The Ten Thousand Doors of January - Alix E. Harrow Page 0,100
Have you ever even seen a second-class ticket?” I didn’t say anything, damningly, but merely glared. “We’ll be sleeping in the woods and begging rides, so adjust your expectations accordingly.”
I couldn’t think of an especially clever reply, so I switched subjects. “I’m not convinced we should even go to this Arcadia place. My father disappeared in Japan, if you recall, and we ought to go look for him, at least—”
But Jane was shaking her head tiredly. “They’ll be expecting that above all. Maybe someday, after some time has passed, when it’s safer.”
To hell with safer. “Maybe—maybe we could go to Mr. Locke for help.” Samuel and Jane both emitted sounds somewhere between disbelief and outrage. I forged on, shoulders squared. “I know, I know—but look: I don’t think he wanted me or my father hurt or dead. He just wanted to get a little richer and have a few more rare objects to stick in display cases. He might not even know about the Society closing the Doors, or maybe he doesn’t care—and he loved me, I think. At least a little. He could help us hide, lend us some money, get us to Japan…” I trailed off.
Jane’s eyes filled with something tarry and oozing: pity. It’s surprising how much pity can hurt. “You’d like to go off adventuring and save your father, like a fairy-tale hero. I understand. But you are young and penniless and homeless, and you’ve never really seen the ugly side of the world. It would swallow you whole, January.”
Beside me, Samuel said, “And if Mr. Locke was trying to protect you before, he has done a very bad job so far. I think you should run.”
I went mute, feeling my whole future twist and warp dizzyingly beneath my feet. I’d been waiting for my life to snap back to normal, as if everything that’d happened since my father’s disappearance were a movie and soon the card would say THE END and the lights would buzz back to life and I’d find myself safely back at Locke House, rereading The Rover Boys on Land and Sea.
But all that was permanently in the past, like a dragonfly preserved in amber.
Follow Jane. “All right,” I whispered, and tried not to feel like I was seven again, eternally running away. “We’ll go to Arcadia. And will you—will you stay there with me? Or go home?”
She flinched. “I have no home.” I met her eyes and found that the pity in them had curdled into something ragged and despairing. It made me think of ancient ruins or decaying tapestries, of things that have lost the thread of themselves.
She teetered for a moment on the edge of saying something further—recriminations or rebukes or regrets—then turned and left the cabin with her back very straight.
Samuel and I were quiet in her absence. My thoughts were a flock of drunk birds, ricocheting between despair (Would we both be homeless forever? Would I spend my life running?) and a childish, bubbling excitement (Arcadia! Adventure! Escape!) and the distracting warmth of Samuel’s hand still lying beside mine on the quilt.
He cleared his throat and said, not very casually, “I intend to go with you. If you allow it.”
“What—you can’t! Leave your family, your home, your, your profession—it’s far too dangerous—”
“I was never going to be a good grocer,” he interrupted mildly. “Even my mother admits it. I have always wanted something else, something bigger. Another world would do.”
I gave an exasperated half laugh. “I don’t even know where we’re going, or for how long! My future is all tangled and messy, and you can’t sign up for all that out of, of goodness or pity or—”
“January.” His voice had gone lower and more urgent, which made my heart do a funny duh-dump against my ribs. “I do not offer out of pity. I think you know this.”
I looked away, out the cabin window at the blueing evening, but it didn’t matter: I could still feel the heat of his gaze against my cheek. The banked coals had sparked and caught flame.
“Maybe,” he said slowly, “maybe I did not make myself clear before, when I said I was on your side. I meant also that I would like to be at your side, to go with you into every door and danger, to run with you into your tangled-up future. For”—and a distant part of me was gratified to note that his voice had gone wobbly and strained—“for always. If you like.”