Chapter 1
Sweat dripped down her face. Aubrey Wilson’s hair felt sticky despite being tied in a ponytail behind her. The Florida sun stretched the last gasp of summer into fall and beat down on the evening after Thanksgiving. Aubrey sat at a picnic table at the park while her brother, Ethan, and his friend, Porter, played soccer. She had played soccer with them for a while, but had grown bored and tired chasing after the ball. Aubrey expected this to happen, that’s why she had her colored pencils and sketch pad with her.
She had to go to the park. Dad had driven out of town that morning because he had to finish getting things set up at his new work-site in Melbourne. Mom started working on the night-shift at the hospital, so she was at home, but sleeping. Olivia, and all of Aubrey’s other friends, were out of town for the holiday. Her only options were to sit at home doing something quiet, or come to the park to play with Ethan and Porter. At least she got to spend some time outside here. She watched a handful of white puffy clouds dance around the sky making shapes as the wind rustled fallen leaves and the wildflowers that grew just off the soccer field.
While she decided what to draw next, Aubrey looked up and saw Ethan and Porter. Now that she wasn’t playing, the boys didn’t have anyone to pick-on but each other. Ethan was the much better player, and scored a lot more. He practiced all the time, and Aubrey knew it was because he was afraid people would think he was a nerd if he wasn’t good at sports.
Aubrey looked down again and decided she wanted a dragon in her picture. Not a scary dragon, but a beautiful love dragon that played with the forest animals. It would still be able to breathe fire and blow away enemy armies from the gates with its wings if it wanted too. Aubrey turned to her left to sharpen her dulled teal colored pencil. Then she saw something. Someone? She wasn’t sure, but it had moved quickly behind a tree near the edge of the woods. It must have been an animal. Except it had been red, she thought. It hadn’t been a pale red-brown like you might find on an animal’s coat, but bright red. Was it the world’s biggest cardinal? She stared at the woods. Her eyes studied the motionless trees intently. She had seen something though; she was sure of it.
“Mr. Richards, did you see that?” Aubrey asked.
Mr. Richards, Porter’s dad, looked up from his phone and said, “See what?”
Aubrey didn’t know how to describe it, so she just said, “It was probably nothing, never mind.”
“Ok, honey,” Mr. Richards said. “Hey boys, five more minutes and then we have to go. I’m getting hungry.”
Aubrey kept her eyes on the woods and in what felt like no time, Mr. Richards announced it was time to go. She never saw anything else. As they all walked back to the car Aubrey asked Ethan, “Did you see anything in the woods while you were playing?”
“Like an animal? I saw some squirrels. Maybe a bird or two. Why?”
“Not like that, it was something bigger, and bright red.”
Ethan sighed. “No, I didn’t see anything. Not a unicorn, not a griffin, not a Komodo dragon, not a monster, not anything.”
“It’s not a game, Ethan. I really saw something. I’m not sure what it was though. A griffin is a possibility. I’m sure they could be red. Maybe a baby one…”
“You’re so weird,” he said while wiping his glasses on his shirt.
Aubrey silently stared out the window for the few minutes it took for Mr. Richards to drive to their apartment complex. They passed two fast food restaurants, a thrift shop, two other apartment complexes and a bike repair shop before they got to the graffiti wall sitting across 34th street from their apartment. It was a Gainesville landmark. People could legally spray-paint it, and so the wall frequently featured birthday wishes and announcements about the University of Florida’s various organizations, but mostly featured unskilled paintings and personal messages. Aubrey thought it was nice to have outside her bedroom window. It gave her something different to look at every day. Today as they drove by, she noticed that something peculiar had been painted on. A small door covered the corner of a “Happy 21st Birthday, Sidney” message. What made it exceptionally odd was that the painting of a small wooden door with a silver doorframe actually had a bronze door knob glued to it.
Mr. Richards turned the car into their apartment complex, and Aubrey’s window no longer faced the wall. She craned her neck around, but couldn’t see it anymore. Had there really been a doorknob? Who would have gone to the trouble to attach that? She had to look again.
