by Jeff Wheeler
I cried. And she cried.
Until she sat down next to me and we cried together.
The next time I got caught, Dad was home. I saw Sarah over his shoulder, shaking her head. He didn’t know what to do. He stared at me after the policeman left. Then he said, “Sweetheart, it’s not about the door.”
I stared at him. I looked away.
“I love you, no matter what.”
I brushed past him. Took refuge in my room. But later that night, I crept down the stairs to listen to them talk.
“You have to accept it,” she said. “She’s not like us.”
“She’s my daughter. It doesn’t matter.”
“Of course it does.”
“Not to me.”
They stayed home for a long time after that. She was subdued—no fits and no fuming. He kept to his workshop, out in the garden. They were quiet, so quiet, both withdrawn into themselves. But they were there.
And now and then she tried. She’d buy me a shirt at the shop—of course, it was the wrong size. Or lean over my homework and correct a sum. Then she’d try to explain it with symbols from another world. She tried baking cookies—and burnt them. But she tried.
And then, one day, after a weekend where we’d all watched Little Women together—laughing and crying together—I came home to a house smelling of brine.
It took months to wear off. We couldn’t invite anyone to visit. But even when it wore off, they hadn’t returned. Months wore on, seasons changed, the school year finished and restarted. But they never came back.
I waited, and waited.
Sarah waited with me. I clung to her. She was such a quiet, tiny woman, and she was all I had. At last, she told me that her real name was Thembi.
I cried when she told me. Of course her name wasn’t Sarah. But I’d never asked. Why had I never asked?
I made her move into the house. I hated being alone. She moved into the downstairs guest bedroom. Months later, she asked if her son could have the outside room. He’d look after the garden.
I agreed, but I didn’t care if the pool turned green and the garden fell apart. It didn’t matter, not anymore.
My school fees were paid. And my university application fees. And then my university fees and a stipend to live on.
Paul kept the money flowing, and the cover story going. He asked if I wanted to sell the house. I refused. I lived in Fuller Hall, a university residence; Thembi looked after the house. She’d call if . . .
I’d stopped opening doors. I stopped going home. I called Thembi once a week. But I didn’t visit.
When I finished my years at the University of Cape Town, I thought about going overseas. Not hard. Not for long.
I got a flat—all open-plan—in a leafy suburb full of schools and in the shadow of the university. Paul paid for it.
I took out all the bedroom doors. I left only the front door and the front gate. My only nod to security, normality, my world.
My first job took ages to find. Cape Town is small. I got offered two jobs in Johannesburg, one even in Durban, but turned them all down. Went back to university.
Met Rob. Fell in love. Got married. Told him my parents were dead. Died somewhere exotic. Told him once. Could never remember whether I said Thailand or Indonesia. Refused to talk about it again. Too painful. No other family. Both parents only children.
Too bad, so sad.
His family was enormous, overflowing with aunts and uncles and cousins. Everyone seemed related to everyone in a hundred different directions. I asked Rob to draw a chart, but even he got confused trying to get it all onto one page. I laughed. He laughed.
And then we had Stella.
Beautiful, perfect Stella. Absolutely tiny when she was born. Mottled pink and grey and brown. But soon she was a plump, caramel-coloured baby. Perfect, with all her toes and all her fingers. But I would have loved her with any amount.
From the day I found out I was pregnant, I promised her that I would love her. No matter what.
When she was two, she disappeared for the first time. Rob was frantic, searching everywhere. I sank down onto the floor of her nursery in our big open-plan house. We’d bought a house; we’d left my flat. A very open-plan house, but there were still doors. Her nursery had a door. And she was gone.
Rob went downstairs to call the police. I restrained him. And then we heard her, gurgling upstairs. We found her back on the floor of her nursery. He didn’t call the police.
She was two years old, and she could have been anywhere.
