He wonders what to write that would be of any use. He thinks he understands now why his mother did not leave him any letters. He cannot even tell Lenore what time or day he was here waiting as he does not have available measurements for time. He realizes how difficult it is to determine the passage of time without sunlight.
He puts the quill down.
He wonders how long is an appropriate time to wait for a girl who may or may not have been a dream. Wonders if h
e could have dreamed a girl in a real place or if the place is a dream and then his head hurts so he thinks perhaps he should find something to read instead of continuing to think.
He regrets leaving Sweet Sorrows in the cottage. He looks through the books on their shelves. Many are unfamiliar and strange. A heavy volume with footnotes and a raven on its cover pulls his attention more than the others, and he finds himself so drawn into its tale of two magicians in England that he loses track of time.
Then the door with the feather opens, and she is here.
Simon puts the book down. He does not wait for her to say anything. He cannot wait, he is too afraid that she will vanish again and never reappear. He closes the distance between them as quickly as he can and then he kisses her desperately, hungrily, and after a moment she kisses him back in equal measure.
Kissing, Eleanor thinks, is not done any justice in books.
They peel off each other’s clothes in layers. He curses at the strange clasps and fasteners on her garments while she laughs at the sheer number of buttons on his.
He leaves her bunny ears on.
It is easier to be in love in a room with closed doors. To have the whole world in one room. In one person. The universe condensed and intensified and burning, bright and alive and electric.
But doors cannot stay closed forever.
ZACHARY EZRA RAWLINS stands in front of a statue of a woman covered in bees wondering if it takes a crown to make a queen.
This is the only identity he can think of for the Queen of the Bees from his newfound quest (Is this a side quest or a main quest? the voice in his head ponders) but he doesn’t know how to give her keys. He searched the marble statue for keyholes and found nothing but cracks, not that he has keys to give. He’s stuck on the never-been-forged part and he’s not sure where to find a gold key. Maybe he should sort through all the jars in the Keeper’s office, or find the room with the keys from Sweet Sorrows and he realizes the keys in the jars might be those same keys, put into storage.
He has inspected every bee, investigated the entire marble chair the woman sits upon, and found nothing. Maybe there’s another woman somewhere who rules the bees. The bees aren’t even part of the statue, they’re carved from a different stone in a warmer appropriate honey color and they’re movable. They all might belong somewhere else. Some of them have moved since the first time Zachary saw this statue.
Zachary places a single bee on each of the woman’s open palms and leaves her alone to think whatever thoughts statues think when they are alone underground and covered with bees.
He chooses a new-to-him hall, pausing at a contraption that looks like a large old-fashioned gumball machine filled with metallic orbs of various shades. Zachary turns the ornate handle and the machine dispenses a copper sphere. It is heavier than it looks and once Zachary figures out how to open it he finds a tiny scroll tucked inside that unfurls like ticker tape with a surprisingly long tale written upon it about lost loves and castles and crossed destinies.
Zachary tucks the empty copper ball and the now tangled story in his bag and continues along the hall until he reaches a large staircase that leads down to an expansive space. A massive ballroom, utterly empty. Zachary tries to imagine how many people it would take to fill it with dancers and revelry. It is taller than the Heart, its soaring ceilings disappearing into shadows that could be mistaken for night sky. Fireplaces line the walls, one of them lit and the rest of the light comes from lanterns hanging from chains strung along the walls. He wonders if Rhyme lights them in case someone passes through the room, or in case someone wants to dance, or if they light themselves, in giddy flaming anticipation.
As he walks across the ballroom, Zachary feels more acutely that he has missed something. He has arrived too late, the party is over. If he had opened that painted door so long ago would he already have been too late then? Probably.
There is a door on the far wall, past the fireplaces and beyond a stretch of dark open archways. Zachary opens the door and finds someone else in the midst of the post-party emptiness.
Mirabel is curled up amongst racks filled with bottles, up in a window-like nook on a wall with no window in a wine cellar with more than enough wine for all the parties that are not occurring in the ballroom. She wears a long-sleeved black dress that could probably be described as slinky if it wasn’t so voluminous. It obscures her legs and the stacks of wine below her and part of the floor. She has a glass of sparkling wine in one hand and her nose is buried in a book and as Zachary gets closer he can read the cover: A Wrinkle in Time.
“I was annoyed about not remembering the tesseract technicalities,” Mirabel says without looking up or clarifying any specifics regarding space or time. “You may be interested in knowing that the damage due to an electrical fire in the basement of a private club in Manhattan was extensive but controlled and did not spread to neighboring buildings. They might not even have to tear it down.”
She rests her book on a nearby wine bottle, open to keep her page marked, and looks down at him.
“The building was, reportedly, unoccupied at the time,” she continues. “I’d like to know where Allegra is before I take you back up, if that’s all right with you.”
Zachary thinks it likely doesn’t matter whether or not it is all right with him, and again finds himself in no great hurry to return to the surface.
“Who’s the Queen of the Bees?” he asks.
Mirabel looks at him quizzically enough for him to be certain that she didn’t write the note, but then she shrugs her shoulders and points behind him.
Zachary turns. There are long wooden tables with benches tucked amongst the racks of wine, and other window-like nooks in the stone walls, the largest of which holds the massive painting that Mirabel is pointing at.
It is a portrait of a woman in a low-cut, wine-red gown holding a pomegranate in one hand and a sword in the other. The background is a textured darkness with the light coming from the figure herself. It reminds Zachary of a Rembrandt painting, the way she glows within the shadows. The woman’s face is entirely obscured by a swarm of bees. A few of the bees have wandered downward to investigate the pomegranate.
“Who is she?” Zachary asks.