As soon as she was out of the car Aubrey said, “I’m going to get something from my room, I’ll be right over, Mr. Richards.” The Richards family only lived two apartments down from the Wilson’s apartment. Aubrey opened the door to their apartment and her hurried feet slapped the floor a little as she moved to her room. Mom was a light sleeper, and she didn’t want to wake her. If Mom woke up, she would certainly make Aubrey leave to go back to the Richards’ apartment, and Aubrey couldn’t see the graffiti wall as well from there.
Aubrey skipped across her magenta throw rug, tossed a pile of her stuffed animals off the bench by her window, and perched herself on it. She looked over the traffic on 34th street to the wall. The door remained. She grabbed her purple binoculars from her bookshelf and took a closer look at the door. The wood actually had grain on it, and the silver trim surrounding the door seemed to glimmer. Someone had gone to a lot of trouble to paint this mysterious door. Aubrey started searching the other messages on the wall for oddities. A variety of short crudely painted messages filled the wall; nothing except for the door seemed unusual.
Aubrey heard footfalls behind her and gasped. Ethan walked into her room. “What are you doing?” he asked. “I thought you were just grabbing something and coming back over to Porter’s.” Ethan looked down and saw the binoculars resting in Aubrey’s hand. “What are you looking at?”
“Come look,” she said, holding out her binoculars for him to use. “Look at the corner of the purple and teal one that says ‘Happy Birthday Sidney.’”
“What is that?” Ethan said a moment later with the binoculars pinned to his eyes.
“How long do you think it took them to paint it? Look, they made the wood look real.”
“They probably just stuck some thin wood to the wall somehow. They attached a knob too.”
“Maybe,” said Aubrey, “what do you think it means?”
“I don’t know. It’s probably just some weird prank.”
“But even if it’s a prank, there has to be some kind of story or meaning behind it. Why would they put a door on the wall?”
“Aub, who cares? It’s just a stupid pra…” The way Ethan trailed off made Aubrey jerk her head back towards the wall, just in time to see him. A small man, not any taller than Aubrey ran next to the wall. His red full-length winter coat extended past his knees but left his green leggings exposed on his lower legs. He moved fast; his stocky legs were a blur. Aubrey thought he might even have a gold glimmer trailing behind him, like a comet, or something from a cartoon, but it was hard to make out from this distance. The little man reached out for the doorknob attached to the door on the wall and pulled it open. Even though he wasn’t very tall he ducked to fit into the door, and as quickly as he had come, he disappeared, closing the door behind him.
“Did you see that, Aub?”
“Yeah,” she said. “And I’m pretty sure I saw him in the park too.”
***********
“Did you see how fast he was going? Did you see the way the door opened right out of the wall? Could you see what was through the door? I didn’t even think to look at that. Ethan, did you see it? Was there a trail behind him? It looked like glitter, or fairy dust. Ethan, do you think it could have been fairy dust? Do you think he was a gnome? If he was a gnome, would it have been gnome dust? If it was really fairy dust, would that make him a fairy? Are there boy fairies? He didn’t have wings. Does he have to have wings to be a fairy? Ethan, are you listening to me? Talk to me.”
Ethan listened. She spoke three times faster than a normal person would and her voice got higher and higher as she squeezed the words into one breath. Still, Ethan heard every word. She always spoke like that when she got excited. Usually, she chittered about a drawing she was proud of, a book she had read, when the sun came up perfectly in the middle of her bedroom window, or if a squirrel had a cute snaggletooth. This time though, she had a really good reason to be excited. They had seen something extraordinary, and Ethan couldn’t explain it yet.
“Aubrey, you have to get quiet. You’re going to wake up Mom.”
“How can you be worried about waking up Mom? We just saw something magical. That was like the greatest moment of my life, and the greatest moment in your life too, even you have to admit it. Ethan, we just saw some magical little man walk through a door that led into a wall!”
