All stories do, no matter what form they take. Something was, and then something changed. Change is what a story is, after all.
This is the rabbit hole. Do you want to know the secret to surviving once you’ve gone down the rabbit hole?” Zachary nods and Mirabel leans forward. Her eyes are ringed with gold. “Be a rabbit,” she whispers.
Maybe the Starless Sea isn’t just a children’s bedtime story.
It arrived only a few days ago and is still a novelty. Had it been present for longer, Caroline likely would have chosen a different dare, but the circus is currently the talk of the town, and Caroline likes to keep her dares en vogue.
Sorry it’s so poetry today.” “So what?” Zachary asks, not certain he heard her correctly. “Poetry,” Mirabel repeats. “The weather. It’s like a poem. Where each word is more than one thing at once and everything’s a metaphor. The meaning condensed into rhythm and sound and the spaces between sentences. It’s all intense and sharp, like the cold and the wind.
This is where we leave them, in a long-awaited kiss upon the Starless Sea, tangled in salvation and desire and obsolete cartography.
You can talk, can’t you?” he asks. “No,” says the cat. It bows its head and turns, walking off into the shadows, leaving Zachary staring dumbly after it.
For no mortal can love the moon. Not for long.
Far beneath the surface of the earth, hidden from the sun and the moon, upon the shores of the Starless Sea, there is a labyrinthine collection of tunnels and rooms filled with stories. Stories written in books and sealed in jars and painted on walls.
The parliament of owls told their decision to the stars and the stars agreed. The moon did not, but on this night she was dark and could not offer her opinion.
Each door will lead to a Harbor on the Starless Sea, if someone dares to open it.
It is a sanctuary for storytellers and storykeepers and storylovers. They eat and sleep and dream surrounded by chronicles and histories and myths. Some stay for hours or days before returning to the world above but others remain for weeks or years, living in shared or private chambers and spending their hours reading or studying or writing, discussing and creating with their fellow residents or working in solitude.
They are enthusiasts, devotees. Addicts. Something about the circus stirs their souls, and they ache for it when it is absent.
There was a daring rescue and bondage and tea and a fire and two-thirds of us got poisoned.
Am I familiar?’ Dorian says and Zachary wants to say Yes, yes you are the most familiar and I don’t understand how but that is too much truth right now so instead he says, ‘If you were a man lost in time where would you be?
He thinks I feel like I have known you forever but he doesn’t say it and so they only hold each other’s gaze, not needing to say anything.
The night of the anniversary party,” she says. “The night you kissed me. I thought it that night. I didn’t want to play anymore, I only wanted to be with you. I thought I would ask you to run away with me and I meant it. The very moment I convinced myself that we could manage it, I was in so much pain I could barely stand. Friedrick didn’t know what to make of me, he sat me in a quiet corner and held my hand and did not pry when I couldn’t explain because that’s how kind he is.
The Murray twins have a theory that she is in love with the dream of someone and not an actual person.
I need you to know that what I feel for you is real. Because I think you feel the same. I have lost a lot of things and I don’t wanna lose this, too.
You are words on paper,” Simon whispers, to himself or to Zachary or to the words above them clinging to their respective papers. “Be careful what stories you tell yourself.