The Starless Sea

In a city beneath the earth, there is a temple devoted to stories. It is a place of pilgrimage to some; others devote themselves to one of three paths: acolyte, guardian, or keeper. One young woman chooses the path of acolyte. She spends a month in isolation in a soundproof room, a test run for the silence that comes with the lifelong vocation of acolyte. It is her last chance to use her voice, and those who use their voices more tend to have more success: “Those who scream and cry and wail, those who talk to themselves for hours […] are ready when the time comes to proceed with their initiation” (7).

After a month of singing, the aspiring acolyte is offered the traditional metal disk with a bee carved in relief. She gives up her name, the bee is branded into her chest, and her tongue is cut out and burned. Acolytes “take an unspoken vow to no longer tell their own stories in reverence to the ones that came before and to the ones that shall follow” (9-10). When she officially becomes an acolyte, “the stories begin to come” (10).

The son of a fortune teller takes his usual shortcut on the way to school. Instead of graffiti on the alley wall, he discovers a shockingly realistic painting of a door. It is so realistic that he is surprised to feel the brick beneath the paint when he touches it. On the door are three symbols in a vertical line: a bee, a key, a sword.

Although he recognizes the door’s magical properties, he chooses to leave it. The next day, the boy returns but the door has been whitewashed over, just like the usual graffiti.

There is an authorless, burgundy book in a university library in Vermont. It was donated upon the death of its previous owner. Zachary Ezra Rawlins, a New Media Studies student in his second year of his master’s degree, checks this book, entitled Sweet Sorrows, out.

The first two stories seem unrelated; one is about a pirate, the next about an acolyte. The third story, however, is about him: Zachary is the son of a fortune teller. Zachary is confused as to how a book older than him could possibly recount the events of a day in his childhood, a day of which he had never spoken to anyone. He wonders if he is the only real person in the stories, or if the stories reflect other real events and characters. He is caught by the last two words of the story: “And so the son of the fortune teller does not find his way to the Starless Sea. Not yet” (13).

Carefully, he removes the book’s barcode on the book and discovers three familiar symbols: a bee, a key, a sword. “He wonders how, exactly, he is supposed to continue a story he didn’t know he was in” (23).

Inside a room at the Harbor of the Starless Sea, there is a semi-sentient dollhouse: “What is remarkable is what has evolved around it” (26). Nearly everyone who enters the room adds something to the dollhouse, resulting in an ever-expanding, doll universe.

Zachary Ezra Rawlins has determined that only one of the stories was about him, but he also notices several pages missing from the book. The stories in the book appear nested: The pirate tells the story of the acolyte, who experiences the story of the boy.

Seeking a distraction from his anxious thoughts, he goes for a walk and runs into Kat, a fellow Emerging Media student who creates interactive games. She asks his help in moderating a class on “Innovative Storytelling.” In the class, students discuss what gamers want in a story and what makes a story compelling.

Students argue that gamers want to make their own choices within the framework of an existing narrative. Defining a story’s meaning is even more complex, as it is personal and therefore variable in nature. One of the students, who knits throughout the class, says the following: “Even if you don’t make the choices along the way, you decide what it means to you […] Stories are personal, you relate or you don’t” (35-36).

After the class ends, Kat tells Zachary that a participant named Elena wants to talk to him. Elena introduces herself as the library aid who helped him check out Sweet Sorrows. She has investigated the book and, while she has no information on the author, the book was donated from a private collection when the collector died. She offers to provide a list of the other books donated from that collection and hands him a slip of paper: “From the private collection of J.S. Keating, donated in 1993. A gift from the Keating Foundation” (38).

In addition to becoming an acolyte in the underground temple of story, one can become a guardian. Guardians are chosen, then unknowingly observed by judges for months or years before their first tests.

