Dana Ilic and the Shadow Door (Lightwielder Chronicles #1) | ✔️

12 | King & Queen

As soon as we stepped across the threshold, the door closed behind us.

Not with a menacing slam, the kind you often see in cartoons, but with a slow, polite thud.

I ran back to the door knob to inspect it.

Was it Radogost, who closed it? 

But the god was nowhere to be found. Just as I was about to rattle it, Max's voice interrupted me.

"Dana. You gotta come see this!"

"What?!" I snapped at him, irritated that we might have fallen into a trap of our own making.

I was already looking for all the available exits.

When I turned around to see what was it that Max had wanted to show me, my mouth formed an 'O."

Whoa. This wooden cabin was like a T.A.R.D.I.S. A lot bigger on the inside.

But it was totally empty, save for the white walls, and white tiles under our feet.

This whole space was the size of a shopping mall.

As soon as that thought flashed through my head, the cabin shimmered, and shifted.

"D! It's changing to fit your vision!" Max pointed at it.

The mall was like a patchwork of all the malls Max and I'd ever been to in our lives.

Bright store signs popped up to the left and right like mushrooms, the space quickly filling with dozens of stores.

The walls turned into glass, with plenty of sunlight coming through, and tile floors shone in all the colors of rainbow.

As we cautiously padded through the newly created corridors, display windows with giant sale signs were erected in mere seconds.

Pots filled with dandelions materialised out of nowhere around elegant wooden benches.

All kinds of shops sprung at us left and right. They were filled to the brim with latest fashion branded clothes, housewares, crafty furniture.

I could see all my favorite books (Hello, Diary of a Wimpy Kid), latest PS5 video games, and toys galore.

And the smells.

I wanted to roll around in them forever. It smelled like popcorn dripping with butter, Ben & Jerry's peanut butter ice cream, and fresh spun cotton candy from the local fair my mom used to take me to every year.

"It would take years to make a place like this," I whispered.

"And we're building it in seconds," Max said. "How are we doing this?"

We paused before a majestic water fountain (that suspiciously looked exactly like the one we had at a Bloomington shopping mall, but better), and dropped onto the two comfy sofas that showed up in the lounge area.

Mine turned bright yellow, with tiny "D" letters sprouting on the textile, and Max's became light blue, decorated with "M" letters.

"Let's think." I held my head in my hands, almost knocking over a glass of cold, refreshing Coke that had materialized to the left of me. "Radogost is the god of hospitality. I mean, even his name says so. Rado is 'kind, willing, glad', and gost is a 'guest'."

"So, he is... willing to have guests?"

"Yeah, basically he is "the one who is ready to welcome his guests," or, err "the one who takes good care of guests." 

The question was, though—

"What would a being like him consider taking good care of guests?" Max finished my thought.