by Neil Gaiman
Door is dreaming of her father.
In her dream, he is showing her how to open things. He picks up an orange, and gestures: in one smooth movement it inverts, and twists: the orange flesh is on the outside, now, and the skin is in the center, on the inside. One must always maintain parity, her father tells her, peeling off an inside-out orange segment for her. Parity, symmetry, topology: these will be our subjects for the months to come, Door. But the most important thing for you to understand is this: all things want to open. You must feel that need, and use it. Her father’s hair is brown and thick, as it was a decade before his death, and he has an easy smile, which she remembers but which time had diminished as the years went on.
In her dream, he passes her a padlock. She takes it from him. Her hands are the size and shape of her hands today, although she knows that, in truth, this occurred when she was a tiny child, that she is taking moments and conversations and lessons from over a dozen years and is compressing them into one lesson. Open it, he tells her.
She holds it in her hand, feeling the cold metal, feeling the weight of the lock in her hands. Something is bothering her. There is something she has to know. Door learned to open some time after she learned to walk. She remembers her mother holding her tightly, opening a door from Door’s bedroom to the playroom, remembers watching her brother Arch separating linked silver rings, joining them back together.
She tries to open the padlock. She fumbles at it with her fingers, and with her mind. Nothing happens. She throws the padlock down onto the floor and begins to cry. Her father reaches down and picks up the padlock, puts it back into her hand. His long finger brushes away a tear from her cheek.
Remember, he tells her, the padlock wants to open. All you have to do is let it do what it wants.
It sits there in her hand, cold and inert and heavy. And then, suddenly, she understands, and, somewhere in her heart, she lets it be what it wants to be. There is a loud click, and the padlock opens. Her father is smiling.
There, she says.
Good girl, says her father. That’s all there is to opening. Everything else is just technique.
She realizes what it is that is bothering her. Father? she asks. Your journal. Who put it away? Who could have hidden it? But he is receding from her, and already she is forgetting. She calls to him, but he cannot hear her, and although she can hear his voice in the distance, she can no longer make out what he is saying.
In the waking world, Door whimpers softly. Then she rolls over, cradles her arm around her face, snorts once, twice, then sleeps once more, sleeps without dreaming.
Richard knows it waits for them. Each tunnel he goes down, each turning, each branch he walks, the feeling grows in urgency and weight. He knows it is there, waiting, and the sense of impending catastrophe increases with every step. He knows that it should have been a relief when he turns the final corner, and sees it standing there, framed in the tunnel, waiting for him. Instead he feels only dread. In his dream it is the size of the world: there is nothing left in the world but the Beast, its flanks steaming, broken spars and juts of old weapons prickling from its hide. There is dried blood on its horns and on its tusks. It is gross, and vast, and evil. And then it charges.
He raises his hand (but it isn’t his hand) and he throws the spear at the creature.
He sees its eyes, wet and vicious and gloating, as they float toward him, all in a fraction of a second that becomes a tiny forever. And then it is upon him . . .
The water was cold, and it hit Richard’s face like a slap. His eyes jerked open, and he caught his breath. Hunter was looking down at him. She was holding a large wooden bucket. It was empty. He reached up one hand. His hair was soaked, and his face was wet. He wiped the water from his eyes and shivered with cold.
“You didn’t have to do that,” said Richard. His mouth tasted like several small animals had been using it as a rest room. He tried to stand, and then he sat down again, suddenly. “Ooh,” he explained.
“How’s your head?” asked Hunter, professionally.
“It’s been better,” said Richard.
Hunter picked up another wooden bucket, this one filled with water, and hauled it across the stable floor. “I don’t know what you drank,” she said. “But it must have been potent.” Hunter dipped her hand into the bucket and flicked it at Door’s face, spraying her with water. Door’s eyes flickered.
“No wonder Atlantis sank,” muttered Richard. “If they all felt like this in the morning it was probably a relief. Where are we?”
