The Ten Thousand Doors of January(101)

“I was there, January. In Delhi. I went around to every mutineer I could find—which wasn’t many, as the captain had been firing them from cannons—and all of them told me the same story: an old Bengali woman in Meerut had slipped through a strange archway and returned twelve days later. She had spoken with some sort of oracular creature that told her she and all her people would one day be free from foreign rule. And so they’d taken up arms against us.”

Locke’s hands rose into the air in remembered outrage. “A fracture! A damned door, lurking beneath my very nose!” He exhaled forcefully and tucked his thumbs behind his belt, as if willing himself calm. “I came to realize the urgency of my mission, the importance of closing the fractures. I took it upon myself to recruit others to my cause.”

And thus was the Society formed, a secretive association of the powerful: an old man in Volgograd who kept his heart in a little velvet box; a wealthy heiress in Sweden; a fellow in the Philippines who transformed into a great black boar; a handful of princes and a dozen members of Congress; a white-skinned creature in Rumania who fed on human warmth.

Now Locke spiraled back to face me in his pacing, snagged my eyes with his own. “We have done our work well. For half a century we’ve labored in the shadows to keep this world safe and prosperous—we’ve closed dozens of fractures, maybe hundreds—we’ve helped build a stable, bright future. But, January”—his gaze intensified—“it isn’t enough. There are still murmurs of discontent, threats to stability, dangerous fluctuations. We need all the help we can find, frankly, especially now that your father is gone.”

His voice fell to a rumbling whisper. “Help us, dear child. Join us.”


It was well past noon now, and our shadows had begun to creep cautiously out from under us, shattering into dark spindles in the tall grass. The river and the cicadas made a kind of rushing thrum beneath the soles of my feet, as if the earth were humming to itself.

Mr. Locke breathed, waiting.

Words pressed at the roof of my mouth, words like Thank you or Yes, of course, sir or maybe Give me some time. They were pleased, flattered words, oozing with girlish gratitude that he loved me and trusted me and wanted me by his side.

I wondered if they were my words or Mr. Locke’s, delivered to me through his white-eyed gaze. The thought was sick-making, dizzying—infuriating. “No. Thank you.” I hissed it between locked teeth.

Locke clucked his tongue. “Don’t be imprudent, girl. Do you think you’d be permitted to wander freely, with your habit of opening things that ought to be left closed? The Society would not suffer such a creature to live.”

“Mr. Ilvane already indicated as much. As did Mr. Havemeyer.”

Locke huffed in exasperation. “Yes, I’m terribly sorry about Theodore and Bartholomew. They were both given to extremes, and to violent solutions. No one will miss Theodore much, I assure you. I’ll admit there were some concerns about Miss Whatsit and your little grocer boy, but I’ve dealt with them now.”

Dealt with—but they were supposed to be safe, supposed to be hidden in Arcadia—a soft wailing sound rang in my ears, as if I were hearing someone crying from a long ways away. I stepped forward, half stumbling on something buried in the ash pile.

“Jane—S-Samuel—” I could barely speak their names.

“Are both perfectly fine!” I went weak with relief and found myself kneeling in the ash with Bad propping me up on one side. “We found them creeping down the coast of Maine after you. We hardly caught a glimpse of Miss Whatsit—awfully quick on her feet, the thieving bitch—but we’ll find her eventually, I’m sure. The boy, though, was quite cooperative.”

A ringing silence. The cicadas hummed and thrilled. “What did you do to him?” It was a whisper.

“My, my, is this a crush, after a decade of Little Miss Leave Me Alone I’m Reading?”If you’ve killed him, I will write a knife into my hand, I swear I will—“Calm yourself, January. My methods of interrogation are far less, hm, primitive than Havemeyer’s. I simply asked him a few questions about you, realized you’d unwisely told him all about Society business, and told him to forget the entire affair. Which he obligingly did. We sent him trotting off home without a care in the world.”

Mr. Locke’s smile—comforting, assured—told me he didn’t understand what he’d done.

He didn’t understand the horror of it, the violation. He didn’t understand that reaching into someone’s mind and sculpting it like living clay is a species of violence far worse than Havemeyer’s.

Was this what he’d done to me, my whole life? Forced me to become someone else? Someone biddable and demure and good, who didn’t run off into hayfields or play on the lakeshore with the grocer’s son or beg on a weekly basis to go adventuring with her father?

Be a good girl, and mind your place. Oh, how I’d tried. How I’d worked to fit myself inside the narrow confines of the girl Mr. Locke told me to be, how I’d mourned my failures.

He didn’t understand how much I hated him then, as I knelt in the ashes and tall grasses, my tears turning to muddy paste on my cheeks.

“So you see, everything is taken care of. Join the Society and all this nonsense will be forgotten. The invitation is still open, just as I promised.” I could barely hear him over my roaring, keening fury. “Don’t you see you’re meant to do this? I’ve raised you at my side, let you see the world, taught you everything I could. I never felt it would be entirely wise to—ah”—Locke coughed in brief embarrassment—“to have a child of my own—what if he was Birthrighted? What if he came to challenge my rule? But just look at you! My adopted child has turned out to be nearly as willful, nearly as powerful as any true-born son of mine could be.” His eyes on me were lit with pride, like an owner admiring his best horse. “I don’t know precisely what you’re capable of, I admit, but let us find out together! Join us. Help us protect this world.”