Those who are made keepers are not made keepers because they are organized, because they are mechanically minded or devoted or deemed more worthy than others. Devotion is for acolytes. Worthiness for guardians. Keepers must have spirit and keep it aloft.
They are made keepers because they understand why we are here.
Why it matters.
Because they understand the stories.
They feel the buzzing of the bees in their veins.
But that was before.
Now there is only one.
ZACHARY EZRA RAWLINS checks his watch three times while he waits to retrieve his coat from the coat check. He reads the note again. Patience & Fortitude. 1 a.m. Bring a flower.
He is ninety-four percent certain that Patience and Fortitude are the names of the lions outside the New York Public Library, only a few blocks away. The six percent uncertainty is not enough to be worth considering alternate possibilities and the minutes insist on ticking by at a much quicker pace than they seemed to be earlier.
“Thank you,” he says to the girl who brings him his coat, too enthusiastically judging by the look on her face which is readable even with her mask obscuring part of it, but Zachary is already halfway to the door.
He pauses, remembering the note’s single instruction, and pulls a flower from an arrangement near the door as surreptitiously as he can manage. It is a paper flower, its petals cut from book pages, but it is, technically, a flower. It will have to do.
He takes off his mask before he goes outside, shoving it into the pocket of his coat. His face feels strange without it.
The air outside hits him like a frozen wall and then something harder hits, knocking Zachary to the ground.
&nbs
p; “Oh, I’m so sorry!” a voice above him says. Zachary looks up, blinking, his eyes stinging from the cold and his post-cocktail vision insisting that he is being addressed by a very polite polar bear.
As he blinks more the polar bear loses some but not all of its fuzziness, transforming into a white-haired woman in an equally white fur coat offering him a white-gloved hand.
Zachary accepts and lets the polar-bear woman help him to his feet.
“You poor dear,” she says, brushing dirt off his coat, the white gloves fluttering over his shoulders and his lapels and somehow remaining clean themselves. The woman gives him a red lipstick frown. “Are you all right? I wasn’t even looking where I was walking, silly me.”
“I’m fine,” Zachary says, ice clinging to his trousers and a dull ache in his shoulder. “Are you all right?” he asks, even though neither the woman nor her coat seem to have a hair out of place, and both now appear more silver than white.
“I am uninjured and unobservant as well,” the woman says, her gloves fluttering again. “I’ve not had a man fall at my feet in some time regardless of the circumstances, my dear, so thank you for that.”
“You’re welcome,” Zachary says, his smile automatic as the pain in his shoulder recedes. He almost asks the woman if she has been at the party but he is too concerned about the minutes ticking by. “Have a lovely evening,” he says, leaving her in the pool of light under the hotel awning and continuing down the street.
He checks his watch again as he turns at the corner onto Fifth Avenue. He has a few minutes left.
As he closes the distance between himself and the library, listening to the cabs rushing over the damp pavement, his autopilot starts to falter. His hands are freezing. He looks down at the now somewhat squashed paper flower in his hand. He gives it a closer inspection to see if he can guess what book the petals are made from but the text is in Italian.
Zachary’s pace slows as he approaches the library steps. Despite the late hour there are a handful of people milling around. A cluster of black coats laughs and chatters as they wait for the light to change to cross the street. A couple kisses against a low stone wall. The stairs themselves are empty and the library is closed but the lions remain at their posts.
Zachary passes one lion he assumes is Fortitude and stops near the center of the steps, halfway between the lions. He looks at his watch: 1:02 a.m.
Did he miss his meeting, if it even is a meeting, or does he have to wait?
Should have brought a book, he thinks as he always does while waiting somewhere without one before he remembers and reaches into his jacket.
But Sweet Sorrows is no longer in his pocket.
Zachary looks through all of his pockets to be certain but the book is gone.
“Looking for this?” someone asks from behind him.