The Ten Thousand Doors of January

by Alix E. Harrow

  I didn’t want to think about my father. I wanted to think about something, almost anything else. “Do you ever want to leave?” The question leapt out of my mouth before I had time to wonder where it came from.

  Jane laid her book spread-eagle on the quilt and considered me. “Leave where?”

  “I don’t know, Locke House. Vermont. Everything.”

  There was a short silence, during which I realized two things simultaneously. First, that I was so selfish I’d never once asked Jane if she wanted to go home, and second, that there was nothing in the world holding her here now that my father and his weekly allowance were gone. Panic made my breath shallow and quick. Would I lose Jane, too? Would I be entirely alone? How soon?

  Jane exhaled carefully. “I miss my home… more than I can say. I think of it every waking moment. But I will not leave you, January.” An unspoken yet seemed to hang specter-like between us, or perhaps it was until. I felt like crying and clinging to her skirts, begging her to stay forever. Or begging to go away with her.

  But Jane saved us both from embarrassment by asking lightly, “Do you want to leave?”

  I swallowed, tucking my fear away for some future time when I would be strong enough to look directly at it. “Yes,” I answered, and in answering realized it was true. I wanted wide-open horizons and worn shoes and strange constellations spinning above me like midnight riddles. I wanted danger and mystery and adventure. Like my father before me? “Oh, yes.”

  It seemed to me I’d always wanted those things, since I was a little girl scribbling stories in her pocket diary, but I’d abandoned such fanciful dreams with my childhood. Except it turned out I hadn’t really abandoned them but merely forgotten them, let them settle to the bottom of me like fallen leaves. And then The Ten Thousand Doors had come along and swirled them into the air again, a riot of impossible dreams.

  Jane didn’t say anything.

  Well, she hardly needed to: we both knew how unlikely it was that I would ever leave Locke House. Odd-colored young orphan girls didn’t fare well out in the wide world, with no money or prospects, even if they were “perfectly unique specimens.” Mr. Locke was my only shelter and anchor now that my father was gone. Perhaps he would take pity and hire me as a secretary or typist for W. C. Locke & Co., and I would turn dull and mousy and wear thick-lensed spectacles on my nose and have permanent ink stains up both wrists. Perhaps he would let me stay in my little gray room until I grew so old and faded I became a half ghost haunting Locke House, alarming guests.

  After a time I heard the regular shush of Jane turning the pages of Tom Swift Among the Diamond Makers. I stared at the sky and tried not to think about the adventures I’d never have or the father I’d never see again or the cold, black thing still wrapped around me, turning the summer sun watery and pale. I tried to think of nothing at all.

  I wonder if there has ever been a seventeen-year-old girl who wanted to attend a fancy party less than I did that night.

  I stood at the edge of the parlor door for several minutes or possibly a century, nerving myself to step around the corner into the chemical fog of pomade and perfume. Serving staff swept past with glittering trays of champagne flutes and fleshy-looking canapés. They did not pause to offer me anything but merely maneuvered around me as if I were a misplaced vase or an awkward lamp.

  I drew a breath, brushed my sweaty palm against Bad’s fur, and slipped into the parlor.

  It would be overdramatic of me to claim that the entire room stood still, or that silence reigned the way it did when a princess entered her ballroom in my books, but there was a kind of silent whooshing around me, as if I were escorted by an invisible wind. A few conversations faltered as their participants turned toward me, eyebrows half-raised and lips curling.

  Maybe they were staring at Bad, standing stiff and surly beside me. He was technically banned from all social events until the end of time, but I was betting Locke wouldn’t make a fuss in public and that Bad wouldn’t injure anyone seriously enough to require stitches. And anyway, I wasn’t sure I could’ve physically made myself leave my room without him beside me.

  Or maybe they were staring at me. They’d all seen me before, trailing in Locke’s shadow at every Society party and Christmas banquet, alternately ignored or fussed over. What a pretty dress you have, Miss January! they trilled at me, laughing in the birdlike manner unique to the wealthy wives of bankers. Oh, isn’t she darling. Where did you say you found her again, Cornelius? Zanzibar? But I’d been a little girl then—a harmless, in-between thing stuffed into dolls’ clothes and trained to speak politely when spoken to.

