Chapter 193

I examined the box where it sat on my desk.

It was small - maybe two inches wide, four inches long, and an inch deep. About the size of a jewelry box meant for a bracelet. One corner had been crushed inward as though it had been dropped at some point. Another side bulged slightly, like someone had sat on it years ago and forgotten about it.

The gray parchment wrapped around it had yellowed with age, mottled with brown stains whose origins I didn't particularly want to speculate about. My name was written across the front in neat, careful script. The whole thing was tied together with rough twine, giving it the appearance of a cheap gift that had been forgotten in the back of a closet.

Something shifted faintly inside when I shook it.

If the bartender had been telling the truth, the package had been delivered nine or ten years ago.

That predated my arrival in Annwn.

Maybe he'd gotten the timing wrong. Maybe it had been delivered shortly after I arrived.

Either way, the question remained - how had they known I would eventually end up there? And how had they known I'd “cause trouble?”

A prophetic vision was possible. Mirri had experienced them before, and hers tended to be unnervingly clear. Grams had as well. Voretta's visions were different - symbolic, chaotic things - convenience over clarity, as she put it.

The paranoid corner of my mind offered a different explanation.

Maybe someone had been arranging pieces behind the scenes. Nudging events. Guiding people into place. Making sure I danced to a song I couldn't hear.

It wasn't impossible.

Jackob had been lured to Crownreach. Following up on that lead had inevitably brought me to the Queen's Cup.

But that explanation only led to more questions.

When I first arrived in Annwn, Jackob had been little more than a tour guide looking after Saint Aldric's ancestral home. Saint Aldric being a hero of the War of Falling Stars who wielded Adhaneth for a time and had withstood Yveth’s sorrow.

He and I didn’t become friends until months later. There was no reasonable way for someone to predict that. At least, there shouldn't have been.

If whoever orchestrated this knew about Jackob, how much else had they known? Did they know about Adhaneth? If they knew about Adhaneth, did they put Mirri in my path? We'd only traveled to Ashhorn because it was on our way to Reedwatch and Mirri wanted to introduce me to Grams.

Back then, Hek had nearly killed us. Serah had saved our lives and destroyed Saint Aldric's house in the process. I hadn't seen Jackob again for months afterward.

The deeper I dug into the idea, the more absurd it became. There were simply too many moving parts. Too many coincidences that would have needed to align perfectly.

The universe wasn't a stage play. Probably.

With a sigh, I untied the twine and carefully peeled away the wrapping. Then I opened the box.

A key rested inside.

Or rather, a key had been forced inside. It was just slightly too large for the box, wedged in at an angle.

The metal was tarnished silver. One end had been shaped into a delicate crescent moon. The teeth sat on the wrong side, giving the entire thing a strange, backwards appearance.

And it glowed faintly with Faith.

Lunythera.

I was almost certain of it.

What confused me more was the wrapping. I couldn't see the key's Faith through the parchment. Normal parchment didn't do that. As far as I knew, nothing did.

Curiosity eventually got the better of me, so I gathered my women and showed them what I'd found.

“No note?” Mirri asked.

“Nope.” I held up the key. “Nothing hidden in the wrapping. Nothing in the box. No secret compartments. Just the key.”

Elise took the parchment from me and examined it closely. “Greybark paper,” she said.

“The stuff blocks Faith?” I'd never heard of it before.

“I do not know,” Elise admitted. “But I recognize it. Greybark paper is made from the bark of the greybark tree. It grows in the desert.” She ran her fingers across the brittle sheet. “It is rare. Durable. Difficult to smudge. Difficult to burn. I have never heard of it blocking Faith, but Faith itself is poorly understood.”

A hint of irritation entered her voice. “The gods do not generally permit mortals to study them.”

“It does,” Serah said.

Everyone looked at her.

She shrugged. “Not perfectly. But better than most materials.”

“You've seen it before?”

She nodded. “The gods occasionally use it when they wish to conceal small objects imbued with Faith. Charms. Tokens. Gifts.”

That was interesting. And mildly concerning.

“Alright. Good to know.” I looked around the room. “Anyone else have anything?”

Ashlara shook her head. Mirri did the same.

“Nope.”

I slipped the key back into its box. “Then I'm heading over to Grams' place to look through her father’s journals.”

* * *

I sat cross-legged on the floor of Grams' living room with a battered wooden trunk open between us.

“This is what I’ve got left of my da,” she said. “Only other thing is the thunder spear.”

“I don’t think we’ll need that,” I said.

The trunk was packed with a lifetime's worth of memories. Dozens of journals. Old clothes. Sketchbooks. Odds and ends collected across half a continent.

I looked up at her. “What do you remember about him?”

A smile softened her weathered features. “The sound of his voice.”

She settled into her chair. “He laughed a lot. Sang horribly. Talked to animals, plants, rocks. Claimed they talked back sometimes.”

She grinned. “He told me stories every night. Taught me how to whistle through a blade of grass.” Her expression grew distant. “He hugged me constantly. Put me on his shoulders even when I was nine years old. Just scooped me up like I weighed nothing. Held my hand every chance he got.”

I smiled.

