The honey follows at her feet, pooling into the room, stretching through the hidden stacks and shelves.
Rhyme passes the empty spot on the shelf where Sweet Sorrows would have been were it not stolen by a rabbit a long time ago and another vacancy where she pulled The Ballad of Simon and Eleanor from its place in the Archive, not so very long ago at all, comparatively.
Rhyme considers whether giving people pieces of their own stories is somehow cheating Fate or not and decides that Fate probably doesn’t mind one way or another.
Two volumes misplaced over so much time is not that bad, Rhyme thinks, looking up at the shelves. There are thousands of them, the stories of this place. Translated and transcribed by every acolyte who walked these halls before her. Bound together in volumes of single narratives or combined in overlapping pieces.
The stories of a place are not easily contained.
It sounds strange and empty now, in her head. Rhyme can hear the hum of past stories though they are low and quiet, the stories always calm once they have been written down whether they are past stories or present stories or future stories.
It is the absence of the high-pitched stories of the future that is the most strange. There is the thrum of what will pass in the next few minutes buzzing in her ears—so faint compared to the tales layered upon tales that she once heard—and then nothing. Then this place will have no more tales to tell. It took her so long to learn to decipher them and write them down so that they bore any resemblance to the way they unfolded in her ears and in her mind and now they’re almost gone. She hopes whoever wrote these last moments did them justice, she did not write them herself but she can tell from the way that they buzz in her ears they have already been recorded.
Rhyme takes one last walk through the Archive, saying her silent goodbyes and letting the stories hum around her before she continues upward.
She leaves the door to the Archive open, to let the sea inside.
The Starless Sea follows Rhyme up stairways and through halls and gardens, claiming statues and memories and oh so many books.
The electric lights flicker and die, plunging the space into darkness, but there are enough candles for Rhyme to see by. She lit her path earlier, knowing she would need the flames to guide her way.
The scent of burning hair greets Rhyme as she reaches the Heart. She does not knock on the door to the Keeper’s office as she enters, nor does she comment on his clipped-short hair or the tangle of braids burning in the fireplace, their strung pearls charring and falling into the ashes.
One pearl for each year he has spent in this space.
He never told her that, but he did not have to. Rhyme knows his story. The bees have whispered it to her.
The Keeper’s robes are folded neatly on a chair and he now wears a tweed suit that was already out of fashion the last time it was worn which was quite so
me time ago. He is sitting at his desk, writing by candlelight. This fact makes Rhyme feel better about having taken so long, but she always knew they would wait until the last moment to depart.
“Are all of the cats out?” the Keeper asks without looking up from his notebook.
Rhyme points at the ginger cat on the desk.
“He’s being stubborn,” the Keeper admits. “We shall have to take him with us.”
He continues to write while Rhyme watches. She could read his rushed inscriptions if she cared to but she knows what they are. Invocations and supplications. Blessings and yearnings and wishes and warnings.
He is writing to Mirabel as he always has, as he has continued to write through the years she has been with Zachary in the depths, writing as though he is speaking to her, as though she can hear each word as it materializes on the paper like a whisper in her ear.
Rhyme wonders if he knows that Mirabel hears him, has always heard him, will always hear him through distance and lifetimes and a thousand turning pages.
This is not where our story ends, he writes. This is only where it changes.
The Keeper puts his pen down and closes the notebook.
He looks up at Rhyme.
“You should change,” he says, looking at her robes and her honey-soaked shoes.
Rhyme unties her robes and takes them off. Beneath them she wears the same clothes she wore when she first arrived: her old school uniform with its plaid skirt and white button-down shirt. It did not seem right to wear anything else for the departure despite the fact that it feels like wearing a past life and the shirt is now too small. The honey-soaked shoes will have to suffice.
The Keeper, seeming not to notice the encroaching waves, stands and pours a glass of wine from a bottle on the desk. He offers to pour another for Rhyme but she declines.
“Don’t fret,” the Keeper says to Rhyme, watching her as she watches the sea. “It is all here,” he says, placing a fingertip on Rhyme’s forehead. “Remember to let it out.”
The Keeper hands her his fountain pen. Rhyme smiles at the pen and places it in the pocket of her skirt.