nothing to touch. The snow wraps around his outstretched hand and slips under the cuff of his inherited coat.
Dorian was here, he thinks to himself in an affirmation. He’s down here somewhere and he’s alive and I am not alone.
Zachary takes a deep breath. The air is not so cold anymore.
There is a soft noise nearby. Zachary turns and here is the stag, staring at him. Close enough to see its breath clouding in the air.
The stag’s antlers are gold and covered with candles, twisting and burning like a crown of flame and wax.
Zachary stares at the stag and the stag stares back, its eyes like dark glass.
For a moment neither of them moves.
Then the stag turns and walks toward the trees.
Zachary follows.
They reach the edge of the woods sooner than he expects. Moonlight or starlight or imaginary artificial light filters in through the trees though most of the space stays in shadow. The snow looks more blue than white and the trees themselves are gold. Zachary pauses to inspect the trunk of one more closely and finds its bark covered in delicate gold leaf.
Zachary follows the stag through the trees as closely as he can though sometimes it is no more than a light guiding him onward. He loses sight of the field quickly, consumed by this gilded forest that is both deep and dark.
The trees grow larger and taller. The ground feels uneven and Zachary brushes the snow away with his shoe to find it is not earth but keys, piles of them shifting beneath his feet.
The stag guides Zachary to a clearing. The trees here part, revealing a stretch of star-filled sky above. The moon is gone and when Zachary returns his attention to the ground the stag has abandoned him as well.
The trees surrounding the clearing are draped with ribbons. Black and white and gold, wound around branches and trunks and tangled in the snow.
The ribbons are strung with keys.
Small keys and long keys and large heavy keys. Ornate keys and plain keys and broken keys. They rest in piles in boughs and swing freely from branches, their ribbons crossing and tangling, binding them to one another.
In the center of the clearing is a figure seated in a chair, facing away from him. Looking off into the woods. It is difficult to see in the light but Zachary catches the barest hint of pink.
“Max,” Zachary calls but she does not turn. He moves toward her but the snow slows his progress, allowing only single steps at a time. It seems like an eternity before he reaches her.
“Max,” he calls again but still the figure in the chair does not turn. She does not even move as he gets closer. The hope he had not realized he was clinging to so tightly dissolves beneath his fingers along with her shoulder as he reaches to touch her.
The figure in the chair is carved from snow and ice.
As her gown cascades around the chair the ripples in the fabric become waves, and within the waves there are ships and sailors and sea monsters and then the sea within her gown is lost in the drifting snow.
Her face is empty and icy but it is not merely a resemblance like the statues from before, this is as precise a likeness as could be captured in frozen water, as though it has been molded from the flesh-and-blood version. It is Mirabel down to its snow-flecked eyelashes, perfect save for the now broken shoulder.
Within her chest there is a light. It glows red underneath the snow, creating the soft illusion of pink that he had seen from afar.
Her hands rest in her lap. He expects them to be held out and waiting for a book like the statue of the Queen of the Bees but instead they hold a length of torn ribbon, like the ribbons in the trees, only if this one once had a key strung on it the key has been removed.
Zachary can see now that she is not looking out into the trees. She is looking at the other chair in front of her.
This chair is empty.
It is as though she has been here, always, waiting for him.
The keys hanging from the trees sway and clatter against one another, chiming like bells.
Zachary sits down in the chair.
He looks at the figure facing him.
He listens to the keys as they dance on their ribbons, striking against one another around them.
He closes his eyes.
He takes a deep breath.