was getting somewhere. I began walking a bit faster, feeling the lick of flames inside me rise ever so slightly.
As I got closer, I realised that the patch of black had very straight edges. This was definitely not a natural occurrence. It had to be either man or monster made. In fact it looked suspiciously like a door. When I was a scant hundred or so yards away, I realised that that was exactly what it was. There even appeared to be a doorknob, just as black as the rest of it. I checked it for signs of a letterbox – perhaps I could drop Iabartu a little note, I thought sardonically, but there was only the door shape and the doorknob itself. I couldn’t work out what material it was made out of. It didn’t look like it was anything solid and, as I could actually circle round the whole of it, I noticed that it was paper thin along the edges. As the trail leading from the cloth went straight into it, and didn’t appear on the other side, this had to be the way I was supposed to go.
I shrugged to myself and used the corner of my t-shirt as a barrier between my skin and the doorknob to twist it open. There was a prickle across the length of my arm as I did so and then the door swung open. There was nothing on the other side, other than the rest of the valley, but the blue smoke went through it one way and didn’t reappear on the other side, so it had to lead somewhere. I tugged out the silver dirk and clutched it in my sweaty palms and took a deep breath then stepped through.
And went nowhere. The smoke might have disappeared through the doorway but I certainly didn’t. I was in exactly the same valley and in exactly the same place, just on the other side of the stupid door. That wasn’t meant to happen. I frowned and tried stepping through in the opposite direction. Again, nothing. I hopped back and forth through the frame, irritated. What kind of stupid magic door was this? I had the horrible feeling that somewhere Iabartu was watching me on some otherworld version of CCTV and absolutely pissing herself laughing.
I wondered if it was just me. I knelt down and pulled on a tuft of grass, crying out in surprised pain as it cut deep into the edges of my palm. A few drops of blood welled up, jewel-like. Cursing, I wiped the blood onto my jeans and used the dirk instead, gingerly holding the tips of the grass blades tight. Even though the dirk’s blade was razor sharp, I still had to saw through to free them from the ground. That was…different. I definitely wasn’t in Kansas any more. I stood up, still pinching the tips of the blades of grass and taking care not to cut myself further then flung them through the open doorway.
Like the blue smoke, they disappeared in midair. Huh. Rooting around in my bag, I found a bottle of water and unscrewed the lid, taking a long swig. Then I threw the bottle cap. It vanished as soon as it passed through the black edges of the frame. So it wasn’t a case of just being something substantially from another plane that couldn’t pass through. It was just me that couldn’t pass through. Perhaps it was to do with carrying silver. I was extraordinarily reluctant to leave my best weapons behind, but they’d do me no good stuck here in the middle of nowhere with no-one to fight anyway. I took the backpack off my shoulders and removed the arrows, placing them carefully on the ground next to the dirk, then experimented first by waving a hand and a leg through the doorway. They didn’t seem to go anywhere. There was only one way to know for sure. Casting a forlorn look at the grounded weapons, I tightly closed my eyes and jumped.
I opened one eyelid carefully, peeking first. Fuck. I still hadn’t gone anywhere. Opening the other eye, I kicked the doorway in frustration and felt the same prickle as before run up my leg. Yeah, yeah, so it was definitely a fantastic magic gateway in the middle of a fantastic magical otherworld plane filled with killer grass. It still didn’t help me in the slightest.
I kicked the door again, this time shouting at the top of my lungs.