The Ten Thousand Doors of January - Alix E. Harrow Page 0,51

something other than overstarched sheets—lit like a coal in my belly. If I’d let it burn it would have ignited a conflagration, a ravenous blaze that would have ripped apart my stiff sheets and smashed my oatmeal against the wall and turned my eyes white-hot. No one would have believed I was sane, after that. I smothered the coal.

They left and I stood at my window, pressing my forehead against the summer-warm glass until my feet began to ache. I lay back down.

The hour-dragons stalked me. They grew larger as the sun set, multiplying in the shadows.

I think I might have shattered into pieces that second night, and never quite found all of myself again, had it not been for an irregular, half-familiar pattering against the window. I stopped breathing.

I crept out of bed and struggled against the stiff window latch, feeling the liquid weakness of my arms. It wedged open only a miserly few inches, but it was enough to let in a sweet summer-night smell. Enough for me to hear, far below, a familiar voice say, “January? It’s you?”

It was Samuel. I felt for just a moment like Rapunzel must have when her prince finally showed up to rescue her from the tower, except that I couldn’t have wedged myself out the window even if my hair had been long and golden rather than curled and matted. Still.

“What are you doing here?” I hissed down at him. I couldn’t see much more than a man-shaped shadow several floors below, holding something in its hands.

“Jane sent me, she says to tell you she tried to see you, but could not—”

“But how did you know which window was mine?”

I saw his shadow shrug, one-shouldered. “I waited. I watched. Until I saw you.”

I didn’t say anything. I pictured him hiding in the hedges, staring up at my prison and waiting for hours and hours until he saw my face in the window—and a shiver ran down my breastbone. In my experience, the people you cared most about did not linger. They were always turning away, leaving you behind, never coming back—but Samuel had waited.

He was speaking again. “Listen, Jane says it is important that you have—”

He stopped. Both of us saw the yellow glow of lights flicking on through the first-floor windows, heard the muffled thumps of footsteps coming to investigate. “Catch!”

I caught. It was a stone tied to a length of twine. “Pull it up! Quick!” And he was gone, disappearing into the landscaped grounds just as the hospital doors creaked outward. I yanked the twine up through my window in panicky jerks and jammed the window closed. I slid down my room wall, panting as if it were me sprinting into the night instead of Samuel.

There was something smallish and square tied to the end of the line: a book. The book. Even in the dark I could see the half-worn lettering smiling at me like gold teeth through the gloom: THE TEN THOU OORS. It had been a long time since Samuel had smuggled a story to me; I wondered dizzily if he’d dog-eared his favorite scenes.

Several hundred questions occurred to me—how had Jane recognized the book, and why did she want me to have it? And how long would Samuel keep waiting for me, if I was trapped here forever?—but I ignored them. Books are Doors and I wanted out.

I crawled to the center of the floor, where there was a slanted yellow square of light from the hall, and began to read.

Chapter Three

Much on Doors, Worlds, and Words

Other worlds and the flexibility of natural laws—The City of Nin—A familiar door seen from the other side—A ghost at sea

It is a heartless thing, but it is at this juncture in our narrative that we must abandon Miss Adelaide Larson entirely. We leave her just as she sails The Key into a foreign ocean, with the salted wind blowing the pine sap out of her hair and filling her heart with glowing certainty.

We do not abandon her without good reason: the time has come when we ought to discuss more directly the nature of doors themselves. I must first assure you I did not delay this instruction out of any sly sense of theater, but simply because I hope by now that I have gained your trust. I hope, simply, that you will believe me.

Let us begin with the first conceit of this work: doors are portals between one world and another, which exist only in places of