“That was certainly awkward,” Myrtle said. She slipped the wand back up her sleeve.
“Sister,” Poplar said irritably. “Your temper!”
“Oh pish-tosh,” Myrtle replied. “They’ll be back to their revolting selves in short order—and none the wiser.”
The knight nodded as he strode to the closet door. “She’s right. Squelch never recall real magical acts. And besides, dillywig magic doesn’t hold for long where the squelch live.”
Myrtle’s face dropped like a Shar Pei. “We do not refer to commons as squelch. With language like that, one might wonder about your allegiances.”
The knight laughed. “Oh Myrtle, squelch don’t care what we call them.” He winked at Briar and smiled broadly like he’d just told a great joke. “Besides, she isn’t squelch, is she? She’s one of us.”
Briar stood with her back leveled against wall with eyes fixed upon the strange intruders. “Mrs. Poplar, what—what’s going on here? This is definitely the weirdest social worker visit I’ve ever had.”
Poplar came to Briar’s side and took her cold, pale hand. “I know it’s a bit much to take in,” she said. Then she ogled Briar with her telescopic monocle.
“Poor thing’s never seen an alteration,” Myrtle said to the knight who just nodded. “But you did get my message on your device, did you not? And Ash—he told you that it was no longer safe, did he not?”
Ash, the knight, was busy fitting the closet door into its frame. “I told her,” he said. “It still isn’t safe—not yet—nor ever, I would guess.” He pointed his sword at the door. The sword glowed and the hinges reattached with a red-hot sizzle. “But, I told you that people just shut down when I show up in that damned ball-gown.”
“No!” Myrtle cried. “Not the one with the diamond shoes and the tiara again?”
He nodded.
“Your favorite, Poplar,” she said. “And you missed it.”
Ash shook his head. “That was a fine way to meet Briar for the first time.”
Poplar shrugged. “Still, it’s better than if you had arrived as the geisha—”
Briar shook her head. “I’m sorry, I’m not following any of this. I stopped following once phones started flying, a big blue tornado spun through my room, and people started popping in and out of my closet like it was a freakin’ carnival fun house.”
Poplar took Briar by the elbow. “Come sit down, Briar, you’re overwrought.” Then Poplar told Myrtle, “It’s her first time seeing an alteration.”
“So I’ve heard.” Myrtle seemed unamused.
“Let go of me,” Briar snapped. She backed away from Poplar and edged toward the closet. “Yeah, and it’s safe to say it’s my first time with weirdo home-invading kidnappers. Good call, Poplar—or whatever the hell your real name is.”
“I blame myself for this ignorance,” Myrtle said. “Look at the poor thing. From the Blackwood clan and she doesn’t even know how a proper door works.” She looked away with glistening eyes.
“You see? This is what happens when you leave commons to raise a child like Briar,” Ash said. He pounded with his steel boots over to the hole in the split baseboard, bent down on his shrill knee-plates, and searched for the Saulks. “They better get out of there before they change back, or this could get messy.”
Myrtle pursed her lips. “I don’t recall forcing them into the wall. Besides, I presume that’s where most vermin live. I suppose they were only living out their deeper nature.” She looked away with her chin aloft.
Briar shook her head. “Excuse me. I’m still trying to catch up here. Just how did any of you get in here through that closet?”
Poplar smiled. “I walked mostly. Although, I may have tip-toed once I got closer to the door.”
“Hey, Straightjacket, you can’t just walk through walls. We’re in a basement—you know, like, underground,” Briar said. She opened the closet door and peered in.
“Oh yes, underground, close to the roots of that magnificent apple tree in the front yard.” Poplar clapped the fingertips of her lace gloves together. “She was quite fortunate in that regard.” She nodded with Myrtle.
Briar began shouting. “You’re full of shit. Now stop lying and give me some answers.”
Just then the fox fur around Myrtle’s neck lifted its head and spoke. “This is absurd. Miss Ingrate is ignorant, insulting, and has quite the potty-mouth.”
Briar screamed. “What the hell?”
The fox hopped off Myrtle’s shoulders, scurried to Briar and squinted at her with one eye. After a few moments he said, “Nope. She isn’t the right one, anyway. Now come on. Let’s all get out of here before Orpion’s spies find us.”
“Don’t pay any attention to Sherman,” Poplar said to Briar. “Just show him the key and he’ll know what’s what.”
“The key?” Briar was staring at the talking fox, and could barely process what was happening.
“Yes, dear, the one around your neck. Show Sherman so he’ll shut that chicken-poaching trap of his,” Poplar said.
Briar followed Poplar’s request, reached for the chain and pulled the key up from the front of her dress. She regarded it, tracing the black iron curls and floral design at its head with her gaze, turning its smooth barrel between her thumb and forefinger. Poplar had often told her that it was the last remnant of her birth mother, whose whereabouts were unknown. Briar went nowhere without it.
“That’s not the key,” the fox said. “It’s supposed to be gold. I remember these things.”
Briar felt as though the walls were closing in on her. This shit is off-the-chain crazy. And yet, there was something disturbingly familiar about it all. She started to back away from them, and inadvertently stepped through the closet doorway. Once that happened, she disappeared.
Myrtle raised her eyebrows. “Well how do you like that?” she said. “The child left without as much as a goodbye.”
