Behind the curtain

Not many know this, but deep in the heart of our world of metal and smoke, there is a door. Ordinary in shape and simple in frame It hangs quietly in the back of the White Rabbit Clock Repair and Antique Shop. Guarding things yet unseen by humans.

Marcy Storae had spent years among the ticking clocks.The young apprentice had grown up around the place. Happily surrounded by clocks as she'd grown. Later the old caretakers took her in. Becoming much like family in their own way . Mr. Jacobs with his rough demeanor and gravelly voice balancing out his wifes soft spoken nature and warm snacks. 

It was, she had decided long ago, a good life.If a bit small and predictable. The kind of life her mother would have approved of, every variable accounted for, mapped out, and safe. For the most part, this was enough.

The bell above the front door chimed softly as Marcy stepped inside to begin her morning shift. Normally, Mr. Jacobs would call out "Mornin' Marcy!" in that raspy voice of his, and he'd already have tea ready for her in that old ceramic pot with the chip on the handle. While she set her bag down Mrs. Jacobs would appear from somewhere with a treat she'd "accidentally" made too many of and offer it to her with a smile.

Three years of comfortable rhythm. It was the closest thing she'd ever had to family outside her tiny little apartment and her ever growing stacks of books on her nightstand.

Except something had changed. No voice called out after the bell. No kettle whistled as she looked around."Mr. Jacobs?" she called worriedly as the sound in the shop seemed to dim and the place feel colder as she moved.  Her hand found the counter steadying herself as she felt herself start to panic. Her mother's voice surfaced. The voice calm and organized in her chaotic mind. "Before we panic Bumblebee lets breathe and look. What's different? What's looks different at this moment?"

She pauses and takes that much needed breath. The lights were on. Someone had been here this morning if for nothing more than to open the shop. Now though only the clocks spoke. Each keeping time in its own peculiar rhythm. Once the chorus had been comforting. Now it felt like standing in a room full of people who had all turned to look at her, their whispers quiet and deafening at the same time.

"Mr. Jacobs?" she called again softly, setting her bag on the counter. Her voice lingering in the air.  Slowly she moved as she checked the back office first. Mr. Jacobs reading glasses sat folded on top of a parts catalog next to a mug of tea. Steam still rising from the liquid. The small kitchen was next. A kettle sat on the stove as if it had been set to boil and then forgotten. She turned off the heat and moved on. The bathroom door stood open, its light off. She gave it a quick check anyway.

Her panic was starting to build again when the thick velvet curtain at the back of the shop caught her eye.

Marcy stood in front of it a moment as the clocks ticked around her. Hanging in the way it always had. Separating the showroom from whatever was kept behind.

"Never pass beyond the curtain."

 Mr. Jacobs had said it only once, when she'd first started. He'd been showing her how to oil the hinges on a display case, his fingers moving with surprising delicacy when she'd glanced towards the curtain without really meaning to. And in the three years she'd worked with them since. she'd walked past it hundreds of times carrying clocks and other items. Dusted nearby it, but never once did she touch the fabric. The rule had simply existed after that, as solid and unquestioned as the walls themselves.

Except...

 Mr. Jacobs wasn't here. The shop itself was empty. And behind that curtain was the only place she hadn't looked.

"What if something's wrong? What if they fell? What if they're hurt? What if they need help?"   Reasonable concerns. Responsible, even.

She was aware distantly, that she was building a case for herself. Stacking justifications like evidence for a jury that didn't exist. Her mother had done the same thing. Rationalized every decision until it felt like the only possible choice. I'm not being reckless. I'm being thorough.

She knew herself better than that.

The truth was simpler and more damning: she wanted to know wanted to know for three years. And now, for the first time, no one was here to stop her.

Her fingers gently brushed  the curtain.  The fabric was dense as if it was holding something back. She still pushed the curtain aside.

The air beyond was cooler. Heavier as it pressed against her skin like a cold hand resting on her shoulder.

Dust motes drifted in thin shafts of light from small cracks in the ceiling. The room was smaller than she'd expected, and yet somehow expansive, warping in ways that refused to follow the geometry of the shop outside. Walls bent at angles that made her eyes slide away. Shadows pooled in corners that seemed too close and too far away. Carved out of the space itself rather than cast by any absence of light.

Her mother's voice filtered in again. "Count. How many shelves? You'll be okay if you count, Bumblebee." That old reflex flaring as she attempted to get her bearings.

