The Ten Thousand Doors of January

by Alix E. Harrow

  “Well. In this world you cannot be black-skinned and found near a dead white man in uniform. I used a stone to smash the body up and dragged him near the rubble, so there would be no bullet wound to scandalize a search party, and then we ran.

  “We were on the train to Khartoum when your father asked where I would go next. I told him I wanted to find another way in, a back door, and he smiled sadly at me. ‘I’ve been looking my whole life for another door to my home world,’ he told me. ‘But I’ll look for yours, too, if you do something for me.’ And he asked me to come to a rich man’s house in Vermont and protect his daughter.”

  Another silent wave shook her. Her voice remained perfectly even. “I kept my end of the bargain. But Julian… didn’t.”

  I cleared my throat. “He’s not dead.” I felt her go very still beside me, tense with hope. “I finished his book. He found a Door in Japan that led back to his own world but he didn’t go through it—he tried to come back for me”—that small sun blazed again, briefly, then faltered—“but he never made it, I guess. He says to tell you”—I swallowed, tasting the shame of it on my tongue—“he’s sorry.”

  Air hissed through the gap in Jane’s teeth. “He promised me. He promised.” Her voice was strangled, almost swallowed by emotion: bitterest betrayal, jealousy, and the sort of rage that leaves bodies in its wake.

  I flinched and her eyes flicked toward me, then widened. “Wait. January, you made a passage between the asylum and this cabin. Could you do it for me? Could you write me home?” Her face shone with desperate hope, as if she expected me to produce a pen from my pocket and draw her Door in the air between us, as if she were about to see her husbands and wife again. She looked younger than I’d ever seen her.

  I found I couldn’t look at her as I answered. “No. I—my father’s book says there are places where worlds rub against one another, like the branches of two trees, and that’s where Doors are. I don’t think a Door here, in Vermont, could ever reach all the way to your world.”

  She made an impatient, dismissive sound. “Fine, but if you went with me to Kenya, to my ivory door—”

  Mutely, I lifted my bandaged left arm and held it level with her eyes. It shook and shivered after only a few seconds, and after a few more I dropped it back to my side. “Opening the way from the asylum to here almost killed me, I think,” I told her softly. “And that was a Door within the same world. I don’t know what it might take to reopen a Door between two worlds, but I doubt I have it.”

  Jane exhaled very slowly, staring at my hand where it lay against the earth. She didn’t say anything.

  She stood abruptly, dusting her skirt and reaching for the shovel again. “I’ll finish here. Go see to Samuel.”

  I fled, rather than see Jane cry.

  Both Bad and Samuel looked like they’d died and been reanimated by a sorcerer of questionable skill. Bad—dotted with dried blood, patchworked with bandages and stitches—had crammed himself in bed between Samuel and the wall, and now slept with his chin propped adoringly on Samuel’s shoulder. Samuel’s skin was an unhealthy mushroomy color between white and yellow, and his breathing beneath the quilt stuttered and shivered.

  His eyes opened to gummy slits when I perched on the bedside. Improbably, he smiled. “Hello, January.”

  “Hello, Samuel.” My return smile was a timid, tremulous thing.

  He extricated an arm and patted Bad’s side. “What did I tell you, eh? Bad is on your side.”

  My smile sturdied. “Yes.”

  “And,” he said more softly, “so am I.”

  His eyes were steady, glowing with some sourceless warmth; looking into them was like holding my hands above a banked fireplace in February. I looked away before I said or did something stupid. “I’m sorry. For what happened. For what Havemeyer did to you.” Was my voice always that high-pitched?

  Samuel shrugged, as if being tortured and kidnapped were a tiresome inconvenience. “But you will explain exactly what he was, of course, and what these doors are that so upset him, and how you got here without my daring rescue.” He was sliding out from beneath the quilt as he spoke, arranging himself against the pillows as though every inch of him were bruised.

  “Daring rescue?”

  “It was going to be spectacular,” he sighed mournfully. “A midnight raid—a rope through the window—a getaway on white horses—well, gray ponies—it would’ve been just like one of our story papers. All wasted.”

