“Jesus, it’s a goddamned parade. All right, folks, you’re going to stop where you are and turn around real slow. And then you’re going to tell me what your business is, and how in the name of sweet Christ you found our door.”
The Burning Door
When you’ve stepped into a foreign world and you’re cold and weak-limbed and only half-dressed, you tend to do as you are told. The three of us turned slowly around.
Facing us was a rangy, raggedy old man, very much like a scarecrow if scarecrows grew patchy white beards and wielded spears. He wore a vaguely martial-looking gray coat, a pair of rough sandals made of rope and rubber, and a bright feather tucked into the white tangle of his hair. He grunted, jabbing the spear point toward my belly.
I raised shaking hands. “Please, sir, we’re just trying to—” I began, and it was no effort at all to sound pitiful and terrified. But the effect was undercut somewhat by Bad, who was making a sound like an idling engine, hackles spiked, and Jane, who had drawn Mr. Locke’s revolver and pointed it directly at the old man’s chest.
His eyes flicked to the gun and back to me, hardening. “Go ahead, miss. But I bet I could gut this girl before I bled out. You want to make the same bet?” There was a brief stillness, during which I imagined how unpleasant it would be to be disemboweled by a rusty homemade spear and silently swore at my father for his poor judgment—and then Samuel stepped between us.
He leaned gently forward until the spear point dimpled his shirt. “Sir. There is no need for this. We don’t mean any harm, I swear to you.” He made a sharp put down your weapon, woman gesture at Jane, who ignored him entirely. “We’re just looking for a, ah, place to hide for a little time. We didn’t mean to intrude.” The old man’s eyes remained narrowed and suspicious, a pair of damp blue marbles set in deep folds of flesh.
Samuel licked his lips and tried again. “Let us try again, yes? I am Samuel Zappia, of Zappia Family Groceries in Vermont. This is Mr. Sindbad, more often called Bad; Miss Jane Irimu, who will lower her gun very soon, I am sure; and Miss January Scaller. We were told this was a good place to—”
“Scholar?” The man spat the word, tilting his chin at me.
I nodded over Samuel’s shoulder.
“You Julian’s girl, then?”
My skin prickled at the sound of my father’s name. I nodded again.
“Well, shit.” The spear point dropped abruptly earthward. The man leaned comfortably against it, picking at his snaggled teeth with one fingernail and squinting amiably at us. “Sorry to scare you, hon, that’s my mistake. But the whole point of guard duty is to guard, ain’t it, and you can’t be too careful. Why don’t y’all follow me and we’ll get you some hot food and a place to set down. Unless”—and here he gestured toward the gnarled, age-wracked tree just behind us, at the narrow Door nestled in its roots—“there’s anybody likely to come running through after you?”
Samuel and I stared at him in slightly stunned silence, but Jane made a considering sound. “Not immediately, I shouldn’t think.” The revolver had vanished again into her tight-knotted bundle and Bad’s growls had turned to intermittent grumbles. His tail gave the smallest of wags, not indicating friendliness so much as a cessation of open hostilities.
“Well, c’mon, then. Might make it back for dinner if we hustle.” The man turned toward the setting sun, bent to pluck a rusted red bicycle from the tall grass, and began wheeling it down a narrow track. He whistled tunelessly as he walked.
We exchanged a series of looks, ranging from what the hell to at least he’s not trying to kill us anymore, and followed him. We waded across the plain with the last red sunbeams warming our cheeks, driving the frigid Atlantic from our bones. The old man alternated between whistling and chatting, entirely undeterred by our weary, edgy silence.
His name, we learned, was John Solomon Ayers, called Sol by his friends, and he’d been born in Polk County, Tennessee, in the year 1847. He’d joined the 3rd Regiment of the Tennessee Infantry when he was sixteen, deserted at seventeen when he realized he was likely to die miserable and hungry on behalf of some rich cotton grower who wouldn’t give a bent penny for him, and was promptly taken prisoner by the Yanks. He’d spent a few years in a Massachusetts prison before busting out and running for the coast. He’d stumbled into this world and been here ever since.
“And have you been, uh, all alone? Until my father came through?” It would, I felt, explain a few of Solomon’s more eccentric qualities. I pictured him squatting alone in a dirt hovel, whistling to himself, perhaps shunned by the natives… And where were the natives of this world? Were they likely to swoop down on us in a thundering horde? I glanced up at the bare horizon but saw nothing more alarming than a low line of hills and a jumble of sand-colored stones ahead.
Solomon cackled. “Lord, no. Arcadia—that’s what we call it, who knows what it used to be called—is about halfway toward being a proper city these days. Not that I’ve seen many of those. We’re nearly there, now.” No one answered him, but Jane’s face expressed deepest skepticism.
The tumbled stones loomed larger as we walked, growing into massive boulders that leaned against one another at precarious angles. A few birds—eagles, maybe, or hawks, the same shimmering golden color as the feather in Sol’s hair—watched us mistrustfully from their craggy perches. They took flight as we approached, seeming by some trick of the fading light to vanish into the sky.
Solomon led us to a gap between the two largest stones, which formed a shadowed tunnel with a strange, shining curtain strung across it. It was only when we stood before it that I realized it wasn’t fabric at all, but dozens of golden feathers tied and dangling like soft wind chimes. I could see through them to the other side of the standing stones: a few empty hills, endless swaying grasses, the last rose glimmer of the sun as it set. No secret cities.
Solomon leaned his bicycle against the stone and crossed his arms, staring at the feathers as if waiting for something to happen. Bad gave an impatient whine.
“Excuse me, Mr. Ayers,” I began.
“Sol’s fine,” he said absently.
“Right. Um, excuse me, Sol, what are you—” But before I could find a polite way to ask if he was an honest-to-God madman who spent his spare time knitting feathers into curtains, or if he had an actual destination in mind, I heard padding footsteps. They came from the darkness behind the curtain, but there was nothing there except stone and dusty earth—
Until a wide hand swept the feathers aside and a squat woman in a black stovepipe hat stepped out of the empty air and stood before us, arms crossed and eyes narrowed. Jane said a series of words I didn’t recognize, but which I was sure were impolite.
The woman was roundish and brownish, with silver-streaked hair. She wore a collection of clothes just as motley as Solomon’s—including a silver-buttoned tailcoat, pants sewn from burlap, and some sort of bright beaded collar—but somehow contrived to look imposing rather than comical. She glared at each of us in turn with heavy-lidded eyes.
“Guests, Sol?” She said the word guests the way you might say fleas or influenza.