She nearly yelled the last part, and right on cue Ethan could hear Mom groan from her room. “Aubrey,” she called, “What are you yelling about? I thought you two were going to spend the afternoon at the Richards’ apartment.”
“Don’t worry about it, Mom. Sorry we woke you. We’re going to go back to the Richards’ apartment right now.” He said the last part while motioning to Aubrey emphatically. Ethan held his finger over his lips and pointed towards their front door.
Aubrey looked annoyed but started to silently prance to the front door. She made it eight steps before she began whispering again. “What do you think was on the other side of the door? Do you think we could open it? Do you think he dug a tunnel through the wall? How could he do it? It would have taken a long time and we probably would have heard it from our bedrooms.”
“Aubrey, shhh.”
Aubrey lowered her voice back to a whisper. “It was so cool. Magic is real, Ethan; do you get how amazing this is? I get to tell Porter about the glitter dust trail, I don’t think you could describe it right.”
“Wait, what?” This time Ethan’s voice became too loud. “Aubrey, we cannot tell Porter about this. We can’t tell anyone. He’ll think we’re crazy. Anyone would think we’re crazy.”
“How would he not believe us after we open the door? We could bring him with us.”
“Aub, it’s probably just an optical illusion or something, a hologram. I don’t know how they did it, but I’m sure it’s a prank. I’m not going to go tell Porter we saw a gnome-fairy thing run through a magic door into a wall. I’m certainly not going to ask him to come with us to try to open the door in the wall.”
“So, we are going to try to open the door? That’s great. Do you think Mom would let us go while she’s making dinner? I bet if we…”
“I didn’t say we were going to open the door. I said we weren’t asking Porter to go. If we tried, we’d probably just end up on the internet in some video of stupid people yanking on a doorknob glued to a wall. Do you want a bunch of people laughing at how stupid we are, Aubrey?”
“Ethan, are you kidding me? You’re worried about people we don’t know laughing if it’s not real? What if it is real? It could be the coolest thing we ever see. It could be a magical land with dragons, and unicorns, and wizards, and princesses, and knights, and talking animals. Why would we risk missing out on that just because we were afraid of people we don’t know laughing? We have to try to open the door. I’m going to open the door, with or without you, Ethan, but I don’t want you to miss out on it.”
They were standing in the open-air hallway right outside the Richards’ apartment now. Ethan had to get Aubrey quiet. “Ok, ok. Fine. We’ll go across the street and check out the door after Mom leaves for work. Just promise me you won’t talk about it in front of Porter, ok? Or Mom. We can’t tell anyone.”
“Sure, whatever, I didn’t want him to come with us anyway.”
They went inside and the rest of the afternoon tested the limits of Ethan’s nerves. Aubrey didn’t outright violate their agreement, but she wasn’t being careful either. She stared out the window towards the door in the mural so much that Porter started to give her strange looks. Ethan had to ask Porter to grab a board game from his room in order to have time to whisper to Aubrey to cut it out.
“You guys could probably stay over here for dinner. I’m not sure what we’re having, but we could ask,” said Porter when he returned.
“No,” Aubrey nearly shouted, and her cheeks immediately reddened as she realized she had probably over-reacted to a dinner invitation. She started to stutter out what would surely be a poor excuse.
“What she meant to say,” interjected Ethan, “is that Mom likes us to have early family dinners together before she goes to work a night-shift, so we can’t stay over that late.”
Porter nodded and Aubrey seemed to calm down a bit. The rest of the afternoon brought only minor lapses from Aubrey that Porter probably wouldn’t notice. They waved goodbye to Porter and his dad and walked back to their apartment. Aubrey’s every step seemed a combination of a skip and twirl. Ethan began to imagine her disappointment when the door didn’t open and the guys with the camera jumped out to point and laugh.
Aubrey continued to talk when they reached their apartment. Now she spoke fast enough that Ethan was having trouble understanding every word. The smells of garlic and tomato sauce wafted from the kitchen. Mom must be preparing spaghetti for dinner. He motioned for Aubrey to keep quiet and calm down, and walked into their apartment.