  I laughed for the second time that evening. And then—haltingly, messily, fearing that Samuel would either laugh at me or pity me—I told him everything. I told him about the blue Door in the overgrown field; about my father and mother and how neither of them was dead or perhaps both of them were; about the New England Archaeological Society and the closing Doors and the dying world. Mr. Locke, keeping my father like a leashed hound and me like a caged bird. The Written, and the way certain willful persons are able to rewrite existence. And then I told him about the silver coin that became a knife, and showed him the words I’d written in my own flesh.

  The skin beneath my bandages was pale and puckered with fresh scabs, like some injured lake creature that had washed ashore. Samuel touched the jagged curve of the J carved into my skin.

  “You did not need rescuing, then, it seems,” he said, a wry twist in his smile. “Stregas rescue themselves in all the stories.”

  “Stregas?”

  “Witches,” he clarified.

  “Oh.” Sure, I’d been hoping for something a little more complimentary but—he believed me, without even a flicker of doubt. Maybe all those years of sneaking pulpy monster stories when he was supposed to be manning the shop counter had rotted his brain just like his mother said they would. Maybe he just trusted me.

  Samuel continued, speculatively. “They always end up alone in the stories—witches, I mean—living in the woods or mountains or locked in towers. I suppose it would take a brave man to love a witch, and men are mostly cowards.” He looked directly at me as he finished, with a kind of raised-chin boldness that said: I am not a coward.

  I found I couldn’t say anything at all. Or even think, much.

  After a moment he smiled again, gently, and said, “So these Society people. They will keep looking for you, won’t they? For the things you know, and the things you can do.”

  “Yes, they will.” Jane’s voice came from behind me. She stood in the doorway, framed by the last red rays of sunlight, her mouth set in a grim line. Something about her reminded me of my father, and the way grief stooped his shoulders and carved lines on his face.

  Jane moved stiffly to the water bucket to rinse her dirt-grimed arms, saying, “We need a plan, and a place to hide.” She patted herself dry. “I suggest Arcadia, the name your father gave me for a world hidden on the southern coast of Maine. It is inhospitable and inaccessible, or so I am given to understand, which makes it an excellent place to disappear. I know the way.” Jane’s voice was perfectly even, as if a hostile and alien world was a perfectly ordinary destination, like the bank or the post office.

  “But surely we don’t need to—”

  “January,” she interrupted, “we have no money, no place to live, no family. I am black in a nation that abhors blackness, foreign in a nation that abhors foreigners. And worst of all we are memorable—an African woman and an in-between girl with wild hair and a scarred arm.” She turned her hands palm up. “If the Society wants to find you, they will. And I doubt Mr. Havemeyer was the worst of them.”

  Samuel shifted against his pillows. “But you are forgetting—Miss January is not defenseless. She could write you anything you pleased, it seems to me. A fortress. A door to Timbuktu, or Mars. An unfortunate accident for Mr. Locke.” He sounded rather hopeful about that last possibility; he had growled in a very Bad-like manner when I told him about Brattleboro.

  A sour smile twisted Jane’s face. “Her powers are not unlimited, I am told.”

  I felt a prickle of defensiveness, doused in
shame. “No.” It came out slightly choked-sounding. “My father says word-working comes at a cost. I can’t just rip things up and stick them back together however I like.” I snuck a sidelong look at Samuel, my voice lowering. “I’m not much of a witch, I’m afraid.”

  He twitched his hand so that it lay very near to mine on the blankets, our fingertips almost touching. “Good,” he whispered. “I’m not that brave.”

  Jane cleared her throat rather markedly. “Now, getting there will be challenging. We have two hundred miles to cross without being recognized or followed, and not much money to do it with. I am afraid”—she smiled a tight, chill smile—“Miss Scaller will have to become accustomed to a rather different standard of living.”

  That stung. “I have traveled a bit, you know.” I had luggage with my name stamped on little brass plates; my passport looked like a well-thumbed paperback novel.

