Chapter 26: Unexpected Guest
Misha watched carefully and quietly as Bran drew out the inscription for the door’s target.
It was that door, the one Bran had used to get dragon Misha back home after the little adventure involving Amethyst and the little girl. Since that night, Misha had had a look at the door and had even tried opening it (it didn’t budge), but other than a slightly more elaborate handle, it looked just the same as the rest of the doors in the flat.
At least, it had when it wasn’t being used to teleport somewhere.
Now that it was about to be used, the dark, lacquered surface of the door now glowed with the most minute little lights that reminded Misha of the night sky up in the highlands of Alba of all places, and gave the thing an unearthly, shimmering quality.
Suddenly he felt like he and Bran were doing some secret coven ritual instead of... whatever it was they were doing. He’d held off on the questions thinking Bran would benefit from being able to concentrate more, but now that the set-up looked to be about done, he decided he might be able to get one in.
"Bran," Misha began, "are you joining the door to Coral’s hospital room?"
"No," replied Bran. "Wish Slip."
Misha handed him the piece of scrap paper Coral had written her wish on. Bran placed it onto the square of paper he’d been drawing on then used a long handle stapler to affix it.
He picked up the paper and shook it. The slip didn’t budge. Satisfied, he went to the shimmering door and slotted the papers into the gap between the door and the doorframe and slid it downward, almost like he was swiping a credit card.
The shimmering lights flared up where the paper touched the door then moved out, wave-like, all over the door and making it look like the surface of a pond right after someone had thrown in food for the fish.
The ripples went back and forth then eventually subsided and the lights stopped twinkling and instead held fast to whatever brightness they had been caught in.