There is not much time left Mister Rawlins sir you had your dance the story is over we really must be going.
The buzzed warning comes from all around them.
“I missed it,” Zachary says. “I missed so much.” He is not really talking about the story.
“You’re here for the end,” Mirabel says. It doesn’t make him feel better.
“What happens now?” Zachary asks, as now seems suddenly more meaningful than next.
“That’s not up to me, Ezra. Like I said, I don’t make things happen, I just provide opportunities and doors. Someone else has to open them.”
Mirabel reaches out and traces a line in the honeycomb wall with her finger and then another and another until they are roughly the shape of a door.
She draws a doorknob for it and pulls it open. There is a starlit wood beyond it, the tree branches heavy with leaves. The waves of honey around their feet lap at the grass but do not pass through the door.
“Goodbye, Ezra,” Mirabel says. “Thank you.”
She gives him a bow. The end of a dance.
“You’re welcome, Max.”
He bows to her in return, slow to rise again, expecting her to be gone by the time he looks up but instead she has come back and she is right in front of him and she kisses him, a brief, light brush of her lips against his cheek like a parting gift. A stolen moment before the end laced with honey and inevitability. It is not entirely sweet. Then Mirabel turns and walks through the door.
The door closes behind her and melts away into the wax wall, leaving Zachary alone in an empty, collapsing ballroom.
It is time to go Mister Rawlins sir.
“Go where?” Zachary asks but the buzzing has stopped. The honey swirling around Zachary’s feet is getting higher. He makes his way to the stairs and up into the dollhouse. The honey follows him.
Back inside the dollhouse the bees are gone.
The porcelain doll has vanished from the sunroom.
Zachary tries to open the front door but it has been sealed closed with wax.
He climbs the dollhouse stairs and passes unoccupied doll bedrooms and closets until he finds another flight of honey-sticky stairs that lead to an attic filled with forgotten memories and within the attic there is a ladder, leading to a door in the ceiling.
Zachary pushes it open and climbs out to the top of the dollhouse. He stands on the widow’s walk, staring out at the sea. Honey bubbles up through the paper confetti, turning the blue sea golden.
The bees are swarming over the roof below him. They buzz at him as they begin to fly up and away.
Goodbye Mister Rawlins thank you for being the key you were a good key and a nice person we wish you well in your future endeavors.
“What future endeavors?” Zachary yells at the bees but the bees do not answer. They fly off into the darkness, past models of planets and stars, leaving Zachary alone with only the sound of the sea. He misses the buzzing as soon as it is gone.
And now the sea is rising.
The honey sweeps over the paper grass and mixes with the sea. The lighthouse falls, its light extinguished. The honey steals the shore away and pulls the buildings down, insistent and impatient.
There is only one sea now, consuming the universe.
The sea has reached the house. The lock on the dollhouse breaks as the waves sweep through the open door and up the stairs. The facade falls, cracking open the honeycomb interior.
The rowboat is floating, not near enough to reach easily but Zachary is out of options. The world is sinking.
Being dead should not feel this perilous.
The honey is up to his knees.
This is really the end, he thinks. There is no world beneath this world.
There is nothing that comes after this.
The reality of it all is setting in as the dollhouse sinks below him.
The end is here and Zachary fights it.
He pulls himself up on the guardrail and dives for the boat. He slips, falling into the honey sea and the honey embraces him like a long-lost love.
He grabs for the edge of the boat but his honey-coated hands are too slippery to hold on.
The boat capsizes.
This Starless Sea claims Zachary Ezra Rawlins for its own.
It pulls him under and refuses to let him surface.
He gasps for a breath his lungs do not require and around him the world breaks.