  I was not a little girl now, and they were no longer so charmed. Over the winter I’d suffered through all those mysterious, alchemical changes that transform children into sudden, awkward adults: I was taller, less soft, less trusting. My own face reflected in the gold-gilt mirrors was foreign to me, hollowed out.

  And then there were Mr. Locke’s gifts now on display: long silk gloves, several loops of pinkish pearls, and a drapey chiffon gown in ivory and rose that was so obviously expensive I saw women staring in disbelieving calculation. I’d even waged dutiful war with my hair, which could be defeated only by the application of a hot comb and Madame Walker’s Wonderful Conditioning Treatment. My scalp still sizzled faintly.

  The conversation lurched clumsily back to life. Shoulders and backs turned decisively away, and lacy fans snapped out like shields against some intruder. Bad and I slid around them and posted ourselves like mismatched mannequins in our usual corner. The guests obligingly ignored us, and I was free to slump and tug at the too-tight buttons of my dress and watch the shimmering crowd.

  It was, as always, an impressive display. The household staff had polished every lamp and candlestick until the room radiated sourceless golden light, and the parquet floor was waxed to life-threatening slickness. Enormous enameled vases oozed peonies, and a smallish orchestra had been crammed between a pair of Assyrian statues. All of New England’s faux-royalty preened and glittered for one another, reflected back on themselves a hundred times by the gleaming mirrors.

  I noticed girls my own age scattered through the crowd, their cheeks flushed and their hair hanging in perfect silky curls, their eyes darting hopefully around the room (the gossip pages of the local paper always ran a column listing the most eligible bachelors and their rumored worth before the party). I pictured them all planning and scheming for weeks, shopping for just the right dress with their mothers, doing and redoing their hair in the mirror. And now here they were, glowing with promise and privilege, their futures laid out before them in an orderly gilt procession.

  I hated them. Or I would have hated them, except that dark, formless thing was still wrapped tightly around me, and it was hard to feel anything but dull distaste.

  A ringing clink-clink-clink sounded over the crowd and heads turned like well-coiffed marionettes. Mr. Locke was standing beneath the grandest chandelier, tapping his tumbler with a dessert spoon for attention. It was hardly necessary: Mr. Locke was always looked at and listened to, as if he generated his own magnetic field.

  The orchestra stopped mid minuet. Locke raised his arms in benevolent greeting. “Ladies, gentlemen, honored Society members, let me first thank you all for coming and drinking all my best champagne.” Laughter, buoyed on golden bubbles. “We are here, of course, to celebrate the forty-eighth anniversary of the New England Archaeological Society, a little group of amateur scholars who, if you’ll forgive me my hubris, do their very best to contribute to the noble progression of human knowledge.” A smattering of dutiful applause. “But we are also here to celebrate something rather grander: the progression of humanity itself. For it seems clear to me that the people gathered here tonight are both the witnesses and stewards of a new era of peace and prosperity from pole to pole. Every year we see the reduction of war and conflict, an increase in business and good faith, the spread of civilized government over the less fortunate.”

  I’d hear
d it all so many times I could probably deliver the rest of the speech myself: how the hard work and dedication of persons like themselves—wealthy, powerful, white—had improved the condition of the human race; how the nineteenth century was nothing but chaos and confusion, and how the twentieth promised to be order and stability; how the discontent elements were being rooted out, at home and abroad; how the savage was being civilized.

  Once as a girl I’d told my father: Don’t let the savages get you. He’d been about to leave, his shabby luggage in hand, his shapeless brown coat hanging from bent shoulders. He’d given me a half smile. I will be quite safe, he’d said, as there are no such things as savages. I could’ve told him that Mr. Locke and several metric tons of adventure novels disagreed with him, but I didn’t say anything. He’d touched his knuckle to my cheek and disappeared. Again.