Anywhere is a dangerous place. Back when I was young, my dad had explained it to me, drawn me maps and diagrams. Talking about nodes and paths and nexuses. And power. Dad was weak. He could jump node by node, one at a time. All the nodes close to my world were safe. They’d checked before settling down. Even two or three nodes out was safe.
And there were places to go, world-walker places, and ways to find them. A bar here, a clearing there. Somewhere safe to wait.
Mom was stronger. She could jump farther, much farther. Her maps were different. Her viewpoint. She navigated on feel and intuition and an ability to peek before she leapt. Not like Dad. Not methodical at all. Strong and far-seeing.
But when she was little, even she jumped only two or three nodes at a time.
Where had Stella been?
She was only two.
I took away her dollhouse and wedged her door open. I threw a fit until Rob let me leave it open all the time. We had a gate on the bedroom wing to keep intruders out; her door didn’t need to be closed. We had to be able to hear her.
When she disappeared the second time, only I was home.
She was three. And it wasn’t for long. But I was hysterical. And by the time Rob got home, I had taken out all the doors—like in the apartment I’d never quite been able to explain.
When I calmed down, I told him everything. I had to. It would happen again. It would definitely happen again. He stared at me. He thought I was mad. He stared at Stella.
He asked her questions. Before, he’d thought her gurgled stories a blossoming imagination. Now, he wasn’t so sure.
I left him with her. Drove to the old house. My house. Thembi let me in. I told her what had happened, short and fast and clipped. She nodded and we went into my dad’s workshop. Found his maps and notes. And I took them home.
Showed them to Rob.
He stared. He shouted. He accused. How could I marry him and not tell him? How could I have a child and not warn him? Not warn that she might be a . . .
When he saw her, he trailed off. But he couldn’t look at her for long. He slept in the guest room. He didn’t say good night, not to me, not to her. I didn’t cry. I told myself he would come round. He’d understand. He loved me. He loved Stella.
But the next day when I got home from work, he was gone, and so were his things. I held Stella, holding her tight against my chest as she squirmed. When I put her down to sleep, I drew up a chair and sat by her all night.
Her father had left. But I wouldn’t. Under my breath, I promised her again and again. No matter what.
But she was my daughter and I couldn’t protect her. I couldn’t protect her from her daddy being gone. And the grandparents and aunts and uncles and cousins who stopped visiting. I couldn’t protect her when she disappeared. Never for long.
Until she turned five.
She’d left the smell of smog and thick cloying air behind her. It didn’t smell good. I pulled out Dad’s maps. Two nodes over, it looked like. Two nodes, and she was only five. Not a nice world, but not a dangerous one. At least, not for a child. I hoped Dad’s assessment still held.
I’d told her everything I could. Drawn her pictures of where to go, what to do.
But she was only five.
And I couldn’t protect her. I couldn’t go after her.
I slept in that room, cramped on her child-sized bed, with the smog-smelling air. But in the morning, she hadn’t returned. I called her nursery school to say she was sick. I call
ed work to tell them I was. And I waited. And waited.
Two days, it took. Two days.
Two days of waiting and watching. And when she came back, she wasn’t alone. They came into my bedroom. Stella bounced straight up onto my bed.
“Look who I found, Mommy,” she said.
I pulled her close and stared at my mother over her head.
World-walkers aged slowly. But my mother looked every day of that extra decade. Grey had filtered into her thick, dark hair, swept back, untidy and messy. Lines had crept in around her eyes. She stared back at me.
What do you say to the woman who abandoned you?
What do you say to the woman who could protect your daughter?
What do you say?
I felt numb, holding Stella close. She got bored of that quick—she always did—and squirreled out of my iron grip. Off to check on her pink plastic ponies. To brush their hair and rearrange their bows.
I led the way to the kitchen. I couldn’t address this in my bedroom. Not somewhere so personal, so intimate. I sat on the couch, a soft, leather couch that Rob and I had bought only a month after we moved in. Our first co-purchase. My mother took a chair. A thin fancy chair that I hoped was very uncomfortable.