Briar suddenly found herself in a dim, red-carpeted hallway lit by flickering candles set in dusty gold brackets. “What the—?” she whispered. She turned around looking for the door through which she passed, and her heart paused.
Though the light was dim and unsteady, she saw that she stood within an impossibly long corridor lined with white doors of all shapes and sizes. Thousands of lustrous doors with gleaming brass knobs crowded the walls and even the ceiling. Some doors were small and round. Perhaps only a thimble could fit through them. Others were tall and square, and they reached as high as the ceiling would allow. The doors were stacked atop one another and jammed together tightly, making a ladder necessary to reach the highest of them.
She could be lost forever in these halls with bisecting corridors, all of which seemed to infinitely stretch out.
“Hello?” she called out. But the corridor was hushed, except for a tick-tock sound coming from somewhere nearby.
She tiptoed toward the first intersection not far from where she stood. Her every footstep creaked on the warped old floor-boards beneath the carpet. Once she arrived, she only found another hall crammed with doors on either side and above her.
This hallway, however, was shorter, maybe the length of several parked cars, she estimated. A tall grandfather clock was wedged into the end of the hall. Not that Briar had much experience with old clocks, but this was unlike any she had ever seen. To begin with, it was at least two times the height of a full-grown man. Then, instead of the normal faceplate, from what she could see, the thing had three concentric dials crisscrossed with sixteen strange markings. She wanted a better look, so she stepped into the second, bisecting hall.
This one was tighter than the first. If she were to walk straight on, her shoulders would brush both walls. And, in fact she brushed a shoulder along an ancient tapestry she hadn’t noticed hanging above a row of knee-high doors. It was probably a trick of the light, but it seemed to her that the faintly stitched roses in the graying background bowed aside.
Briar stood back as far as she could and studied the entire length of the weaving. It was stitched with crosshatched illustrations from a children’s storybook, with images of cottages, creatures, and faded landscapes. Gnarled oaks and oversized flowers loomed over a yellow two-story dwelling with ginger-bread trim. It looked just like the Saulks’ home. Her heart dipped and she felt a fog of confusion rolling through her mind.
Toward the top of the musty old hanging was a red-cloaked figure that held a mirror in its hands. And a spinning wheel, with drips of red stitched in as though it were dripping blood from its spindle, was positioned near a gloomy palace. A dark cloud was carefully woven in the distance and was shaped like an ominous hooded figure that seemed to hold the whole tapestry between its clawed hands.
Hidden along the border of the decaying mural, amid scrollwork of vines and leaves, were short wiry creatures with pointed caps and sharp claws. Each one clamped a colorful jewel between its teeth. There were other images as well, hideous, monstrous things, or so it seemed to Briar. But they were too worn by time for her to fully make them out. She smoothed her fingertips along the stitching of a jewel-eating creature. The fabric felt brittle and easily torn. She felt her muscles seize when the woven creature suddenly recoiled from her hand and skittered across the tapestry to hide inside a distant cave.
Briar stumbled backward against the opposing wall, a doorknob jammed into her spine. Not taking her eyes off the moving cross-stitched images, she side-shuffled a few steps until she bumped into the clock. Its pendulum suddenly developed a panicked tempo and it click-clacked madly from side to side. Its various chimes then clamored together as though screaming at her. Then she saw clearly that instead of two hands, like a normal clock, this one had many hands pointing in every direction. One of the hands stood straight out, pointing directly at Briar as though accusing her of some unknown crime.
She covered her mouth with a gasp and barreled back to the other end of the dark hall. She began grabbing feverishly at doorknobs, but they all held fast. Briar’s throat tightened and her knees could have crumbled like ruined sandcastles. The whole scene was so bizarre that she wasn’t certain that any of this was really happening.
She closed her eyes and held them shut for a moment. Things might change, just as they would in a dream—if indeed this were one. She shook her head vigorously with her eyes still shut. Then she blinked and looked again down the corridor, expecting the vision to be different now. But every detail remained in its exact, vivid, inexplicable form.
She looked to her right, and in the dancing candle shadows, she noticed clear light seeping around the edges of another closed, paint-crackled door. She took a couple of hushed-toe steps toward what she hoped might be a way out, when another door opened. From it burst Ash, Poplar and Myrtle.
“Stay where you are!” Poplar shouted.
The sight of the three coming down the corridor toward her was enough to send Briar on a sprint to the door framed in light.
“Where is she going?” Poplar asked. Her face was screwed up into a question mark.
“Child, stay away from that room,” Myrtle commanded.
Briar twisted the doorknob and, salvation, it was unlocked. She swerved herself around the door, slammed it shut, and pressed her body up against it. She felt a key in the door’s lock. She twisted it until it clicked, and then she tested the door, making sure it could hold up against rat-eating crazed weirdos.
Just above her shoulder something struck the door with such fury that it left a hand-sized gouge. She whirled around toward her attacker, only to face a fluffy brown sparrow the size of a grizzly bear. The bird cheeped loudly and stabbed again with its pointy brown beak.
Briar moved her torso just in time and the bird pecked into the door again. Wood chips and splinters flew in all directions and the door rattled on its hinges. The bird hopped closer toward her on its spindly talons and cocked its head to get a better look. It chirped shrilly, and Briar covered her ears. The bird hopped backward, preparing to strike once more.