Eden?” Cedar asked as she moved to stand beside her daughter. Then her jaw dropped. “What the…?”
The two of them stood in shocked silence, looking into the room. The air in the open doorway was sparkling with a thousand points of light, like the surface of a pond catching the mid-afternoon sun. Strangely, the sight reminded Cedar of looking through the windows in her old apartment. She and Finn had covered them with clear plastic to help keep the cold out. They could still see what was on the other side, but through a film. In this case, the film glittered and moved. Even more remarkable than the way the air had changed in the doorway was what was on the other side.
“Pyramids?” Cedar whispered. No longer could she see Eden’s room, with its pink walls and bright, flowered bedspread. Instead, she was looking at the unmistakable form of two giant pyramids. The sky around them was black, but they were lit by huge spotlights and were glowing like fallen stars embedded in the desert. Cedar glanced at her bare feet, where she could feel the breeze swirling around her ankles. She slowly bent, picked up a few grains of white sand and rolled them between her fingers. Eden reached over and took hold of her hand.
Cedar tore her eyes away from the spectacle in front of them and asked the first question that came to mind. “Can you see them too?”
Eden nodded.
“What did you do?” Cedar asked.
“I didn’t do anything! It was just like this when I opened the door!” Eden said, still holding onto Cedar’s hand. “It’s like magic! Is our house magic?”
“No,” answered Cedar automatically, thinking of what Finn had said about magic. You just need to open your mind a wee bit more. “I mean, of course not. That’s impossible. There’s got to be some logical explanation.” But even as she said it, she felt something shift deep inside her, like the tectonic plates of reality were being realigned.
Still, she considered the options. She was pretty sure she was awake, but she grabbed a fold of skin on her arm and gave it a hard pinch. Ouch. Maybe they were sharing some sort of collective hallucination. Maybe they both had a brain tumor. Or maybe there was some sort of toxic gas in the air that was causing them to see this. But the sand felt real, and a few grains were still stuck to her fingers.
“I’m going to close the door,” Cedar said.
“What if it goes away?” Eden protested. She let go of Cedar’s hand and stretched her arms across the door as if to guard it.
“Yes, well, let’s just see what happens,” Cedar said.
She reached out a hand toward the doorknob, but in order to take hold of it she would have to move her arm through that glittering…whatever it was. She pulled her hand back. “Did you touch this?”
“I went through it. Just, like, one step,” Eden said. “But I came right back out.”
“I think we should test it,” Cedar said. “I want to see what happens.”
Looking around, she spotted Eden’s favorite stuffed animal lying on the floor of the hallway and picked it up.
“Is Baby Bunny very brave?” she asked. Eden nodded, eyes wide. Cedar gently lobbed Baby Bunny through the shimmering doorway. The pink and brown rabbit landed in the sand on the other side, raising a small poof of dust in the air. Cedar leaned forward as far as she dared and peered at the rabbit. “She looks all right, just the same as usual,” she said. She took a deep breath and slowly stretched her hand through the air and toward the doorknob. She expected to feel something, a tingling sensation maybe, but there was nothing. It was like passing through ordinary empty air, except that the air on the other side felt slightly warmer. She grabbed hold of the doorknob and quickly swung the door toward her.
The click of the latch echoed in the hallway as she and Eden stared at the closed door. There was still a small mound of sand on the carpet, and Eden bent down and poked her fingers into it. Then she stretched out on her stomach to look under the door.
“I think it’s still there,” she said.
Cedar opened the door a crack before pushing it more forcefully. The same eerie scene met their eyes: Egyptian pyramids surrounded by an inky black sky. It was undeniably there.
“Why Egypt?” Cedar whispered.
“I like Egypt. I