At last, I said, “Where’s Dad?”
She sat up straighter. “I was about to ask you the same thing.”
“What do you mean? He left with you.”
“But he didn’t stay long.”
“I don’t understand. You left me. You both left me.”
She sighed. “I left you. But I didn’t tell him. I didn’t warn him. Until we were far, far away. And then, not at first. I knew he’d be mad. But I thought, once he saw what was out there . . .”
“He’d forget me.” I stared at my hands.
“But he didn’t. And he wouldn’t. He was so angry. He insisted I bring him back. I refused. We were so far from anywhere we’d ever been together. Anywhere he could reach on his own. But he wouldn’t accept it. He couldn’t. So he left.”
“What do you mean?”
“He left me. He up and opened a door and left. All on his own. I searched but I couldn’t find him. I don’t see things the way he does. I didn’t know which worlds were close. I found a map maker, and I searched. I heard rumours. I kept searching. But I never found him.”
“Where did he go?”
“He tried to get home.”
A lump formed in my throat. He tried to get home. To me. But he hadn’t made it. But he tried.
I stared at her. “How could you?” I said at last, speaking through my tight throat.
“How could I?” she said, standing, pacing towards the window. “He was my husband. He was mine. I should never have listened to him. But he wanted . . . and I thought you’d be . . . and then you took him from me.”
“Took him from you?” I said, standing myself. “You took him from me. You were my mother.”
She shrugged like that meant nothing. “I thought . . . without you . . . he’d remember what it was like . . . before . . .”
I stared at her. “Just get out.”
“Fine, I will,” she said. She stormed towards the door, but she didn’t make it. Halfway there, she fell. And then she started to shake.
I’d never seen her so close when it happened. Lying there on the floor, helpless. And I felt nothing but anger. I wanted to kick her. Kick her while she was down. I wanted to drag her outside, onto the pavement, and leave her there. I wanted to, so badly. It coursed through me, burned through my veins. I hated her.
But I found her meds, in a backpack she’d arrived with. I plunged the needle into her arm. I hoped it hurt. And then I dragged her to the guest bedroom. And closed the door behind me.
I stood there, wanting, wishing that I never had to speak to her again. That this could be it. That I could throw her out in truth.
But as I stood, waiting while she slept, I knew I couldn’t.
I couldn’t help Stella. But she could. She could protect her.
And I wouldn’t be the kind of mother who put her own needs first. I wouldn’t.
When she woke the next morning, I was sitting in a chair at the foot of her bed. She saw me out of her bleary eyes and slowly straightened up. She stared at her hands and then back at me. She looked so old, each line etched more deeply, the grey tangled through her hair.
“Thank you,” she said, her voice cold, “I’m not very good at being alone.”
I knew then that’s all I would get. All the apology she would ever offer. All the forgiveness she would ever ask for.
But she was right. She wasn’t good at being alone.
And much as I wished she were, that I could abandon her, I needed her. I needed her to protect Stella.
I sold the house I’d bought with Rob and left those memories behind. Left Rob and his table and his couch. He took most of them. I didn’t care. We moved back in with Thembi. I took my parent’s bedroom and Stella took mine. Stella learnt not to disappear for too long. My mom learnt how to make dinner conversation. She lives outside.
Thembi’s son has a wife and family and moved out years ago. So, my mother lives there now. And I buy her medicine for her.
I’ve invented an asthma complaint for Stella—to explain her absences from school. Stella loves it, as it gives her an endless excuse to avoid physical education classes.
She’s more responsible than my mother. And better at judging time. Doesn’t disappear for too long. Doesn’t miss too much school.
She’s my daughter, and I love her, just as she is.
I think of my father often. All my memories have been washed clean. He did love me. He did. All those years when I dreamt of him, he dreamt of me. So I can grieve, a good, clean grief. An aching loss, and the tiniest hope.
