with star-shaped holes. A pair of leather gloves. A coiled length of rope. A rolled piece of parchment that looks like a map. A wooden bow and a quiver of arrows. A magnifying glass.
Some, but not all, of it will fit in his bag.
“Inventory management,” Zachary mutters to himself.
In the center of the table of supplies there is a folded note. Zachary picks it up and flips it open.
when you’re ready
choose a door
Zachary looks around the tent. There are no doors, only the flaps he entered through, tied open with cords.
He takes the torch from its resting place and walks out into the cavern, following the path beyond the tent.
Here the path stops abruptly at a crystalline wall.
In the wall where the path should continue there are doors.
One door is marked with a bee. Another with a key. And a sword and a crown and a heart and a feather though the doors are not in the order he has become accustomed to. The crown is at the end. The bee is in the center next to the heart.
The son of the fortune-teller stands before six doorways, not knowing which one to choose.
Zachary sighs and returns to the tent. He puts down the torch and picks up a thankfully already open bottle of wine and pours himself a cup. He has been given a place to pause before he proceeds and he is going to take it, despite its resemblance to similar virtual respites he has taken before. Nothing like too many health potions placed just before a door to signify something dangerous to come.
He considers the table filled with objects trying to decide what to take and pauses to catalogue what he already has:
One sword with scabbard.
One small owl companion currently tearing apart a silk cushion with its talons.
A chain around his neck with a compass, its needle currently spinning in circles. Two keys: his room key and the narrow key that had fallen out of Fortunes and Fables that he somehow never managed to ask Dorian about, and a small silver sword. Zachary moves on to examining the contents of his bag to think about someone, something, anything else.
There is Sweet Sorrows, comforting in its familiarity. A cigarette lighter. A fountain pen he doesn’t remember putting in the bag at all, and a very squished gluten-free lemon poppy seed muffin wrapped in a cloth napkin.
Zachary discards the muffin on the table with the rest of the food. He pulls apart the Cornish game hen that is somehow still hot. Why didn’t Mirabel stick around if she was here so recently? Maybe he has found himself in a pocket outside of time where food stays perpetually warm. He puts more of it on a silver plate and pulls a cushion closer to the fire and sits. The owl hops over and perches nearby.
Zachary looks at the choices set before him, chewing thoughtfully on the wing of a roasted hen, wondering idly if it is rude to eat a bird in the presence of another bird and then remembering a story Kat told him once about witnessing a seagull murder a pigeon and coming to the conclusion that it probably isn’t.
He drinks his wine while he weighs his options and his future and his past and his story. How far he’s come. The unknowable distance left to go.
Zachary takes the folded-paper star from his pocket. He turns it over in his hand, letting it dance over his fingers.
He hasn’t read it.
Not yet.
The owl hoots at him.
The son of the fortune-teller tosses the paper star with his future inscribed upon it into the campfire.
The flames consume it, charring and curling the paper until it is no longer a star, the words it once contained lost and gone forever.
Zachary stands and picks up the rolled parchment from the inventory table. It is a map, a roughly drawn one containing a circle of trees and two squares that might be buildings. A path is marked moving from the building to a spot in the surrounding forest. It doesn’t seem helpful.
Zachary puts it back and instead takes the penknife, the cigarette lighter to have a spare, the rope, and the gloves and puts them in his bag. After considering the rest of the objects he takes the twine as well.
“Are you ready?” he asks his owl.
The owl responds by flying out past the campfire and into the shadows.
Zachary takes the torch and follows it to the wall of doors.
The doors are