  And now he’s disappeared for the last time. I closed my eyes, felt the cold, dark thing wind itself more tightly around me—

  The sound of my own name jarred me. “—consider my own Miss January, if you want proof!” It was Mr. Locke, jovial and booming.

  My eyes flew open.

  “She came to this household nothing but a motherless bundle. An orphan of mysterious origin, without so much as a penny to her name. And now look at her!”

  They were already looking. An ivory ripple of faces had turned toward me, their eyes like fingers plucking at every seam and pearl. What exactly were they supposed to be looking at? I was still motherless, still penniless—except now I was fatherless, too.

  I pressed my back to the wood paneling, willing it to be over, willing Mr. Locke’s speech to end and the orchestra to start up and everyone to forget about me again.

  Locke made an imperious come-here gesture. “Don’t be shy, my girl.” I didn’t move, my eyes terror-wide, my heart stammering oh no oh no oh no. I imagined myself running away, shoving past guests and out onto the lawn.

  But then I looked at Mr. Locke’s proud, shining face. I remembered the solid warmth of his arms as he’d held me, the kind rumble of his voice, the silent gifts left in the Pharaoh Room all these years.

  I swallowed and pushed away from the wall, stumbling through the crowd on legs gone stiff and heavy as carved wood. Whispers followed me. Bad’s claws clicked too loudly on the polished floor.

  As soon as I was in range Locke’s arm descended and crushed me against him. “There she is! The picture of civility. A testament to the power of positive influences.” He gave my shoulders a bracing shake.

  Did women actually faint, I wondered, or was that an invention of bad Victorian novels and Friday night picture shows? Or perhaps women simply contrived to collapse at convenient moments to delay the burden of hearing and seeing and feeling, just for a little while. I sympathized.

  “—enough about all that. Thank you all for indulging an old man’s optimism and enthusiasm, but we’re here, I’m told, to enjoy ourselves.” He raised his glass in a final toast—his beloved carved jade cup, translucent green. Had my father brought it to him? Stolen it away from some tomb or temple, packed it in sawdust, and sent it across the world to be clutched by this square, white hand?

  “To peace and prosperity. To the future we shall build!” I dared to look up at the pale, sweating faces that surrounded us, their glasses twinkling in the chandelier’s prisming light, their applause breaking around me like ocean waves.

  Mr. Locke’s arm unclamped from my shoulders and he spoke in a much lower voice. “Good girl. Meet us in the east smoking room at half past ten, won’t you. I’d like to give you your birthday gift.” He made a lazy circle with his finger to indicate the “us” he meant, and I realized the Society members had gathered like suit-wearing moths around him. Mr. Havemeyer was among them, watching me with his gloved hands resting on his cane and a polite, well-bred species of disgust on his face. Bad’s hackles spiked beneath my palm and he growled so low it was like an undersea earthquake.

  I spun and dove blindly away, Bad trailing stiff-legged at my heels. I aimed for our safe, invisible corner but couldn’t seem to arrive. The crowd eddied and swirled in dizzy patterns, their faces leering, their smiles too wide. Something had changed—Locke’s speech had dragged me to center stage, like a reluctant elephant prodded into the main ring at the circus. I felt gloved fingers stroke my skin as I passed, heard a trill of scintillated laughter. A tug on my pinned and burnt hair.

  A male voice far too close to my ear: “Miss January, isn’t it?” A bluish-white face loomed above me, his blond hair slicked against his skull and gold cuff links flashing. “What kind of a name is that, January?”

  “Mine,” I answered stiffly. I’d asked my father once what had possessed him to name me after a month, and particularly such a dead, frost-eaten month as January, and if there were any more normal-sounding names I could have instead. It is a good name, he’d said, rubbing his tattoos. And when I pressed him: Your mother liked it. The meaning of it.

  (Don’t bother looking up the meaning. Webster’s says: The first month of the year, containing thirty-one days. L. Januarius, fr. Janus, an antiquated Latin deity. How enlightening.)

  “Now, don’t be rude! Take a turn outside with me, won’t you?” The boy leered at me.