  Jane laughed. It wasn’t a very cheerful sound. “And in all your travels, have you spent a single night in a bed you made yourself? Cooked a single meal? Have you ever even seen a second-class ticket?” I didn’t say anything, damningly, but merely glared. “We’ll be sleeping in the woods and begging rides, so adjust your expectations accordingly.”

  I couldn’t think of an especially clever reply, so I switched subjects. “I’m not convinced we should even go to this Arcadia place. My father disappeared in Japan, if you recall, and we ought to go look for him, at least—”

  But Jane was shaking her head tiredly. “They’ll be expecting that above all. Maybe someday, after some time has passed, when it’s safer.”

  To hell with safer. “Maybe—maybe we could go to Mr. Locke for help.” Samuel and Jane both emitted sounds somewhere between disbelief and outrage. I forged on, shoulders squared. “I know, I know—but look: I don’t think he wanted me or my father hurt or dead. He just wanted to get a little richer and have a few more rare objects to stick in display cases. He might not even know about the Society closing the Doors, or maybe he doesn’t care—and he loved me, I think. At least a little. He could help us hide, lend us some money, get us to Japan…” I trailed off.

  Jane’s eyes filled with something tarry and oozing: pity. It’s surprising how much pity can hurt. “You’d like to go off adventuring and save your father, like a fairy-tale hero. I understand. But you are young and penniless and homeless, and you’ve never really seen the ugly side of the world. It would swallow you whole, January.”

  Beside me, Samuel said, “And if Mr. Locke was trying to protect you before, he has done a very bad job so far. I think you should run.”

  I went mute, feeling my whole future twist and warp dizzyingly beneath my feet. I’d been waiting for my life to snap back to normal, as if everything that’d happened since my father’s disappearance were a movie and soon the card would say THE END and the lights would buzz back to life and I’d find myself safely back at Locke House, rereading The Rover Boys on Land and Sea.

  But all that was permanently in the past, like a dragonfly preserved in amber.

  Follow Jane. “All right,” I whispered, and tried not to feel like I was seven again, eternally running away. “We’ll go to Arcadia. And will you—will you stay there with me? Or go home?”

  She flinched. “I have no home.” I met her eyes and found that the pity in them had curdled into something ragged and despairing. It made me think of ancient ruins or decaying tapestries, of things that have lost the thread of themselves.

  She teetered for a moment on the edge of saying something further—recriminations or rebukes or regrets—then turned and left the cabin with her back very straight.

  Samuel and I were quiet in her absence. My thoughts were a flock of drunk birds, ricocheting between despair (Would we both be homeless forever? Would I spend my life running?) and a childish, bubbling excitement (Arcadia! Adventure! Escape!) and the distracting warmth of Samuel’s hand still lying beside mine on the quilt.

  He cleared his throat and said, not very casually, “I intend to go with you. If you allow it.”

  “What—you can’t! Leave your family, your home, your, your profession—it’s far too dangerous—”

  “I was never going to be a good grocer,” he interrupted mildly. “Even my mother admits it. I have always wanted something else, something bigger. Another world would do.”

  I gave an exasperated half laugh. “I don’t even know where we’re going, or for how long! My future is all tangled and messy, and you can’t sign up for all that out of, of goodness or pity or—”

  “January.” His voice had gone lower and more urgent, which made my heart do a funny duh-dump against my ribs. “I do not offer out of pity. I think you know this.”

  I looked away, out the cabin window at the blueing evening, but it didn’t matter: I could still feel the heat of his gaze against my cheek. The banked coals had sparked and caught flame.

  “Maybe,” he said slowly, “maybe I did not make myself clear before, when I said I was on your side. I meant also that I would like to be at your side, to go with you into every door and danger, to run with you into your tangled-up future. For”—and a distant part of me was gratified to note that his voice had gone wobbly and strained—“for always. If you like.”

  Time—an unreliable, fractious creature since the asylum—now absented itself entirely from the proceedings. It left the two of us floating, weightless, like a pair of dust motes suspended in afternoon sunlight.