Hunter flicked another handful of water at Door’s face. “In the stables of a friend,” she said. Richard looked around. The place did look a little like a stable. He wondered if it were for horses—and if so, what kind of horses would live beneath the ground? There was a device painted on the wall: the letter S (or was it a snake? Richard could not tell) circled by seven stars.
Door reached a tentative hand up to her head and touched it, experimentally, as if she were unsure just what she might find. “Ooh,” she said, in a near-whisper. “Temple and Arch. Am I dead?”
“No,” said Hunter.
“Pity.”
Hunter helped her to a standing position. “Well,” said Door, sleepily, “he did warn us it was strong.” And then Door woke up completely, very hard, very fast. She grabbed Richard’s shoulder, pointed to the device on the wall, the snaky S with the stars surrounding it. She gasped. “Serpentine,” she said to Richard, to Hunter. “That’s Serpentine’s crest. Richard, get up! We have to run—before she finds out we’re here . . .”
“And do you think,” asked a dry voice from the doorway, “that you could enter Serpentine’s house without Serpentine knowing, child?”
Door pushed herself back against the wood of the stable wall. She was trembling. Richard realized, through the pounding in his head, that he had never seen Door so actually and obviously scared before.
Serpentine stood in the doorway. She was wearing a white leather corset and high white leather boots, and the remains of what looked like it had once, long ago, been a silk-and-lace confection of a white wedding dress, now shredded and dirt-stained and torn. She towered above them all: her shock of graying hair brushed the door lintel. Her eyes were sharp, and her mouth was a cruel slash in an imperious face. She looked at Door as if she took terror as her due; as if she had become so used to fear that she now expected it, even liked it.
“Calm yourself,” said Hunter.
“But she’s Serpentine,” wailed Door. “Of the Seven Sisters.”
Serpentine inclined her head, cordially. Then she stepped out of the doorway and walked toward them. Behind her was a thin woman with a severe face and long dark hair, wearing a black dress pinched wasp-thin at the waist. The woman said nothing. Serpentine walked over to Hunter. “Hunter worked for me long ago,” said Serpentine. She reached out a white finger and gently stroked Hunter’s brown cheek with it, a gesture of affection and possession. And then, “You’ve kept your looks better than I, Hunter.” Hunter looked down. “Her friends are my friends, child,” said Serpentine. “You are Door?”
“Yes,” said Door, dry-mouthed.
Serpentine turned on Richard. “And what are you?” she asked, unimpressed.
“Richard,” said Richard.
“I am Serpentine,” she told him, graciously.
“So I gathered,” said Richard.
“There is food waiting for all of you,” said Serpentine, “should you wish to break your fast.”
“Oh God no,” whimpered Richard politely. Door said nothing. She was still backed against the wall, still trembling gently, like a leaf in an autumn breeze. The fact that Hunter had clearly brought them here as a safe haven was doing nothing to assuage her fear.
“What is there to eat?” asked Hunter.
Serpentine looked at the wasp-waisted woman in the doorway. “Well?” she asked. The woman smiled the chilliest smile Richard had ever seen cross a human face, then she said, “Fried eggs poached egg
s pickled eggs curried venison pickled onions pickled herrings smoked herrings salted herrings mushroom stew salted bacon stuffed cabbage calves-foot jelly—”
Richard opened his mouth to plead with her to stop, but it was too late. He was suddenly, violently, awfully sick.
He wanted someone to hold him, to tell him that everything would be all right, that he’d soon be feeling better; someone to give him an aspirin and a glass of water, and show him back to his bed. But nobody did; and his bed was another life away. He washed the sick from his face and hands with water from the bucket. Then he washed out his mouth. Then, swaying gently, he followed the four women to breakfast.
“Pass the calves-foot jelly,” said Hunter, with her mouth full.
Serpentine’s dining room was on what appeared to be the smallest Underground platform that Richard had ever seen. It was about twelve feet long, and much of that space was taken up with a dinner table. A white damask cloth was laid on the table, and a formal silver dinner-service on that. The table was piled high with evil-smelling foodstuffs. The pickled quails’ eggs, thought Richard, smelled the worst.
