The potential keeper must pick a story. Any story they please. A fairy tale or a myth or an anecdote about a late night and too many bottles of wine, as long as it is not a story of their own.
(Many who believe at first that they wish to be keepers in truth are poets.)
They study their story for a year.
They must learn it by memory. By more than memory, they must learn it by heart. Not so that they can simply recite the words but so that they feel them, the shape of the story as it changes and lifts and falls and rushes or meanders toward its climax. 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.
After the year of study they are brought to a round room with a single door. Two plain wooden chairs wait in the center, facing each other.
Candles dot the curved wall like stars, glowing from sconces set at irregular heights.
Every bit of the wall that is not occupied by a candle or voided by the door is covered in keys. They stretch from the floor over the wall and continue unseen past the highest candles into the shadows above. Long brass keys and short silver ones, keys with complicated teeth and keys with elaborate decorative heads. Many are ancient and tarnished but as a collection they shimmer and sparkle in the candlelight.
There is a copy here of every key in the Harbor. If one is needed another is made to take its place so that none are ever lost.
The only key that does not have a twin hanging in this room is the key that opens the door in its wall.
It is a distracting room. It is meant to be.
The potential keeper is brought to the room and asked to sit.
(Most choose the chair facing the door. Those who choose to face away from the door almost always perform better.)
They are left alone for anywhere from a few minutes to an hour.
Then someone enters the room and sits in the chair opposite them.
And then they tell their story.
They may tell their story however they wish. They may not leave the room and they may not bring anything but themselves into it. No props, no paper to read from.
They do not have to remain in their chair, though their singular audience must.
Some will sit and recite, allowing their voice to do the work.
More animated storytelling can involve anything from standing on the chair to pacing the room.
A potential keeper once stood, walked around to the back of her audience’s chair, leaned in, and whispered the entire story into their ear.
One sang his story, a long, involved tale that moved from sweet and soft and melodic to howling pain and back again.
Another, using her own chair for assistance, extinguished each candle as her story progressed, finishing the terrifying tale in darkness.
When the story is complete the audience departs.
The potential keeper remains alone in the room for anywhere from a few minutes to an hour.
A keeper will come to them then. Some will be thanked for their work and their service and dismissed.
For the rest, the keeper will ask the potential keeper to choose a key from the wall. Any key they please.
The keys are not labeled. The choice is made by feel, by instinct, or by fancy.
The key is accepted and the potential keeper returns to their seat. They are blindfolded.
Their chosen key is taken and heated in flame and then it is pressed into the new keeper’s chest. Creating a scarred impression approximately where it might have lain if they had worn it on a chain around their neck.
In the darkness the keeper will see themselves inside the room their chosen key unlocks. And as the sharpness of the pain fades they will begin to see all the rooms. All the doors. All the keys. All the things they keep.