Zachary glimpses another couple out of the corner of his eye and for a moment it looks as though the glimmering man in the coat quite similar to his own dancing next to them is missing his left hand, but then it catches the light, transparent but there.
“Allegra saw the end,” Mirabel says. “She saw the future coming on its wings and she did everything she could think to do to prevent it, even things she didn’t want to do. She wished she could preserve the present and keep her beloved Harbor the way it was but everything got tangled and restricted. The story kept fading and the bees wandered back down to where they started. They followed the story for a very long time through Harbor after Harbor but if things don’t change the bees stop paying as much attention. The story had to end closer to the sea in order to find the bees again. I had to trust that someday someone would follow the story all the way down. That there could be one story to tie all of the others together.”
“The bees said hello, by the way,” Zachary tells her. “What happens next?”
“I don’t know what happens next,” Mirabel answers. “Truly, I don’t,” she adds, in response to the look Zachary gives her. “I spent a very long time trying to get to this point and it seemed such an impossible goal that I didn’t give much thought to what waited beyond it. This is a nice touch, back to the beginning and all. I didn’t think we’d get to finish our dance. Sometimes dances are left unfinished.”
Zachary has a thousand questions still to ask but instead he pulls Mirabel closer and rests his head against her neck. He can hear her heartbeat thrumming, slow and steady, in time with the music.
There is nothing now save for this room and this woman and this story. He can feel the way the story spreads out from this point, through space and through time and so much farther than he ever imagined but this is the beating, buzzing heart of it. Right here and right now.
He’s calm again. Relieved to have his Max back and even though he knows they both have other people they belong with there is still this room and this dance and this moment and it matters, maybe more than any of the others.
There is a humming noise all around them beyond the walls. The dancing ghosts fade one after another until only the two of them are left.
“I don’t know if you will ever understand how grateful I am, Ezra,” Mirabel says. “For everything.”
The music falters and the ballroom begins to shake. One of the walls cracks. Honey seeps up from the floor.
There is not much time left Mister Rawlins sir you had your dance the story is over we really must be going.
The buzzed warning comes from all around them.
“I missed it,” Zachary says. “I missed so much.” He is not really talking about the story.
“You’re here for the end,” Mirabel says. It doesn’t make him feel better.
“What happens now?” Zachary asks, as now seems suddenly more meaningful than next.
“That’s not up to me, Ezra. Like I said, I don’t make things happen, I just provide opportunities and doors. Someone else has to open them.”
Mirabel reaches out and traces a line in the honeycomb wall with her finger and then another and another until they are roughly the shape of a door.
She draws a doorknob for it and pulls it open. There is a starlit wood beyond it, the tree branches heavy with leaves. The waves
of honey around their feet lap at the grass but do not pass through the door.
“Goodbye, Ezra,” Mirabel says. “Thank you.”
She gives him a bow. The end of a dance.
“You’re welcome, Max.”
He bows to her in return, slow to rise again, expecting her to be gone by the time he looks up but instead she has come back and she is right in front of him and she kisses him, a brief, light brush of her lips against his cheek like a parting gift. A stolen moment before the end laced with honey and inevitability. It is not entirely sweet. Then Mirabel turns and walks through the door.
The door closes behind her and melts away into the wax wall, leaving Zachary alone in an empty, collapsing ballroom.
It is time to go Mister Rawlins sir.
“Go where?” Zachary asks but the buzzing has stopped. The honey swirling around Zachary’s feet is getting higher. He makes his way to the stairs and up into the dollhouse. The honey follows him.
Back inside the dollhouse the bees are gone.
The porcelain doll has vanished from the sunroom.
Zachary tries to open the front door but it has been sealed closed with wax.
He climbs the dollhouse stairs and passes unoccupied doll bedrooms and closets until he finds another flight of honey-sticky stairs that lead to an attic filled with forgotten memories and within the attic there is a ladder, leading to a door in the ceiling.