The Ten Thousand Doors of January - Alix E. Harrow Page 0,13

he’d had when he was retelling the plot of a dime novel and was about to get to the really good part where the hero swoops in to save the kidnapped kid at just the right moment. “Take it.”

At this point, you’re thinking this story isn’t really about Doors, but about those more private, altogether more miraculous doors that can open between two hearts. Perhaps it is in the end—I happen to believe every story is a love story if you catch it at the right moment, slantwise in the light of dusk—but it wasn’t then.

It wasn’t Samuel who became my dearest friend in the world; it was the animal snuffling and milling its stubby legs in the basket he handed me.

From my rare and Wilda-chaperoned trips into Shelburne, I knew the Zappias lived crammed in an apartment above the grocery in town, in the sort of sprawling, raucous nest that made Mr. Locke whuffle through his mustache and complain about those people. The store was guarded by an enormous, heavy-jawed dog named Bella.

Bella, Samuel explained, had recently produced a litter of burnished bronze puppies. The other Zappia children were busy selling most of them to tourists gullible enough to believe they were a rare African breed of lion-hunting dog, but Samuel had kept one. “The best one. I saved for you. See how he looks at you?” It was true: the puppy in my basket had stopped its squirming to stare up at me with damp, blue-sheened eyes, as if awaiting divine instruction.

I couldn’t have known then what that puppy would become to me, but perhaps some part of me suspected, because my nose was prickling in that dangerous, you-are-about-to-cry way when I looked up at Samuel.

I opened my mouth, but Wilda made her rattly throat sound again. “I think not, boy,” she declared. “You will take that animal right back where it came from.”

Samuel didn’t frown, but the smile-crimp at the corner of his mouth flattened out. Wilda snatched the basket from my clutching hands—the puppy toppled and rolled, legs paddling in midair—and thrust it back to Samuel. “Miss Scaller thanks you for your generosity, I’m sure.” And she steered me back inside and lectured me for several eons about germs, the inappropriateness of large dogs for ladies, and the perils of accepting favors from men of low standing.

My appeal to Mr. Locke after dinner was unsuccessful. “Some flea-bitten thing you took pity on, I suppose?”

“No, sir. You know Bella, the Zappias’ dog? She had a litter, and—”

“A half-breed, then. Those never turn out well, January, and I won’t have some mongrel chewing on the taxidermy.” He waggled his fork at me. “But I’ll tell you what—one of my associates raises very fine dachshunds down in Massachusetts. Perhaps if you apply yourself in your lessons I could be persuaded to reward you with an early Christmas present.” He gave me an indulgent smile, winking beneath Wilda’s pursed lips, and I tried to smile back.

I returned to my ledger copying after dinner feeling sullen and strangely rubbed raw, as if there were invisible chains chafing against my skin. The numbers blurred and prismed as tears pooled in my eyes and I had a sudden, useless desire for my long-lost pocket diary. For that day in the field when I’d written a story and made it come true.

My pen slunk to the margins of the ledger book. I ignored the voice in my head that said it was absurd, hopeless, several steps beyond fanciful—that reminded me words on a page aren’t magic spells—and wrote: Once upon a time there was a good girl who met a bad dog, and they became the very best of friends.

There was no silent reshaping of the world this time. There was only a faint sighing, as if the entire room had exhaled. The south window rattled weakly in its frame. A sick sort of exhaustion stole over my limbs, a heaviness, as if each of my bones had been stolen and replaced with lead, and the pen dropped from my hand. I blinked blurring eyes, my breath half-held.

But nothing happened; no puppy materialized. I returned to my copy work.

The following morning I woke abruptly, much earlier than any sane young woman would voluntarily wake up. An insistent plink-plinking rang through my room. Wilda snuffled in her sleep, brows crimping in instinctual disapproval.

I dove for my window in a fumbling mess of nightgown and sheets. Standing on the frosted lawn below, wrapped in the pearly