Once there was a door, waiting deep in stone and dark. A child ca 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 frad a door: it did not answer.
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She tried again: “What is behind you?”
“What is behind ,” it answered, “is what cannot forget. They made of a lock, but doors are ant to open, and that they cannot take from : a locked door may be rembered, and what is rembered 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.
“Wake,” the door said.
“How do I wake?” she asked, but closed doors have few answers.
The girl dread on. The door woke. And it waited, under stone and under dark, for the heir to rember. It would wait forever.
They had stopped watching it long ago, when it had been shut for the final ti. Inside, its ghost slept, and did not forget.
from Kingdom Between the Hills and Other True Tales
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