to whether the Owl King is a person or a bird or a type of weather.
Simon stares at him and blinks.
“We are the stars,” he answers, as though it is the most obvious of facts afloat in a sea of metaphors and misdirections. “We are all stardust and stories.”
Simon turns away and unties a rope from one of the hooks near the wall. He tugs it and far above the gears and pulleys swing into motion. A crescent shape turns in on itself and disappears. “This is not right,” he says, pulling a different rope that shifts the fluttering pages. “Doors are closing, taking possibilities with them. The story is recorded even when she is unsure of how it goes and now someone else follows after her, reading. Looking for the ending.”
“What?” Zachary asks though maybe he means who and he can’t remember the difference.
“The story,” Simon repeats as though it answers the question instead of creating new ones. “I was in the story and then wandered outside of it and I found this place where I could listen instead of being read. Everything whispers the story here, the sea and the bees whisper and I listen and I try to find the shape of it all. Where it has been and where it is going. New stories wrap themselves around the old ones. The ancient stories that flames whisper to moths. This one wears thin in the places it has been told and retold. There are holes to fall into. I have tried to record it and I have failed.”
Simon gestures up at the statues, at the ribbons and ropes and papers and keys.
“This is…” Zachary begins.
“This is the story,” Simon finishes his thought for him. “If you remain down here long enough you will hear it buzzing. I capture as much as I can. It eases the sound.”
Zachary looks closer. Within the ribbons and ropes and gears and keys there is more, shifting and glimmering and changing in the firelight:
A sword and a crown surrounded by a swarm of paper bees.
A ship without a sea. A library. A city. A fire. A chasm filled with bones and dreams. A figure in a fur coat on a beach. A shape like a cloud or a small blue car. A cherry tree with book-page blossoms.
The keys and the ribbons shift and the images within them grow clearer, too clear to be woven from paper and thread.
Vines climb through windows to curl around a ginger cat asleep in the Keeper’s office. Two women sit on a picnic table beneath the stars, drinking and talking. Behind them a boy stands in front of a painted door that will never open.
Zachary looks from another angle and for a moment the entire ephemeral structure appears to be an enormous owl encompassing the room and then in a fluttering of pages it fragments into bits of story again. The changed viewpoint brings both more and less. Figures that were entwined are now separate. Somewhere it is snowing. There is an inn at a crossroads and someone is walking toward it.
There is a door in the moon.
“The story is changing.” Simon’s voice comes as a surprise beside him, Zachary is so absorbed in the shifting images, though when he looks again there is only a tangle of paper and metal and cloth. “It moves too quickly. Events are overlapping.”
“I thought time wasn’t…” Zachary starts but stops again, unsure of what time wasn’t or won’t be or is. “I thought time was different here.”
“We proceed at different rates but we are all moving into the future,” Simon tells him. “She was holding it in like a breath and now she is gone. I did not think that would happen.”
“Who?” Zachary asks but Simon does not answer, switching more ropes with his one hand.
“The egg is cracking,” he says. “Has cracked. Will crack.”
Above them a series of keys fall, clattering against one another like chimes.
“Soon the dragon will come to eat the world.” Simon turns back to Zachary. “You should not be here. The story followed you here. This is where they want you to be.”
“Who?” Zachary asks again and this time it seems like Simon hears the question. He leans in and whispers, as though he fears someone else might hear.
“They are gods with lost myths, writing themselves new ones. Can you hear the buzzing yet?”
At his words the air changes. A curling breeze moves through the room, sending book pages and ribbons fluttering and