𝓢𝓮𝓿𝓮𝓷 𝓓𝓸𝓸𝓻𝓼

6

Kat,” Jay’s voice whispered. “Kat, what do you see?”

“Give me a second,” I whispered back. The woman paced in front of me; she seemed to have a hard time sitting completely still. While her eyes remained rapt and focused on me, her head shifted this way and that at every noise, tilting almost imperceptibly against the breeze. Her wings shifted and ruffled constantly, giving the impression of tireless energy, and intense power held at bay.

”You are younger than I expected,” she said after a moment. ”Not yet a woman. But the smell of your blood is much older.”

Oh Jesus Christ, the smell of my blood???. My knees nearly liquified; her presence was crushing, as if I was standing in front of every leader of every major country on earth, and required to give a speech on a topic I hadn’t studied for. I was still pressed hard against the red door and refused to move forward into her wingspan. “I…” I swallowed, clearing the sudden lump in my throat. “I apologize, um…but I don’t know what that means.”

She seemed to find that funny. ”You are truly a youngling. And yet you and the others wander through these expanses with such relative ease. We have watched you ever since you stepped through that door.” Her gaze snapped to the red door behind my back, and then back down to my face, obvious interest unveiled on her features. ”You have something that would be very valuable to many here.”

I didn’t know what to say to that; I opened my mouth to ask what she meant, but she suddenly cocked her head sharply to the side, pupils contracting to tiny pinpoints of black in a sea of red and gold. ”It encroaches. Whatever you’ve done to disturb It, It now presses Its influence between the expanses.” Her gaze flicked back to me. ”You are here to clean up your mess, yes?”

“I…um. Yes. That’s the goal.” I felt absurdly like I had forgotten something extremely important when talking to her; as if she were in on an inside joke that she expected me to join her in, and yet I didn’t know what it was.

”It’s coming closer.” She shook her head, feathers ruffling around her face for a moment, and her wings expanded. ”It may know that you are here. I tire of holding this form, but I will give you this; that Its door and Its Self are intrinsically connected. It is a being of gateways, of passages, of in-betweens and not-places. What you do to Its Gateway, you do to Its Self.”

She shuddered before I could get a word out, shivered and hunched forward, and in an undulating ripple of feathers, the woman was gone and the owl blinked at me, wickedly hooked beak flashing in the eternal sunset. It flapped its wings in a powerful down beat and lifted off the ground, rising higher overhead before clearing the skyline of buildings and disappearing, taking off into the twilight.

“Jay,” I said quietly when she was gone. “I think I have an idea.”

“What happened?”

“I’ll tell you, I promise, but…just bear with me. I may not be able to talk much.”

I took off in a light run, keeping my eyes peeled for anything that would seem out of place in this red-gold world. Every few moments, a shadow would fall across me as a dark shape would fly overhead between buildings; like every time before when we had explored the world behind the red door, I was watched from a distance. I wondered if it were only the owl woman watching, or if there were more like her far above me in the sky.

And then, as I reached a wide open marketplace, empty of stalls or beings, I heard it.

A low rumbling, with a choppier sound layered over the top.

Fuck. “It’s here, Jay. I don’t have much time.” I walked out to the center of the empty marketplace, turning in a slow circle, watching the nearby buildings and doors. “When I say so, I need everyone in the circle, including you, to picture the green door in your minds. Try not to think of anything else, but just the green door. You got it?”