The Ten Thousand Doors of January - Alix E. Harrow Page 0,65

lettering, inhaled the faraway, free scent of it.

And then I edged into the slanting moonlight, opened the book, and ran away.

Chapter Four

On Love

Love takes root—Love takes to the sea—The simultaneously predictable and miraculous results of love

It is fashionable among intellectuals and sophisticates to scoff at true love—to pretend it is nothing but a sweet fairy tale sold to children and young women, to be taken as seriously as magic wands or glass slippers.11 I feel nothing but pity for these learned persons, because they would not say such foolish things if they had ever experienced love for themselves.

I wish they could have been present at the meeting of Yule Ian and Adelaide Lee in 1893. No one watching their bodies crash together in the waist-deep surf, watching their eyes glow like lighthouses leading stray ships home at last, could have denied the presence of love. It hung between them like a tiny sun, radiating heat, remaking their faces in red and gold.

But even I must admit that love is not always graceful. After Ade and Yule peeled themselves apart they were left standing in the waves, staring at the perfect stranger before them. What do you say to a woman you had met only once in a hayfield in another world? What do you say to a ghost boy whose boot-leather eyes have haunted you for twelve years? Both of them spoke at once; both of them stuttered to silence.

Then Ade said, passionately, “Shit,” and after a pause, “Shit.” She ran her fingers through her hair and smeared seawater on too-warm cheeks. “Is it really you, ghost boy? What’s your name?”

The question was a perfectly natural one, but it dimmed the sun between them. Both of them became abruptly aware of how unlikely it was that two people who did not even know one another’s names should be in love.

“Yule Ian.” It came out in a rushing whisper.

“Nice to meet you, Julian. Could you give me a hand?” She gestured back toward her boat, now bobbing amiably southward. It took long minutes of wrangling and thrashing before the two of them had the little ship hauled into the bay and anchored to a standing stone in the surf. They worked in silence, studying the movements of each other’s bodies, the miraculous geometry of bone and muscle, as if it were a secret code they’d been assigned to translate. Then they stood on the shore in the red bloom of sunset, and it became difficult to look directly at one another again.

“Would you like—I have a place to stay, in the City.” Yule thought of his cramped room on a washerwoman’s second floor, and wished very much that he were inviting Ade to a castle or palace or at least one of the costly balconied bedrooms rented by traveling merchants. Ade nodded, and they wound back up through the City of Plumm side by side. The backs of their hands brushed timidly together sometimes on the narrow streets but never lingered. Yule felt the heat of those passages like matches struck against his skin.

In his room he perched her on the end of the unmade cot and skittered briefly in circles, consolidating piles of books and raking empty ink bottles into corners. Ade didn’t say anything at all. If Yule had known her for longer than a few hours in her youth, he would’ve realized how very unusual this was. Adelaide Lee was a woman who wore her desires openly, without shame or artifice, and generally expected the world to accommodate them. But now she sat in a cluttered room that smelled of ocean and ink, and could not find the right words.

Yule sat hesitantly beside her. “How have you come here?” he asked.

“Sailed through a door on a mountaintop back in my world. Sorry it took me so long to get here, it’s just there are an awful lot of doors out there.” A little of her usual swagger slunk back into her voice.

“You were looking for this world? For me?”

Ade tilted her head at him. “Of course.”

Yule smiled, hugely, and it seemed to Ade it was a smile stolen from a much younger boy. It was the same smile he’d given her in the field when she promised to meet him in three days, giddy at his own good luck, and it was suddenly clear to Ade what she ought to do next.

She kissed him. She felt the grinning curves of his lips reshape themselves against hers, his delicate