by Sam Hall
“She died recently," Tess said finally.
"My word! I am most apologetic! That was an unforgivable blunder on my part. The last time I saw your grandmother, she as fit as a fiddle. Please accept my deepest condolences."
"Thanks," I said. It was lame, but what else could I say?
"I say, a death notice in the Mirenese Gazette would stop this kind of gaffe in its tracks. Would you mind awfully if I placed an advertisement in your name?"
"Um, yeah, I guess that’s fine. Nan must have had a lot of old customers who are wondering where she is. That would be a great help. And I guess we need to let people know the store is open again."
"Leave everything to me," Benjamin said. "Well, I must be off."
"Did I just give a sentient dog permission to notify an alternate realm of Nan's death?" I said.
"Seems so. On a positive note, I've found the polished amber dust," Tess said.
4
I took the shock of finding out we had an inter-dimensional portal in our stockroom and put it to one side and then set about trying to rebuild the business relationship with the gnome. After all, he was the nearest thing we'd had to a customer in weeks. All three of us scurried around, getting what he wanted, then found the price list for the obscure items. The gnome looked much more pleased.
“There you go, sir, we've added extra powdered amber as compensation for our earlier behaviour," Tess said, placing the neatly packaged parcel in his hands.
“Much obliged," the gnome said with a smile. "His Highness helped me to understand the situation better. I had no idea Mistress Miranda had passed. Please accept my condolences."
"Of course," she said.
"Obviously, she did not have time to train you to take up your birthright. I will instruct others to make allowances."
Jez’s and my eyebrows shot upwards at the same time at this. Tess hastily smiled and ushered the gnome out. I swivelled around to Prince Harold who lounged elegantly against the counter. “So, inter-dimensional travel, something that happens in your world?"
“Indeed, it’s how I found you. A portal opened on my morning ride."
"And you just went through? There could have been anything on the other side."
He shrugged, "I felt certain I was needed and I was correct."
I shook my head, this was just too weird. I sat down behind the counter, scrubbed at my scalp, then picked up the little nuggets of gold he’d left. Evidently, it was a currency that worked across dimensions. Was this how Nan had made money? Hawking strange body parts to people from other worlds? Was it like, one of those dodgy traditional medicine places where rhino horn was sold illegally to give guys boners? Where did the gryphon beak come from? Maybe they were endangered in their world and we were making small change selling powdered forms of it. And the portal. Could we walk through it? What would happen if we did? Could we get back?
“Forgive me, Lady Ashley, but you look pensive. Is there any way I can be of assistance, outside of moving books, of course?”
I met his violet-blue eyes head on and said, “How much do you know about portal travel?”
Jez, Tess and I sat the prince down and quizzed him for a few hours. It appeared that gryphons were not rare and the beaks came from a group of people who cohabited with the bird/lion hybrids. The beaks and other body parts came from animals who had died naturally and were harvested and sold for income. The gryphons were not terribly sentimental about the bodies of their fallen comrades. Once you could not fly, you were meat. The Lamassians used the money they accrued to maintain the tribe and to buy items the gryphons loved but could not get nearby, like fire mice. I nearly asked what fire mice were, but stopped myself from going down that wormhole.
“So, how do people travel between realms? For example, how are you going to get home?” I asked.
“One travels with the aid of sorcerers. There are many who make their living this way, ushering those with coin from one world to the next.”
“And if we went through the door without one?” Jez asked.
“I would advise against it, my ladies. Without the properly qualified person, you may be stuck in the realm you have entered.”
“Dude, I knew you were going to say that,” Tess said, slamming her hand down on the table. Jez and I looked at her in mild shock. My sister was the easy-going one, but apparently, this was the final straw. “What if I went through and Ash kept the door open?”
“My lady, we have no idea how the magic of the door works. How long it stays stable, whether travel is possible from both directions.”
“Tess, we’ve got to be careful here. I get it, this is exciting–”
“Exciting? Exciting? I've been preparing for this my whole life! I spent my childhood burrowing into the backs of wardrobes and looking for mysterious doors. My Nan was a witch and knew magic. I was destined to be that kid in all those books, destined to have incredible adventures and make magical friends. . . . Do you know what it’s been doing to me, seeing the spell work on you every morning? You get to meet all the people I’ve wanted to my whole life!”
“There’s nothing stopping you from talking to them!”
“But they’re all here for you! I’m not the tough and sassy protagonist, I’m the geeky sidekick!”
“I’m not sass. . . . Not the point. Look, I’d do anything for our roles to be reversed and for you to wake up in glass coffins, believe me. Actually, maybe that’s it.”
“What’s it? You want to bury your sister in a glass coffin?” Jez asked.
“No, we should be looking into the spell, into all of Nan’s books. She has to have written all this stuff down, right? How else did she expect us to look after the shop without her help?”
5
We spent the rest of the afternoon pawing through the piles of books, looking for some clue but not really finding anything.
“What I can’t believe is that I didn’t know that door existed,” Jez said. “Like, your Nan used to disappear into the storeroom all the time, but I thought it was to do grandma stuff like crochet or something.” Tess held up a New Age tome that talked about opening the doors of perception through drugs, but Jez was dismissive of this. "Old hippie stuff, keep looking," she said.
