Probably Sort-Of Safe

Chapter 3: The Keeper of Keys

The Keeper of Keys took this left, dashed around that right, turned here and hurried there, slamming doors behind him as he went. He flung himself into a dark room and used every type of displacement and locking charm that was known to him (which is to say, every displacement and locking charm in existence) to bar and vanish the portal from existence and notice.

He pressed an ear to the door.

The Dog passed, fell quiet. The Keeper of Keys panted, sucking in big gushing gasps of air. He mopped his forehead. A lucky thing. He allowed himself a moment of relief.

“Oh dear,” said a Voice from nearby. “You very nearly had us there.”

The Keeper of Keys shrieked and turned to run, but The Dog had arrived and it bore down upon him, gas-swamp eyes all aglow. Its fur was so black as to almost hid the stains from earlier meals. Almost.

The great beast brought him down to the floor. It pinned him to the ground with claws that could rend the hull of a steamship wrought in diamonds.

“Good boy,” said The Voice. “Now then, what are we ever to do with you?”

“You’ll…you’ll never get away with this!” cried The Keeper of Keys. “The…the Lady of the River! The Watcher Between Worlds! No matter what you do to me, the Order will see justice done!”

The Voice tittered in amusement. It had no origin, and was neither near nor far but simply present and clear within your mind at the moment of speech.

And it said, “My good man, I am quite aware of all the silly little cogs in your silly little Order, and I have taken quite a few provisions. And please trust, I have dealt with The Lady in her turn, just as I have dealt with The Watcher and The Red and Madame No-Face, and just as I will deal with all the others when it is their turn. But it is not their turn, my good man, it is yours. And the thing that you must keep in mind is that, even if someone else along the way does indeed manage to avenge your death, it will not change your condition, which will be death.”

The Keeper of Keys had to acknowledge that this was a not insignificant detail.

“So,” The Voice went on, “the question remains the same: What to do with you.”

He wished to be able to tremble, but feared what would happen should his skin meet the claws of The Dog.

“Sp-spare me?” he suggested

“Oh, do be serious, will you?”

“I can help you!” the pinned man pleaded.

“Ah, good, yes. I was rather hoping you would say so. It is ever so heartening to see a fellow acquiesce with such ease. The last one, well, it does not bear mentioning in polite company. Now, let us see…there’s the small matter of allowing me access to what was stolen by you miserable mystics. You know which door to which I refer. Open it up like a good chap.”

“I…I can’t do that.”

“Professional pride will get you nowhere. In fact, on this particular day, it will condemn you to spend the remainder of all eternity pinned to that spot you are in now.”

“No, I-”

“Although I suppose bits of you will go over there. And there. And perhaps a little bit over there if you struggle. I wouldn’t though. Struggle, I mean. The Dog will think you are trying to play a game and he will try to play back. His games tend to involve nerve endings. No one else much likes them. So-”

“No, I mean, I literally can’t,” The Keeper of Keys insisted. “There are rules far older than you or I. To open up that door, you’d need my brother, The Man of Locks.”

The Voice sighed with annoyance. “Fine. He was further down the list, but I suppose we can track him down next and-”

“But you can’t,” said The Keeper of Keys. “He quit. He used his abilities on himself and locked himself away. Every last bit of who he was has been shut down, by his own will. He wanders the earth with no sense of what he’s running from or to what he’s heading towards. Every time he learns something new, he locks it away and leaves the hiding place where only the wind can find it.”

“Why on any earth,” said The Voice, “would someone subject themselves to such a life?”

“That’s a longer story. We’d have to go back to Once Upon a Time times for that.”

“I am not in any rush. You certainly have no place else to be. So, out with it.”

“Well, in the old days, he did things in the opposite manner. He would lock information inside of his head, allowing him to remember every detail of every experience of every day. My brother could remember the patterns of individual snowflakes from a hundred blizzards past, and that was without even trying. All the tales and all the secrets of all the worlds were his to know and his to keep. And keep them, he did.

“Until one day, on a day I have cursed every day for years without count, he visited the Palace of the Western Wind and fell in love with the princess who lived there, the daughter of the Western Wind.

“Hoping to impress her, he told her his every secret. He told her the names of things which should be best left unnamed. He described what he had heard when listening to the voices which were meant to stay silent.

“He told her all this in the hope that one of his secrets would impress her so much that her heart would open up into love and she would cast off the trappings of royalty and join him in the life of the road which he held so dear, for even then he loved the endless travel.

“The princess begged him to stop telling her these secrets. She knew that there was no secret that would win her heart, because it had already been won. It had belonged to my brother from the moment she had first seen him cross the garden. But she knew that they could never be together. Those damnable rules again. She was a lady of the high court, and he was of the Order and bound to be ever vigilant against evil. No offense.

“And then…” he trailed off.

“Well?” said The Voice. “What happened next?”

“The dog is drooling in my face,” said The Keeper of Keys, “and I cannot concentrate.”

The Voice made a noise and The Dog retreated a step. The Keeper of Keys sat up and continued with his tale.

