falls onto the pile of books, barely distinguishable from the rest.
It was not a dream.
If the book was not a dream, the girl is not a dream.
Simon goes to the back door and pushes it. Shoves it. Throws all his weight into his shoulder to force it open and this time it relents.
Here now is the stair again. The lanterns at the bottom.
The metal cage waiting for him.
The descent is maddeningly slow.
There are no pedestals in the antechamber this time. The door allows him entrance without question.
The Keeper’s office is closed and Simon hears the door open as he heads down a corridor but he does not look behind him.
It is difficult to locate the door with the heart again without his compass. He takes wrong turns and doubles back again and again. He climbs stairs made of books.
Finally he finds a familiar turn, and then the shadowed nook and the door with its burning heart.
The room beyond it is empty.
He tries the door with the feather but it insists on opening into nothingness. He closes the door again.
She could return at any moment.
She might never return.
Simon paces around the table. When he tires of pacing he sits on the chaise longue, first angling it so he can face the door. He wonders how long that cat had waited in this room for someone to open a door to release it and how it was left inside in the first place.
He tires of sitting and goes back to pacing.
He picks up a quill from the table and considers writing a letter and slipping it under the door.