“Oh, I wouldn't call it complete rubbish. Many of our sorcerers have employed the use of hallucinogens to overcome mental blocks," Charming said.
"Your magicians take drugs?" I asked. This was obviously not the Disney version of Prince Charming. "Have you ever tried them, Your Majesty?"
"It's not considered a respectable activity–"
"Didn't inhale. Got it."
By the time the sun began to set, we had gone through most of the piles of books from the shelves and all of those we’d found in the storeroom as well, without any luck. "She must have stored the information at Pa's house," Tess said. "She was always writing stuff down in those notebooks with the red corners."
“We could head over there now, pick up Pa some Chinese takeaway. He’d love that,” I said.
“Well, I’ve got to hit the hay, ladies. I’d like to say this was fun . . .,” Jez said, swinging her bag on to her shoulder.
“Ah, about that,” I said.
“What? You can’t be expecting overtime? We’ve gone over every book in the place. Seriously, please don’t ask me for overtime.”
“No, no, this will hopefully be more pleasant than looking through old books,” I glanced over to where Prince Charming stood studiously examining the display cabinet of crystal specimens.
“Oh,” Jez’s smile spread wide, “Oh, I take it all back. Sign me up for all the overtime you like. You sure you don’t want him? He’s a bit squeaky clean, but that’s kinda part of the appeal, maybe you could . . . muss him a bit.”
I looked at the man and felt a twinge of concern. It felt a little like tossing a lamb to a wolf, which wasn’t in any way lessened when I looked at Jez’s positively carnivorous expression. “Just don’t . . . break him, alright? He’s an actual person
, not a Disney cartoon. He has a castle and a kingdom to return to.”
“Uh-huh.”
“And he may become a customer of the shop. You wouldn’t want to sour a good business relationship, would you?”
“Nuh-uh. Look, Ash, I get you’re pretty blasé about this, having had a parade of truly spectacular-looking men arrive in your bedroom each morning, but the rest of us are scrambling to find someone even slightly reasonable to grace our beds. I promise you, I will go above and beyond to give your prince a positive impression of the shop and really develop that customer relationship.”
“OK, I get it. I shouldn’t have said–”
“I wonder if oral sex is a thing is his world.”
“Oh, God, am I sorry I said something!”
“What about a—?”
“Stop! Go! Take the prince, fuck his brains out, but just go!”
“Well, if you insist. Hey, Harry baby, you’re coming home with me tonight.”
“Oh, is that alright with you, Lady Ash?”
“Absolutely. You kids have fun.”
“I do look forward to what you’ll bring in tomorrow morning,” Jez said with a smile. “Actually, maybe that’s part of your solution.”
“What? Sleeping with characters from my sister’s spank bank?”
“Hey!”
“You know it’s true.”
“No, if you’re doomed to be visited from characters from books or movies she’s seen, find one who knows something about portals. Hell of a lot of books about doors into other realms out there.”
“Y’know, that’s not such a bad idea. You’re not just a sex-crazed Wiccan madwoman.”
“Nope, I’m the sex-crazed Wiccan madwoman with the ideas. Later, bitches.”
“Lord of the Rings,” I said.
“Oh, God no!” Tess said pulling a face. “All that portentous language, the endless travel and the singing. It’s like the guy really liked the Sound of Music or something.”
“Gandalf the fricking Grey, showing you how to travel through inter-dimensional portals. I’m just going to put that idea on the table.”
We were driving over to our grandfather’s tossing around ideas in response to Jez’s suggestion and not getting very far. Usually, Tess got a lift home with Jez, but with the way she was looking at the prince, Tess figured she’d be safer with me.
“Gandalf the Grey . . . do you think he’d look like Ian McKellen?” she asked.
“I have no idea. I have a copy of Fellowship on DVD, gets you around the portentous language thing. . . .”
“Oh, but we have no guarantee who would come through. What if it was an Orc?”
“Were they those really ugly guys? The ones in the mud?”
“If you mean the big muscly ones? They were Uruk-hai, which might I add is piece of evidence number two against LOTR. I mean what if Saruman the White came through?”
“Was he the bad white wizard dude with the locks? Oh, God, what about Gollum?”
“OK, that book is done. No LOTR until this spell is sorted. What about the Narnia books? An obvious choice.”
“And get help from Cat-Jesus? Nah, he was always saying that the kids could never go through the same way and that when they got too old or started touching themselves inappropriately, they couldn’t go to Narnia. I don’t want to lose the portal because I had a wank.”
“I don’t remember Aslan telling the kids off for masturbating . . .,” Tess said.
“Then there’s Mr Tumnus or the White Witch–”
“OK, not that one, either. How about Alice in Wonderland?”
“That whole film/book was some kind of kiddy-porn hash dream. I don’t need to try and get advice from a bad trip while not under the influence of said trip.”
“What if the Mad Hatter turned up looking like Johnny Depp?”
“No, no, no.”
“Um, Peter Pan?”
“Oh, that has potential. I found him totally sexy when I was a kid.”
“Really? Flying pubescent boys, huh? How about Outlander?”