One such test is given to a boy in a library. A woman in a green scarf asks him to watch a book for her. He agrees, she leaves, and time passes. Eventually, the boy becomes worried that he will need to leave before she returns. A woman in a green scarf comes and takes the book, but she is not the same woman. Despite her protests, the boy insists that he is watching it for someone and she cannot have it. The original woman returns for the book, giving him candy in thanks. Initial tests like these evaluate the potential guardian’s propensity for care, respect, and attention to detail.

After passing 12 initial tests, the person is told that they are being tested to become a guardian. If they are from the world above the Starless Sea, they are brought to the Harbor, where they study and are tested on psychological strength, willpower, improvisation, and imagination. After three years, they are given an egg and told to return with the same, unbroken egg in six months. If they return with their egg, they take it to an elder guardian. They hold the egg up for inspection, but the elder guardian folds their hand around it, forcing them to crush the egg. The egg becomes a golden powder, which leaves a permanent shimmer on the potential guardian’s hand, offering an unspoken lesson on responsibility and fragility.

The potential guardian begins the initiation and is given a tour of the Harbor, much deeper than the residents or even acolytes receive. After walking the shores of the Starless Sea, the potential guardians are seated and asked if they would give their life for it. Those who answer “yes” are tattooed with a unique sword designed specifically for them. Those who answer “no” are killed.

Unlike acolytes, guardians do not have a uniform or set of robes to make them identifiable. Their assignments rotate, and though most stay in the Harbor, some go to the world above, unnoticed. “They understand that what it is to be a guardian is to be prepared to die, always. To be a guardian is to wear death on your chest” (43).

Since the library is closed, Zachary Ezra Rawlins goes to the local bar with Kat and another friend named Lexi. They discuss site-specific theater, a storytelling experience in which different locations tell different pieces of a story. When Zachary asks how such a method assures that the audience members all receive the entire story, Lexi answers: “You can’t guarantee it but if you provide enough to see hopefully they can piece it together themselves” (45). As they prepare to leave, Kat insists that a man had been watching Zachary but has since left.

The next day, Zachary goes to the library to get the other 12 books donated by the Keating Foundation. One of these books is Bulfinch’s The Age of the Fable, or Beauties of Mythology, which is blue with gilded details. After poring over the first 11 books looking for some hint of what Sweet Sorrows is and who may have written it, he decides to take a break and get some coffee. When he returns, the blue book is gone, though Elena says that no one has checked it out.

Once home, Zachary Googles information on Sweet Sorrows. An image search for the cryptic symbols produces a black and white, candid photograph of a masked woman wearing a necklace with three chains and a charm on each one: a bee, a key, and a sword. The image is in a photo gallery titled “Algonquin Hotel Annual Literary Masquerade, 2014.” Zachary realizes that the current year’s event is in three days.

A door to the Starless Sea lies in a forest, rotten and rusted, without its knob. The house around the door has long since disappeared. A small girl wanders through the forest. She lifts the knocker and lets it fall with a resounding thud.

The girl falls feet first through the crumbling earth. Still, she is not afraid, only curious when she lands. The doorknocker is broken, the door is destroyed, and she is in the Starless Sea.

Zachary Ezra Rawlins heads to New York City, to the Algonquin Hotel Annual Literary Masquerade. He considers why he has become so fixated on the book and its origins. He also considers that perhaps his story was a cautionary tale about missed opportunities, but the last words of his story—"not yet”—keep him searching for answers. He wonders why he believes that the story is real and where he should “draw mental lines, where to stop suspending his disbelief” (59). Ultimately, Zachary decides that, if nothing else, he knows he believes in books.

There are many doors in varied locations, differing in style and condition, some well used and some never used. Each leads to the Starless Sea, drawing in story-lovers to visit it. Whether it is a book, a conversation, or a comfortable chair, everyone finds something they seek if they go through the door. Some even choose to stay forever, spending their lives at the Harbor of the Starless Sea, unconcerned about its future.

Zachary Ezra Rawlins attends the masquerade ball, where attendees wear elegant costumes and offer strange methods of storytelling, whether in personal storytelling rooms or in the manner of the woman who hands out short stories she types on a typewriter. He dances with a woman dressed as Max from Where the Wild Things Are, but she soon leaves.