His skin felt clammy, and his eyes felt like they had been put in their sockets wrong, while his skull gave him the general impression that someone had removed it while he had slept and swapped it for another two or three sizes too small. An Underground train went past a few feet from them; the wind of its passage whipped at the table. The noise of its passage went through Richard’s head like a hot knife through brains. Richard groaned.
“Your hero is unable to hold his wine, I see,” observed Serpentine, dispassionately.
“He’s not my hero,” said Door.
“I’m afraid he is. You learn to recognize the type. Something in the eyes, perhaps.” She turned to the woman in black, who appeared to be some kind of majordomo. “A restorative for the gentleman.” The woman smiled thinly and glided away.
Door picked at a mushroom dish. “We are very grateful for all this, Lady Serpentine,” she said.
Serpentine sniffed. “Just Serpentine, child. I have no time for silly honorifics and imaginary titles. So. You’re Portico’s oldest girl.”
“Yes.”
Serpentine dipped her finger in the briny sauce that held what appeared to be several small eels. She licked her finger, nodded approvingly. “I had little time for your father. All that foolishness about uniting the Underside. Stuff and nonsense. Silly man. Just asking for trouble. The last time I saw your father, I told him that if he ever came back here, I’d turn him into a blindworm.” She turned to Door. “How is your father, by the way?”
“He’s dead,” said Door.
Serpentine looked perfectly satisfied. “See?” she said. “My point exactly.” Door said nothing. Serpentine picked at something that was moving in her gray hair. She examined it closely, crushed it between finger and thumb, and dropped it onto the platform. Then she turned to Hunter, who was demolishing a small hill of pickled herrings. “You’re Beast-hunting then?” she said. Hunter nodded, her mouth full. “You’ll need the spear, of course,” said Serpentine.
The wasp-waisted woman was now standing next to Richard, holding a small tray. On the tray was a small glass, containing an aggressively emerald-colored liquid. Richard stared at it, then looked at Door.
“What are you giving him?” asked Door.
“Nothing that will hurt him,” said Serpentine, with a frosty smile. “You are guests.”
Richard knocked back the green liquid, which tasted of thyme and peppermint and winter mornings. He felt it go down and prepared himself to try to keep it from coming back up again. Instead he took a deep breath and realized, with a little surprise, that his head no longer hurt, and that he was starving.
Old Bailey was not, intrinsically, one of those people put in the world to tell jokes. Despite this handicap, he persisted in trying. He loved to tell shaggy-dog stories of inordinate length, which would end in a sad pun although, often as not, Old Bailey would be unable to remember it by the time he got there. The only public for Old Bailey’s jokes consisted of a small captive audience of birds, who, particularly the rooks, viewed his jokes as deep and philosophical parables containing profound and penetrating insights into what it meant to be human, and who would actually ask him, from time to time, to tell them another of his amusing stories.
“All right, all right, all right,” Old Bailey was saying. “Stop me if you’ve heard this one before. There was a man walked into a bar. No, he wasn’t a man. That’s the joke. Sorry. He was a horse. A horse . . . no . . . a piece of string. Three pieces of string. Right. Three pieces of string walk into a bar.”
A huge old rook croaked a question. Old Bailey rubbed his chin, then shrugged. “They just do. It’s a joke. They can walk in the joke. He asks for a drink for himself and one for each of his friends. And the barman says, ‘We don’t serve pieces of string here.’ To one of the pieces of string. So. It goes back to its friends and says, ‘They don’t serve strings here.’ And it’s a joke, so the middle one does it too, three of them, you see, then the last one, he ties himself around the middle and he pulls the end of him all out. And he orders a drink.” The rook croaked again, sagely. “Three drinks. Right. And the barman says, ‘here, aren’t you one of those pieces of string?’ And he says, the piece of string, he says, ‘No. I’m a frayed knot.’ Afraid not, y’see, a frayed knot. Pun. Very, very funny.”
