Gene Wolfe - There Are Doors

“So Joseph looked out. A bright bird fluttered above the brambles. ‘I see an enchanted princess picking blackberries,’ he told Jacob. ‘An enchanted princess with wings,’ he added after a moment, and Jacob’s pen flew faster than the bird.”

Tina was drying herself with Kleenex. “Do you think the Schwarzwald Gazette will buy Jacob’s story?”

He nodded. “I’m sure they will. It’s such a good one.”

“So am I,” Tina said. “Now read some more.”

“Soon Jacob’s story was finished. He addressed an envelope, and that night Joseph walked to the village to mail it.

“After that, Jacob wrote another story and another, but no answering letter arrived from the Schwarzwald Gazette. When the last leaves had fallen, Joseph bought as much food as he could; and when winter came in earnest, and the snow was higher than a man’s knees, he made snowshoes. Each day, after he had dressed himself as warmly as he could, he went hunting. He shot several hares in that way, and at Christmas he and Jacob feasted upon a partridge.”

Tina stepped into the blue teddy he had bought her in Toys. “All clean,” she announced. “We can start on the drawers, but you’ll have to open them for me and lift me up.”

He carried her into the bedroom and (deciding they might as well be systematic) opened the upper left drawer of his bureau. “You can start in here,” he told her. “But I don’t think you’ll find anything except handkerchiefs.”

She hopped from his palm. “I like your hankies. They’re so clean. Now go on with the story.”

He sat down on the bed and found his place. “And yet there were many days when Joseph shot nothing at all, and he and Jacob supped upon pease porridge and water, for dried peas, water, and firewood were the only supplies that the winter had left them; and on such days, Joseph filled Jacob’s bowl to the rim but took only a few spoonsful for himself.

“But on this day, when he saw how few dried peas remained, Joseph resolved that Jacob should have them all and that he himself should have nothing, for he blamed himself bitterly for returning with an empty bag. He set out Jacob’s bowl and a spoon, filled two pots with snow, sprinkled all the remaining peas into one, and hung them over their little fire.

“Then Jacob said, ‘Brother, I am hard at work on a new tale, but you must look out the window for me.’

“Joseph looked, and to his astonishment saw a fine sleigh drawn by four—”

Tina called, “Look!” She was holding up something thin and brown and shapeless, suspended on a scarlet thread.

“What is it?” he asked.

“Don’t you know? I found it in your drawer.”

He took it from her and held it up to the light. “It’s a root,” he said. At once Mr. Sheng’s shop rose before his mind’s eye, complete with all its queer boxes of incense, paper horses, blue-haloed gas ring, and steaming teapot. “It’s a magic charm,” he told Tina.

“A real charm?”

“The man who gave it to me said it was.”

“Will it make you as little as me?”

“I’m afraid not.”

She seated herself on the edge of the drawer, slender legs dangling over what was to her an abyss. “I didn’t think so—not really. But we could pretend. Will it make you invisible?”

He shook his head. “It was supposed to bring mail.”

“But it doesn’t work?”

“I don’t know. There was a lot of mail when I got back, but then I’d been gone for a month.”

“Will it bring a sleigh with reindeer, like the one in the story?”

“I don’t think they were reindeer.” He glanced down at the page. “No, chargers.”

“I don’t know that word.”

He groped. “Like ponies,” (Tina would surely know pony ) “but bigger. I don’t think it will bring any kind of sleigh.”

“Aren’t you going to put it on?”

“I hadn’t planned to,” he said.

“It’s the first thing I’ve found. Or anyway the first real thing, because you didn’t even pick up the dime and the button. Besides, if you don’t put it on how are you going to know if it works?”

“The mail carrier’s been here already today,” he pointed out.

“Then if you get some more letters or something, you’ll know it’s a real charm.”

He was not often subject to sudden insights, but he had one then; it was that he was arguing with a doll about a magic root. He nodded his surrender and hung the charm around his neck.

“Joseph looked, and to his astonishment saw a fine sleigh drawn by four white ponies. ‘What do you see?’ Jacob asked him.

“‘I see a magnificent sleigh,’ Joseph answered. ‘It’s bright with gilt and dancing golden bells.’

“‘Ah! Continue, please,’ said Jacob. ‘Give me more, dear brother.’

“‘A big coachman in a high fur hat and a big brown fur coat cracks his long, black whip above the ponies. Beside him sits a tiny groom in a scarlet jacket, so that they look like a bear and a monkey in the circus. Riding in the sleigh is a woman wrapped in white furs.’

“‘Wonderful!’ Jacob exclaimed, and his pen danced over the paper so busily that he seemed not to hear the tinkle of sleigh bells as the sleigh stopped before their little house.”

“Open this other drawer,” Tina instructed him. “And when I jump across, you can shut this one. I think she’s the editor of the Schwarzwald Gazette.”

He pulled out the drawer that held his socks. “Maybe,” he said.

“Joseph saw that the woman was a princess, and he bowed to the ground. ‘Are you Jacob?’ she inquired. ‘The publisher of our little paper has sent all your stories to me, knowing that they are just the sort of thing I like. I forbade him to tell you of it until I had rewarded you.’

“‘No, Highness,’ Joseph said honestly, ‘it’s my brother who writes the stories. If you’ll wait a moment, I’ll bring him out to pay his respects to you.’

“‘That’s certainly not necessary,’ said the princess. ‘I shall go in to pay my respects to him.’

“But when Joseph hastened to open the door, he found that Jacob was already in the doorway. ‘Your Highness,’ Jacob said, ‘what my brother has told you is not wholly true. It is indeed he who writes my stories—I, as you see, am blind. I merely write them down.’”

“That was a sad story,” Tina said. “Sometimes fairy tales are too much like real life. But I liked it.”

He nodded and closed the book. “So did I.”

There was a knock at the door.

There was another knock. A voice muffled by the door announced, “UPS.”

“All right,” he said, and opened it.

The UPS driver was short and dark, and looked angry. “This Seven C? ”

He nodded.

“Here it is. You want it out here or in there?” It was a big, solid-looking crate on a handcart.

“Is that for me?” he asked.

“This is Seven C? It’s for Seven C.”

“I wasn’t expecting—”

The driver snarled. “Your name Green?”

“Yes, but—”

“Want me to take it off my buggy and leave it in the hall?”

He shook his head. “I guess you’d better bring it inside.”

The driver grasped the handles of the handcart and gave a mighty heave, tilting the cart back enough to put the center of gravity of the crate over its axle. “You should have seen me getting this bastard in that elevator. You’d have laughed your head off. Usually a thing like this goes to a loading dock.”

He asked, “Who sent it?”

“Hell, I don’t know. It says on the side someplace.”

He bent to look. “It’s just an address.”