The Ten Thousand Doors of January - Alix E. Harrow Page 0,144
of things that made no sense to him—or rather, they did but then didn’t, as if the words were sagging and sloughing away in his mind, and he could almost hear a voice saying Forget it all, boy—and eventually she grew irritated with him.
She had pressed a slip of paper into his hand with an address scrawled in red ink, and whispered, “Just in case.”
“In case what, ma’am?” he’d asked.
“In case you remember.” She had sighed, and something in the sigh made him wonder if she had a hole in her heart, too. “Or in case you see her again.” And she was gone.
Since then he has felt the ache in his chest like an open window in winter.
It is worse on mornings like this one, when he is alone and the crows’ cries are brittle and cold. He thinks, for no reason at all, of the gray ponies he drove as a boy, of rattling down the drive to Locke House and looking up at the third-story window hoping to see—he does not recall what he hoped to see. He tries to think only about delivery routes and flour, and how best to position the busted sack so it won’t spill.
Movement startles him. Two figures have emerged, rather suddenly, from the mist at the end of the cobbled alley. A dog, heavy-jawed and deep gold, and a young woman.
She is tall and brownish, and her hair is braided and coiled in a fashion he has never seen before. She is dressed like some combination of vagabond and debutante—a fine blue skirt fastened with pearl buttons, a leather belt slung low over her hips, a shapeless coat that looks several centuries older than she is. She limps, just slightly; so does the dog.
The dog barks at him, joyfully, and Samuel becomes aware that he is staring. He flicks his eyes sternly back to the flour sacks. But there is something about her, isn’t there, a sort of glow, like light shining around a closed door—
He imagines her wearing a champagne-colored gown, dripping pearls, surrounded by the bustle and swirl of a fancy party. She looks very unhappy in this imagining, like something caged.
She does not look unhappy now; indeed, she is beaming, her smile shining bonfire-bright and a little wild. It takes him a moment to realize she has stopped walking, and the smile is for him.
“Hello, Samuel,” she says, and her voice is like a knock at that closed door.
“Ma’am,” he answers. He knows at once it was the wrong thing to say, because her bonfire-smile dims a little. The dog is unconcerned; he shimmies up to Samuel as if they are old friends.
The woman’s smile is sad, but her voice is steady. “I have something for you, Mr. Zappia.” She produces from her coat a fat bundle of papers tied with what appears to be brown string, a rag, and a strand of fencing wire. “Sorry about the mess—I wasn’t patient enough to get it printed and bound.”
Samuel takes the pile of paper, because there doesn’t seem to be anything else to do. He notices as he does so that her left wrist is a labyrinth of ink and scars.
“I know this must all seem very strange to you, but please just read it. As a sort of favor to me, although I guess that doesn’t mean much anymore.” The woman huffs an almost-laugh. “Read it anyway. And when you’re done, come find me. You know—you still remember where Locke House is, don’t you?”
Samuel wonders if perhaps this young woman is a bit mad. “Yes. But Mr. Locke has been away for months now—the house is empty, the staff have started to leave—there are rumors about his will, about his return—”
The woman flaps an unworried hand. “Oh, he won’t be returning. And his will has just recently been, ah, discovered.” Her smile is sly, mischievous, with a little curl of vengeance at its edges. “Once the lawyers get done signing things and siphoning off as much money as they can, the house will be mine. I think it’ll suit my purposes rather well, once I get rid of his ghastly collections.” Samuel tries to picture this wild young woman as the rightful heiress to Locke’s fortune, fails, and wonders if perhaps she is mad and a criminal. He wonders why this possibility doesn’t bother him more. “I’m thinking I ought to return his things to their proper owners, where possible, which will require a great deal of travel to some very strange and surprising places.” Her eyes spark and flare at the thought.
“We’ll go to East Africa first, of course. We’ll need Jane to show us the precise spot, but I imagine she’ll turn up—have you seen her, by chance?” She continues before Samuel can answer. “I’ll miss her terribly once she goes home, but I might be able to do something about that… There are so many doors in Locke House, after all—who’s to say where they lead?”
She squints her eyes like a woman redecorating her parlor. “One to Africa, one to Kentucky, maybe even one to a certain cabin on the north end of the lake, if you like. They’ll cost me, but it would be worth the price. And I’m getting stronger, I think.”
“Ah,” says Samuel.
That summer-bright smile returns, shining at him like a small sun. “Read fast, Samuel. We have work to do.” She reaches up, quite fearlessly, and touches his cheek. Her fingers are ember-warm against his cold skin, and she is very close to him now and her eyes are alight and the hole in his heart is howling, chattering, aching—
And he sees her face, just for a moment, peering down at him from the third story of Locke House. January. The word is a door creaking open in his chest, pouring light into that terrible absence.
She kisses him—a soft heat, so fleeting he isn’t sure whether he imagined it—and turns away. Samuel finds himself entirely unable to speak.
He watches the woman and her dog walk back down the alley. She stops and draws her finger through the air, as if she were writing something on the sky. The mist swirls and snakes around her like a great pale cat. It draws itself into a shape like an archway or a door.