Chapter Folktale: Door
Once there was a door, waiting deep in stone and dark. A child came looking for it in her dreams. She tried to open it, but it was locked. She sought the key, but the only thing the smith had for her was a knife. She took up lock picking with it, but what lay inside this lock long been left to rust. Finally, she took a step back.
She lifted the knocker out of its dust, and let it fall.
The door woke.
“How do I open you?” the girl asked. An impertinent question, for one who’d never so much as framed a door: it did not answer.
The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.
She tried again: “What is behind you?”
“What is behind me,” it answered, “is what cannot forget. They made of me a lock, but doors are meant to open, and that they cannot take from me: a locked door may be remembered, and what is remembered may open yet.”
In her dream, this made the kind of sense that felt heavy and true. The old urgency of the door settled over her shoulders, and into the deepest part of her heart.
“How do I open you?” she asked again.