There is Sweet Sorrows, comforting in its familiarity. A cigarette lighter. A fountain pen he doesn’t remember putting in the bag at all, and a very squished gluten-free lemon poppy seed muffin wrapped in a cloth napkin.
Zachary discards the muffin on the table with the rest of the food. He pulls apart the Cornish game hen that is somehow still hot. Why didn’t Mirabel stick around if she was here so recently? Maybe he has found himself in a pocket outside of time where food stays perpetually warm. He puts more of it on a silver plate and pulls a cushion closer to the fire and sits. The owl hops over and perches nearby.
Zachary looks at the choices set before him, chewing thoughtfully on the wing of a roasted hen, wondering idly if it is rude to eat a bird in the presence of another bird and then remembering a story Kat told him once about witnessing a seagull murder a pigeon and coming to the conclusion that it probably isn’t.
He drinks his wine while he weighs his options and his future and his past and his story. How far he’s come. The unknowable distance left to go.
Zachary takes the folded-paper star from his pocket. He turns it over in his hand, letting it dance over his fingers.
He hasn’t read it.
Not yet.
The owl hoots at him.
The son of the fortune-teller tosses the paper star with his future inscribed upon it into the campfire.
The flames consume it, charring and curling the paper until it is no longer a star, the words it once contained lost and gone forever.
Zachary stands and picks up the rolled parchment from the inventory table. It is a map, a roughly drawn one containing a circle of trees and two squares that might be buildings. A path is marked moving from the building to a spot in the surrounding forest. It doesn’t seem helpful.
Zachary puts it back and instead takes the penknife, the cigarette lighter to have a spare, the rope, and the gloves and puts them in his bag. After considering the rest of the objects he takes the twine as well.
“Are you ready?” he asks his owl.
The owl responds by flying out past the campfire and into the shadows.
Zachary takes the torch and follows it to the wall of doors.
The doors are large and carved from a darker stone than the crystal surrounding them. The symbols on them are painted in gold.
There are so many doors.
Zachary is sick of doors.
He takes his torch and explores the shadows, away from the doors and the tent, among jagged crystal and forgotten architecture. He carries the light into places long unfamiliar with illumination that accept it like a half-remembered dream.
Eventually he finds what he is looking for.
On the wall there is the faintest trace of a line. An arm’s reach away there is another.
Someone has scratched the idea of a door upon the face of the cavern.
Zachary brings the torch closer. The crystal drinks in the light, enough for him to see the shape of the etched doorknob.
The son of the fortune-teller stands in front of another door drawn on another wall.
A man this far into a story has his path to follow. There were many paths, once, in a time that is past, lost many miles and pages ago. Now there is only one path for Zachary Ezra Rawlins to choose.
The path that leads to the end.
Hudson River Valley, New York, two years from now
The car looks older than it is, painted and repainted in less than professional manners, currently sky blue and wearing a number of bumper stickers (a rainbow flag, an equal sign, a fish with legs, the word Resist). It approaches the winding drive tentatively, unsure if it has found the right address as its GPS has been confusing its driver, unable to locate satellites and losing signals and being the target of a great many creative profanities.
The car pulls up to the house and stops. It waits, observing the white farmhouse and the barn behind it wearing a rich indigo shade rather than the more traditional red.
The driver’s door opens and a young woman steps out. She wears a bright orange trench coat, too heavy for the almost summer weather. Her hair is cut pixie short and bleached a colorless shade that has not fully committed to being blond. She removes her round sunglasses and looks around, not entirely certain she has reached her destination.