Somehow the shelves refused to stay numbered. Every time she thought she'd fixed a total in her mind, her gaze would slip, and she'd find another alcove, another corner that hadn't been there before. Six shelves. Eight. Twelve. Six again.

She blinked a few times. Looked and looked again. The room looked back.

A clock without hands sat on a cluttered shelf to her right. Its face was blank and smooth, like a moon seen through fog. And yet it ticked. Steady as a heartbeat. She caught herself timing the pulse against her own breathing.

A glass sphere floated above a wooden pedestal, constellations swirling across its slowly rotating surface. She watched a tiny galaxy spiral inward, collapse, and bloom all in the span of a breath. 

After a moment she shook her head. "You're standing in an impossible room cataloging rotation speeds. You've officially lost your mind."

That thought should have sent her back through the curtain. Instead, she stepped deeper into the room.

Shelves bowed under the weight of trinkets she couldn't identify. Things that glimmered with light from sources she couldn't see. She moved carefully, each step feeling like a confession.

A delicate iridescent bag rested against a rougher satchel near the workbench. The first was stitched from what looked like dragonfly wings, catching the light in patterns that hurt to follow too closely. The second was leather worn soft by years of handling, adorned with a carved mask and the suggestion of a tail curling along its strap.

"What were you doing back here, Mr. Jacobs? What have you been doing all along?"

Her hand hovered over the leather without quite touching it. Something told her that would be a mistake.

A small glass bottle drew her attention. The kind that might hold perfume or medicine, stoppered with a wax covered cork. Inside something glowed faintly. Tiny wings folded tight against a body no larger than her thumb. The creature's posture held something she couldn't read. Peaceful? Waiting?

A yellowed tag dangled from the bottle's neck, its handwriting faded but legible:

Instant Sea Sprite Light!! Just add water for your very own Sea Sprite Companion to light your way!

Something about those exclamation points felt wrong. Like a circus poster advertising wonders while the animals paced in a too small cages behind the tent.  She pulled her hand back without touching the glass she hadn't realized she'd been reaching for.

She should leave. Should walk back through the curtain grab her bag, and pretend she'd never seen any of this. She could still do that.

Her feet carried her deeper into the room.

And then, almost hidden behind a half-shattered mirror with dark swirls dancing across its fragments, she saw it.

A simple door.

Plain and unassuming. The kind of door you'd walk past a thousand times without noticing. It stood quietly in its frame, waiting for nothing and no one. And yet she couldn't look away.

Oh, she thought, the word feeling too small for what was happening in her chest. As if she'd been looking for it. As if it had been waiting for her to find it..

She noticed the way the wood grain seemed to move when she looked at it directly. The slow, patient expansion and contraction, easy to miss if you weren't watching for it.

A faint vibration traveled up through the floorboards and into her bones when she stepped closer. A hum so low it was more sensation than sound, felt in the teeth and the soft space behind the eyes.

A small note caught her eye, its ink browned with age, the paper curling at the edges. Some of the letters faded to ghosts, but she could still make out:

Don't forget… the key home.

Mrs. Jacobs's handwriting. Marcy would have recognized it anywhere. That familiar looping script from grocery lists and birthday cards and the little notes left on the counter when the Jacobses went out. Back in twenty minutes. Help yourself to tea. There's pie in the icebox.

Something in her chest loosened at the sight of it. A thread connecting her back to everything made sense, more or less.

Her hand found the handle before she could think better of it. The door did not budge.

Of course it was locked. Every book on her nightstand could have told her that. The forbidden door in the back of the mysterious shop. The ancient portal hidden in plain sight. They were always locked. That was the rule.

But locks had keys.

And in stories, the curious always found them.

"You aren't in a story bumblebee," her mother's voice warned softly. "Stop. Lets think about this."

But her hands were already moving.

She turned slowly, scanning the cluttered room. Where would someone keep keys in a place like this?

The workbench against the far wall caught her attention again.

She didn't remember crossing the room. One moment she was at the door. The next she stood before the bench, fingers brushing scattered papers, tarnished tools. And there, half-hidden beneath a curling invoice. A keyring.

The keys dangled from her fingers before she'd decided to pick them up, cold metal warming slowly against her skin.

You could still put them back. You could walk away and respect some things are meant to stay closed.You could be sensible.

She looked at the keys in her hand.

Keys of every shape hummed with potential, a promise, or a warning. Her thumb traced the edge of the first.

