The Ten Thousand Doors of January - Alix E. Harrow Page 0,105

revolver had vanished again into her tight-knotted bundle and Bad’s growls had turned to intermittent grumbles. His tail gave the smallest of wags, not indicating friendliness so much as a cessation of open hostilities.

“Well, c’mon, then. Might make it back for dinner if we hustle.” The man turned toward the setting sun, bent to pluck a rusted red bicycle from the tall grass, and began wheeling it down a narrow track. He whistled tunelessly as he walked.

We exchanged a series of looks, ranging from what the hell to at least he’s not trying to kill us anymore, and followed him. We waded across the plain with the last red sunbeams warming our cheeks, driving the frigid Atlantic from our bones. The old man alternated between whistling and chatting, entirely undeterred by our weary, edgy silence.

His name, we learned, was John Solomon Ayers, called Sol by his friends, and he’d been born in Polk County, Tennessee, in the year 1847. He’d joined the 3rd Regiment of the Tennessee Infantry when he was sixteen, deserted at seventeen when he realized he was likely to die miserable and hungry on behalf of some rich cotton grower who wouldn’t give a bent penny for him, and was promptly taken prisoner by the Yanks. He’d spent a few years in a Massachusetts prison before busting out and running for the coast. He’d stumbled into this world and been here ever since.

“And have you been, uh, all alone? Until my father came through?” It would, I felt, explain a few of Solomon’s more eccentric qualities. I pictured him squatting alone in a dirt hovel, whistling to himself, perhaps shunned by the natives… And where were the natives of this world? Were they likely to swoop down on us in a thundering horde? I glanced up at the bare horizon but saw nothing more alarming than a low line of hills and a jumble of sand-colored stones ahead.

Solomon cackled. “Lord, no. Arcadia—that’s what we call it, who knows what it used to be called—is about halfway toward being a proper city these days. Not that I’ve seen many of those. We’re nearly there, now.” No one answered him, but Jane’s face expressed deepest skepticism.

The tumbled stones loomed larger as we walked, growing into massive boulders that leaned against one another at precarious angles. A few birds—eagles, maybe, or hawks, the same shimmering golden color as the feather in Sol’s hair—watched us mistrustfully from their craggy perches. They took flight as we approached, seeming by some trick of the fading light to vanish into the sky.

Solomon led us to a gap between the two largest stones, which formed a shadowed tunnel with a strange, shining curtain strung across it. It was only when we stood before it that I realized it wasn’t fabric at all, but dozens of golden feathers tied and dangling like soft wind chimes. I could see through them to the other side of the standing stones: a few empty hills, endless swaying grasses, the last rose glimmer of the sun as it set. No secret cities.

Solomon leaned his bicycle against the stone and crossed his arms, staring at the feathers as if waiting for something to happen. Bad gave an impatient whine.

“Excuse me, Mr. Ayers,” I began.

“Sol’s fine,” he said absently.

“Right. Um, excuse me, Sol, what are you—” But before I could find a polite way to ask if he was an honest-to-God madman who spent his spare time knitting feathers into curtains, or if he had an actual destination in mind, I heard padding footsteps. They came from the darkness behind the curtain, but there was nothing there except stone and dusty earth—

Until a wide hand swept the feathers aside and a squat woman in a black stovepipe hat stepped out of the empty air and stood before us, arms crossed and eyes narrowed. Jane said a series of words I didn’t recognize, but which I was sure were impolite.

The woman was roundish and brownish, with silver-streaked hair. She wore a collection of clothes just as motley as Solomon’s—including a silver-buttoned tailcoat, pants sewn from burlap, and some sort of bright beaded collar—but somehow contrived to look imposing rather than comical. She glared at each of us in turn with heavy-lidded eyes.

“Guests, Sol?” She said the word guests the way you might say fleas or influenza.

Solomon gave an exaggerated bow. “May I introduce our most esteemed chieftainess—don’t growl at me, darlin’, you know you are—Miss Molly Neptune. Molly, you remember that black fella