Flat Top's Arc

Chapter 2 of 2

Flat Top stared at the wooden frame and knew he could not touch it. He had learned the shape of the threshold, but not its mood. A sealed frame looked the same as an open one. If he pressed his palm to a sealed door, he might end up stuck between the waking world and the dream — half here, half gone. He stepped back into the trees and walked until he reached his base. His base was a small house he had patched together at the edge of the wood. The walls were painted in loud reds and pinks. Peace signs hung above the door. He had built it close enough to the thresholds to work from, far enough that none of them touched his roof. Inside, he took a cracked stone amulet off a nail by the window and looped the cord around his neck. The stone was cool against his chest. He had carried it for years. It warmed near sealed ground. It went hot near cursed ground. It was the only honest thing he owned besides his eyes. He walked back through the pines. His knee-length hair dragged behind him and caught on a low branch of a tree whose leaves swirled in pinks and blues like a bruise that would not settle. He had snagged on this tree a hundred times. He worked the strands free without looking and kept moving. The first frame he found stood between two stumps. He stopped six paces out. The amulet grew warm, then hot, until it stung his collarbone. Sealed. He marked the trunk beside it with a scratch of his thumbnail and moved on. He tested four more frames that afternoon. Each one burned the stone hot. Each one earned a scratch. By the fifth he was tired and his hope was thinning. Then he stepped into a small clearing and saw a sixth frame, taller than the others, its colors slower. He stopped six paces out and waited. The amulet stayed cool. He took one step closer. Still cool. Another step. Cool. His hand shook. He did not touch the frame. He did not need to. He had what he came for. He pulled a strip of cloth from his coat and tied it to a branch beside the door so he could find it again. Then he turned and walked back to the painted house, the cold stone tapping his chest with every step. He had a door now. Tomorrow he would decide whether to open it.