At one such exhibit a man remained to speak with the sculptor after the crowds departed, a man who seemed more like a mouse, quiet and nervous, a world unto himself pulled tight and secretive, his words soft and delicate.
“Would you hide something in a story for me?” the mouselike man asked the sculptor. “There are…there are those who seek what I must conceal and would turn the universe inside out to find it.”
This was a dangerous request, and the sculptor asked for three nights to consider her answer.
The first night she did not think on the matter, concerning herself with her work and her rest and the small things that brought her happiness: the honey in her tea, the stars in the night sky, the linen sheets on her bed.
The second night she asked the sea, since the sea has hidden many things in its depths, but the sea was silent.
The third night she did not sleep, constructing a story in her head that could hide anything, no matter what it might be, deeper than anything had been hidden before, even in the depths of the sea.
After three nights the mouselike man returned.
“I will do what you request,” the sculptor told him, “but I do not wish to know what it is you desire to hide. I will provide a box for it. Will it fit in a box?”
The man nodded and thanked the sculptor.
“Do not thank me yet,” she said. “It will take a year to finish. Come back then with your treasure.”
The man frowned but then nodded.
“It is not a treasure in the traditional sense,” he said, and kissed the sculptor on her hand knowing he would never be able to pay for such a service, and he left her to her work.
The sculptor toiled for her year. She refused all other requests and commissions. She created not one story but many. Stories within stories. Puzzles and wrong turns and false endings, in stone and in wax and in smoke. She crafted locks and destroyed their keys. She wove narratives of what would happen, what might happen, what had already happened, and what could never happen and blurred them all together.
She combined her work with permanence and stone with the work she had created when she was young, blended elements that would withstand the test of time with those that might vanish as soon as they were completed.
When the year was up the man returned.
The sculptor handed him an elaborately carved and decorated box.
The man placed the precious object that he needed to hide inside. The sculptor did not show him how to close it, or how it might open again. Only she knew that.
“Thank you,” the man said and he kissed the sculptor on her lips this time as payment—the most he could give—and she took the kiss in exchange and thought it fair.
The sculptor did not hear anything of the man after he departed. The story remained in place.
Many years later those who sought what had been hidden found the sculptor.
When they realized what she had done they cut off her hands.
a now forgotten city, a very, very long time ago
The pirate (who remains a metaphor yet also a person and sometimes has difficulty embodying both at once) stands on the shore, watching the ships that sail the Starless Sea near this Harbor.
He allows his mind to picture himself and the girl at his side aboard one of these ships, sailing farther into the distance and further into the future, away from this Harbor and toward a new one. He imagines it so clearly that he almost believes it will happen. He can see himself, away from this place, free from its rules and constraints, bound to nothing but her.
He can almost see the stars.
He pulls the girl close to keep her warm. He kisses her shoulder, pretending he will have her for a lifetime when in truth they have only minutes left together.
The time the pirate sees in his mind is not in the city now. It is not soon.
The ships are far from the shore. The bells behind them are already ringing in alarm.
The pirate knows, though he does not wish to admit it even to himself, that they have so far yet to go.
The girl (who is also a metaphor, an ever-changing one that only sometimes takes the form of a girl) knows this as well, she knows it better than he does but they do not discuss such things.