worlds does not grow less terrifying.
The darkness swallowed me like a living thing. I tilted forward, falling but not falling because in order to fall there has to be an up and a down and in the Threshold there’s only the endless black nothing. I felt Bad brush past me, legs paddling ineffectually against the emptiness, and scooped my arm around him. He kept his eyes fixed on me. It occurred to me that dogs are probably never lost in the in-between, because they always know precisely where they are going.
And so, this time, did I. I felt my father’s book wedged tight against my ribs, and followed the cedar-and-salt smell of his home world, my home world, toward that white-stone city.
I could still feel the hungry tugging of the darkness, but it was as if something bright and shining in me had finally unfurled and filled me to my edges. I was weak, riddled with hurts—betrayal, abandonment, the tiny black hole in my shoulder, a new something-very-wrong in my left hip that I didn’t want to think about—but I was entirely myself, and I was not afraid.
Until I felt a hand close around my ankle.
I didn’t think he would follow me. I want you to understand that—I didn’t mean for it to happen, any of it. I thought he would stay behind in his safe little world and crush my Door back to ash and char. I thought he would sigh regretfully, cross out my entry in his mental ledger book (In-between girl, magic powers suspected, value unknown) and then go back to his twin passions of amassing wealth and closing Doors. But he didn’t.
Maybe he loved me, after all.
I think I even caught a glimpse of love when I turned back to look at his face—or at least a possessive, conditional, desire-to-own—but it was quickly subsumed beneath his towering fury. There is nothing quite like the anger of someone very powerful who has been thwarted by someone who was supposed to be weak.
His fingers burrowed into my flesh. His other hand still held the shining revolver, and I saw his thumb move. There was no sound in the Threshold, but I imagined I could hear that ominous click-click again. No no no—I could feel myself slowing, floundering in the black, fear blurring my goal—
But I had forgotten Bad. My first friend, my dearest companion, my terrible dog who had always seen the Please Do Not Ever Bite list as a fundamentally negotiable document. He arched backward, yellow eyes gleaming in the fierce joy of an animal doing what he loves best, and buried his teeth in Locke’s wrist.
Locke’s mouth opened in a soundless scream. He let go of me. And then he was floating, falling alone in the empty vastness of the Threshold and his eyes had gone white and wide as china plates.
For all the Doors he’d closed, I wondered how long it had been since he’d stepped through one, since he’d seen the Threshold. He seemed to have forgotten his rage, his direction, the gun in his hand—now there was nothing in his face but wild terror.
He could still have followed me.
But he was too afraid. He was afraid of change and uncertainty, of the Threshold itself. Of things outside his power, and things in between.
I watched the darkness nibble, delicately, at the edges of him. His right hand and his revolver vanished. His entire arm. His eyes—his powerful, pale eyes, which had brought him such wealth and such status, which had subjugated enemies and persuaded allies and even reshaped stubborn young girls, temporarily—could do nothing against the darkness.
I turned away. It was not an easy turning-away; a part of me still wanted to reach my hand back to him, to save him; another part of me wanted to watch him vanish, piece by piece, to pay for every betrayal and every lie. But I felt my home world still waiting for me, certain and steady as the North Star, and I could not go toward it if I were still looking back.
My bare foot found solid, warm stone.
I knew nothing but sunlight, and the smell of the sea.
It was sunset when I opened my eyes. I could see the sun sinking like a squat red coal into the western ocean. Everything was soft around the edges, lit by a pinkish-gold glow that reminded me for a sleepy moment of the quilt my father had given me when I was a girl. Oh, Father, I miss