He sits at the bar, feeling like a failure and yet overwhelmed by all that has happened as he attempts to catalogue the entire evening. Drank rosemary for remembrance. Looked for a cat. Danced with the king of the wild things. Excellent-smelling man told me a story in the dark. Cat found me.
He tries to remember the name of the bourbon that Godot had mentioned earlier and pulls his ticket from his jacket pocket.
As he does, a rectangle of paper the size of a business card falls from his pocket and flutters to the floor.
Zachary picks it up, trying to recall if anyone he had spoken to had given him a card.
But it is not a business card. It contains two lines of handwritten text.
Patience & Fortitude
1 a.m. Bring a flower.
Zachary checks his watch: 12:42.
He turns the card over.
On the back is a bee.
As long as there have been bees, there have been keepers.
They say that there was one keeper in the beginning but as the stories multiplied there was a need for more.
The keepers were here before the acolytes, before the guardians.
Before the keepers there were the bees and the stories. Buzzing and humming.
There were keepers before there were keys.
A fact usually forgotten, as they are so synonymous with keys.
It is also a forgotten fact that once there was a single key. A long, thin key made of iron, its bow dipped in gold.
Many copies of it, but a solitary master. The copies worn on chains around each keeper
’s neck. Falling so often against their chests that many wore the impression of the key imbedded in their flesh, metal wearing against skin.
This is the origin of a tradition. No one remembers this now. A mark on a chest arising as an idea because of a mark on a chest. Obvious until it is forgotten.
The role of the keepers has changed over time, more than any of the other paths. Acolytes light their candles. Guardians move unseen and alert.
Keepers once kept only their bees and their stories.
As the space grew larger they kept rooms, dividing stories by type or by length or by unknown whim. Carving shelves for books into rock or building racks of metal or cabinets of glass and tables for the larger volumes. Chairs and pillows for reading and lamps to read by. Adding more rooms as they were needed, round rooms with fires at the center for telling stories aloud. Cavernous rooms with excellent acoustics for performing stories in dance or song. Rooms to repair books, rooms to write books, empty rooms to be used for whatever purposes might arise.
The keepers made doors for the rooms and keys to open them or keep them closed. The same key for every door, at first.
More doors led to more keys. At one time a keeper could identify every door, every room, every book, now they could not. So they acquired individual sections. Wings. Levels. One keeper might not ever meet all the other keepers. They move in circles around each other, sometimes intersecting, sometimes not.
They burned their keys into their chests so that they might be known as keepers at all times. To be reminded that they have a responsibility even if their key (or keys) hang on a hook on a wall and not around their necks.
How one becomes a keeper has also changed.
In the beginning they were chosen and raised as keepers. Born in the Harbor or brought there as infants too young to remember the sky even as a dream. Taught from a tiny age about the books and the bees and given wooden toy keys to play with.
After a time it was decided that the path, like the one of the acolytes, should be voluntary. Unlike the acolytes, the volunteers are put through a training period. If they wish to volunteer after the first training period, they enter a second. After the second, the remainder go through a third.
This is the third period of training.