Cecilia’s Fate
It was cold, and the sidewalks were
coated with a layer of slush so that she had to step in the footprints left
behind by others to keep her canvas shoes dry.
No one had expected it to snow that day, it was too far into spring.
The snow had only recently
fallen—during the last few hours of the school day. She had spent all of her Arithmetic’s class
craning her neck to watch the flakes come down and then melt on the street
below.
There was only one set of footprints
in the slush, and she hoped that whoever came before her was going was going
the same way she was.
Her walk home to her family’s
apartment was only a few blocks, but the wind and the weight of the books under
her arm made it much longer.
Across the street from the apartment
building was a dumpy old fairground.
She’d heard that the city was going to tear it down and build more
apartment buildings. Today, there was
something new to the fairground, a kind of light and sparkle that she’d never
seen before. Just inside the rotted
wooden gate was a horse-drawn wagon. It
was colored a bright and obscene green.
The paint was old and discolored such that it appeared in different
shades as she approached the wagon.
It wasn’t like the wagons that sold
vegetables at the markets—this was like the wagons in the photographs of the
pioneers who first ventured out to the west.
It wasn’t roofed however, by canvas, but rather with wood—it even had
its own tiny chimney jutting out from the side.
It was more common for vendors to use automobiles, but not unheard of
for horse-drawn wagons to still exist.
The lurid green color was so out of
place in the endless gray of the city that she was drawn to it like a moth to
an open flame, heedless of the cold soaking into her shoes. She had left the safety of the footprints.
As she crossed from the road onto the
opposite sidewalk, a young man appeared from out of the wagon. He clambered down a set of rickety stairs
extending from the rear of the wagon to the ground.
The man came around to the front of
the wagon and stopped short when he saw the little girl. He was a funny looking man—his eyes seemed
too big for his face, and he wore boots that would rival a mink coat—
“What?” the man said, looking down
at his feet, “They’re better in snow than those ridiculous cloth things you’re
wearing!”
She blinked. “I’m sorry, I—I didn’t mean to be rude.”
He waved her apology off, “I’m not
really offended.” He turned and took a few
steps back towards the wagon, then stopped.
“Aren’t you coming?” The man
turned again to look at her.
She shook her head.
He sighed. “What’s the difference between over there,”
he indicated the sidewalk, “and over here?”
She shook her head again.
The young man looked
exasperated. “But I’ve got something for
you! It’s very special and I don’t think
anyone else should have it.”
The girl crossed her arms. “What is it?” she asked with the voice her
mother reserved for haggling with shopkeepers.
“I won’t show you if you don’t come
over here.”
It was a key. It was old and had mother-of-pearl laid into
the handle. It had her name on
it—Cecilia. The letters looped and
curled into themselves. If she had tried
to trace the path of a single line she would’ve gotten lost and stared at it
forever. The lines of her name would
being to dance and shift if she starred at them for long enough.
The inside of the man’s wagon was
the strangest thing she’d ever seen.
There were two workbenches running opposite each other on either
side. The young man sat on a wheeled
stool and flew from one bench to the other with an air of much practice. The spaced was cramped, and the man hunched
over—with his over large eyes, this made him look bird-like.
Above the workbenches were shelves,
cluttered with strange and obscure books with symbols on the spines that she
would never see again in her life. In
between the books were haphazardly placed gadgets. They were mechanical in nature, and defied
all the young girl’s attempts to guess their function.
There was a small fire towards the
front of the wagon—no doubt attached to that odd little chimney. The light from the flames lit the small space
with a strong orange glow.
The man didn’t want any money in
exchange for the key. He said it had
been hers for quite some time and she pretended to believe him.
When she passed the fairground again
on her way to school, she saw that the wagon was gone and the wooden gate was
closed.
The snow had melted away and so she
was free to walk wherever she chose.
None of her friends had noticed the young man or his bright green
wagon. It wasn’t there when she went
home in the evening either. She
suspected it was gone forever.
“This key will fit into any lock,
but the doors it opens…they will not take you to any place you know. Listen to me because this is important,” he
leaned in close to her and she realized that she could not name the color of
his large glassy eyes. “Are you
listening?”
“Yes,” the girl squirmed
uncomfortably.
“Good. Once you use this key, and enter—you’re not
paying attention!”
Her eyes snapped back up to
his. She had been watching the letters
on the key writhe around. “Sorry,” she
set the key down on the workbench.
“Nothing that you see will ever be the
same way again. What you choose to do
with this key is the most important decision of your life.”
She didn’t want to be around him
anymore—he was now no longer simply intriguing.
Now, he was talking nonsense, as her father would say. He was probably one of those people that
belong in a sanitarium. “What are you
talking about? You’re not making any
sense.” said her mother’s haggling voice.
The man became impatient. “It’s a place,
another place. Don’t you read adventure books?”
“They’re not real,” she insisted, petulantly, like an adult.
“This place is real.”
“Oh yeah? Well show me a map of it then,” this was a
child’s voice.
“Only madmen make maps of the other
world.”
“Why?”
“Because it is impossible to know.
It has many different…layers—levels.
It doesn’t function the way is world does.”
She decided then that he did belong in a sanitarium, and the
young man could sense that he had lost her.
His thin angular shoulders drooped, he sighed. “I’m sorry,” he said “but that key isn’t yours
anymore. You should go now.”
The girl went, and stepped back into
the footprints on the other sidewalk, and felt relieved that she never saw the
man or his wagon again. It wasn’t until
years later that she wished she had taken the key.
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