“The one with all the Scottish dudes? We’re not looking to get me laid, we’re looking for someone who can tell us what to do. We need a great sage or eldritch wizard or something.”
“Without horrible bad guys that could possibly come instead. What about Merlin?”
“Now that has potential, Merlin the mother-fucking wizard. It’s like Gandalf but minus creepy eyes in the sky. Yeah, we need to get you a copy of that movie, Excalibur, on the way home.”
“Not the Monty Python one?” Tess asked as we pulled into Pa’s driveway.
“Not the Monty Python one!”
6
“So, you want to look at your Nan’s notebooks?” Pa asked as we all filed into the dining room and started dishing up the Chinese. Nan would have had a fit, cartons of MSG-laden food being placed on her good lace tablecloth, rather than being plated in the kitchen.
“If that’s OK. We’re having some difficulties with the shop, and we assumed she left some kind of instructions.”
“Found the portal, did you?”
Both of our jaws dropped. Pa was an ex-cop, a big, tall, blustery guy and while his hair and beard were white, the twinkle in his eye at our expression said nothing was getting past him, even though he was in retirement.
“So, you–?”
“You knew all the–?”
“I shared my life with your grandmother for nearly fifty years. How do you think she’d hide something like a portal from me? I was the one who insisted on the lockable door, to protect anyone who wasn’t her from it. I can let you into her old workroom, girls, but I have no idea where to find the information you’re looking for. She didn’t expect to go, y’know, not yet.”
“Pa . . .” Tess reached over and put her hand over his, eyes glistening.
“How are you holding up, really?” I asked.
“I . . .” Pa dropped his fork into the bowl of sweet and sour pork and rice. “I’m getting by. I go to the pub some nights, catch up with some of the boys. I keep the garden how she liked it, make sure the hydrangeas aren’t getting too leggy.” He stopped and stared at his food as if it held the answers. “This isn’t what we planned, your Nan and I, this wasn’t how it was supposed to go.”
“It’s OK,” Tess said rubbing his arm.
“It’s not! Sorry, Tessy girl, but it’s not. I spent my life with that woman, woke up every day to her, and went to bed every night with her. I did my best, to be the man she needed me to be, but in the end, it didn’t make any difference. I-I just can’t believe that she’s gone.”
“I meant it’s OK to feel like that,” Tess said. “We miss her, too. I miss talking to her, getting her advice, whether I wanted it or not.” We both chuckled at that. Every time she’s start with, “I know you’re not going to listen to me, but. . . .”
“We should have come around more often,” I said. “I’m sorry, Pa. You’ve always seemed so . . . together. I didn’t think about how this must be making you feel.”
“It’s alright, it just gets to me from time to time. Eat your food and then we’ll go up and have a look.”
Nan’s workroom was on the second floor of her house. During the day, morning light flooded into the room, making it look bright and airy, though it seemed strangely fitting that it was a lot dingier in the evening. Pa pulled a ring of keys from his pocket and went and unlocked a large wooden cupboard, then another, then another. Inside each was hundreds upon hundreds of exercise books. My heart sank looking at them. Tess went over and pulled one out. “1967!” she said, flipping through it briefly before putting it back.
“Do you know what year she put the portal in the shop?” I asked.
Pa took a seat on a low stool by her herb prep table and rubbed at his beard. “Wasn’t in the 70s, that’s when she started the shop. I think . . . it was in the 80s. The New Age crowd had thrown away the patchouli and become yuppies and she needed some way to bring the money in. Yeah, definitely 80
s.”
“So that narrows it down to ten years. So what, is it one book per year?” I asked Tess.
She shook her head and pulled out a huge pile of notebooks, “This is 1979.”
“All of them?”
“I think so. Nope, here’s a couple more.”
I sat down heavily on the wood floor, cross-legged. I shut my eyes and rubbed at the sockets. I was so bloody tired. “Maybe we should come by on the weekend, make a day of it, Tess?”
“Couldn’t we . . .?” Tess’s fingers closed around the bunch of notebooks in her lap reflexively. I let out a long sigh as quietly as I could and held a hand out.
“OK, pass me the 1980 pile.”
Evidently, it was not installed in 1980, ‘81, ‘82 or ‘83. It was getting damn close to ten o’clock, my back ached, my eyes burned and I had had enough.
“Tess . . .”
“I know, I know. I’m just finishing skimming this one.”
“Tess, I’ve got to stop. I am hurting.”
“OK, go downstairs. Sit with Pa, I won’t be long.”
“Tess, we’ve got to get up early tomorrow and open the shop.”
“So, go!” she snapped. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to . . . Look, I can crash here, stay with Pa for the night. You can pick me up on your way in the morning.”
“Tessy,” Pa said, getting to his feet a little stiffly, then firmly but gently taking the book from her hands and putting it in the pile. “C’mon girl, you have to get some sleep.”
“But . . .” she looked around the room with bleary eyes, “this is the first time I’ve really felt her . . . since she died. It smells like her, her herbs are still hanging from the drying rack, her journal is open. Everything is the same. It’s like she’s here, like she’ll come in that door at any moment. . . .”
