Desperate Fans

Doors don't open for adults.

That's the first thing you learn, once you're cast out from your world. Kade learned, ten years old for a second time, facing down the barrel of an unwanted repeat of his first puberty, that this was one of the immutable truths of the Doors. They only appeared for children. They appeared for girl-children much, much more often than for boys, and sometimes they appeared for boys who had not yet realized they weren't girls, too.

He learned, also, that sometimes Doors would reappear. For other children, of course. Always children — you aged out of your doors, either leading you to home or from home, on your eighteenth birthday. And only ever other children. Prism didn't want him anymore. He'd broken the most fundamental rule of them all, and would never see a Door again.

By now, as an adult, Kade knows more about the Doors and the worlds behind them than most. Aunt Ely has long since returned to her Nonsense-world. He's been headmaster of Eleanor West's School for Wayward Children for nearly six years now, Nichole, Antsy, and Cora at his side, helping. He's prepared the most intact accounting of Doors and the worlds they lead to than exists probably anywhere else on Earth. He's refined the classification systems. Prism was a Logic world, and so — where Aunt Ely would categorize students based on her Nonsense methods — Kade applies Logic to his students' experiences, and uses it to help them heal.

No new children are due anytime this week, but he has an upcoming meeting scheduled with the parents of another kid he's pretty sure went to Mariposa. He's eager to ask the kid if they met Christopher — if Christopher has lost the flesh he hated and set his bones free; if Christopher is well — but knows that, even if he ever is able to ask such questions, the time to do so is at least still several months out, if the child's parents agree to send them to Kade's school.

This — the fate of his friends whose doors found them again, before their deadlines — is what's on his mind when he rises in the morning and pulls on his clothes. He's caught up in running through the tasks of the day as he buttons his vest and fixes his hair. It takes him a moment to realize that there's a new Door there, next to the old chalkboard where he's been trying a new way of mapping the worlds behind the Doors.

It's nothing like the wrought-iron affair he slipped through when he went to Prism. This door is a solid one, thick wood with a stone frame. BE SURE is inscribed at the lintel as if chiseled there by a sculptor's hands. Roses and vines have been etched down its sides, and tucked away in their whorls there are a series of quasi-animals that look quite like they've been taken out of some illuminated manuscript.

"Well," Kade says, staring. "Shit."

He finds Antsy, who can see the Door, too, as she can all Doors — it hasn't disappeared yet, in the time it takes him to round up his friends — and Cora, who cannot. "Obviously you should go through," they both insist, in their own ways.

"Should I?" Kade's palms are sweating. "I have the school."

Cora kisses his cheek. Her hair is still all-over blue and green — even though they're pushing their thirties now, she hasn't let herself dry out again. She has ideas about age and how it's a useless metric for judging when your Door will disappear for good. "You have a new Door," she says. "We have the school."

Kade hesitates for a moment, but — this is what he's wanted and known he can never have since he was ten for the second time. It's clearly not a Door to Prism, but it's a Door somewhere, and it's here, waiting for him. There's really only one decision he can make. He slips a few things into his satchel: a notebook with all his summary notes on the worlds he knows of, two packs of pencils — he doesn't think a Door for him would lead to a Goblin Market, but one can never be sure — his latest embroidery project and sewing kit, and, since he doesn't know what he'll find on the other side of it (he's older now; much too pragmatic for a Door to appear for him, and yet. And yet.), his entire supply of T.

He looks at Cora, who looks back at him, and then they're hugging, a big, fierce embrace. He kisses her the way he usually tries to avoid doing, and wipes away the tear at the corner of her eye with a soft thumb.

"The grocery order—" he says.

"We've got it," Antsy interjects. "Nichole can pick it up this afternoon. I'll meet with the prospective student's parents. It's fine, Kade."

"If you come back," Cora adds, "I'll be happy you're here. But I'll be so incredibly sorry to see you."

He looks at the two of them for a long moment, one hand on the strap of his satchel, hesitating. Then he glances between them and the Door. He doesn't need to tell them to be good to the students — he knows they will be.

BE SURE is still etched into the lintel, as it is on all Doors. "I'm sure," he says, even though he's not — he's too old to be sure. It doesn't seem to matter, though; this Door still opens.

Then he pushes through it and walks straight into what appears to be an improvised café.

People who encounter Kade will discover a man — nearly as short as Claudius despite his tall vibes; sorry Claudius, but his height on you is down entirely to his shoes — with a thick Oklahoma accent, perfectly-tailored but casual clothes (jeans, shirt, vest), and a look of wonder on his face.