Those who seek will find. Their doors have been waiting for them.
Welcome, reader of stories. You’re invited to be somewhere else for a while.
To begin, select your experience from the options below.
Far beneath the surface of the earth, hidden from the sun and the moon, upon the shores of the Starless Sea, there is a labyrinthine collection of tunnels and rooms filled with stories. Stories written in books and sealed in jars and painted on walls. Odes inscribed onto skin and pressed into rose petals. Tales laid in tiles upon the floors, bits of plot worn away by passing feet. Legends carved in crystal and hung from chandeliers. Stories catalogued and cared for and revered. Old stories preserved while new stories spring up around them.
The place is sprawling yet intimate. It is difficult to measure its breadth. Halls fold into rooms or galleries and stairs twist downward or upward to alcoves or arcades. Everywhere there are doors leading to new spaces and new stories and new secrets to be discovered and everywhere there are books.
Here you are waiting for something to begin. The day has just begun and you have just arrived. You listen, carefully, for instructions.
First, pick up a book. Perhaps it contains stories within stories beneath a cover emblazoned with a golden bee, its pages crisp and newly printed. At first glance, it may appear no different from many books you have held before. Its importance is not known to you.
Not yet.
With the book heavy in your hand, consider for a moment whether you should settle comfortably in a seat or stand in anticipation of what is to come. The decision is yours to make. In this moment, the choice might not feel significant, but choices always change things. Though Fate may guide your story, she cannot define it.
Nearby there is a door, beyond which lies an impossible world of stories that you will soon discover.
There are numerous doors in varying locations. In bustling cities and remote forests. On islands and on mountaintops and in meadows. Some are built into buildings: libraries or museums or private residences, hidden in basements or attics or displayed like artwork in front parlors. Others stand freely without the assistance of supplemental architecture.
Each door will lead to a Harbour on the Starless Sea, if someone dares to open it. Little distinguishes them from regular doors. Some are simple. Others are elaborately decorated. Most have doorknobs waiting to be turned though others have handles to be pulled.
These doors will sing. Silent siren songs for those who seek what lies behind them. For those who feel homesick for a place they’ve never been to. Those who seek even if they do not know what (or where) it is that they are seeking. Those who seek will find. Their doors have been waiting for them. But what happens next will vary.
Sometimes, someone finds a door and opens it and peers inside only to close it again. Others when faced with a door will leave it undisturbed, even if their curiosity is piqued. They think they need permission. They believe the door awaits someone else, even if it is in fact waiting for them. Some will find a door and open it and pass through to see where it leads.
You hold the book. You wonder about the meaning of the story you heard, and your own place within it. Perhaps you wonder, too, if you are given to such fancy, whether this is a story about a door, a sea, or yourself. Or all three at once.
Before one can enter the Starless Sea, the traveler must choose their path through the stories there, there are many paths but only you can choose yours.
Three symbols shine before you: a bee, a key and a sword. One of the symbols calls to you. Without hesitation, choose your path.
There are three paths. This is one of them.
You look around and notice the words, not for the first time but now in a way that you cannot ignore. There are words that tell tales, fables, myths and legends. Of crowns and owls, knights and broken hearts. But beyond the words committed to paper, more stories buzz in and out. The stories of a place are not easily contained.
To accept the bee is to choose to devote oneself to this space, to this temple of stories. To untangling the hum around you, transcribing the stories on scrolls and parchment to calm the noise. To follow this path is to take an unspoken vow to no longer tell your own stories, in reverence to the ones that came before and to the ones who shall follow.
Your ears awaken.
Then the stories begin to come.
There are three paths. This is one of them.
Every reader has a favourite story. A fairy tale, or a myth, or an anecdote about a late night and too many bottles of wine. These stories live in the memory of each reader, learnt by heart and recalled so intimately it is as if they had lived it themselves.
Those readers choosing a key can recite their stories without error. You can conjure hope from the stuttering flame of a single candle, or fear from a handful of dust. You live the spirit of your tale; your heartbeat is the rhythm of poetry and the cadence of speech. Your calling lives in your veins, buzzes in your blood. You understand why stories matter.
