And Dorian is gone.
Behind him, what had been an open door moments before is now a wall of solid rock. Zachary bangs his hands against it, leaving metallic smudges of gold paint on smooth, dark stone.
“Dorian!” he calls but the only response is his own voice echoing around him.
When the echo fades the quiet is heavy. No rustling trees, no distant cars rushing over damp pavement.
Zachary calls out again but the echo sounds halfhearted, knowing that somehow no one can hear him, not here. Wherever here is.
He turns from the gold-smudged wall and looks around. He stands on a stretch of rock in a space that looks like a cave. A spiral stair is carved into the round space leading downward and somewhere below something is casting a soft, warm light upward, like firelight but steadier.
Zachary moves away from the space where the door had been and walks slowly down the stairs, leaving a trail of gold paint along the stone.
At the bottom of the stairs, seamlessly fitted into the solid rock, is a pair of golden doors flanked with hanging lanterns suspended from chains that is undoubtedly an elevator. It is covered in elaborate patterns including a bee, a key, and a sword aligned along the center seam.
Zachary puts out his hand to touch it, half expecting it to be a clever illusion like the painted doors but the elevator is cool and metal, the designs embossed and clearly defined beneath his fingertips.
This is a significant moment, he thinks, hearing the words in his head in his mother’s voice. A moment with meaning. A moment that changes the moments that follow.
It feels like the elevator is watching him. To see what he will do.
Sweet Sorrows never mentioned an elevator.
He wonders what else Sweet Sorrows never mentioned.
He wonders what has happened to Dorian.
On the side, beneath one of the lanterns, is a single unmarked hexagonal button surrounded by gold filigree and set into the rock like a jewel.
Zachary presses it and it comes alight with a soft glow.
A loud, low rumble starts from somewhere below, growing louder and stronger. Zachary takes a step backward. The lanterns shudder on their chains.
Abruptly, the noise stops.
The button light extinguishes itself.
A soft chime sounds from
behind the doors.
Then the bee and the key and the sword split down the center as the elevator opens.
The pirate tells the girl not the single story she requested but many stories. Stories that fold into other stories and wander into snippets of lost myths and forgotten tales and yet to be told wonderments that turn back around again into each other until they return to two people facing each other through iron bars, a storyteller and a story listener with no more whispered words left between them.
The post-story silence is heavy and long.
“Thank you,” the girl says softly.
The pirate accepts her thanks with a silent nod.
It is almost dawn.
The pirate untangles his fingers from the girl’s hair. The girl steps back from the bars.
She places a hand over her chest and gives the pirate a low, graceful bow.
The pirate mirrors the gesture, the bowed head, the hand near his heart, the formal acknowledgment that their dance has ended.