Dispatches from Mythikal Spiriticus — Entry 010
From the field journal of Tamsin Quill, Cartographer of Questionable Roads
The blue door opened onto seven stone steps and a sky that could not decide what time it was.
Dawn rested on one horizon. Stars crowded the other. Between them stood a copper-leaf tree and the Unfinished House.
I remembered the house as crooked.
This one had gone considerably further.
Its left wall was cedar boards. Its right wall was charcoal lines sketched against the air. Half the roof had tiles; the other half waited beneath a carpenter’s measurements. One chimney released smoke. The second ended in a neat question mark.
The moon-moth peered over my shoulder.
“Does it always look like that?”
“Only when it is trying to make a good impression.”
Behind us, the door still opened into Mythikal Sundries™. The brass dragon knocker watched from across the shop.
“You forgot the mat,” it called.
Then the blue door swung shut.
The handle disappeared.
“It did warn us,” said the moon-moth.
I held up the brass key from Orla’s parcel. It leaned toward the house like a compass needle.
The path beneath our feet ended three strides from the porch. Beyond it was not grass or mud, but blank paper stretching to every horizon.
My childhood map rustled inside my journal.
I unfolded it. The seven steps, the tree, and the crooked house were still there. A new line of silver ink had appeared beneath them.
WHAT IS REMEMBERED MAY ENTER.
“Convenient,” I said. “I remember the porch.”
A porch drew itself across the blank space.
Its boards appeared one by one, exactly as I recalled them: narrow, gray, and forever threatening splinters. We crossed. The moment my boot touched the first plank, the empty world behind us folded upward like the edge of a map.
The front door had no lock.
I knocked three times.
Three knocks answered from somewhere deep inside.
“Orla?”
No reply.
The brass key warmed in my palm.
IF THE HOUSE IS MISSING, ASK THE KEY, the parcel had said.
“What do you open?” I asked.
The key lifted from my hand, flew past the door, and vanished through the cedar wall.
A lock clicked.
The entire wall opened inward.
“Show-off,” I muttered.
Inside, the entrance hall was only half a room. The coat pegs were solid. The coats were outlines. A blue umbrella stood in a brass bucket, but the floor beneath it was still crosshatched pencil.
At the end of the hall waited three doors.
I remembered the kitchen on the left and Orla’s map room on the right. The middle door had never been there.
The knocking came again.
From the middle door.
The moon-moth’s wings pressed flat.
“Postal guidance recommends beginning with a door you recognize.”
“Postal guidance has improved.”
We entered the kitchen.
A table appeared when I remembered it. So did a chipped green cup, a round loaf under a cloth, and rain ticking against the window.
For one breath, Orla stood at the counter with rolled maps beneath one arm.
Then I tried to remember the color of her coat.
I chose brown.
The room lurched.
The walls narrowed. The window filled with white.
On the table, my childhood map wrote a warning in my own uneven hand.
DO NOT FINISH WHAT YOU DO NOT KNOW.
“Blue,” I said quickly. “Her coat might have been blue. Or green. I don’t remember.”
The false brown drained away. The walls settled. Orla’s figure vanished, leaving an honest empty space beside the counter.
My aunt’s first rule had been measure twice.
Her last rule should have been never furnish a magical house from an unreliable memory.
We returned to the hall.
I opened the door on the right.
Orla’s map room remembered itself without my help.
Drawers climbed to the ceiling. Brass instruments hung above a broad worktable. Hundreds of maps covered the walls, but each ended at the same ragged white boundary.
The house stood at the edge of every one.
On the table lay a single sheet pinned beneath the brass key.
The writing was Orla’s.
TAMSIN—
If you found the house, you have already learned what I could not teach you: a road survives because someone returns by it.
Do not complete this place. What remains unfinished cannot be entered into the Royal Atlas, and what the Atlas cannot contain, its hungry margins cannot erase.
I went north to learn who taught the Atlas to eat. If I do not return, follow only when your compass refuses to point.
—ORLA
Beneath her name, the paper bore three narrow silver cuts.
I had seen marks like them on Orren Vale’s measuring rulers.
The moon-moth read over my sleeve.
“Does your compass point?”
I set it on the table.
The needle spun once, twice, then stopped.
It pointed toward the middle door.
The door knocked three times.
Every map on the wall shivered.
White margins began creeping across their roads.
The house had let us enter on memory. Now something was following the route we had made.
“We need to leave,” I said.
“Through the missing door?”
“Through an accurate one.”
I opened my field journal and drew what I could prove: seven steps, one copper-leaf tree, a blue door, and the crooked outline of the house. I left the roof unfinished. I left Orla’s coat blank.
The moon-moth pressed one silver foot onto the page.
Its satchel chimed.
ADDRESS WITNESSED, silver ink wrote beneath my drawing.
A blue door appeared in the map-room wall.
We ran through as the white margins reached the worktable.
I landed on the floor of Mythikal Sundries™ with the moon-moth tangled in my hat and the brass key clenched in one hand.
The dragon knocker looked down at us.
“The mat would have landed more gracefully.”
Behind us, the blue door became a painted outline, then faded from the wall.
The black ledger opened on the counter.
DELIVERY ATTEMPT TWO: ACCEPTED. RETURN ADDRESS: WITNESSED, NOT SAFE.
I placed my compass beside it.
The needle turned north.
Then it turned away.
Next dispatch: “Where North Refuses to Point.”
Follow Tamsin’s dispatches through Mythikal Spiriticus, the original fantasy world behind Mythikal Sundries™. Begin with Entry 001 and read the adventures in order.
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