broom. The cat on the desk yawns and Simon yawns in response.
“The title of the volume?” the Keeper asks.
Simon looks down at the book, even though he knows the answer.
“Sweet Sorrows,” he replies. “It doesn’t have an author listed here.”
The Keeper looks up at him.
“May I see that?” he asks.
Simon hands him the book.
The Keeper looks it over, studying its binding and endpapers.
“Where did you find this?” he asks.
“Lenore gave it to me,” Simon answers. He assumes he does not need to tell the Keeper who Lenore is, as she is rather memorable. “She said it is her favorite.”
The expression on the Keeper’s face is strange as he hands the book to Simon.
“Thank you,” he says, relieved to have it back.
“Your compass,” the Keeper responds with an open palm, and Simon stares blankly for a second before taking the golden chain from his neck. He almost asks if something is wrong, or about Lenore, or any of his many questions, but none of them will consent to being articulated.
“Good night,” he says instead and the Keeper nods and this time when Simon tries to leave the door opens for him without protest.
He falls asleep standing up in the cage as it ascends, jolted back to half awake when it stops.
The lantern-lit stone room looks the same as before. The door leading back into the cottage is still open.
Moonlight shines through the cottage windows. Simon cannot guess what time it might be. It is cold and he is too tired to light a fire but grateful for his coat.
He collapses on the bed without clearing the books from it, Sweet Sorrows clutched in one hand.
It falls to the floor as he sleeps.
Simon wakes disoriented with book-shaped bruises along his back. He does not remember where he is or how he got here. The morning light peeks in through the gaps in the ivy. A still-open window squeaks on its hinges as the wind tugs at it.
The memory of the key and the cottage and the train seeps back into his cloudy thoughts. He must have fallen asleep. He had the strangest dream.
He tries the door at the back of the cottage but it sticks, probably held shut by the brambles outside.
He builds a fire in the hearth.
He doesn’t know what to do with this space and these books, these things that his mother presumably left for him.
He finds a long, low trunk behind the bed. The lock is rusted shut but so are the hinges and a good kick with the heel of his boot manages to break them both. Inside there are faded papers and more books. One of the documents is the deed to the cottage made out in his name and including a great deal of the surrounding land. He looks through the rest for some missive from his mother, annoyed that she would have anticipated his eighteenth birthday and his finding this place without addressing him personally, and he finds most of the other papers inscrutable: snippets of notes and papers that seem like fairy tales, long rambling things about reincarnation and keys and fate. The only letter is not one from his mother but one written to her, a rather ardent missive signed from someone named Asim. The thought crosses Simon’s mind that this might well be from his father.
He wonders, suddenly, if his mother knew she was going to die. If she was preparing this in anticipation of her absence. It is not a thought he has entertained before and he does not like it.
He has an inheritance. A dusty, book-filled, ivy-infested one. It is something to call his own.
He wonders if he could live here. If he would want to. Perhaps with carpets and better chairs and a proper bed.
He sorts through books and stacks myths and fables on one side of the table, histories and geographies on the other, and leaves volumes he cannot differentiate in the middle. There are books of maps and books written in languages he cannot read. Several are marked with annotations and symbols: crowns and swords and drawings of owls.
He finds a small volume by the bed that is not as dusty as the others and when he recognizes it he drops it again. It falls onto the pile of books, barely distinguishable from the rest.
It was not a dream.
If the book was not a dream, the girl is not a dream.
Simon goes to the back door and pushes it. Shoves it. Throws all his weight