A brass key hummed faintly against her palm, like a tuning fork struck long ago, still holding a note it refused to forget.                                                                                                                                             A glass key shimmered in colors that shouldn't exist together, fragile and beautiful. The kind of beautiful that meant dangerous.                                                                                                                     A key made of shadow seemed to drink the light around it, leaving her fingers cold in the way of deep water.                                                                                                                                                          A crooked crescent-moon key leaned against the others, its surface etched with symbols she didn't recognize. It felt patient. Like it had been waiting a very long time for something specific.

And a silver key.

It was smaller than the others. Delicate silver vines curled along the shaft. Where the teeth should have been, tiny rubies bloomed instead. Roses, she realized. Each one no larger than a grain of rice, catching the light like drops of frozen blood.

Something in her chest answered it. A recognition she couldn't explain. The way you might feel seeing a familiar face in a crowd.

"Don't." that whisper of her mothers voice one last time.

The silver key called to her like a name spoken in a dream.

This is the part where the heroine makes the choice that changes everything, she thought as she turned the key around her hand.

As if it had been waiting. As if she had been walking toward this moment her entire life. As if the routine and the safety and the carefully-controlled years had all been a prologue.

It was warm. Warmer than metal should be. A faint pulse moved through it, like a heartbeat trying to sync with her own.                                                                                                                                     The vines along the stem shifted and curled gently around her finger. Learning the shape of her.

She should have been afraid. Somewhere beneath the wild drumming of her heart, beneath the breathless certainty that she was about to do something monumentally foolish she was. But the fear felt distant, muffled, like hearing someone shout from the bottom of a well.  

"Every book on my nightstand must be screaming at me right now," she thought . "You know how this goes. You know what happens next."

The key was warm in her hand, and the door was waiting.Her hands were shaking as she crossed back to the door.

The lock accepted the key without resistance. The tumblers clicked a soft resonant chime that hummed through the floorboards. As if something was waking up.

The door shuddered.

Its surface rippled,  like water reacting to a touch. The wood grain reformed into something else. Rough stone emerged then softened and bloomed with green. Vines twisted up from nowhere, curling around the frame, sprouting tiny ruby red flowers that mirrored the key's design.

A garden gate. Ancient and living. Held together by memory  and something older.

Warm light spilled through the cracks. Golden and soft. The kind of light that belonged to endless summer afternoons, and childhood memories that felt real but might have been fantasies. The scent of earth after rain filtered in and curled through the air, so vivid that Marcy could almost taste it. And past that the unmistakable sound of birdsong, distant and close all at the same time. Like music played in another room just next door.

Some sensible part of her screamed to stop. Walk away while she still could.                            

"But what's the harm?"

She muttered to herself as she pushed the gate open. The ground rose to meet her.

Moss yielded beneath her shoes. Soft and springy, making every step feel like a warm welcome. As though the earth itself recognized her arrival.

The air wrapped around her, thick with the scent of honeysuckle and freesia and something sweeter beneath, something she could almost recognize if she stood there long enough, like a dream half-remembered.

Golden light saturated the world, shimmering in waves of color that shifted like liquid glass. The space subtly bending and swirling, alive with motion she couldn't quite comprehend. Her stomach fluttered.

"This isn't real," she whispered. Then, softer: "This can't be real."

But the moss felt real beneath her shoes and when she reached out to touch a cluster of pale yellow blossoms, they turned toward her hand like she was the sun.                                                  She laughed. The sound startling her as it rang bright and strange in this place, and the flowers nearby swayed as if silently laughing with her

"Hokay," She breathed her heart calming. "Okay. I've lost my mind. That's fine. That's completely fine."

"At least it's a beautiful place to lose it." That small part of her says as she looks around again.

Slowly she walked deeper, trailing her fingers through the soft brightly colored flowers. Everything here alive in a way the world she'd left never had. Alive and aware. Somehow glad she was here.

Dangerous, some distant part of her whispered. It's too welcoming.

She ignored it.

The trill of an unseen bird rang out, crystalline and high,as the air whispered with half-formed words swirling just out of reach. A language she might almost understand if she only listened harder.

She took a breath, and the garden answered.

Among the bright clusters of blossoms, one caught her eye. Smaller than the others. It seemed to glow from within, petals unfurling slowly as she approached, as though greeting her.

Don't! that small part of her screamed.

She knelt beside the patch of soft blue blooms. Their tiny throats humming with a faint, electric song, almost lost unless you listened closely. Marcy leaned closer, and the petals turned to follow her, swaying as if drawn toward her like a tide. Like sunflowers searching for a sun they'd only heard about in stories.