  I found myself thinking, for no particular reason, of my father. Of the way he’d looked as he walked away from me all those times, shoulders bent and head bowed, dusty coat hanging loose on his frame. Then I thought of Mr. Locke: the warmth of his hand on my shoulder, the jovial boom of his laugh. The pity in his eyes as he’d watched me drugged and dragged from his house.

  In my life I’d learned that the people you love will leave you. They will abandon you, disappoint you, betray you, lock you away, and in the end you will be alone, again and always.

  But Samuel hadn’t, had he? When I was a child trapped in Locke House with no one but Wilda for company, he’d slipped me story papers and brought me my dearest friend. When I was a madwoman locked in an asylum without hope or help, he’d brought me a key. And now, when I was a runaway pursued by monsters and mysteries, he was offering me himself. For always.

  I felt the lure of that offer like a hook behind my heart. To be not-alone, to be loved, to have that warm presence always at my shoulder… I stared hungrily into Samuel’s face, wondering if it was a particularly handsome one and realizing I could no longer tell. It was only his eyes I saw, ember-bright, unwavering.

  It would be so easy to say yes.

  But I hesitated. My father had written about True Love like it was gravity—something that simply existed, invisible and inescapable. Was it True Love that made my breath catch and my heart seize? Or was I merely scared and lonely, reeling from exhaustion, clinging to Samuel like a drowning woman offered a buoy?

  Samuel was watching my face, and whatever he saw made him swallow. “I’ve offended you. Forgive me.” His smile curdled with embarrassment. “It is only an offer. To consider.”

  “No, it’s not—I just—” I started the sentence without knowing where it was going, half-terrified of where it might end, but then—with a sense of timing that bordered on the divine—Jane returned.

  She had an armload of mossy firewood and a closed expression, like a sutured wound. She saw us and paused, her eyebrows lifting in a my-my-what-have-I-interrupted sort of expression, but proceeded to the stove without comment. Bless her.

  After a minute or two (during which Samuel and I both exhaled and shifted our hands farther apart), Jane said mildly, “We should sleep early tonight. We leave in the morning.”

  “Of course.” Samuel’s voice was perfectly even. He levered himself off the bed, face paling with the effort, and ducked his head graciously toward me.

  “Oh no, you don’t have to—I can sleep on the floor—”

  He f
eigned deafness, spreading a few mousy-smelling blankets in the corner and crawling into them. He rolled his face to the cabin wall, shoulders curving inward.

  “Good night, Jane. January.” He said my name carefully, as if it were barbed.

  I climbed into bed beside Bad and lay stiff and aching, too tired to sleep. My eyelids felt hinged and hot; my arm throbbed. Jane propped herself in the rocking chair in front of the stove with Mr. Locke’s revolver in her lap. Faint coal light glowed from the grate, drawing the planes of her face in soft orange.

  She wore her grief more openly now that she was unobserved. It was the same expression I’d seen so many times on my father’s face, when he paused in his writing and stared out the gray windows as if wishing he could sprout wings and dive through them.

  Was theirs the only future I could look forward to? Was I doomed to grim survival in a world that wasn’t my own? Grieving, unmoored, terribly alone?

  Bad gave one of those soft dog yawns and stretched beside me.

  Well, not entirely alone, at least. I fell asleep with my face pressed into the sunshine smell of his fur.

  Traveling with Jane across New England was nothing at all like traveling with Mr. Locke, except that both of them had similarly clear ideas about who was in charge. Jane issued orders and instructions with the calm confidence of someone used to seeing them followed, and I wondered if she’d led her own bands of hunters back in her adopted world, and how hard it had been for her to impersonate a maid in this one.

  She woke Samuel and me in the predawn gloom, and we were halfway across the lake before the first honeyed line of sunlight crept above the horizon. The four of us crammed into the Zappias’ rowboat rather than risk the ferry and its curious eyes, and took turns rowing toward the dull gaslight glow of the shore.

  Rowing, I discovered, is quite as difficult as shoveling dirt. By the time the hull scuffed against coarse sand, my palms had progressed past blistered and were approaching bloodied, and Samuel was moving like someone several decades older than his actual age. Jane looked perfectly fine, except for the grave dirt and blood still staining her skirt.