“But she did not beg him to stop too fiercely, no. Not insistently enough that he might heed her warning. For she did love him and did love seeing him and wanted nothing more than to take him in her arms and wander forever. But her father, the fearsome Western Wind, had forbidden her from ever leaving the palace. Indeed, he had promised to raise a storm that would flatten all that was and all that ever might be if she so much as set foot outside the palace walls. It was hopeless, she knew, but she could not bring herself to send away the Man she loved. She could not bear that. And she feared that, should the Man of Locks learn the truth of her situation, he would quail at the obstacles before him and flee.”

“Would he have?” asked The Voice. “Do you think your brother could have withstood the Western Wind?”

“Withstood? No. No man, be he magic or mundane, can face the Winds and tell the tale. But would he have stood? Oh yes. He would have fought for her, should she have asked him. But of course she never would have, for the same reason.

“What she did instead was wear a mask of indifference, knowing it would drive him to keep coming back, and knowing the bad ending was always coming closer, but unwilling to deviate from the course she had set.

“Alas, my brother had not thought to place the charm upon the Princess that would allow her to contain the mass of secrets and names and tales which the Man of Locks could hold so easily. This poor girl, she could feel the strain upon her mind, and knew that any given secret might be the one too many that would make her snap.”

“But for love,” said The Voice, “she persevered.”

“But for love,” The Keeper of Keys agreed, “she persevered. Until at last she could take no more. Something within her snapped. The secrets began to pour out of her lips, a rain of knowledge that she could not stem.

“Unable to stop, unable to bear the shame and the pain of it all, she flung herself from the tallest tower of the palace. They say the fall lasts so long, you can be fooled into believing that you are flying, before the ground clear all confusion and silences all dreams.”

“Ah, but I have heard this tale!” The Voice cried out. “Yes, once upon a time it was known to me. Her father, the Western Wind, he caught her before she hit the ground, correct? And the princess was saved. Right?”

The Keeper of Keys shook his head. “He did catch her,” he said. “And she did not die. But no one was saved. Her father saw her plummeting from many leagues away, and he blew a great gale which carried her high and far.

“The West Wind took to the sky with his winged court, and they quested far and they quested high, all to find the spot where she had landed. At last they found it. There was no princess awaiting them. What they found instead was her voice on the air, still reciting all the treasures which so many had sought to bury away in ancient scrolls and hidden books. The rest of her had faded like so much dust. Only her voice was left.

“And so her father, the Western Wind, he set her voice on the breeze, and let her drift away. Her voice still flows along the wind, still speaking my brother’s secrets.

“And so, for that, he keeps none.”

The Keeper of Keys, The Voice and The Dog contemplated this tale, each in their own manner.

“A nice story,” said The Voice.

“A true one,” said The Keeper of Keys.

“Woof,” said The Dog.

“But how,” supposed The Voice, “has the Man of Locks been able to fulfill his function for all these years, when he has no knowledge of how to do so?”

“Generally,” said The Keeper of Keys, “generally speaking, at least, things tend to move along by themselves without us poking our heads in. But whenever we really need his intervention, well…he’ll…”

“Yes?” said The Voice.

“Generally speaking, anyway, he just sort of…shows up.”

“He…he what?”

“He just sort of…shows up. As needed.”

“But how do you signal him?”

“We don’t.”

“But how do you alert him?”

“We don’t.”

“How,” The Voice was thick with fury, “do you get him to remember who he is?”

“We don’t!”

“Right, Dog, dinner.”

“No! Listen, I’m being completely honest with you. Whenever we get into a really bad scrap, he’ll arrive and he’ll be his old self again. Then, once we’ve settled what needs being settled, my brother will evaporate. Look…do you remember that thing with the volcano a couple years back?”

“No.”

“Oh…well. Anyway…a couple years back there was this thing with a volcano. The Ancient Hunger had awoken and the Order had to seal it back down. We had no way of doing this, and it appeared all was lost, the battle over. And then, like a flash, The Man of Locks appeared. He wove one of the most complex spells I’ve ever seen. He saved the day and the world. Several of them. But no sooner were we clear of the undead mage’s flames then all that was my brother faded away. He was once again nothing more than a doddering old fool.”

The Voice stood (metaphorically speaking) in silent contemplation of all this new information. It reached a conclusion.

“The way forward is clear then. If The Man of Locks appears in order to settle crises, then we shall simply have to manufacture one and draw him out. Keeper,” said The Voice, “you shall make all your available keys usable to the people of the world.”

“But-”

The Dog pounced. It wrapped its jaws around his throat and squeezed just enough so that The Keeper of Keys could feel the pinprick of its fangs.

“Think of it as doing all those people a favor,” said The Voice.

The Keeper of Keys let go.

A million individual *pops* rang together to form a massive, singular, POP!

The Voice made a noise and The Dog seized The Keeper of Keys by the nape of his shirt and began to march down the hallways, up to the door which they needed. The Voice was close, was always close by.

“After all,” it said, “it’d be a shame for reality to be wiped out before people really got the chance to enjoy it.”

TO BE CONTINUED