no progress he pauses to sort through his bag for anything that might be useful. His fingers close around a book and he stops searching.
He takes out Sweet Sorrows. He doesn’t open it, he only holds it for a moment and then places it in the pocket of his coat, to keep it closer.
The bag free of all of its books suddenly feels heavy. The remainder of its contents seem unnecessary.
None of these objects are going to help him. Not here.
Zachary drops the bag on the ground, abandoning it to the snow.
He loops his fingers through the chains around his neck, with their key and sword and a compass currently incapable of pointing him in any direction.
He holds on to them as he continues walking. Lighter now with only his book and his sword to carry.
He wishes Dorian were actually here. He wishes it almost more than he wishes he knew what to do next.
“If Dorian is down here somewhere I want to see him,” Zachary says to the moon. “Right now.”
The moon does not reply.
(She has not replied to any of his requests.)
As Zachary walks his thoughts keep returning to the place he left behind and the imaginary party within it and the way it felt to see this story he has found himself in seep into his normal life and fill the empty spaces.
There are footsteps approaching. Someone running, the sound muffled by the snow. Zachary freezes. A hand grabs his arm.
Zachary rounds on the person behind him, pulling the sword from the scabbard to keep this new delusion at bay.
“Zachary, it’s me,” Dorian says, holding his hands up defensively. He looks just as Zachary remembers, from the longer hair to the star-buttoned coat, except moonlit and covered in snow.
“Where does the moon go when she’s not in the sky?” Zachary asks without lowering the sword and he knows from the smile that he gets in response that this is not a fantasy, this is the real person. Here but not here. Standing with him in the moonlit snow and also somewhere else but actually Dorian. He knows it down to his nearly frozen toes.
“An inn that once rested at one crossroads that is now down here with the rest of whatever this is,” Dorian says, waving a hand around at the snow and the stars. “I’m there now. I think I might be asleep. I was looking out the window at the snow thinking about you and then I saw you and then I was out here. I don’t recall leaving the building.”
Zachary lowers the sword.
“I thought I’d lost you,” he says.
Dorian takes his arm again, pulling him closer, leaning his forehead against Zachary’s. He feels warm yet cold and real yet not real, all at once.
This person is a place Zachary could lose himself in, and never wish to be found.
It starts to snow again.
“You’re down here too now, aren’t you?” Dorian asks. “The world beneath the world beneath the world?”
“I took the elevator with Max—Mirabel, I mean—after you fell. I’m farther down than that now, somewhere past a lost city of honey and bone. I went through a door. I should stop doing that. I lost my owl.”
“Do you think you could find the inn from where you are?”
“I don’t know,” Zachary says. “I must be getting close to the Starless Sea. You and I might not even be in the same time anymore. If…if anything happens—”
“Don’t you dare,” Dorian interrupts him. “Don’t you dare make this goodbye. I am going to find you. We are going to find each other and we are going to figure this out together. You may be by yourself but you are not alone.”
“It’s dangerous to go alone,” Zachary says, almost automatically and at least partly to stop the tears that are stinging his eyes along with the snow. He replaces the sword in its scabbard and removes it from his back. “Take this,” he says, offering the sword to Dorian. It feels like the thing to do. Dorian probably knows how to use it.
Dorian accepts the sword and starts to say something else but then he vanishes, quicker than a blink. He is there and then he is not. There aren’t even footprints left in the snow. No indication that he was ever there.
Except the sword is gone. Along with the moon who has vanished behind the clouds.
The snow is lighter now, the flakes almost floating. Snow-globe snow.
Zachary reaches out just to be certain there is