“Ah, I saw Matilda earlier in the evening but I don’t know where she went off to. It is sometimes more effective to let her find you, in my experience.” She pauses but then adds, in a wistful whisper: “How lovely to be a hotel cat. We should all be so lucky.”
“What brings you here tonight?” Zachary asks her. The music has changed and he loses his footing momentarily and thankfully recovers without stepping on her feet.
But before the woman can answer, something beyond Zachary’s right shoulder catches her eye. She stiffens, a shift he can feel more than see, and he thinks perhaps this is a woman who is good at wearing many different kinds of masks.
“Excuse me for a moment,” she says. She rests a hand on Zachary’s lapel and someone to the side snaps a photograph. The woman starts to turn away but then stops and bows at Zachary first, or something between a curtsey and a bow that seems at once formal and silly, especially since she is the one with the crown. Zachary returns the gesture as best he can and as she disappears into the crowd someone nearby applauds, as if they were part of a performance.
The photographer comes up and asks him for their names. Zachary decides to request that they simply be listed as guests if the photos are posted anywhere and the photographer reluctantly agrees.
Zachary wanders the lobby again, more slowly due to the tighter crowd, a growing disappointment tugging at him. He looks again for jewelry, for bees or keys or swords. For a sign. He should have worn them himself, or drawn them on his hand or found a bee-patterned pocket square. He does not know why he ever thought he could find a single stranger in a room filled with them.
Zachary looks for anyone he has talked to already, thinking perhaps he could inquire nonchalantly about…he’s not sure what anymore. He can’t even find his Max in the crowd. He encounters a particularly dense knot of partygoers (one in impressive green silk pajamas holding a rose in a glass cloche) and ducks behind a column, moving closer to the wall to get around them, but as he does someone in the crowd grabs his hand and pulls him through a doorway.
The door closes behind them, muffling the party chatter and cutting off the light.
Someone else is in the darkness with him, the hand that pulled him in has released him but someone is standing close by. Taller, maybe. Breathing softly. Smelling of lemon and leather and something that Zachary can’t identify but finds extremely appealing.
Then a voice whispers in his ear.
“Once, very long ago, Time fell in love with Fate.”
A male voice. The tone deep but the cadence light, a storyteller voice. Zachary freezes, waiting. Listening.
“This, as you might imagine, proved problematic,” the voice continues. “Their romance disrupted the flow of time. It tangled the strings of fortune into knots.”
A hand on his back pushes him gently forward and Zachary takes a tentative step into the darkness, and then another. The storyteller continues, the volume of his voice now loud enough to fill the space.
“The stars watched from the heavens nervously, worrying what might occur. What might happen to the days and nights were Time to suffer a broken heart? What catastrophes might result if the same fate awaited Fate itself?”
They continue walking down a dark hall.
“The stars conspired and separated the two. For a while they breathed easier in the heavens. Time continued to flow as it always had, or perhaps imperceptibly slower. Fate wove together the paths that were meant to intertwine, though perhaps a string was missed here and there.”
Now a turn, as Zachary is guided in a different direction through the darkness. In the pause he can hear the band and the party, the sound muffled and distant.
“But eventually,” the storyteller continues, “Fate and Time found each other again.”
A firm hand on Zachary’s shoulder halts their movement. The storyteller leans closer.
“In the heavens, the stars sighed, twinkling and fretting. They asked the moon her advice. The moon in turn called upon the parliament of owls to decide how best to proceed.”
Somewhere in the darkness the sound of wings beating, close and heavy, moving the air around them.
“The parliament of owls convened and discussed the matter amongst themselves night after night. They argued and debated while the world slept around them, and the world continued to turn, unaware that such important