Chapter 5:

The Hall of Doors

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The landscape that they encountered after crossing that threshold was not as she’d expected. Once they crossed, the sheer white of the hall forced her to close her eyes, where did all that light come from? Because there was no sun in that place, only doors, multiple doors in different stories, going round and round in the walls in a never-ending circle.

“You took your time!” A man said between the spots that still clouded her vision. “… You’ve found her.”

“It took us quite a while,” Briallen said, and Amelia blinked to see the person she was talking to, a middle-aged man dressed in the same archaic clothes they all wore. Unlike the girl and the man, he seemed to carry no weapons, which didn’t calm her weariness.

The man smiled at her and took off the pointed hat he wore. “My lady? Do you remember me?”

Amelia stared at him as they stepped closer, he looked around his late fifties but could be younger, his hair had been red once upon a time, and his eyes were bright green from close… But none that she remembered ever seeing. “I don’t, I’m sorry.”

“Oh, that’s all right, we only saw each other a couple of times,” the man said, though he seemed a little chest-fallen. Should she remember him? Was he actually a friend she had left behind in that other world? “Where did you find her then?”

“A world that was compressed in half a week,” Briallen, replied and cast a pitying glance at her. “I think someone took her memories, Master Ivor. She can’t remember our world, she didn’t even know she had any magic at all, less about being a Weaver.”

“What?”

“But… Now you’re here, it means we should head home, right?” The stranger member of the group commented, and she turned to him, thankful that he talked to her instead of pretending she wasn’t there. A boy, no older than eighteen, with dark hair and eyes, smiled at her as if this situation wasn’t abnormal in the sightless. “You can take us there, right?”

“I doubt she can,” Ector said bluntly and Amelia couldn’t help both the shiver and the stab of frustration of them three still talking as if she weren’t there. “Not even a Weaver can control the movement of these doors and she doesn’t remember how to use her magic.”

“He is right, even if she tries to stop the doors, they might suck us inside another world to protect themselves and it would be the same situation.”

“Then we just go one door at a time again?” The boy complained and it would have seemed like a whine if his face didn’t look so properly horrified at the fact that they were entering those doors again. Amelia thought about her— the world she had been in. Were they all like that? Trapped prisons focused in a single week, in a single moment? Why was she suddenly so relieved about accepting all of this?

She stared at her companions discussing and then at the doors in the walls. They hadn’t stopped, still circling and interweaving with each other as if they wanted to prevent any visitors from picking the same door more than one time. How many were? How many worlds? She couldn’t count them straight. Fifteen? Twenty? Certainly more than the ones they had already visited.

You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

“If you’ve stopped talking like I am not here,” Amelia raised her voice; her hands clenched into fists as she tried to follow a particular door and prayed that it was the correct one. “Maybe we should get moving.”

She raised her arms in an exasperated gesture when the four pairs of eyes stared at her like she had done something wrong. “Oh, I’m sorry, was I supposed to just shut up and be carried in somebody’s back? Because you are acting like I am the luggage.”

Briallen was the first and technically only one to look embarrassed while Amelia cringed at her own words. This place was certainly getting on her nerves, it was the white and the spinning of the doors made her head hurt.

“Apologies, my lady,” the old man said. “It’s just that, we have come a long way just to find you and the magic used to travel worlds is unpredictable. If you are not in condition—”

“Can’t you use the key he has to travel?” Amelia asked, pointing at Ector with her chin.

“We can but wave no way of knowing which world we might go. to”

“Can’t I take you then? I am a Weaver, you said, whatever that means it seems to be important.”

“It is,” he said intently. “But magic to travel worlds is unpredictable and you can’t leave directly without coming here first. The keys are quite consuming too, that’s why we have two. We have halved that work with the princess.”

“And avoided telling me that it can work on someone without magic,” Briallen said, crossing her arms and glaring at the old wizard – because what else could he be?

“I didn’t think you would ever need to give away the key, Your Highness,” Ivor said and Ector scoffed and held Briallen’s glare. “But the Lady Weaver is right, we need to start moving, food will begin to be sparse soon.”

“The name is Amelia, and I am not any kind of lady.” She turned around to the doors, trying to pick one and keep it in her line of sight. “What about this one?”

It was the rail closest to them, with different doors passing through, others went up of course, so tall that she would think they would disappear if it wasn’t so obvious that there weren’t stairs in the hall, only doors and they all looked the same. Nevertheless, she kept one on sight and this one went up, did a full circle, went down, and up again and soon it would be passing through again.

“I guess we can start with something,” Ivor said and sighed. “Allow me, Lady Amelia, I’ve my own key here.”

“Give it to me, then,” she said and met with the old man’s wide gaze. If they thought that acting like she was more a task than a person was noticed they had been quite mistaken. “What’s the difference? You said you don’t need magic to use them, maybe the magic I have will send us directly to your world.”

“Or you could get attacked as soon as you cross it,” Ector retorted, Amelia ignored him and stretched her hand to Ivor, who placed the silver key on her hand without much protest, though eyeing her curiously. Had she acted like he remembered her being before? Had they even known each other enough for him to notice? For some reason, Amelia didn’t think so, the little memory she had now, from her never-ending routine, her only friend and her small house, this fire running now felt like just a momentous spark caused by the madness of it all.

She took a deep breath and waited for the door, her fingers grazing the cool surface and making it stop. Closing her hand over the round, white doorknob, Amelia fitted the key inside and the same white light blinded her as she crossed her to the new world.

… Only this time, instead of taking a step, she found herself falling.

And the pain that she felt when she hit the water felt like a thousand knives.