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Welcome, delicious friend. You don’t know my name, but you will. You and I will be much better acquainted, in time.
You are a Curious Archivist. You are employed by Her Enduring Majesty’s government, organizing and filing the reports of Zee-Captains from around the Neath. It’s interesting work, despite the bureaucracy. You are content with your profession.
Mostly.
There is a cat in your lodgings. It is nothing like the cat who hangs around your old friend, the Fearless Journalist. That cat is plump and sleek with stolen secrets. The cats of Fallen London are not generally pleasant creatures, but the Journalist’s cat is large and soft and does not drive too hard a bargain.
This cat is thin. Emaciated. Starving.
It eats the food you put out for it, and then the food you didn’t put out for it. It eats your dinner from the table in front of you. It eats every edible scrap in your larder. It eats your tea.
The Starveling Cat wants more.
If someone had asked you, before you had encountered this particular cat, whether it is possible for any creature to eat dreams, you would have laughed in their face. (Reports of snakes from beyond mirrors be damned. It doesn’t matter that three of the most reliable Zee-captains in the Admiralty’s employ have reported the same thing. It doesn’t make sense. It Is-Not, it Cannot-Be.)
But your dreams have been strange of late, ever since you started feeding the creature. Dim and red and hungry, with a voice whispering just beyond the edge of your hearing. You strain to catch its hollowed-out words.
“North,” it whispers. “North.”
You are a Hungry Archivist. You have recently been sacked from your position in Her Majesty’s government for misuse of confidential files. This is fine. You didn’t need the files anyway. The secrets in your dreams are so much more potent than anything those superstitious Zee-captains bring in, and you will find them and record them and bring them into the light. (The light of a candle, the seven candles that burn in the well...)
You are also hungry in a more conventional sense. You haven’t managed to find any other work since being sacked, and your money is starting to run out. You make do with what little you have saved, and resign yourself to stricter rationing.
You stop feeding the Cat. It doesn’t matter. The Cat is exactly as starving as it was before this all began.
It is not too late to stop. You could turn back. You even have a good chance of surviving.
But you won’t, will you?
Your friends are beginning to worry about you. They say things like “I haven’t seen you in a while” and “You look tired, have you been sleeping?” and occasionally “Good lord, Jon, when’s the last time you ate something?”
It’s fine. You’re fine. You don’t need their help. Not any of them: neither the Fearless Journalist nor her friend the Volatile Photographer. Not the Cheerful Publisher and not the Ardent Researcher. Neither the Stoic nor the Relentless Detective. Not even the Gentle Assistant, though he tries hardest out of all of them. He keeps coming back even after all the others have abandoned you.
You betray them, one by one. At first, it happens by accident—you didn’t know, when you whispered the terrible truth burning up your mind into the Journalist’s ear, that your nightmares would become hers as well. But now the voice in your dreams is louder, and you know what you have to do.
So you do it again. And again. And again, and again, and again. And one last time, to make seven.
The night after the Gentle Assistant flees, weeping, from your sitting room, you dream of a candle which burns not wax but innocence. When you wake, it is clutched in your hand.
You are a Starving Archivist. You have no friends. You have no allies. You have only your dreams for company. Your dreams, and a growing collection of candles.
You find them in all sorts of odd places. The first one came from your dreams, of course. The second you found in a carnival. The third you fished out of a well and all shall be well and all manner of thing shall be well—
You’ve been getting distracted frequently of late. No matter. The truth you seek is still out there, and you will find it if it’s the last thing you do.
Four, five, six. The seventh is—difficult. But seven is the number, and you have to know.
You board a ship. Is it your ship? Are you supposed to be here? You’re not sure. Only one thing is certain: a reckoning will not be postponed indefinitely. Or, indeed, much longer.
You are finally, finally heading NORTH.
The air grows cold. The zee grows empty. You run aground on an icy beach. Ahead of you, upon the Avid Horizon, there is a gate. Its color has been eaten away.
You stand on the threshold, your hand poised to knock. Now is the moment to decide. You could still, despite everything, turn back now. Your ship is not too badly damaged, and you have proven rather conclusively that starvation cannot stop you. You could go back. Your friends—well. Most of them would slam the door in your face, now. But maybe not all of them. Perhaps your Assistant would still welcome you.
But that’s not where this story is going, is it? You came all this way. You knew the consequences from the start.
You cannot tell me you mean to turn back now.
You don’t even know my name yet.
Your knuckles strike the gate.
You are—
Who were you, again?
All is well.