Someone—a man who is taller than him and smells wonderful—pulls Zachary through a doorway into pitch blackness. The mysterious stranger tells a story while guiding Zachary through darkened rooms and hallways. In the story, Time falls in love with Fate. Since this complicates fortune, which can be affected by both Fate and Chance, the stars worry what will happen if this love affair ends badly. The stars separate the lovers, but they eventually find one another again. Then, the stars ask the Moon what to do, and the Moon asks the parliament of owls.

After long consideration, the owls decide that if the issue is the combination or Time and Fate, the least important element should be removed. The owls rip Fate to pieces. No one interferes with the murder except a mouse who takes Fate’s heart and safeguards it. The owl who ate Fate’s eyes becomes the Owl King and has greater eyesight than any other creature.

Time continues, and the things that once were fated are now left to Chance, which never loves anything for too long—yet Fate finds ways to pull herself back together and impact events, thanks to the preserved heart, and “Time is always waiting” (73).

The storyteller guides Zachary to a new room. The door locks behind him, and he finds himself in a darkened corner of the hotel lobby. Unsure whether he has heard the vaguely familiar story before, he returns to the party and finds a card in his pocket. It says: “Patience & Fortitude 1 a.m. Bring a flower.” (74). The back of the card has a bee on it.

The third path, that of the keeper, is the oldest. The keepers have a different role than the other paths: “Devotion is for acolytes. Worthiness for guardians. Keepers […] are made keepers because they understand why we are here. Why it matters. Because they understand the stories” (78).

The keepers originally built the doors and the keys to go with them. Once, keepers kept only bees and their stories, but the role has changed over time. As with the other paths, a keeper’s initiation involves training. The final training requires the potential keeper to pick any story that is not their own and study it for a full year. They study it not to learn by mere memory, but by heart “so that they can recall and relate the story as intimately as if they have lived it themselves and as objectively as if they have played every role within” (76).

After this year of study, the potential keeper is brought to a round room covered in keys—a copy of every key in the Harbor. In this room, the potential keeper tells their story. If they have passed the test, they are asked to pick one of the keys on the wall. The selected key is heated to brand the chest of the new keeper. After the branding, the keeper sees every door, every key, and everything kept within.

Zachary Ezra Rawlins leaves to meet the mystery person near “Patience” and “Fortitude,” who are the lions outside the New York Public Library. He grabs a paper flower from an arrangement on his way out but is knocked to the ground by a woman in a white fur coat; he dubs her the “polar-bear lady.” He makes his way to the library early only to find Sweet Sorrows missing from his pocket.

The teller of the Time and Fate story appears with the missing book and introduces himself as Dorian. He says he’s being followed by people who want to take the book. He warns Zachary not to let the people who are following him know that Zachary’s story is in the book. When Zachary asks who they are, Dorian describes them as “a bunch of cranky bastards who think they’re doing the right thing when right in this case is subjective” (83).

Dorian says that the plan is to go to the people’s headquarters and have Zachary give them The Age of Fable, or Beauties of Mythology—the blue book which had gone missing from the library—in exchange for another book. He promises that if Zachary gets him the book, he will not only return Sweet Sorrows but also take him there. He announces that Zachary will not be able to get there without his help unless he has “an arrangement with Mirabel” (84).

Dorian gives Zachary a sword pendant on a chain and tells him to say he has a “drop-off for the archive” and that “Alex”—a code, not a person—sent him (85). Once inside, Zachary will be escorted to an unlocked room. When the escort leaves to answer the doorbell, Zachary will find a brown book in a case, swap the blue book for it, and leave through a back door.

Zachary wants to know who Dorian is, where he comes from, why Dorian cannot do the task himself, what is important about the book, who those people are, what the mouse did with Fate’s heart, who Mirabel is, and when he can get his glasses back from the hotel. Dorian answers that they have a common destination and that he needs the book before he can go there. Dorian’s voice is tinged with “storyteller cadence” again, prompting a flare of attraction in Zachary before he once again feels nervousness. Zachary finds the austere building and notices a plaque: Collector’s Club. He rings the doorbell.

