She somehow found a pair of boots that fit him, tall and cuffed and quite piratey. They are almost comfortable. Along with his star-buttoned coat he looks like he walked out of a fairy tale. Maybe he did.
He goes out to the deck and freezes in his boots at the sight in front of him.
A dense forest of cherry trees in full bloom fills the cavern, all the way up to the edge of the river. Twisting tree roots disappear below the surface of the honey while stray blossoms fall and float downstream.
“It’s pretty, isn’t it?” Eleanor says.
“It’s beautiful,” Dorian agrees, though the single word cannot capture the way the sight of this long-beloved place is tearing at his heart.
“I won’t be able to stop long with this current,” Eleanor explains. “Are you ready to go?”
“I think so,” Dorian says.
“When you find the inn tell the innkeeper I said hello, please,” Eleanor says.
“I shall,” Dorian tells her. And because he knows he might not have another chance he adds: “I know your daughter.”
“You know Mirabel?” Eleanor asks.
“Yes.”
“She’s not my daughter.”
“She’s not?”
“Only because she’s not a person,” Eleanor clarifies. “She’s something else dressed up like a person, the way the Keeper is. You know that, don’t you?”
“I do,” Dorian admits, though he would not have been able to explain it so simply. The dream that was all memory replays in his mind again, following through the rest of that night they spent together in a hotel bar as his world fractured and fell apart and Mirabel caught the pieces in the bottom of a martini glass. He wonders sometimes what might have happened, what he might have done, had she not stayed with him.
“I think it’s probably hard to be not a person when you’re stuck inside a person,” Eleanor muses. “She always seemed very mad about everything. What is she like now?”
Dorian doesn’t know how to answer the question. He feels a heartbeat in his fingers that is not there. For a moment, remembering, conjuring the idea of the person who is not a person, he feels again the way he felt that night, and underneath all the terror and confusion and wonder there is a perfect calm.
“I don’t think she’s mad anymore,” he tells Eleanor. Though even as he says it he thinks perhaps that calm is more akin to the calm within a storm.
Eleanor tilts her head, considering, and then she nods, seemingly pleased.
Dorian wishes he could give Eleanor something for her kindness, in payment for the transportation. For saving his life, something that seems to run in the family.
He has but one thing to give and he realizes now it was the fact that the book was not being read that bothered him more than the fact that it was not in his possession. Besides, he carries it with him always, in ink on his back and constantly unfolding in his head.
Dorian takes Fortunes and Fables from the pocket of his coat.
“I’d like you to have this,” he says, handing it to Eleanor.
“It’s important to you,” she says. A statement and not a question.
“Yes.”
Eleanor turns the book over in her hands, frowning at it.
“I gave a book that was important to me to someone a long time ago,” she says. “I never got it back. I’m going to get this back to you someday, is that all right?”
“As long as you read it first,” Dorian says.
“I will, I promise,” Eleanor says. “I hope you find your person.”
“Thank you, my captain,” Dorian says. “I wish you a great many future adventures.” He bows at her and she laughs and here and now they separate to further their respective stories.
Dorian’s disembarking is a complicated feat of ropes and a carefully managed jump and then he is standing on the shore watching the ship become smaller and smaller as it continues down the coast.
From here he can read the text carved into its side:
To Seek & to Find
The ship becomes a glowing light in the distance and then it is gone and Dorian is alone.
He turns to face the forest.
They are larger cherry trees than he has ever seen, looming and gnarled, branches twisting in all directions, some high enough to skim the rock walls of the cavern high above and others low enough to touch, all weighted with thousands of pink blossoms. Roots and trunks grow through solid stone ground that cracks open around them.
Paper lanterns are strung from branches, some from impossible heights,