“He drew all the time. Everything. Anything. Sometimes he'd disappear for days. Maybe a week.” She shrugged. “When he came back he'd always bring me something. Shells from the coast. Flowers from the desert. Dwarven coins. Little treasures.”

Her smile softened. “He wanted me to know he was thinking about me.”

For a moment neither of us spoke.

Then she chuckled. “I remember my ma complaining about Lunythera.”

Grams adopted a grumbling voice. “She’d say ‘If she keeps stealing my husband for midnight adventures, she can help weed the garden.’ and ‘tell your moon friend she still owes me a basket.’”

I laughed. “She was annoyed?”

“Seemed like it.” Grams shrugged. “Not jealous. Just annoyed.” Her expression dimmed slightly. “But she was heartbroken when he disappeared.”

I nodded. “He sounds a little like my dad.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.” I smiled despite myself. “Worst jokes imaginable. The kind that made no sense.” I laughed. “Like there was a man born with a golden bolt in his bellybutton.”

Grams frowned. “That can't be healthy.”

“It gets worse.” I continued. “One day he goes to the doctor and asks to have it removed. Doctor says sure, takes him into surgery, and removes the bolt.”

She leaned forward.

“The man wakes up in recovery, sees the bolt is gone, thanks the doctor profusely, gets up to leave…” I paused dramatically. “…and his butt falls off.”

Silence. Grams stared at me.

I stared back.

Several long seconds passed.

Then her face split into a grin. “H-his butt fell off?” She started laughing. Not a chuckle. Not a giggle. Full-bodied, helpless laughter. “He took out the bolt and his butt fell off!”

Now I was laughing too. Partly because the joke was stupid. Mostly because her laughter was contagious.

Within moments we were both wiping tears from our eyes. Every time one of us started getting control of ourselves, the other would lose it again. It took nearly half an hour before either of us could breathe normally.

“Holy Mother Matron,” Grams wheezed. “That's the dumbest joke I've ever heard.” She shook her head. “Makes me wonder if our fathers were related.”

I shrugged. “Who knows? Maybe they were.”

The joke died instantly.

Grams blinked. Then sat upright. “Where was your da from?”

“New Jersey,” I said. “My mother's from New York.”

Her brow furrowed. “What happened to the old Jersey and old York?”

I laughed. “My people aren't very imaginative. Way back, there was a place called England. That's where York and Jersey were. Then a bunch of people crossed an ocean to settle somewhere new.”

I spread my hands. “When they got there, they started naming things after places they missed. So they made a New York and a New Jersey, and the names just stuck.”

“Is that anywhere near a place called Organ?”

I smiled. “Oregon.”

“That's what I said.”

I chuckled. “No, you said Organ.”

“Close enough.”

“It really isn't,” I replied.

She threw a cushion at my head.

I caught it. “Oregon's on the other side of the continent. About three thousand miles away. I went there once. It was really nice. Pretty.”

Her eyes widened. “You did? Why? How long did the trip take?”

“I went there for work once. It took about eight hours.”

The cushion hit me before I finished speaking.

I lowered it from my face. “What was that for?”

“I expected a real answer, whey-brain,” she spat

“It is a real answer.”

“Don't lie to your elders.”

I pointed at her. “One, you're like seven years older than me.”

“Still your elder!”

“And two, it took about eight hours.”

She crossed her arms.

I sighed. “I took a plane. They fly at, like, five hundred miles per hour”

Her eyes narrowed. “Sure they do.”

“You know those folded paper birds your da taught you to make? Where I'm from they're called paper airplanes because they're shaped like airplanes and use the same basic principles to fly.”

I stuck my tongue out at her.

She threw another pillow.

* * *

The journals were packed with drawings.

Drawings of the people of Pinefall - many of the women topless, as goblin tradition dictated. Drawings of Grams' mother, most of them nude. Judging by the sketches, she had been beautiful. There were portraits of Grams from infancy through her pre-teen years. Landscapes. Rivers. Wildlife. Plants carefully rendered with an artist's patience and an explorer's curiosity.

And then there were pages that made no sense at all.

A mushroom wearing spectacles with the caption - ‘This mushroom understands taxes’. An entire page devoted to doors of every conceivable shape and size. Another filled with nothing but eyes. Yet another contained sketches of keys - ornate keys, simple keys, keys that looked entirely impractical.

Mixed among the journals were odds and ends from another world. Two one-dollar bills. A handful of coins. An old Zippo lighter rusted nearly beyond recognition. A cracked pair of sunglasses. A peace sign made from cheap metal. And a faded ticket stub for a Peter, Paul, and Mary concert.

Near the bottom of the trunk, I found several old Arvellian coins.

I paused.

A king stared back at me from one side. A castle adorned the other.

“Hey, Grams. Any idea how old these are?”

She glanced over. “Dunno. Hundred years maybe? That's the current queen's great-grandfather.”

“Why would he have coins that old?”

She shrugged. “They would've only been forty or fifty years old when he got 'em. That's not that strange.”

“Right.” I wasn't entirely convinced.

Beneath the coins sat several packets of letters tied together with ribbon.

“Da wrote constantly,” Grams said. “Even when he wasn't going anywhere.”