There are three paths. This is one of them.
Paper is fragile, even when bound with string in cloth or leather. There are stories that are more fragile still: for every tale carved in rock there are more inscribed on autumn leaves or woven into spiderwebs. There are those who would see those stories fall to dust, and there are those who would give their lives to defend them.
Unbeknownst to you, your actions have been scrutinised for years. Your every move, every choice marked by unseen judges. You were being tested. Everything that has gone before has led you here, now, and guided your attention to a sword on a screen.
Your calling is to defend the stories, to serve as the guardian of the tales at all costs.
Once there was a woman who sculpted stories.
She sculpted them from all manner of things. At first she worked with snow or smoke or clouds, because their stories were temporary, fleeting. Gone in moments, visible and readable only to those who happened to be present in the time between carving and disintegrating, but the sculptor preferred this. It left no time to fuss over details or imperfections. The stories did not remain to be questioned and criticized and secondguessed, by herself or by others. They were, and then they were not. Many were never read before they ceased to exist, but the story sculptor remembered them.
Passionate love stories that were manipulated into the vacancies between raindrops and vanished with the end of the storm.
Tragedies intricately poured from bottles of wine and sipped thoughtfully with melancholy and fine cheeses. Fairy tales shaped from sand and seashells on shorelines slowly swept away by softly lapping waves.
The sculptor gained recognition and drew crowds for her stories, attended like theatrical performances as they were carved and then melted or crumbled or drifted away on the breeze. She worked with light and shadow and ice and fire and once sculpted a story out of single strands of hair, one plucked from each member of her audience and then woven together. People begged her to sculpt with more permanence. Museums requested exhibitions that might last more than minutes or hours.
The sculptor conceded, gradually.
She sculpted stories out of wax and set them over warm coals so they would melt and drip and fade. She organized willing participants into arrangements of tangled limbs and twined bodies that would last as long as their living pieces could manage, the story changing from each angle viewed and then changing more as the models fatigued, hands slipping over thighs in unsubtle plot twists.
She knit myths from wool small enough to keep in pockets though when read with too much frequency they would unravel and tangle.
She trained bees to build honeycombs on intricate frames forming entire cities with sweet inhabitants and bitter dramas.
She sculpted stories with carefully cultivated trees, stories that continued to grow and unfold long after they were abandoned to control their own narratives.
Still people begged for stories they could keep.
The sculptor experimented. She constructed metal lanterns with tiny hand cranks that could be turned to project tales on walls when a candle was placed within them. She studied with a clockmaker for a time and built serials that could be carried like pocket watches and wound, though sometimes their springs would wear out.
She found she no longer minded that the stories would linger. That some enjoyed them and others did not but that is the nature of a story. Not all stories speak to all listeners, but all listeners can find a story that does, somewhere, sometime. In one form or another.
Once there was a merchant who traveled far and wide, selling stars.
This merchant sold all manner of stars. Fallen stars and lost stars and vials of stardust. Delicate pieces of stars strung on fine chains to be worn around necks and spectacular specimens fit to display under glass. Fragments of stars were procured to be given as gifts for lovers. Stardust was purchased to sprinkle at sacred sites or to bake into cakes for spells.
The stars in the merchant’s inventory were carried from place to place in a large sack embroidered with constellations.
The prices for the merchant’s wares were high but often negotiable. Stars could be acquired in exchange for coins or favors or secrets, saved by wishful dreamers in hopes that the star merchant might cross their path.
Occasionally the star merchant traded stars for accommodations or transport while traveling from place to place. Stars were traded for nights spent in inns with company or without.
One dark night on the road, the star merchant stopped at a tavern to while away the time before the sun returned. The merchant sat by the fire drinking wine and struck up a conversation with a traveler who was also staying the night at the tavern, though their paths would take them in different directions come morning.
“To Seeking,” the star merchant said as their wine was refilled.
