This book is small and gilded. It looks like Sweet Sorrows but bound in dark blue. There are no markings on the cover or the back or any indication as to which is which.
The text inside is handwritten. Zachary thinks at first that it might be a diary but then the first page has a title.
The Ballad of Simon and Eleanor
They cannot stay in this room forever. They know that, but they do not discuss it, distracted by tangled naked limbs and untangling and finding new ways to tangle them again. They find a bottle of wine tucked behind a stack of books but there is no door to the Kitchen here and eventually one of them will have to leave.
The practical worries tug at the buoyancy Simon feels but he pushes them back in his mind as long as he can. He presses his face into Eleanor’s neck and focuses on her, on her skin, the way she smells, the way she laughs, the way she feels beneath him and above him.
They lose track of relative time.
But untracked time leads to problems of hydration and starvation.
“What if we could leave together through one of the other doors?” Eleanor suggests as she pulls on her strangely striped stockings, looking around at the bee and the key and the sword and the crown.
The bee door refuses to budge. The sword door doesn’t have a knob, something Simon had not noticed before. The crown door opens onto a pile of solid stone, the hall beyond it has collapsed. A few stray pebbles roll into the room before Simon closes the door again.
Which leaves only the door with the key.
It is locked but Eleanor uses the metal pieces on her necklace to coerce it open.
Beyond it is a curving hall filled with bookshelves.
“Do you recognize it?” Simon asks.
“I’d have to look around more,” Eleanor says. “A lot of the halls look the same.”
She puts a hand out and nothing stops its passage forward.
“You try,” she suggests and Simon repeats the gesture. Again, nothing prevents his hand from moving from room to hall.
They look at each other. There is nothing else to do. There are no other options.
Simon offers his hand and Eleanor links her fingers in his.
Together they step into the hall.
Eleanor’s fingers vanish within Simon’s own like mist.
The door swings shut behind him with a slam.
“Lenore?” Simon calls but he knows she is gone. He tries the door, a matching key inlayed on this side, and finds it is locked. He knocks but receives no response.
His mind races with options and settles on nothing satisfactory. He decides to try to find his own door, his door with the heart, because that door is unlocked.
Simon traverses mazelike halls and sees nothing familiar for some time. He finds a table laid out with fruit and cheese and biscuits and stops to eat as much as he can and stuffs several biscuits and a plum into the pockets of his coat.
Soon he finds himself back in the Heart.
He knows how to reach the heart-marked door from here and rushes there only to find that its doorknob has been removed. A plug of wood occupies the vacancy its removal has left. The keyhole is similarly filled.
Simon goes back to the Heart.
The door to the Keeper’s office is closed but opens as soon as Simon knocks.
“How may I be of assistance, Mister Keating?” the Keeper asks.
“I need to get into a room,” Simon explains. He sounds out of breath, as though he has been running. Perhaps he was, he does not remember.