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Crispin

W hen Crispin was a wee fae, long before he found his calling in the Office of the Lost and first sat down at his neat, perfectly white marble desk—allegedly carved from the stone of Mount Olympus—he’d opened The Door.

The Door was a strange fixture in his mother’s house, although Cerillia Ailedrin Moss’caladin’s home wasn’t a home, per se.

There were no real walls, no particular barriers of any sort, although even that depended on the place in which it materialized.

It had the odd (and often annoying) propensity of shifting from one world to the next, so that he might go to sleep on Therrin, with her grand castles and well-manicured forests, and wake up to the blood-curdling howls of the ghoulsts of Thauria.

Mother’s home was usually a grove of trees—often great oaks, lit by eldritch lights, that reached up into an impossibly tall sky filled with stars; in other incarnations, tall spindly spiral trees with heart-shaped leaves.

And sometimes, as when it manifested itself in a casino on Odds, startlingly realistic wallpaper of the grand trees.

No matter how the home manifested, local males were always finding their way in, looking for Mab or the Fairy Queen or the Ecch Ridah…

and his mother always indulged them. She loved playing her little games, telling them they would be stuck with her if they ate or drank a thing in her house.

Some immediately imbibed, and were severely unhappy when they were shown the exit the next morning, while others went to great lengths to try to avoid even breathing the air.

But however her house looked or who came to visit, The Door was the one constant.

It sat off to one side of the wide clearing in the heart of the Estate, where one of their ancestors had built the center and focal point of Mother’s home: a large amphitheater that looked like a stone bowl, filled with the softest of silk pillows.

One morning, Crispin awoke after a particularly long night of drunken imbibing by the Mother of Fae and her latest paramour—a gray-skinned, single-horned brute from Greebals, their current temporary home.

Two of Crispin’s co-parents, Aether and Freyis, had called it a rhinsus before they’d stumbled off into the darkness together.

The rhinsus lay flat on his stomach, his horn moving gently up and down, a stubby gray arm thrown over Crispin’s mother’s torso. This was a tableau he’d seen repeated over and over with various suitors, so frequently that he barely gave the poor wretch a second look.

He liked the world of Greebals. It was lush and green, filled with lakes and rivers and interesting smells.

But over the years, he had slowly reached a level of boredom that would make a blade of grass uproot itself and go in search of a cliff to jump off of, just to end the monotony.

He was an adolescent fae now, after all.

His seventy-odd years ought to count for something.

He had grown tired of his mother’s Estate, of the boring everyday sameness.

Aspin was away on the Great Hunt, and even when he was home, he didn’t spend much time with his “weird little brother Elly.”

There had to be some adventure that he hadn’t experienced before.

He’d rejected the idea of sneaking off the Estate.

Not only had he already done that, but Mother was overdue for a change of scenery.

If she departed Greebals and then had to come back for him from another world, she would be very angry.

Things often exploded when the Mother of Fae was angry. Or turned into fish and frogs. Or simply ceased to exist, though he doubted she would visit such a punishment on her youngest child.

His eyes wandered past the Red Dukes of Vespertine—all five of them, collapsed in a pile amid crystal flagons of his mother’s cherry wine—and up the slopes of the hollow.

And there it was. The Door.

His mother (and all his other parent fae) had been very explicit about it.

He was never to open The Door. Bad things would happen if he did, things they never quite explained, which was somehow worse.

His imagination had filled in a variety of possible outcomes, none of them good and many of them ending up with that same threat of nonexistence.

He took a seat on a white stone bench carved with cupids—nasty things in reality, no matter how charmingly they were portrayed—and considered The Door for a few moments. He pulled out his omnipresent pad of paper and charcoal stick and began sketching its outlines.

In its Greebals incarnation, a complex intertwining of deep green vines framed a round door of thick wood panels, with a brass handle curled like the toe of an elf’s boot. The Door was always red.

Don’t open The Door. Ever.

Crispin sighed. All of his life he’d been told all the things he shouldn’t do.

Never look the Red Dukes in the eyes. Never interrupt the Mother of Fae when she was “entertaining.” Never lead a mortal back to the Estate without an adult’s express permission.