The scent met her. Gentle at first, then shifting. Sweet, but tinged with something cold and metallic. Silver-bright on the edge of taste.

A sweetness with teeth.

Step back. That tiny voice again.

One pale blossom, laced with fine silver veins, caught her attention. Shimmering motes drifted from its petals. The air around her hand cooling. A measured, living coolness.

She should pull back. She knew she should pull back.

The motes waltzed lazily around her hand, riding the garden's twisted light. For an instant, she thought she saw herself inside them. Not quite reflected, but as if the face she glimpsed was nearly her own, yet subtly off. Eyes too luminous. Expression distant, like a portrait painted from a half-remembered dream.

The silver veined blossom trembled.

Around her, the flowers stirred. Their stems drifted in a slow, uncanny wave. A whole field bowing to a wind she couldn't feel.

She sucked in a breath.

With it came the thick sweetness, warm as honey, edged with something slick and sharp.                 A needle-prick tingle danced across her tongue. Her heart faltered. Skipped and stuttered in a way that sent panic blooming through her chest.

She tried to steady herself. Tried to swallow that slippery, strange scent clinging to the back of her throat. The garden seemed to hum around her, privately amused by her uncertainty.

The birdsong had changed. What was melodic before now twisted, a faint sour note pushing through the tune.

Her pulse picked up. Her mother's voice returned, sharp with alarm: Count something. Ground yourself. Five things you can see, four things you can...

The movements of the flowers shifted. Slower now. As though considering her with every flicker. Colors pulsed beneath petals, fading and brightening in time with her breath, as if the garden fed on each exhale.

She couldn't shake the feeling of being watched. The garden was reading her. The silver-veined blossom leaned closer still. Its pale petals had deepened as if something beneath the surface had risen to meet her. A single bead of violet dew gathered at the edge of one petal, swelling like a tear that refused to fall.

Marcy watched it. Transfixed. Unable to move.

" Move. Move move move..."

The dew rolled to the edge.                                                                                                                           And dropped onto her wrist.

It was far colder than she had expected. Thick and gleaming, clinging to her skin like oil. In the split second before she could brush it away it was gone.Vanishing into her skin like water into dry earth.

The spot tingled.

Then smoldered.

Then burned.

"Shit." The word escaped before she could stop it, sharp and startled.

Something twisted in her stomach as comprehension dawned. Too late. Just like the curtain. The door. Always moving before she thought to stop.

She stumbled back, clamping her palm over her wrist, eyes fixed on the flower as it drew away, folding its petals one by one until only a sliver of silver-veined blue remained. Its glow faded. Its hum sank low, retreating into the garden's greater thrum.

The flower's satisfaction curled through her like a second heartbeat.

Birdsong, once bright fell into silence. Overhead, leaves trembled, though no breeze stirred the air.                                                                                                                                                                     Under her skin, heat pulsed sharper now, a bright surge that blurred the garden at the edges of her sight.

"O-Okay," she managed, her voice thin and brittle. "Okay. I should just... go. That's the smart thing. Yup... lets  just... go back through the gate and pretend none of this happened. M-Maybe see a doctor about the possible magical poisoning..."

She was babbling. Filling the horrible silence, keeping the panic at arm's length for one more breath.

But when she turned, the gate had changed.

Where it had stood, vines now curled thick as ropes, knotted over an arch that might have been wood but looked like bone. The key glimmered faintly beneath it all,its silver catching the garden's strange light.

  "Oh," she heard herself say, her voice small. "O-Oh, that's not good."

Marcy's breath came shallow now. Each inhale thick with sweetness that once seemed inviting, clinging to her lungs, suffocating her. She looked down at her wrist. The skin looked unmarked, but she swore she could still feel the burn just beneath the surface.

And then she saw it.

Right where the droplet had touched, thin lines began to spread beneath her skin. Faint at first, then clearer. Like silver roots branching outward from her wrist, twisting lazily along her veins, curling in delicate spirals that caught the garden's strange light.

The burning sharpened as the roots climbed higher.

From the center of it all, just above her pulse, a small red flower bloomed. Its petals soft and translucent, the color of fresh blood under glass.

Marcy stared, frozen, as the vines slowed and seemed to stop just below her elbow. Her breath trembled, her vision blurring at the edges before she could stop it.