I opened one bundle.

“He'd leave letters under Ma's pillow. Sometimes at the dinner table where I sat. Sometimes tucked into books.” She smiled fondly. “He just liked writing.”

There was also a journal devoted entirely to pressed flowers. Each specimen had been carefully preserved alongside notes.

One page contained a spray of purple-blue blossoms.

• Mountain Lupine
• Found above Pinefall.
• Kes says these only grow where the mountain remembers being touched by lightning.
• I asked how she knew.
• She said she asked the mountain.
• Couldn't tell if she was joking.

Another held a pink rose.

• Mountain Rose
• From my wife.
• First time she kissed me.
• Nearly forgot my own name.

A third displayed a delicate blue flower beside a child's drawing.

• Harebell
• Rosi says this is me.
• Apparently I have six fingers and a tail.
• Art criticism seems unnecessary.

“Is this one yours?” I asked.

Grams leaned over and laughed. “Yeah.” She pointed at the drawing. “I got ahold of one of his journals and wanted to draw like him. I was always a shit artist.”

“You were a kid,” I countered

“I was a shit artist kid.”

I shook my head. “You're too hard on yourself.”

“I'm exactly hard enough on myself.”

At the very bottom of the trunk sat a small wooden box roughly the size of a cigar case. When I opened it, I found it full of keys. Dozens of them.

“What is all this?”

Grams chuckled. “Da collected keys.”

“Why?”

“No clue. Weird, right?”

I picked one up.

Heavy iron. Rusted. Its teeth resembled castle battlements. The tag attached to it read - Found in a lockbox. Box was unlocked.

Another appeared to be carved from ivory or bone. Its label read - Sings when the moon is full. Or maybe that's the dreamcaps.

A third was copper-green with age. Leaves curled around the bow. ‘Found hanging from a tree branch. Nobody knows who put it there. Including the tree.’

There were dozens more. Old. Corroded. Strange.

Then I found one that made my stomach tighten.

Tarnished silver. A bow shaped like a gibbous moon. Teeth positioned on the wrong side. The tag simply read - Moon

“Grams?”

“Yeah?” She looked over. “Oh. The moon key.”

I slowly reached into my pocket and withdrew the key I'd received earlier that day.

Her eyes widened. “Where the fuck did you get that?”

I ignored the question for a moment and carefully slid the two keys together. They clicked. The two halves became one - a complete moon. Teeth protruded from both sides of the shaft.

For several seconds neither of us spoke.

Then Grams repeated herself. “Where the fuck did you get that?”

“Crownreach.” I turned the completed key over in my hands. “Someone left it for me ten years ago.”

“Wait.” She blinked. “What?”

“That's what I'd like to know.” I stared at the key. “Why would someone give me the other half of your father's moon key?”

“Who gave it to you?”

“No idea. Apparently some woman in a blue dress. The bartender didn't know much and remembered even less.”

Grams' brow furrowed. “What bartender?”

“The one at the Queen's Cup.”

She nearly jumped out of her chair. “Holy shit.”

“What?”

“My da used to tell a story about the Queen's Cup.”

My brow rose. “Yeah? What story?”

She tapped her lip thoughtfully. “I might butcher it. Been a long time.”

“Once upon a time there was a rabbit who collected stories. One day the rabbit heard a rumor that a star had fallen in the desert and buried itself beneath the sand. Most folk agreed this was nonsense. Stars belonged in the sky.”

“But the rabbit was not a sensible fellow. So he packed a lunch and went looking. After many days he arrived at an inn called The Queen's Cup, where travelers traded stories for supper.”

“There he met a crow with one silver feather. The crow told him, ‘Wait by the back gate after sunset. If you're lucky, somebody might tell you where the star landed.’ So the rabbit waited. And waited. And waited some more.”

“Finally a fox arrived carrying a lantern. The fox never gave her name. The rabbit asked where the fallen star was. The fox said ‘I could tell you. But then you'd stop looking.’”

“The rabbit thought this was a stupid answer. The fox agreed. Then she handed him a key. The rabbit asked, ‘What does it open?’ The fox replied, ‘The wrong door.’ The rabbit asked, ‘Then why would I want it?’ The fox smiled. ‘Because it's the right key.’”

“The rabbit stared at the key for a long time. When he looked up, the fox was gone. The rabbit searched the desert for years trying to find the lock, but he never did. Instead he found many interesting things along the way. And eventually he decided that maybe the fox had been right all along.”

When she finished, silence settled between us.

I rubbed a hand across my face. “The rabbit is your father.”

Grams blinked. “He is?”

“Yeah.” I pointed at the key. “And the Queen's Cup is real. People use it as a meeting place.” I stared at the joined halves. “Which means the fox might have been real too.”

A thought struck me. “Did someone give your father this key?”

Grams shrugged. “Maybe?”

“And what was the star?”

Neither of us had an answer.

I looked down at the journals filling the room. At the flowers. The maps. The drawings. The notes. The keys.

Somewhere in this mess was a trail. James had left it decades ago. The question was whether he'd meant anyone to find it.

With that thought in mind, I opened the first journal and began reading in earnest.