Flat Top steps between the pines, his knee-length hair dragging through wet needles. His juju eyeballs scan the wood for the door between waking and dreaming. Every shimmer could be it. Every shimmer could be nothing. He stops at a drifting patch of fog. It glows soft and layered, exactly like the threshold should look. His heart kicks. He reaches out. His hand passes through cold, ordinary mist. "Right," he mutters. "Not you either." He wipes his palm on his coat and keeps walking. The wood is full of fakes. He has chased shimmers for years now, and his hair is the receipt. Then he sees it. Deeper in the trees stands a tall wooden frame, its grain swirling with impossible color, birch edges smooth as bone. No mist. No trick. The wood itself looks awake. Flat Top stops breathing. He finally knows what the threshold looks like — and now he has to find the one that opens.

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.

Flat Top slept badly and woke before dawn. The open frame was waiting in the clearing, marked with his strip of cloth. He had a door now. That was the problem. If he stepped through, he might not step back. He had heard stories of searchers who crossed and never returned — their bodies left in the pines, their minds gone somewhere else. His juju eyeballs could show him the door, but they could not guide him home from the other side. He sat at his kitchen table and opened a leather journal he had kept since the search began. The cover was tooled in loud swirls of pink and green. Inside were years of notes — sketches of false shimmers, lists of failed frames, questions he had never answered. He turned to a clean page and wrote one line. If I go in, what pulls me out. He stared at the words until the ink dried. The answer came from a hook by the door. A climber's safety line hung there, coiled tight, its rope banded pink and teal, two steel carabiners heavy at the ends. He had bought it years ago to scale a cliff he never scaled. He lifted it down. The weight felt honest in his hands. One end for him. One end for something on this side that would not move. He walked to the clearing with the rope over his shoulder and his hair dragging behind him. The tall frame stood where he had left it. Its birch edges were smooth. Its wood swirled with colors that would not hold still. He circled it and picked the thickest pine within reach, a trunk twice his width, roots dug deep. He looped one carabiner around the pine and locked the gate. He tugged. The tree did not care. He clipped the other end to his belt. He measured the slack with his eyes — enough to step through, not enough to wander. He touched the amulet at his chest. Still cool. He drew a breath and put his palm flat against the frame. His hand went through. The wood did not resist. The colors climbed his wrist. He pulled back hard and the rope pulled with him and his hand came out whole, warm, tingling. He laughed once, sharp, and sat down in the pine needles. It worked. The line held. The door let him touch without keeping him. He stayed there a long time, watching the rope where it crossed into the frame and vanished a few inches in. He had proved he could reach through and return. He had not yet gone in. That was tomorrow's problem, or the next day's. He unclipped, coiled the line, and started back toward the painted house. Halfway home he noticed the carabiner at his belt was warm. He had not touched a cursed thing. Something on the other side had touched the rope.