smile, a few strokes of slivered-moon paint creating an entire expression of expectant calm. An expression like the closing of the eyes before blowing out the candles on a birthday cake. The doll is carved in a style that reminds him at first of his mother’s kokeshi collection, but then he finds a well-disguised seam around its rounded waist and realizes it is more like a Russian matryoshka. He carefully turns the doll and separates the top half from the lower.
Within the lady in her robe of stars is an owl.
Within the owl is another woman, this one wearing gold, her eyes open.
Within the golden woman is a cat, its eyes the same shade of gold as the woman who came before.
Within the cat is a little girl with long curly hair and a sky-blue dress, her eyes open but looking off to the side, more interested in something else beyond the person looking at her.
The tiniest doll is a bee, actual-size.
Something moves at the end of the hall where the stone is draped with red velvet curtains—something bigger than a cat—but when Zachary looks there is nothing. He joins all of the dolls’ halves together separately and leaves them standing in a row along the shelf, rather than letting them remain trapped all in one person, and then continues on.
There are so many candles that the scent of beeswax permeates everything, soft and sweet mingling with paper and leather and stone with a hint of smoke. Who lights all of these if there’s no one else here? Zachary wonders as he passes a candelabra holding more than a dozen smoldering tapers, wax dripping down over the stone that has clearly been dripped on by many, many candles before.
One door opens into a round room with intricately carved walls. A single lamp sits on the floor and as Zachary walks around it the light catches different parts of the carvings, revealing images and text but he cannot read the whole story.
Zachary walks until the hall opens into a garden, with a soaring ceiling like the marble near the elevator, casting a sunlight-like glow over books abandoned on benches and fountains and piled near statues. He passes a statue of a fox and another that looks like a precarious stack of snowballs. In the center of the room is a partially enclosed space that reminds him of a teahouse. Inside are benches and a life-size statue of a woman seated in a stone chair. Her gown falls around the chair in realistically carved rippling cloth, and everywhere, in her lap, on her arms, tucked into the creases of her gown and the curls in her hair there are bees. The bees are carved from a different color of stone than their mistress, a warmer hue, and appear to be individual pieces. Zachary picks one up and then replaces it. The woman looks down, her hands in her lap with the palms facing up as though she should be reading a book.
By the statue’s feet, surrounded by bees and resting like an offering, is a glass half filled with dark liquid.
“I knew I was going to miss it,” someone says behind him.
Zachary turns. If he hadn’t recognized her voice he would not have guessed this could be the same woman from the party. Her hair without the dark wig is thick and wavy and dyed in various shades of pink beginning in pomegranate at the roots and fading to ballet-slipper at her shoulders. There are traces of gold glitter around her dark eyes. She’s older than he had thought, he’d guessed a few years older than him but it might be more. She wears jeans and tall black boots with long laces and a cream-colored sweater that looks as though it spent as little time as possible in the transition from sheep to clothing and yet the whole ensemble has an air of effortless elegance to it. Several chains draped around her neck hold a number of keys and a locket like Zachary’s compass and something that looks like a bird skull cast in silver. She somehow, even without the tail, still seems like Max.
“Miss what?” Zachary asks.
“Every year around this time someone leaves her a glass of wine,” the pink-haired lady answers, pointing at the glass by the statue’s feet. “I’ve never seen who does it, and not for lack of trying. Another year a mystery.”
“You’re Mirabel.”
“My reputation precedes me,” Mirabel says. “I have always wanted to say that.