And never, ever open The Door.

The adults around him were always making up rules for him while they did whatever they wanted. Many of the edicts existed to make sure he stayed in his place; he was sure of it.

Maybe the whole Door thing was one of those?

He set down his sketch pad and charcoal stick and crept past the Red Dukes, careful lest any of them have their eyes open.

Then he made his way up the wide stairs that surrounded the amphitheater, old gray stone, which although splintered by moss-filled cracks nevertheless seemed flush with strength and dignity and ageless wisdom.

Aether and Freyis had made their way back at some point and were snuggled together on one of the steps, smiles on the two men’s sleeping faces.

Crispin repressed his own smile. He’d seen what they did together. Maybe one day he’d be old enough—and ready enough—to try.

He climbed the wide stone steps of the amphitheater and stood on the paved circle that fronted The Door.

Up close, the portal looked—strange. Unreal.

As if someone, or something, had constructed the idea of a door, based on many other doors they had seen in the past. It looked like a real door, mostly.

But if you got too close, the details were off.

Some of the interwoven vines just ended, replaced by other vines that appeared out of nowhere.

The woodgrain was suspect too; in some places it formed what almost looked like words, in others it disappeared as if someone had brushed it away.

He reached out to touch the brass handle. It was warm to the touch. As one, the vines turned toward him like the heads of snakes. Crispin shivered, expecting the vines to attack him, but instead they just moved back and forth slightly, as if blown by a breeze he couldn’t feel.

He took a deep breath and twisted the handle, and The Door slipped open with a loud groan.

The vines screamed. Wind howled from the crack between The Door and the frame, quickly scaling up to a wild keen that filled the vale.

Lightning flared and static crackled behind the half-open portal. Tendrils of dark smoke pushed their way out and quested around the space near The Door.

“Crispin, what have you done?” His mother was suddenly, startlingly awake, her presence a shock at his back.

His face covered with cold sweat, he looked over his shoulder and wished he hadn’t. Cerillia Ailedrin Moss’caladin’s eyes had gone wide and her mouth was open, moving wordlessly. He’d never seen the Mother of Fae frightened.

A growling roar drew his attention back to The Door. Something huge was on the other side. He could feel it—enormous, twisted, broken—the antithesis of Order. It pushed forward, eager to reach him, to consume him. Although he was terrified, he was perversely tempted to allow himself to be drawn in.

And then Aspin was there, his golden sword unsheathed, looking every inch the conquering hero.

He was bright where Crispin was dim, sharp where his little brother was dull, dressed in golden chain mail and shining with his own light, his blond locks swinging in the air as he fought the shadows.

He swung at the tendrils of smoke, and they parted like water, oozing something black and foul onto the layers of decomposing leaves, sizzling and giving off a putrid smell, like death and decay.

The thing that had been pushing its way through The Door retracted, and the tentacles of icy cold that had squeezed Crispin’s heart released him as well.

Aspin lifted a mighty leather boot and kicked The Door shut with a resounding thunk.

The clearing fell silent, save for Aspin’s heavy breathing.

A shadow fell across Crispin as something blocked out Greebals’ brightest golden moon.

Crispin looked up into his mother’s face.

She was calm, her face as placid as the lake on the edge of her Estate where a young man and his wizard friend had once found a fabled sword. As calm as death.

Crispin shuddered and closed his eyes, expecting to be spelled out of existence.

Instead, a cool hand cupped his cheek. He dared to open his eyes and, staring into hers, saw great pools of anger and—surprisingly—concern.

“Don’t ever disobey me again.”

All of this flashed through Crispin’s head in an instant as they ran into the tepid waters of the Pond of Disappointment. He skidded to a halt in the silty sand at the bottom of the pond and turned to face the oncoming cloud. “I know what it is.”

“Dude. Gonna need more.” Leopold blinked. “If this is the Zima again?—”

“It was never the Zima.” Crispin sighed.

Why couldn’t they have sent him to collect a crown, or a key, or…

even a possum? Possums pretended to be dead when threatened, right?

That would be better than the man’s constant questions and inane observations.

“Here, follow my motions.” He took Leo’s left hand in his right and turned to face the advancing fog.