Her fingers twitched toward her wrist, the urge to scratch, tear, and claw out whatever was burrowing beneath her skin almost overwhelming.One tear escaped before she could stop it.

"Don't," her mother's voice said, distant but certain. "Don't touch it, bumblebee. You'll make it worse.Breathe. There has to be..."

Stupid. I'm so stupid. The thought came out vicious and tired. Every door she shouldn't have opened. Every threshold crossed before her mind caught up to her hands as they scratched at the spot.

This is what you get.

"Hey! You! Get out of there! Are you insane?!"

The voice cut through the stillness like a blade.

Green eyes at the edge of the clearing. Eyes that didn't belong to the garden. Sharp lines and solid weight behind them. Boots planted firmly on the ground.

A man who looked more real in a place that had stopped making sense hours ago.

"The rescuer." Some hysterical part of her brain supplied. "But where is his white horse?"

He strode toward her with long, purposeful steps. Irritation creasing his brow, but so did something else. Something tight....Fear?

"Don't move," he barked, reaching her in a few long strides. His hand closed around her wrist before she could react.

He went still. His gaze dropped to her wrist.

For a heartbeat, he stared.

"Damn it." The curse slipped out low, almost to himself. His eyes squeezed shut for a moment. A flash of something that looked almost like grief. Then they snapped open again, hard and focused. "Not again."

 The word landed cold in her chest. This has happened before. To someone else.

Marcy's fingers twitched at her side. "I don't understand." Her voice came thin and uneven. "What is this? What's happening to me?"

"Yeah," he muttered, jaw tightening. "I figured."

His eyes stayed fixed on the bloom spreading across her skin. " Let's start with getting you out of here alive."

Then his hand closed around her arm. Firmly, but not roughly. The grip of someone who knew exactly how much force was needed and refused to use more.

He pulled her out of the clearing. She let him.

You're trusting a stranger, her mother's voice observed, faint with disapproval. You don't know anything about him.

He's real, Marcy thought back. He's real and he knows what this is and that's more than I've got.

The flowers, motionless until now, swayed as they left. Petals turning. Watching. Reaching.

Marcy stumbled after him, her feet catching on roots that seemed to rise just to trip her. The garden didn't want her to leave. She could feel it in the way the air thickened around her ankles, in the way the light dimmed with each step away from the clearing, in the way the flowers leaned toward her like children reaching for a mother walking out the door.

The man didn't stop. Didn't slow. His grip on her arm remained constant, pulling her forward with a certainty that left no room for argument.

Behind them, something rustled, a sound like a thousand petals shifting at once. Marcy glanced back and wished she hadn't.

The flowers were closer than they'd been a moment ago. The vines thicker. The shadows deeper. As if the garden itself was contracting, drawing inward, trying to keep what it had claimed.

"Don't look back," the man growled without turning. 

She snapped her gaze forward and kept moving.                                                                                    One foot in front of the other. Don't think about what's growing under your skin. Don't think about how close those flowers are getting. Don't think about whether you're going to make it out of this.

Just move.

He didn't stop guiding her until the shimmer of the garden thinned behind them, its glasslike air rippling and fading. The path wound through tangled roots and damp soil, the real world returning in uneven breaths. Each step pulled her further from that dreamlike place, and each step made her legs heavier, her lungs tighter, her wrist burn sharper.

By the time the trees opened to a small village tucked against the edge of the forest, she was barely staying upright.

The cottage he led her to was modest. A thatched roof sagging gently in the middle, walls leaning like they'd earned their rest. Herbs hung from the eaves in bundles, filling the air with sharp green scents. Smoke curled from a sturdy stone chimney, gray against a sky that seemed somehow too real.

Warm light gathered in the windows, steady and solid in a way the garden's glow hadn't been.

Marcy barely registered the details. Her mind was still caught somewhere between the shimmer she'd left behind and the bloom pulsing beneath her skin. Her legs moved because he pulled her forward, not because she willed them to.

A worn wooden sign swung gently beside the door, the letters faded and barely legible. 

He pushed open the door without knocking.

Inside, warmth washed over her bringing the smell of dried herbs and woodsmoke. Replacing the sweetness still clinging to the back of her throat. She barely noticed the shelves cluttered with jars as a fire crackled low in the hearth.

Seven jars on the nearest shelf. Fourteen on the next. Three bundles of herbs hanging by the fire.   The door closed behind them with a solid thunk.                                                                                    For the first time since stepping through the gate, Marcy felt like she could breathe ... if only barely.