A man is lost in time, searching for a woman he cannot remember. There are times when he remembers stories, but the stories he remembers combine with his memories, confusing him. He can no longer tell the difference between reality and fantasy. The bees once watched him, thinking that he was someone else: “They decided that one man out of his depth is no cause for alarm but even the bees are wrong from time to time” (90).

Zachary Ezra Rawlins is finally answered at the Collector’s Club door. A young woman says she will take the book, but he says that Alex sent him. She admits him. In the hall, countless doorknobs hang on ribbons, each with a tag. He tries to read them surreptitiously, catching city names, numbers—possibly coordinates and dates. She leads him to a door and unlocks it. As planned, the doorbell rings, and she leaves.

Zachary quickly finds the brown, leather-bound book in a case, as expected. The book reminds Zachary of Sweet Sorrows but is written in Arabic. He replaces the book with The Age of Fable, or Beauties of Mythology, and the case closes. On his way out of the building, he hears his escort on the phone. She announces that “he’s here now” and that she thinks “he knows more than we expected” (96). She receives clear instructions of some kind, and Zachary realizes why she looks familiar: She is the student who was knitting in Kat’s Innovative Storytelling class.

Zachary makes his way out of the building only to be stopped by the “polar-bear woman.” She tells him that he is out of his depth and mistaken in whatever he believes is happening, and she offers to pay for his train back to Vermont and his ordinary life afterwards. Though Zachary is unsure whom he should trust—this woman and the student or Dorian—he swiftly escapes and finds Dorian, who ushers him into a cab.

Zachary tells Dorian about the woman in the coat and asks why Dorian stole the book. Dorian explains that it is his as much as anyone’s. When Zachary asks if the people at the building are trying to get there, Dorian answers that they prefer no one uses that door anymore and implies that they destroyed Zachary’s door, among others, by painting over it.

Now, Dorian and Zachary are on their way to a newly created door; like the others, it is painted by Mirabel—Max from Where the Wild Things Are, the costumed girl Zachary danced with at the party. They find the door, which has something written over it; Dorian says it reads, “Know Thyself.” Zachary explains that it is the first half of the Rawlins family motto, the second half being “and Learn to Suffer” (101). Dorian suggests he try to change that part.

Zachary grasps the painted doorknob and opens the door but hears someone behind them. Dorian shoves him through as something wet splashes against him. Zachary expects to see blood but instead sees gold paint. Behind him, instead of the door, he sees only solid rock. He bangs on it, calling for Dorian, but there is no answer. Eventually, he walks down the stairs toward a source of light. At the bottom, he sees an elevator in the rock face, covered in patterns that include a bee, a key, and a sword aligned along its center seam. On the side, he sees a button. He presses it. The elevator opens.

The pirate does not tell the girl only one story, but many stories nested within each other and connected to each other. After the story is over, she silently thanks him. She places her hand over her heart and bows, and he returns the gesture, signifying the end of their dance.

When he looks up, her hand is over the key on the wall. She unlocks the cell without waking the guard, and they walk up the stairs in silence. Just before they reach the door, knowing that they are doomed and will be found momentarily, the pirate kisses her: “But this is not where their story ends. This is only where it changes” (105).

In New Orleans, 14 years ago, a girl painstakingly paints a detailed door on a wall. She is startled by the fortune teller, who invites her for a cup of coffee. The girl agrees. The fortune teller serves the coffee, asks if the girl needs a place to stay, and offers her a set of tarot cards. She tells the girl that they are “cards with stories on them” (110), so the girl thanks the witch and takes the cards.

The fortune teller picks up the mug the girl had used and sees too much—“more people, more places, and more things than should fit in a single girl” (110). Madame Love Rawlins drops the mug onto the floor. She looks down the alley for the girl, but she is gone.