  I hadn’t spent much time with people my own age, but I’d read enough school stories to know gentlemen weren’t supposed to take young ladies out alone into the dark heat of a summer night. But then, I wasn’t really a lady, was I?

  “No, thank you,” I said. He blinked with the stunned expression of a man who knew the word no existed but had never actually met it in the flesh.

  He leaned closer, one damp hand reaching toward my elbow. “Come, now—”

  A silver tray of champagne materialized between us and a low, unfriendly voice said, “May I offer you a drink, sir?”

  It was Samuel Zappia, dressed in the crisp black-and-white uniform of a hired server.

  I’d barely seen him in the last two years, mostly because the red Zappia grocery cart had been replaced by a neat black truck with a closed cab and I could no longer wave to him from the study window. I’d driven past the store with Mr. Locke once or twice and caught blurred glimpses of Samuel out back, unloading flour sacks from a truck bed and staring out at the lake with a distant, dreaming expression. I’d wondered if he still subscribed to The Argosy, or if he’d abandoned such childish fancies.

  Now he looked clear and sharp, as if he’d come fully into focus in a camera lens. His skin was still that golden-dark color mysteriously known as olive; his eyes were still black and bright as polished shale.

  They were fixed now on the blond gentleman in a flat, unblinking stare, beneath eyebrows raised in faux-polite inquiry. There was something unsettling about that stare, something so blatantly unservile that the man took a half step backward. He stared at Samuel with an expression of upper-class offense that generally sent servants scurrying to make amends.

  But Samuel didn’t move. A fey gleam lit in his eye, as if he were rather hoping the young man would attempt to chastise him. I couldn’t help noticing the way Samuel’s shoulders pressed against the seams of his starched suit coat, the wiry look of his wrist holding the heavy tray; beside him, the blond man looked as pale and squashy as unrisen dough.

  He spun away, thin lips curled, and skittered back to the protection of his peers.

  Samuel turned smoothly toward me, lifting a shimmery golden glass. “For the birthday girl, perhaps?” His expression was perfectly bland.

  He remembered my birthday. My dress suddenly felt itchy and hot. “Thank you. For, uh, rescuing me.”

  “Oh, I wasn’t rescuing you, Miss Scaller. I was saving that poor boy from a dangerous animal.” He ducked his head at Bad, who was still watching the retreating man with his hackles raised and his lips curling back over his teeth.

  “Ah.” Silence. I wished I were a thousand miles away. I wished I were a yellow-haired girl named something like Anna or Elizabeth who laughed like a clockwork bird and alwa
ys knew just what to say.

  The corners of Samuel’s eyes crimped. He folded my fingers around the stem of the champagne flute, his hands dry and summer-warm. “It might help,” he said, and vanished back into the crowd.

  I downed the champagne so quickly my nose fizzed with it. I raided several more silver trays as I made my way through the parlor, and by the time I reached the smoking room I was placing my feet very precisely and trying not to notice the way colors sloshed and oozed at the edges of my vision. My dark veil, that invisible Thing that had curled around me all day, seemed to flicker and warp.

  I took a breath outside the door. “Ready, Bad?” He dog-sighed at me.

  My first impression was that the room had shrunk considerably since I’d last seen it, but then, I’d never seen it crammed with a dozen men wearing crowns of bluish smoke and conversing in low rumbles. I recognized this as one of those important, exclusive meetings that I’d never been permitted to attend: those boozy late-night congregations of men where the real decisions were made. I ought to have felt pleased or honored; instead, I tasted something bitter in the back of my throat.

  Bad sneezed at the cigar-and-leather reek, and Mr. Locke turned toward us. “You made it, dear girl. Come, take a seat.” He gestured to a high-backed armchair in the rough center of the room, around which the men of the Archaeological Society were ranged as if posing for a portrait-painting. There was Havemeyer, and the ferrety Mr. Ilvane, and others I recognized from previous parties and visits: a red-lipped woman with a black ribbon around her throat; a youngish man with a hungry smile; a white-haired man with long, curling nails. There was something secretive about them, like predators stalking through tall grass.

  I perched on the armchair, feeling hunted.