Zachary Ezra Rawlins

Zachary Ezra Rawlins is the son of a fortune teller, a gay graduate student, and the primary protagonist of The Starless Sea. When he is 11 years old, he finds a door to the Starless Sea, but does not enter it, not yet. He enjoys reading, gaming, and letting his (only) friend Kat coax him out of his room for cocktails (sidecar, no sugar) or dancing.

Appearance
Zachary wears square-framed glasses, and favors bulky, cable-knit sweaters. He often wears multiple layers of heavy clothes, as he is unused to the cold weather in New England. He has brown skin, described to be in a similar shade to the door painted in the alleyway behind his old house in New Orleans.

Personality
Zachary is an introvert with minor social anxiety issues, though he is shown to warm up to people once he spends some time with them. He seems to dislike standing out, and he is grateful for the anonymity provided by his mask in Zachary (5). In Interlude III, Dorian notices that he listens more than he speaks, but when he does, there is nothing awkward about it. Dorian also calls him "unexpectedly interesting", and thinks that he is capable of intensity, but not quite murder (in comparison to the characters from The Secret History).

Zachary is careful and polite, tending to err on the side of caution and safety, as is shown when he removes the barcode sticker on Sweet Sorrows, taking great care to remove it without tearing either the sticker or the book. He also follows the instructions on the note left to him by Dorian ("Bring a flower"), despite not finding any real flowers. Instead, he uses a paper one, folded from the pages of a book. This also demonstrates his ability to think on his feet and his innovation, as is remarked by Dorian in Zachary (6).

Early Life
Zachary seems to have had a fairly normal childhood, if a little turbulent. He was born in New Orleans, Louisiana, in 1990, and lived there with his mother (Madam Love Rawlins), and father. Madam Love Rawlins works as a fortune teller (a fact which young Zachary wasn't the proudest of), and owned a shop in New Orleans that the Rawlins family lived above. One day, when Zachary was 11, he was walking home from school and found a door in the alley behind the shop. On this door, there was a bee, a key, and a sword. He didn't open it.

The Rawlins family lived in New Orleans until 2004, when Zachary and his mother relocated to upstate New York after her divorce with his father. Eleven years later, Zachary is attending university in Vermont, and that is where our story begins.

Book I: Sweet Sorrows
Zachary is completing his Master's degree in Emerging Media, working on a thesis on gender and narrative in modern gaming. The story begins in January 2015, during what the students refer to as "J-Term", the time in which classes have not officially started, but they are allowed back on campus. He finds an old book, titled Sweet Sorrows, in the neglected fiction section of the school's library, and discovers three symbols hidden under the library barcode on its back: a bee, a key, and a sword. Later, when reading this book, he finds a chapter about himself, titled To deceive the eye, which describes his experience to the letter of finding the door in the alley, except for the last two sentences:

Curious about (and slightly freaked out by) this story out of his childhood, he goes down a rabbit hole investigating the symbols on the back of the book, and they lead him to a photo of a mysterious woman with a necklace bearing those same symbols: bee, key, sword. The photo is in fact taken from the website of the Algonquin Hotel Annual Literary Masquerade, a masked masquerade ball whose next event is only a few days away. Zachary buys a train ticket immediately, and borrows his friend Kat Hawkins' Princess Bride mask, since the costumes are to have a literary theme.

At first, the masquerade seems just like any other fancy party, though one that is slightly scattered in terms of dress. There are people dressed as fairies and book characters, a few people who seem dressed as famous authors (or who may just be those authors themselves), and one elegant woman dressed as Max from Where the Wild Things Are. Over the course of the evening, Zachary gets a bourbon reccomendation from a man dressed as Godot, helps a pair of girls dressed as the twins from The Shining find the local hotel cat (Matilda), and dances with the woman dressed as Max. They have a brief discussion about whether they are themselves with masks on. He admits to her that he is looking for someone (the woman with the necklace), and also the cat. She sympathizes with him, and excuses herself, but before she goes a photographer takes a picture of the two of them.

Zachary wanders around the party some more, before a hand grabs him and drags him into a hallway and begins to tell him a story, the story of how Fate fell in love with Time. When the story is finished, Zachary is returned to the party (and finds the cat), but there is a business card in his pocket. This business card has a bee stamped on the back, and a few words on the front:

He leaves the party immediately, as it is nearing 1am, and on his way out, he bumps into a tall, older woman in a silvery fur coat. She attempts to strike up a conversation with him, but he is anxious to get going, so they part ways. He arrives at the meeting spot, the lion statues of Patience & Fortitude outside the New York Public Library, where he meets Dorian. Dorian explains to him that they are being followed, that people from an organization called the Collector's Club are trying to take back Sweet Sorrows from Zachary. He met one of them on the train to Manhattan, where they planted a tracking device on him in the form of a pen, and he met one of them just minutes ago when she bumped into him outside the party and stole the book from his pocket. Thankfully, Dorian took it back, but he won't hand it over to Zachary until he does him a favour in return. In their New York headquarters, the Collector's Club have a book that Dorian wants, and Zachary is the perfect person to get it. Dorian can't get it himself, because as he puts it, "I cannot do this myself because they know me and if I set foot in that building I will never come out of it again."

Zachary does as Dorian tells him to, and escapes the Club with the book, titled Fortunes and Fables. He and Dorian rush to Central Park, where a woman named Mirabel is supposed to have painted a door for them to enter the Starless Sea with. Zachary makes it through the door, but before Dorian can get through, the door is destroyed, and Dorian is captured.

Relationships

 * Dorian - Zachary's love interest and later boyfriend. Zachary is intensely attracted to Dorian, although at first he tries not to think about it. Just after Dorian admits his feelings for Zachary, they are separated. Zachary struggles to find Dorian, and comes to terms with his feelings of love.  At the end of the story, they begin a relationship.  Zachary's mother believes that she will one day have a son-in-law, which likely refers to Dorian.
 * Madame Love Rawlins - Zachary's mother. They seem to have a close relationship, though they are never shown interacting over the course of the book. In Zachary's childhood, he was inclined to be embarrassed about his mother and her profession as a fortune-teller. Madame Love worries about her son's long absence, but has faith that he will return and find himself in the process.
 * Mirabel - To be added
 * Kat Hawkins - To be added
 * The Keeper - To be added
 * Allegra - To be added
 * Simon - To be added

Trivia

 * Zachary has never gone by 'Zach'.
 * Although his school is not named, Champlain College is the only school in Vermont that offers the degree he is completing (Master's in Emerging Media)
 * He has been in two serious relationships, though neither ended well.
 * When entering the Harbor, Zachary rolled all hearts on the dice, and his drink tasted of honey, spice, vanilla, and orange blossom (with a kick).
 * Zachary speaks French, though not well.