“Hi guys. Did you have fun at Porter’s?” Mom called out as the front door squeaked closed.
“Yeah,” replied Ethan. “We went to the park and played soccer. Then we went back to the Richards’ and played some games for a while.”
“How about you, sweetheart? Did you have a good time too?”
Ethan tensed up waiting for Aubrey to respond. It seemed certain she would say something that resulted in Mom taking her to a psychologist. At best, he would probably be accused of letting her take too hard a hit to the head with the soccer ball. His heart pounded at least five times before Aubrey finally responded.
“Yeah Mom, I played some soccer too, but mostly I colored. Do you want to see my picture? It’s a dragon with purple wings and it breathes fire that’s a glittery silver and pink. It’s still hot though. It melts her enemies before it even touches them. Do you want to see it?”
“Sure sweetheart, but I’m kind of busy. Could you bring it in here to show it to me?
Ethan walked towards his room as Aubrey took her picture to Mom. He needed to plan for his trip across the street to inspect the door. If Mom asked what he was doing, he would tell her that he was going over his math homework. He probably should really check them over for a third time, just to be sure his answers were all correct. First though, he would get some kind of mask or bandana in case the door was an internet prank video. There was that nagging other possibility though? What if Aubrey was right? What if the little man was real? What if the door really was magical? Where could it lead, and more importantly, what could Ethan do to prepare for wherever it took him? A pocket knife seemed like a good idea if you didn’t know what to expect. He grabbed that and shoved his red bandana from his Halloween costume into his pocket. He took a few minutes to review his math homework again, confirming that he hadn’t missed a negative sign on the fourth problem.
Ethan looked out his window at the graffiti wall. The small door with the silver frame remained right where it had been before. He scanned the surrounding area for signs of a hidden camera, but didn’t notice any. Then Ethan washed his hands in the bathroom and walked to the dinner table.
“Oh,” Mom said, “I was just about to call you for dinner, did you wash your hands?”
“Of course, Mom.” Mom stressed hand hygiene. Caring about cleanliness and germs came with the job, she always said.
Aubrey started to take her seat at the table when she walked in, but a terse “Hands, please” from Mom reminded her to go to a sink first. Ethan put some pasta on his plate. “I’m sorry, it’s not something you love, Ethan; but it’s simple. We’ll have the whole Thanksgiving meal together tomorrow though, so that will be fun.”
“I know Mom, spaghetti’s fine.” Ethan knew his mother’s third 12-hour shift of the week would finish tomorrow morning. His father would be home from his business trip about two hours after she left for work. She had decided that Ethan and Aubrey could stay home by themselves for that time, as long as they promised to keep the door locked and call Mr. Porter with any problems. That would be their chance to investigate the door. He couldn’t help but feel excited despite knowing it was probably an optical illusion or a trick. Aubrey came back to the table, visibly shaking with excitement. Mom didn’t seem suspicious though. It was hard to tell Aubrey’s normal excitement from her excitement when she thinks she has confirmed the existence of magic.
In short order they had all finished their pasta and cleared the table. Mom kissed them both and gave them hugs. “Be good, I’ll see you tomorrow morning. Don’t give your father a hard time about bed-time. I know it’s a long weekend, but we can’t have your sleep cycles thrown off, so we need you to go to bed at least near your usual times.”
“We know, Mom, you already told us.” Ethan said.
“Ok, I love you. Be good.” She said walking out the door.
Ethan put one finger in the air indicating to Aubrey that she should wait. He listened to hear a familiar car door close, heard the engine catch and listened to the sound of his mom’s car driving away. He lowered his finger and just said, “Ok.”
“Oh wow, it’s finally time. Ethan, let’s go. I’ve been thinking about it and I’m sure he’s a gnome because he doesn’t have wings. It’s probably either Gnome dust, or he has fairy friends and they let him borrow fairy dust. Either way, it’s the best thing ever. Let’s go through that door! I can’t wait.”
“Ok, but go get a scarf or something. We might need to hide our faces.”