Page 3 of A Door in the Dark

It pointed to the distant canal bridge. Unfinished back then, it was the place where her father had turned to wave back at her. Ren’s eyes found the wooden bench where she’d sat down to wait for him. Sometimes she couldn’t believe it was still there. Like a relic that she’d summoned from her own memories. And then she imagined hearing the sound of the earth grinding beneath their feet as it had that day. The way her father had looked back one final time before he fell. Her entire life, changed in less than a breath.

“Your things?”

The girl was back, standing with both vessels held out. Ren liked to imagine she saw a new glow in them, but the truth was they looked exactly the same. She accepted both vessels, and the runner slipped back to her position behind the table. Ren glanced at the line one more time.

Everyone was waiting. She knew they’d refill their vessels and use spells that unwound the knots in their backs. Spells that added strength to get them through another grueling day. Aunt Sloan liked to spice her soups with a little magic. Others entertained grandchildren with clever charms. She almost envied the thought. Using magic to touch up their days. Meanwhile, she would spend the next few weeks trying to create entirely new spells with her meager allotment. Doing her best to impress people who seemed to find nothing so impressive as their own lives.

Ren took a final look, tucked her wand into a waiting belt loop, and started to walk.

2

The Lower Quarter divided into a dozen smaller neighborhoods.

Ren had grown up on Stepfast Street, north of the busier markets. It would always be home, even if she’d lived on Balmerick’s campus for the last four years. She skirted the growing crowds and took the road that led to the building where her mother lived. It was a drab, square structure with only brightly painted doors to mark it as more than abandoned stone. She aimed for the pearl-blue door at the far end of the building. It swung on groaning hinges, and somehow the sound was even worse than she remembered. She took the stairs on her right and found her mother’s second-floor entry unlocked and unwarded.

“Well, that’s just incredibly safe of you, Mother.…”

It was silent inside. The kitchen was the dining room was the living room. One wall boasted open shelving and a half-rusted stove. It cornered into a fold-out table where every single Monroe family meal had taken place. A hop and a skip would set a person firmly in the living room. There was the knee-high table her father had built, surrounded by cushions her mother had sewn. Ren saw three teacups abandoned there. Not a sign of company, she knew, but more a measurement of the passage of time. The color variations of the stained tea bags in each cup marked how long they’d mulled there in silence.

Ren set to work. Arranging the cushions. Washing the cups. There were abandoned clothes that she folded in a neat stack. Next, the magic. It was a delicate balance of improving her mother’s quality of life but keeping enough to get in the practice reps she needed for her graduate work. She’d learned all about continuous spells during junior year and had been using them to save a few precious ockleys ever since.

A cleansing enchantment kept back the mold common in the Lower Quarter’s poorly lit living spaces. Magical sealants along the frames of every door and window warded against infestations. Each spell already sat in the air—thick and stagnant from when she’d last cast it—though each one faded to uselessness by the time the first of the month came around again.

Refreshing them was like scrubbing out an old canteen and filling it back up with fresh water. Once she finished the normal spellwork, she took the threaded edges of all that magic and layered a longevity spell of her own invention through them. It took, binding invisibly through everything like a braid. Ren was wiping sweat from her forehead when one of the two doors at the far end of the room opened. Her mother emerged, not from her own bedroom, but from Ren’s.

“First of the month,” she said without preamble. “Almost forgot. Tea?”

Agnes Monroe was a spitefully beautiful woman. Life had given her physical body every reason to surrender, but she wore the years and suffering like armor. Her skin was a shade darker than Ren’s, deeply tan. Shifts down on the wharf had drawn out the constellations of freckles running down her neck. She hauled crates of fish sometimes, and her arms were lean and muscular from the work. The deep creases around her mouth spoke of a woman who laughed often and loud. Or at least, a woman who had once had plenty of reasons to smile.

“No thanks,” Ren said. “I’ll be late for class. How’s work?”

“It’s work. What about you? Interviews going well? Any prospects?”

Her mother slid around her to fetch the tea, pausing only long enough to kiss Ren lightly on one cheek. Her stomach churned as she watched her mother get the stove going. The decision to attend Balmerick had centered on the hope of finding favor with one of the five great houses.

The city of Kathor was a distinct hierarchy, and Ren needed to earn a position with them if she ever wanted to do anything of consequence. The second semester of her first year as a graduate student should have been full of interviews, recruiters eager to learn how she’d gotten such high marks on all her tests, but only the lesser houses had shown any interest.

Until yesterday.

Her advisor had left a note outside her dormitory. Ren had an interview with House Shiverian this morning. She also had no plans of sharing that news with her mother until she’d secured a position. False hope was a fuel that Agnes Monroe already knew too well.

“Nothing worth mentioning.”

Her mother set out a mug. “I don’t get it. You’re the top of your class.”

“I’m technically fifth.”

“Fifth,” her mother repeated. “Out of hundreds. And with none of the resources their families could offer them.”

Ren knew the numbers. She always hated being reminded of the numbers, even if her mother’s claim was true. The oldest houses had been in Kathor for six generations. Her mother and father had left southern Delvea when they were only about Ren’s age. Like many others, they were lured by the bright possibilities of a sprawling new age city. Kathor had replaced the original settlements and become the epicenter of trade and magic. Her father used to describe the day they’d first landed in the city’s harbor. A pair of dreamers, her father used to say, but she knew her parents’ dreams were eventually reduced to backbreaking shifts and poor living conditions. The one time her father had demanded more from the world, he’d been killed for it.

“I’m working on it, Mother.”

“Oh, honey, I know. I’m not mad at you. I’m mad at them. The unfairness of it all. See, this is why I gave magic up. We talk about this in our meetings, you know. It’s called voluntary dependence. Every time we use magic, we’re leaning into the system they built for us.…”

Ren had heard all of this before. Any discussion that focused on “they” was a dangerous road to let Agnes Monroe walk down at such an early hour. A road that always led back to her father’s death. Ren never questioned her mother’s decision to give up magic, and she shared her mother’s distaste for the city’s elite, but she preferred a more rational approach to dealing with those inequalities. Her mother favored conspiracies and wild speculation.

“I have proven myself for four years. It will work out. I am not concerned.”

---