The Door

The door appeared in the forest quietly on the heels of a chilling breeze. Gwyn was walking, as she often did, just off the dirt path traveled commonly by others in her village. She had looked up into the leaves and then followed the filtered golden light down as it was cast onto the foliage around her feet. She stepped over a root, felt her brown skirt pick up in the breeze, and looked up once again. In that instant, the door was not there and then it was.

Frozen, Gwyn blinked, curious and startled. She did not move and neither did the door. It remained where it had appeared, nestled between mossy stones that also had not existed moments ago. The forest around her fell unnaturally still. She heard no chirps, no wind, no snapping twigs. Gwyn stared at the door, and it stared back, unwavering and enticing.

The vines and flowers and leaves carved onto the green wood would have been enough to draw Gwyn closer even if this had been a normal door. She would have appreciated the artistry, would have run her fingers over the patterns and marveled, as she had tried and failed at wood carving herself. As she had tried and failed at many things.

But this was no normal door. Gwyn craved the satisfaction of discovering it all the more, so she moved closer, the soft crunch of grass giving way underneath her leather boot the only sound. Not even the dense trees around her swayed in the wind.

She stretched out a hand, her finger tips humming, calling to the door as it called to her, somewhere deep inside. She felt a chill run down her spine. Her thoughts came suddenly and quickly. Where did it lead? Who called it here? Would she open it only to find the same forest on the other side? 

A fear not her own rose inside her, and she dropped her hand. A sensible person would feel fear, she thought, they would feel fear and turn around and not look back. Magic, as this door certainly had to be, had not always been kind to humans like Gwyn and her village. She knew the history as well as anyone else. She had been told the stories at night around warm fires and eyes alight with fear and delight. She had been taught the lessons as a young child, by the elders and by children older than her wanting to scare and tease.

Don’t go wandering the forest alone, especially at night, 

Else the Fae of old might be awakened, tempted by their devilish delight

The ‘devilish delight’ in question being feasting on human flesh and bones. Gwyn had laughed with horror and excitement while other children had cried at the morbid warning.

So, again she thought how a sensible person would act. However, Gwyn had always been anything but sensible. She was already breaking the first warning. She’d made a habit of it. Her mother had tried to shape her into this kind of person, a person who follows the rules and acts with common sense, whatever that was supposed to mean. Her father taught her and guided her, as did a handful of village elders her parents had conscripted as mentors. But as she grew older, the wild, curious part inside her only grew, too, unable to be tamed, pruned, or shaped.

She had tried to do something useful with this thing inside her, she really had. She listened and practiced her mother’s lessons with full attention and effort. When that failed, her father taught her things uncommon for a maiden to know. She’d taken up carpentry, farming, and blacksmithing, as well as soap making, sewing, cooking, and singing. She found all of them wanting in one way or another. Farming and gardening took too long. Cooking became tedious. Singing was enjoyable but she didn’t like the songs her mother made her learn. She wanted to find new, interesting tunes to practice, but it seemed her mother and the entire village only knew the same set of songs. Learning from merchants and village leaders in the village had been a last effort and had quenched the thirst, but only for a short time. Trade secrets and politics were interesting at first but became bogged down by her fellow humans’ need for rules and etiquette and decorum. When one of the village’s men had been caught attempting to peep up the skirts of a woman only a few years younger than Gwyn, she had thought a thump upon the head and a little public humiliation would’ve done the trick, but there were rules to follow. He suffered private community service with the church. Gwyn’s parents tried but never understood what it was that she wanted, what she searched for, and Gwyn did not know either.

Her mother had expressed this concern to Gwyn one night, not even a fortnight ago. They sat in front of the fire in their cottage, sipping tea together. Gwyn had declared the latest skill a bore when her mother asked how the day had gone. You’ll never be content, her mother had said with a sigh. It was spoken not as an admonishment, but a sad truth, a parent’s worry, as they sat together. Gwyn couldn’t disagree. She had started to wonder in her adolescence if she would ever be as happy as the others around her seemed to be. Now at twenty-five, she had started to give up hope that life could match the size and space of her desire. That is, until the moment the door appeared.

Her eyes did not move away from the mysterious structure. Something hummed within the door, causing a similar something inside Gwyn to hum right back, even with her arm still at her side. The door felt true and real, more so than anything she had encountered in her small life. With that thought, her heart picked up, beating wildly in her chest. She had to know what lay on the other side—what danger, what adventure, what life.

The choice excited her, but it was never really a choice. Gwyn knew from the moment her eyes fell on the door what she would and would not do. She would not turn around and return to her village. She would not pretend the door did not exist, would not pretend that it would not drive her mad to know she had not looked on the other side. She would not pretend that this moment did not feel as if it were made for her, that it did not feel as if her life had accumulated to this point. She would not do any of that.

She would lift her hand, and she did, closing the remaining distance between her and the threshold with a few, weighty steps. She took hold of the bronze handle, the hum in her fingers singing with the hum of the metal, savoring the feeling for a second or two, and then she opened the door.