The First Opening

No one now living remembers who first set it down. The earliest reference survives only as a marginal note in a burnt cadastre: a coffer, an inventor’s mechanism, a reliquary, a toy that laughs when opened. Each description contradicts the last; each is certainly a copy of some earlier mislaid account.

Its name is Arcamira.

This is where the record begins. The episodes that follow are the openings already witnessed, transcribed from correspondents whose credibility we cannot vouch for and cannot dismiss.

He has appeared in every century, always the same face, always unaged.

Court records from Prague mention a jester who never laughed. A Venetian inventory lists a servant paid in questions rather than coin. A daguerreotype from 1851 shows him at the edge of a curiosity-cabinet auction, standing slightly apart from the other bidders, as though he already knew what each lot contained.

He carries the key. He does not turn it. That courtesy is left, as it has always been left, to whoever the coffer decides upon next.