The Chaos Gate
Amy Stilgenbauer
Copyright © 2014 Amy Stilgenbauer
All rights reserved.
Cover Image: "South Door, Arminghall Hall, Norfolk" by John Sell Cotman. This work is in the public domain in the United States, and those countries with a copyright term of life of the author plus 100 years or less. This work has been identified as being free of known restrictions under copyright law, including all related and neighboring rights.
Acknowledgements: Many thanks to my dear friends Jillian and Reno for all their support.
Some say that they [the inhabited regions] begin at the beginning of the western ocean [the Atlantic] and beyond. For in the earliest times [literally: the first days] there was an island in the middle of the ocean. There were scholars there, who isolated themselves in [the pursuit of] philosophy. In their day, that was the [beginning for measuring] the longitude[s] of the inhabited world. Today, it has become [covered by the?] sea, and it is ten degrees into the sea; and they reckon the beginning of longitude from the beginning of the western sea. - Selin, Helaine Astronomy Across Cultures: The History of Non-Western Astronomy
1.
The tunnel closed in, growing narrower and narrower as Alice raced toward the end. Wind whipped around her, pulling her forward at moments and forcing her back at others. Still, she pressed on. Behind her everything had gone dark, swallowed up by the tunnel. She couldn’t go back. Only onward.
For hours, she ran, or at least, what seemed like hours. Until all of it stopped. The wind died and the tunnel widened out into a corridor. At the end, stood a large bronze door. Alice approached it with a measured hesitation. It was...truly beautiful. Carved with intricate, detailed trees and flowers, the panels seemed to glow and sing as if made of magic. A voice inside her mind begged her to open them. It was childlike and small. Nothing like her own. Still, she felt powerless against it. Gently, as though cradling a child, she reached out and wrapped her hand around the cool metallic doorknob and began to turn.
“Excuse me! What do you think you’re doing!” Shouted a stern male voice from somewhere in the corridor. He reminded Alice of a schoolmaster.
She stopped. Part of her was suddenly small and fearful of authority. “I’m going through the door,” she whispered, not daring to turn around.
“Are you now?” He asked, sounding a touch more amused as he made his way to stand between Alice and the door.
Alice gaped.
Despite his voice, the man in front of her looked nothing like a schoolmaster. For starters, his feet were bare, clearly calloused, and covered by dirt. He wore overalls that also bore the mark of being travel worn and on his head, in place of a hat, sat a copper bottomed pot. She couldn’t take her eyes from it. The detail recalled something.
“Who are you?” She whispered.
The man shrugged. “I could be asking you the same thing.”
“My name’s Alice,” she replied, still fixated on the man’s cookware hat.
“And what are you doing here?”
“But you didn’t answer...”
The man wagged his finger, tsking lightly. “My corridor. My questions.”
Alice frowned, but accepted this. For some reason it didn’t seem there was any use arguing with the man. “I was going to open the door.”
“And why?”
“I...I don’t know. Because I wanted to see-”
“And how did you come to be in my corridor?”
The question struck Alice as odd. She started to say that she had been running through the tunnel for days and now she needed to keep going, but then something occurred to her: she didn’t remember entering the tunnel. In fact, she didn’t remember much before going to the tunnel at all. Except the part where she had been having dinner with a giant bird. Which, now that she thought about it, didn’t make much sense either.
“Am I dreaming?” She asked then, feeling profoundly silly all of the sudden.
The man began to pace in a circle around her, which made a strange pit in her stomach begin to form. “I suppose that’s possible. People do come here in their dreams from time to time.”
“And where is here, exactly?”
“I don’t know if you’re quite ready for that yet.”
Alice felt the pit begin to grow larger as the man continued to pace. There was nothing predatory about him, but there was something accusatory in the way he stared. “Can you please stop doing that?” She asked.
“You’re the one who’s dreaming,” he replied, halting for just a moment. “Make it stop.”
“If it were that easy, I’d be out of here.”
He raised a thoughtful eyebrow and seemed to consider this for a moment. “My, but you are clever. Maybe I underestimate you.”
Alice closed her eyes and tried to force herself to wake up. It didn’t seem to be working. “I suppose I’ll have to pinch myself,” she muttered.
“Try it!” He encouraged, a sudden child-like gleam to his face.
Alice did just that. Taking a small bit of skin near her elbow between her thumb and forefinger, she squeezed tightly. There was no pain. “Ah! So it is a dream!” But the realization did not wake her.
“Hungry?” The man asked, pointing to a bushel of apples that had appeared next to the door.
“Not really,” Alice replied. Even if it was a dream, she wasn’t one to eat magical fruit. She’d read enough books to know better.
“Suit yourself.” The man picked one up, rubbed it lovingly on his dirty overalls and took a bite. A second later, he spit it out. “Disgusting. Can you dream me some better tasting apples?”
Alice frowned and shook her head. “What’s through that door? If I open it, will I wake up?”
“Oh no, no, no,” the man said with a laugh as he took another bite of his apple. “Second bite’s all right. Maybe you’re getting better at this.”
“What is in there then?”
The man didn’t answer her. He had begun examining the apples with great care.
“Maybe I’ll just go the other way.” She turned around and face the long dark tunnel
She expected him to call out something like “suit yourself” but when she peered back over her shoulder he was still examining the apples and singing to himself.
...Oh, the Lord’s been good to me...