“No, I never did any of it. The dice or the drink me bit. The entrance exam.”
“How’d you manage that?” Zachary asks.
“I was born down here.”
“Really?”
“No, not really. I hatched from a golden egg that a Norwegian forest cat sat on for eighteen moons. That cat still hates me.” She pauses for a second before adding, “Yes, really.”
“Sorry,” Zachary says. “This is all…this is a lot.”
“No, I’m sorry,” Mirabel says. “I’d say I’m sorry you got dropped into the middle of this but truthfully I’m grateful for the company.” She pulls a cigarette case from her bag and opens it, offering it to Zachary and before he can clarify that he doesn’t smoke he sees that the case is filled with small round candies, each one a different color. “Would you like a story? It might make you feel better and they’ll only work while we’re on the elevator.”
“You’re kidding,” Zachary says. He takes a pale pink disk that looks like it might be peppermint.
Mirabel smiles at him. She puts the case away without taking one herself.
Zachary puts the candy on his tongue. He was right, peppermint. No, steel. Cold steel.
The story unfolds in his head more than in his ears and there are words but there aren’t, pictures and sensations and tastes that change and progress from the initial mint and metal through blood and sugar and summer air. Then it’s gone.
“What was that?” Zachary says.
“That was a story,” Mirabel says. “You can try to tell it to me but I know they’re hard to translate.”
“It was…” Zachary pauses, trying to wrap his head around the brief, strange experience that did indeed leave a story in his head, like a half-remembered fairy tale. “There was a knight, like the shining-armor type. Many people loved him but he never loved any of them in return and he felt badly about all the hearts he broke so he carved a heart on his skin for each broken one. Rows and rows of scarred hearts on his arms and his legs and across his chest. Then he met someone he wasn’t expecting and…I…I don’t remember what happened after that.”
“Knights who break hearts and hearts that break knights,” Mirabel says.
“Do you know it?” Zachary asks.
“No, each one’s different. They have similar elements, though. All stories do, no matter what form they take. Something was, and then something changed. Change is what a story is, after all.”
“Where did those come from?”
“I found a jar full of them years ago. I like to keep them on hand, like always having a book with you, and I do that, too.”
Zachary looks at this pink-haired mystery woman, with the knight and his hearts lingering on his tongue.
“What is this?” he asks. Meaning all of it, everything, and trusting she will understand.
“I will never have a satisfying answer to that question, Ezra,” she says and the smile that accompanies the sentiment is a sad one. “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.
Zachary stares at her and somewhere in the staring he realizes he feels a little bit calmer.
“You painted my door in New Orleans,” he says. “When I was a kid.”
“I did. I thought you were going to open it, too. It’s a litmus test: If you believe enough to try to open a painted door you’re more likely to believe in wherever it leads.”
The elevator jolts to a stop.
“That was fast,” Zachary remarks. If his concept of time is not utterly failing him, his own descent had taken three times as long, at least. Maybe his candy story took more time to dissolve than he’d thought.
“I told it we were in a hurry,” Mirabel says.