The Starless Sea - Erin Morgenstern Page 0,179

universe.

Moving a small boat across an ocean. It must seem like nothing from such a distance. A tiny motion in a much larger tableau.

It feels a lot bigger from down here in the center of the ocean.

It takes a lot longer than he expects to reach the city across the sea.

There are many lights along the skyline but Zachary rows toward the brightest one.

As he gets closer he can see that it is a lighthouse.

As he gets closer still he can tell the lighthouse has been imagined from a wine bottle with a candle burning in its neck.

It is the opposite of the castle and its dragon, watching the shape of the city settle into buildings and towers surrounded by painted mountains and then resolve further into the objects they have been constructed from.

The paper confetti around the boat ushers him onto the shore.

Zachary pulls the boat up on the beach so the sea cannot take it away again.

This shore is covered in sand, each grain enormous. But there is only a dusting of it. Beneath it there is a solid surface. Zachary brushes the sand away from a section of it near the boat and uncovers the polished mahogany of the desk this part of the world rests upon, its varnish scratched by sand and time.

He walks from the beach onto green paper grass. He knows now where he is, even if he does not understand why he is here. He walks farther into the doll universe he had longed to see, though he never imagined viewing it from this perspective.

Along the beach there are cliffs and caves and treasure chests and much more to explore but Zachary knows where he is going. He walks inland, the paper grass crunching beneath his bare feet.

He walks past a toppled ruin of a temple and a snow-covered inn, the paper snowflakes scattered over the green of the grass.

He crosses a bridge made of keys and a meadow filled with paper book-page flowers. He does not stop to read them.

Some parts of the world reveal their pieces for what they are: paper and buttons and wine bottles. Others are perfect imitations in miniature.

From far away they look like what they are meant to represent but as Zachary gets closer the textures are wrong. The artificiality bleeds through.

A farmhouse is surrounded by balls of cotton pretending to be sheep.

Above him folded-paper birds flutter on strings. Hanging, not flying.

As Zachary continues walking the buildings grow more frequent. He loops through streets as the space becomes a city filled with tall cardboard buildings lined with unevenly spaced windows. He walks past a hotel and through an alleyway lined with lanterns and banners, decorated for a festival that is not occurring.

The city becomes a smaller town. Zachary walks down a main street lined with buildings. Stores and restaurants and cocktail bars. A post office and a tavern and a library.

Some of the buildings have toppled. Others have been reconstructed with tape and glue. Embellished and expanded and empty, even the ones that have figures posed within them, staring blankly out of windows or into wineglasses.

This is the idea of a world without anything breathing life into it.

The pieces without the story.

It’s not real.

The emptiness in Zachary’s chest aches for something real.

He walks past a lone doll in a tailored suit with too-big stitches resting facedown in the middle of the street.

Zachary tries to lift it but the porcelain cracks, breaking the doll’s arm, so he leaves it where it lies and continues on.

At the top of a hill, overlooking the town, there is a house.

It has a large front porch and a multitude of windows clouded over in amber. On its roof is a widow’s walk that would provide a view of the sea. Someone could have seen him coming from there, but the balcony is currently unoccupied.

It looks more real than the rest of the world.

The world that has been constructed around it with paper and glue and found objects.

He can see the hinges on the side of the dollhouse. The lock keeping its facade in place.

The lanterns on either side of the door are lit.

Zachary walks up the steps of the dollhouse to the front porch.

There is a humming sound. A buzz.

The door is open.

He has been expected.

A sign hanging above the door reads:

know thyself and learn to suffer

The buzzing grows louder. It multiplies and changes and chatters and then resolves itself into words.

Hellohellohellohellohellohello.

Hello Mister Rawlins you are here at last hellohello.

Hello.

excerpt