“To Finding,” came the traditional response. “What is it that you sell?” the traveler asked, tilting a cup toward the constellation covered sack. This was a topic they had not yet discussed.
“Stars,” the star merchant answered. “Would you care to peruse? I shall offer you a discount for being good company. I might even show you the pieces I keep in reserve for distinguished customers.”
“I do not care for stars,” the traveler said.
The merchant laughed. “Everyone wants the stars. Everyone wishes to grasp that which exists out of reach. To hold the extraordinary in their hands and keep the remarkable in their pockets.”
There was a pause here, filled by the crackling of the fire.
“Let me tell you a story,” the traveler said, after the pause.
The sword was the greatest the smith had ever made after years of making the most exquisite swords in all the land. He had not spent an inordinate amount of time on its crafting, he had not used the finest of materials, but still this sword was a weapon of a caliber that exceeded his expectations.
It was not made for a particular customer and the smith found himself at a loss as he tried to decide what to do with it. He could keep it for himself but he was better at crafting swords than at using them. He was reluctant to sell it, though he knew it would fetch a good price.
The swordsmith did what he always did when he felt indecisive, he paid a visit to the local seer.
There were many seers in neighboring lands who were blind and saw in ways that others could not though they could not use their eyes.
The local seer was merely nearsighted.
The local seer was often found at the tavern, at a secluded table in the back of the room, and he would tell the futures of objects or people if he was bought a drink.
(He was better at seeing the futures of objects than the futures of people.)
The sword smith and the seer had been great friends for years. Sometimes he would ask the seer to read swords.
He went to the tavern and brought the new sword. He bought the seer a drink.
“To Seeking,” the seer said, lifting his cup.
“To Finding,” the sword smith replied, lifting his drink in return.
They talked of current events and politics and the weather before the smith showed him the sword.
The seer looked at the sword for a long time. He asked the smith for another drink and the smith obliged.
The seer finished his second drink and then handed the sword back.
“This sword will kill the king,” the seer told the smith.
“What does that mean?” the smith asked.
The seer shrugged.
“It will kill the king,” he repeated. He said no more about it.
The smith put the sword away and they discussed other matters for the rest of the night.
The next day the sword smith tried to decide what to do with the sword, knowing that the seer was rarely wrong. Being responsible for the weapon that killed the king did not sit well with the sword smith, though he had previously made many swords that had killed many people.
He thought he should destroy it but he could not bring himself to destroy so fine a sword.
After much thought and consideration he crafted two additional swords, identical and indistinguishable from the first. Even the sword smith himself could not tell them apart.
As he worked he received many offers from customers who wished to purchase them but he refused.
Instead the sword smith gave one sword to each of his three children, not knowing who would receive the one that would kill the king, and he gave it no more thought because none of his children would do such a thing, and if any of the swords fell into other hands the matter was left to fate and time and Fate and Time can kill as many kings as they please, and will eventually kill them all.
The sword smith told no one what the seer had said, lived all his days and kept his secret until his days were gone.
Reader of stories, your time here is almost over. And while you have reached the end for now, more stories are hidden, waiting to be discovered, folded up into stars or lying quietly between hard covers. The door, not this door, but another, as yet unknown to you, is ready to be opened.
Our lives are a series of choices. The choices you made on this ordinary Monday may seem small at first, but they will lead you into a new world, bursting with opportunity and aching to be explored.
Sometimes, someone finds a door and opens it and peers inside only to close it again. Others when faced with a door will leave it undisturbed, even if their curiosity is piqued. They think they need permission. They believe the door awaits someone else, even if it is, in fact, waiting for them. Some will find a door and open it and pass through to see where it leads.
Your door to the Starless Sea is waiting and a final question remains.
Are you ready to open it?
The journey continues in
Words by Erin Morgenstern, Tom Abba and Josh Connor
Voice acting by Rema Mukena
Technical production by Josh Connor
An Ambient Literature Lab production on behalf of Vintage Books