The starlings made polite noises. The rooks nodded their heads, put their heads on one side. Then the oldest rook cawed at Old Bailey. “Another? I’m not made of hilarity, y’know. Let me think . . .”
There was a noise from the tent, a deep, pulsing noise, like the beating of a distant heart. Old Bailey hurried into his tent. The noise was coming from an old wooden chest in which Old Bailey kept those things he most prized. He opened the chest. The throbbing noise became much louder. The small silver box was sitting on the top of Old Bailey’s treasures. He reached down one gnarly hand and picked it up. A red light rhythmically pulsed and glowed inside it, like a heartbeat, and shone out through the silver filigree, and through the cracks and fastenings. “He’s in trouble,” said Old Bailey.
The oldest rook cawed a question. “No. It’s not a joke. It’s the marquis,” said Old Bailey. “He’s in deep trouble.”
Richard was halfway through his second plate of breakfast when Serpentine pushed her chair back from the table.
“I think I have had my fill of hospitality,” she said. “Child, young man, good day. Hunter . . .” she paused. Then she ran one clawlike finger along the line of Hunter’s jaw. “Hunter, you are always welcome here.” She nodded to them, imperiously, and stood up and walked away, followed by her wasp-waisted butler.
“We should leave now,” said Hunter. She stood up from the table, and Door and Richard, more reluctantly, followed her.
They walked along a corridor that was too thin to allow more than one of them to pass at a time. They went up some stone steps. They crossed an iron bridge in the darkness, while Underground trains echoed by beneath them. Then they entered what seemed like an endless network of underground vaults that smelled of damp and decay, of brick and stone and time. “That was your old boss, eh? She seemed nice enough,” said Richard to Hunter. Hunter said nothing.
Door, who had been somewhat subdued, said, “When they want to make children behave themselves in the Underside, they tell them, ‘Behave, or Serpentine will take you.’ ”
“Oh,” said Richard. “And you worked for her, Hunter?”
“I worked for all the Seven Sisters.”
“I thought that they hadn’t spoken to each other for, oh, at least thirty years,” said Door.
“Quite possibly. But they were still talking then.”
“How old are you?” asked Door. Richard was pleased she had asked; he would never have dared.
“As old as my tongue,” said Hunter, primly, “and a little older than my teeth.”
“Anyway,” said Richard, in the untroubled to
ne of voice of one whose hangover had left him and who knew that, somewhere far above them, someone was having a beautiful day, “that was okay. Nice food. And no one was trying to kill us.”
“I’m sure that will remedy itself as the day goes on,” said Hunter, accurately. “Which way to the Black Friars, my lady?”
Door paused and concentrated. “We’ll go the river way,” she said. “Over here.”
“Is he coming round yet?” asked Mr. Croup.
Mr. Vandemar prodded the marquis’s prone body with one long finger. The breathing was shallow. “Not yet, Mister Croup. I think I broke him.”
“You must be more careful with your toys, Mister Vandemar,” said Mr. Croup.
Eleven
“So what are you after?” Richard asked Hunter. The three of them were walking, with extreme care, along the bank of an underground river. The bank was slippery, a narrow path along dark rock and sharp masonry. Richard watched with respect as the gray water rushed and tumbled, within arm’s reach. This was not the kind of river you fell into and got out of again; it was the other kind.
“After?”
“Well,” he said. “Personally, I’m trying to get back to the real London, and my old life. Door wants to find out who killed her family. What are you after?” They edged along the bank, a step at a time, Hunter in the lead. She said nothing in reply. The river slowed and fed into a small underground lake. They walked beside the water, their lamps reflecting in the black surface, their reflections smudged by the river mist.
“So what is it?” asked Richard. He did not expect any kind of answer.
Hunter’s voice was quiet and intense. She did not break her step as she spoke. “I fought in the sewers beneath New York with the great blind white alligator-king. He was thirty feet long, fat from sewage and fierce in battle. And I bested him, and I killed him. His eyes were like huge pearls in the darkness.” Her strangely accented voice echoed in the underground, twined in the mist, in the night beneath the Earth.