I don’t open doors anymore—at least, only when other people do. I don’t expect to find any strange new world on the other side. Not anymore.
But I do watch doors. Because you never know who might come through them.
Amy Power Jansen
Amy Power Jansen lives in Johannesburg, South Africa, with her husband, Stephen. She works in the financial services industry and escapes to worlds weird and wonderful whenever she gets the chance. Her stories have previously appeared in publications including: Abyss & Apex, Myriad Lands: Volume 2, and Orthogonal.
Salt and Water
By Charlie N. Holmberg | 12,000 words
The sound of his dying breath played a broken melody on the strings of Chellis’s thoughts. The silence of the tiled chamber amplified the haunting song; only the occasional shifting of chains disturbed it.
She tried not to weep, for only when she stopped crying long enough—promising no wasted tears—would they release her back to her chambers. A chamber that sat empty, for the Hagori whom she served had killed little Temas.
Chellis had suspected ulterior motives from the Hagori when her unexpected bunkmate arrived two months before, and a child at that, only eight years of age. A Hagori orphan, not even a Merdan like herself. But after a week of Temas’s smiles and songs, Chellis had come to believe that her dian—her “caretaker”—had come to pity her. That her dian felt guilty over the beatings and the harsh words all dians used to make their Merdans cry. That perhaps she thought eighteen months of loneliness had been too harsh, even for a slave.
Another tear squeezed between Chellis’s eyelids, absorbed by the spongy blinders pressed against her face. A lie. Another lie, but that one crueler than the rest. The Hagori had merely waited long enough for Chellis to grow attached to the boy, to love him, before slitting his throat right there in her chambers. And then her dian had snapped the blinders over her eyes, unwilling to risk wasting a single drop of Chellis’s lifesaving tears. Healing tears that only a Merdan stolen from the sea could weep.
She shifted in the chains that suspended her over the shallow vat—chains that bound her arms and ankles to the wall behind her. The edge of the vat dug painful, deep lines into her scaled knees, its ga
ping mouth waiting for any tears that might escape the blinders. The manacles dug into the scar tissue over her wrists. Her shoulders were numb from supporting her body, which leaned forward with only the chain preventing her from toppling into the vat itself. Her webbed feet tingled. The small fins around her ankles felt like ice, though no ice could be found in the desert home of the Hagori, save within the empty cavities of their chests.
Chellis breathed through her nose, trying to calm the convulsing muscles in her abdomen. Trying to dry out the hurt and relieve the twisting barb that mangled her spirit and sliced her soul. She blinked against the wet sponges in the blinders and willed herself still.
Suspended over the vat with silence her only companion, Chellis could almost smell the sea. She let her tired mind believe that she did, let it whisk her away to the wide-open waters, blue as sky, where she swam weightless among whales and alongside her kin. So few in number, the Merdans. The slave fishers’ relentless hunt for them dwindled their people and shredded their families. The Hagori only saw the Merdan as a balm for their war. Not once had the warmongers tried to barter for the lifesaving tears. They’d only taken.
Three sets of footsteps entered the collecting room, echoing off the tiled walls so loudly it seemed an entire army had come for her. Chellis distinguished the soft sounds of her dian’s sandals from the heavy boots of the guards. She held still as her dian reattached the fine chain leash to the metal collar encircling Chellis’s neck. Only then did the guards unlock the manacles around her wrists and pull her back from the vat. Blood surged into Chellis’s webbed fingers. She bit her bottom lip to keep from crying out. The soft bones in her knees wrenched and popped as the leash hauled her upward. Blood flowed into her feet, marking every new bruise along its path.
“Hold still, Naki,” Lila-dian warned, calling Chellis by her Hagori name. The two guards stood close enough that Chellis could feel the shroud of heat rising from their skin, smell the cactus oil in their beards. It made her itch—made her want to scream and swim away—but Chellis held still, unsure that her weak legs and sore body could withstand another lashing. Not today.
