Night 6: “A Key to Eternity”
Keys are inherently sentimental.
They are sentimental because they unlock something and that something must be sentimental too if it is worth locking away.
Who knows what lovely and golden talismans or knick-knacks have wound their way through someone’s life like the threads that weave together two sides of a torn cloth — bridging them, holding them?
Some threads are more valuable, yes, and others less so. And a key, a key is like the needle that can unwind as well as join these threads.
A key is often as cherished as the items it protects: when a Rottweiler or Minotaur is too bulky or loud the finesse of a simple key, with its long neck and jagged teeth, shoulders their duty.
You also cannot wear a guard dog or a Minotaur around your neck; I, however, have a filigree string around mine and tied to it hanging down to my collarbone, is a key.
This key. Any key. They protect one’s valuables but they also describe one’s entire life. Observe:
The key around my neck is golden and as long as my ring finger.
It is ancient by its very feel.
It is very thin. It is so thin it looks fragile because of its length but it is not fragile. It is scraped and scuffed.
It is well-worn.
But despite these obvious fingerprints of time it is not rusted. Therefore it is often used and not often left to molder in some damp forgotten drawer.
It smells of sweat and brass.
It feels quite heavy when it is held, and one assumes that the lock that is sister to the key is likewise similar in look, feel and state.
The owner, too, is well worn with time. You can tell by the excessive use of the key that he has been unlocking his memories often and, most likely, recently.
The ancient feel from this key also comes from him: an old man, with deep lines around his eyes and mouth, his hair thin and sparse upon his scalp, his body frail but like the key defiant and unbent.
His clutch is like a vice.
His past is like a dream which fades upon waking.
The impressions and markings on the key describe this.
I have the ability to deduce these simple facts; as a thief it is my job.
This key of course is not my own.
I am standing in his house.
The old man isn’t here. I have been searching for the lock that will open to this key that I have stolen from him. The lock that belongs to this key is somewhere in this room. After hours of searching this is the last room to explore.
There is however not much worth exploring. In fact in this room there is nothing. It is barren.
On one side of the room is the door, closed to within a crack.
On its opposite side is a window where the moonlight pries in: my source of illumination in this witchly hour.
But still the lock must be in this room. It can be nowhere else. I have looked everywhere but here.
Perhaps the lock is for a small chest hidden within a secret nook disguised within these walls?
With fingers deftly crawling I feel along the wood for a misplaced crack.
A jutting edge.
An uneven gap.
A slight, quiet knock — thump thump — every few feet assures me that no, there is no such hollow within the walls. The same goes for the uncarpeted floorboards.
By now my fingers are chalked with dust. My clothes smell of something dry and dingy and stale.
Unlike the rest of the house which holds moving boxes and rolls of plastic for covering unsold furniture, this place hasn’t been touched for some time.
I will leave obvious marks in the dust when I depart.
No matter.
If they are noted I will be long gone before they are.
It was on the last wall – the wall with the window gatekeeping the cold moonlight into the room – that I found it.
I found the lock at last!
It was securing the latch that opens the window.
No, I thought, How was this possible?
An old and ancient key like this, the embodiment of hidden loot ripe for taking, merely used for securing a window?
It could not be.
It did not fit my deductions.
The wear along its head, the scrapes along its neck, the slight chipping along its teeth – the key has been used often, but this room has been used not at all.
It could not be, I kept thinking.
I took off the key and easily stuck it into the lock.
With a faint clink! the lock opened.
I looked at the lock then made to put it back. It was frustrating. My hopes had been high but a dud was a dud. Who knows why the old man had put this here.
But I saw something.
Oh?
Oh yes.
I opened the window.
It yawned outwards.
A breeze lifted my damp hair from my brow.
The snowy backyard was undented below and the clear twinkling sky was clear above.
I looked down and I saw an object on the window’s sill.
It was a box.
Small.
Square.
There were fairies painted dancing along its carven surface.
A jewellery box.
I held the box up before me. I turned it around and around and examined it. It was handmade and looked like he had made if for a daughter or a granddaughter.
Then I opened the latch and I lifted the –
Push!!
“Oomph!”
I felt myself falling forwards. The window was wide and I couldn’t control my body as I went through.
I fell over the window’s sill and I was falling and I was falling and then I was looking up from the snow in the old man’s back lawn.
The window two levels above loomed like a hollow, judgmental eye that looked coldly down upon me.
I could no longer feel my body.
I gasped and choked and twitched my hands and feet.
I heard music coming from above me. There was a man’s shadow staring down from the window. He was holding the box. I had dropped the box and he had opened it and its music chimed down to me and sounded sweet, lovely, and foul to my dying ears.
The old man stood there and leaned forward into the moonlight and I saw his face in the moonlight, opaque with dark eyes malicious. He was looking down on me with a smile.
“But I killed you,” I tried crying out to the old man. Nothing came out from my numb throat but gurgles.
“But I killed you! But I killed you! But I killed you!”
His smile was sentimental.
The Compendium 