The Ten Thousand Doors of January - Alix E. Harrow Page 0,104
no door on the outside. My heart shivered in my chest.
The Door was old-looking, even older than the lighthouse decomposing around it, built of lashed-together driftwood and strips of curving ivory. A faint breeze whistled through the gaps, carrying a hot, dry smell like hayfields in the August sun.
Jane tugged the whalebone handle and it flowed smoothly toward her, oiled and silent. She looked back at us, flashed her gap-toothed grin, and stepped into the black.
I rested one hand on Bad’s skull and reached the other toward Samuel, impulsively. “Don’t be afraid, and don’t let go.”
He met my eyes. “I won’t,” he said, and his fingers wrapped tight around mine.
We stepped across the Threshold together. The nothingness was just as terrifying, just as empty, just as suffocating as it had been before—but somehow it felt less vast with Samuel and Bad beside me. We sailed through the dark like a trio of comets, like a many-legged constellation spinning through the night, and then our feet crunched on dry grass.
We stood in the orange, alien dusk of another world. I had a single reeling second to see the endless golden plain, the sky so wide open it felt like an ocean suspended above me—before a rough voice spoke.
“Jesus, it’s a goddamned parade. All right, folks, you’re going to stop where you are and turn around real slow. And then you’re going to tell me what your business is, and how in the name of sweet Christ you found our door.”
The Burning Door
When you’ve stepped into a foreign world and you’re cold and weak-limbed and only half-dressed, you tend to do as you are told. The three of us turned slowly around.
Facing us was a rangy, raggedy old man, very much like a scarecrow if scarecrows grew patchy white beards and wielded spears. He wore a vaguely martial-looking gray coat, a pair of rough sandals made of rope and rubber, and a bright feather tucked into the white tangle of his hair. He grunted, jabbing the spear point toward my belly.
I raised shaking hands. “Please, sir, we’re just trying to—” I began, and it was no effort at all to sound pitiful and terrified. But the effect was undercut somewhat by Bad, who was making a sound like an idling engine, hackles spiked, and Jane, who had drawn Mr. Locke’s revolver and pointed it directly at the old man’s chest.
His eyes flicked to the gun and back to me, hardening. “Go ahead, miss. But I bet I could gut this girl before I bled out. You want to make the same bet?” There was a brief stillness, during which I imagined how unpleasant it would be to be disemboweled by a rusty homemade spear and silently swore at my father for his poor judgment—and then Samuel stepped between us.
He leaned gently forward until the spear point dimpled his shirt. “Sir. There is no need for this. We don’t mean any harm, I swear to you.” He made a sharp put down your weapon, woman gesture at Jane, who ignored him entirely. “We’re just looking for a, ah, place to hide for a little time. We didn’t mean to intrude.” The old man’s eyes remained narrowed and suspicious, a pair of damp blue marbles set in deep folds of flesh.
Samuel licked his lips and tried again. “Let us try again, yes? I am Samuel Zappia, of Zappia Family Groceries in Vermont. This is Mr. Sindbad, more often called Bad; Miss Jane Irimu, who will lower her gun very soon, I am sure; and Miss January Scaller. We were told this was a good place to—”
“Scholar?” The man spat the word, tilting his chin at me.
I nodded over Samuel’s shoulder.
“You Julian’s girl, then?”
My skin prickled at the sound of my father’s name. I nodded again.
“Well, shit.” The spear point dropped abruptly earthward. The man leaned comfortably against it, picking at his snaggled teeth with one fingernail and squinting amiably at us. “Sorry to scare you, hon, that’s my mistake. But the whole point of guard duty is to guard, ain’t it, and you can’t be too careful. Why don’t y’all follow me and we’ll get you some hot food and a place to set down. Unless”—and here he gestured toward the gnarled, age-wracked tree just behind us, at the narrow Door nestled in its roots—“there’s anybody likely to come running through after you?”
Samuel and I stared at him in slightly stunned silence, but Jane made a considering sound. “Not immediately, I shouldn’t think.” The