to people who needed to find it for sanctuary purposes it started whispering for someone to come and destroy it. The space found its own loopholes and worked its own spells, so it could have an ending.
“Did it work?” I remember asking, because she stopped the story there.
“Not yet,” she said. “But it will, someday.”
We talked about something else after that but there was more to the story. It had, like, a whole cast of characters and felt like a proper fairy tale. There was a knight, maybe? I think he was sad? Or there were two of them, and one of them had a broken heart. And some Persephone-esque lady who kept leaving and coming back and there was a king and I remembered before that it was a bird king but I’d forgotten what kind of bird and now I swear it was an owl. Maybe. Probably.
But I forget what it means, what it meant in the story.
It’s weird, I can remember so much of it now. I remember the lights and the stars and the opaque plastic cup in my hand and the melting ice watering down my bourbon and that pot-mixed-with-incense scent coming from the house and I did find Orion and two different cars went by playing that song that was everywhere that summer but I don’t remember the whole story, not exactly, because the story didn’t seem as important as the teller or the stars in that moment when it was being told. It seemed like something else. Not something you could hold on to like an opaque plastic cup or someone else’s hand.
If I’m even remembering it right. I don’t know anymore. I’m pretty sure I remember her, at least.
I remember we laughed a lot and I remember I’d been upset or sad about something or other before we’d started talking and afterward I wasn’t.
I remember I kind of wanted to kiss her but I also didn’t want to ruin it, and I didn’t want to be the drunk girl who kisses everyone at the party even though I’ve been that girl before.
I remember wishing that I’d gotten her number but I didn’t or if I did I lost it.
I do know I never saw her again. I would have remembered. She was hot.
She had pink hair.
THE SON OF THE FORTUNE-TELLER is guided by giant bees down a staircase within a dollhouse to where a basement would be though rather than a basement there is now an expansive ballroom made of honeycomb, shimmering and gold and beautiful.
It is ready Mister Rawlins there is not much time left but here you go here is the place that you wanted the dancing talking place the story sculptor is waiting for you inside tell her we said hello please thank you.
The buzzing quiets, drowned out by the music as Zachary descends to the ballroom. Some jazz standard he recognizes but could not name.
The room is crowded with dancing ghosts. Transparent figures in timeless formal wear and masks conjured from glitter and honey, luminous and swirling over a polished wax floor patterned with hexagons.
It is the idea of a party constructed by bees. It doesn’t feel real, but it does feel familiar.
The dancers part for Zachary as he walks and then he can see her across the room. Solid and substantial and here.
Mirabel looks exactly as she did the first time he saw her, dressed as the king of the wild things, though her hair is its proper pink beneath her crown and her gown has been embellished: The draping white cloth is now embroidered with barely visible illustrations in white thread of forests and cities and caverns laced together with honeycomb and snowflakes.
She looks like a fairy tale.
When he reaches her Mirabel offers her hand and Zachary accepts it.
Here now in a ballroom made of wax and gold, Zachary Ezra Rawlins begins his last dance with Fate.
“Is this all in my head?” Zachary asks as they twirl amongst the golden crowd. “Am I making all of this up?”
“If you were, whatever answer I gave you would also be made up, wouldn’t it?” Mirabel answers.
Zachary doesn’t have a good response for that particular observation.
“You knew that would happen,” he says. “You made all of this happen.”
“I did not. I gave you doors. You chose whether or not you opened them. I don’t write the story, I only nudge it in different directions.”