the drink and fire and the place soak into Dorian. The chill begins to lift.
Dorian listens to the wind howl, wondering what it is howling about, wondering if it is a warning or a wish. The flames dance merrily in the fireplace.
It is strange, Dorian thinks, to sit in a place you imagined a thousand times. To have it be all that you thought it might be and more. More details. More sensations. It is stranger still that this place is filled with things he never imagined, as though the inn has been pulled from his mind and embellished by another unseen storyteller.
He is becoming accustomed to strangeness.
The innkeeper brings another cup and another warmed cloth to replace the first.
Dorian unbuttons the stars on his coat to better keep the warmth close to his skin.
The innkeeper glances down and notices the sword on Dorian’s chest and steps back in surprise.
“Oh,” he says. “It’s you.” His eyes flick back to Dorian’s and then back to the sword. “I have something for you.”
“What?” Dorian asks.
“My wife left something for me to give to you,” the innkeeper says. “She gave me instructions in case you arrived during one of her absences.”
“How do you know it’s meant for me?” Dorian asks, each word heavy on his tongue, still defrosting.
“She told me someday a man would arrive bearing a sword and dressed in the stars. She gave me something and asked me to keep it locked away until you got here, and now here you are. She mentioned you might not know you were looking for it.”
“I don’t understand,” Dorian says and the innkeeper laughs.
“I don’t always understand, either,” he says. “But I believe. I admit I did think you would have an actual sword and not a picture of one.”
The innkeeper pulls a chain from beneath his shirt. A key hangs from it.
He moves one of the stones from the hearth in front of the fire, revealing a well-hidden compartment with an elaborate lock. He opens it with the key and reaches inside.
The innkeeper takes out a square box. He blows a layer of dust and ash from it and polishes it with a cloth taken from his pocket before he hands it to Dorian.
Dorian accepts the box, bewildered.
The box is beautiful, carved in bone with gold inlayed into elaborate designs. Crossed keys cover the top surrounded by stars. The sides are decorated with bees and swords and feathers and a single golden crown.
“How long have you had this?” Dorian asks the innkeeper.
The innkeeper smiles.
“A very long time. Please don’t ask me to attempt to calculate it. I no longer keep any clocks.”
Dorian looks down at the box. It is heavy and solid in his hands.
“You said your wife gave this to you to give to me,” Dorian says and the innkeeper nods. Dorian runs his fingers over a sequence of golden moons along the edge of the box. Full and then waning and then vanished and then returned, waxing and then full again. He wonders if there is any difference between story and reality down here. “Is your wife the moon?”
“The moon is a rock in the sky,” the innkeeper says, chuckling. “My wife is my wife. I’m sorry she’s not here right now, she would have liked to meet you.”
“I would have liked that, too,” Dorian says. He looks back at the box in his hands.
There does not seem to be a lid. The gold motifs repeat and encircle every side and he cannot find a hinge or a seam. The moon waxes and wanes along its edges, over and over again. Dorian trails his chilled fingertips over each one, wondering how long it will be before the moon is new and dark and the innkeeper’s wife is here again and then he pauses.
One of the full moons on what he assumes is the top of the box has an indentation, a six-sided impression concealed in its roundness, something he can feel more than see.
It is not a keyhole, but something could fit there.
He wishes Zachary were here with him, because Zachary might be better at such puzzles and for a multitude of other reasons.
What’s missing? he thinks, looking over the box. There are owls and cats hidden in the negative space between the gold designs. There are stars and shapes that could be doors. Dorian thinks over all of his stories. What isn’t here that should be?
It strikes him, sudden and simple.
“Do you have a mouse?” he asks