The Life and Times of an Opener in the Underside

Bernard said 'Dora was out by the lake, and so that is where Door is headed, black skirts swirling around her ankles in the slight breeze.

It's not unpleasant at all, though her errand is.

No one likes to give bad news.

The first thing she knows is that she isn't dead.

She knows, knows, that when she dies, Mother and Father and Arch will meet her, and they're not here, so she must not be dead.

She is, to be honest, a little disappointed. She is sick - so fucking sick - of running, of fighting.

Well, she thought when they finally caught her, it's about time.

But here she is.

She has no idea what day or time it is - but she does know that she sent rat after rat after rat after... Tom never came. If he had made it home, he would have come for her.

This is the second thing she knows.


The third thing she knows is that her hands are tied much more securely, this time. She won't get a finger on the knots binding her wrists, this time. She-- can't move. Any movement tightens another rope, threatening to strangle her, or pull her hip out of joint, or slice into her wrist.

She's blindfolded.

She's not gagged. It's really rather idiotic, she thinks, that she isn't gagged, but she isn't.

And so she screams. And screams. And screams.

And screams.

It's been two days.

Her arm is well on the way to healing, and she knows she can't stay away any longer without Ingress starting to worry, so she's determined to get home today. If she's lucky, her pursuers will have given up, or at least gotten lazy. If she's not - well, she knows secret ways. She'll make it.

Or not, she reflects a few hours later, when she actually gets a moment to think. She's been engaged in a slow motion cat and mouse ever since leaving the meadow, moving through the Underside, the fluctuations in the temperature of the chain around her neck leading her constantly away from danger - but the distance she can travel before changing direction is getting increasingly smaller.

At this pace, she can last for a long while.

But it's only a matter of time.

Door didn't really sleep, last night, but she knows that Tom needs his sleep for the day ahead, so she didn't wake him.

Early morning sunlight is seeping through the curtains now, and Door is awake, watching him.

Door isn't sure how the rats get in.

She asked her father once, years ago when she was quite small, and they spent an afternoon searching his office for holes in the walls or special rat-sized paintings, but eventually had to leave it a mystery.

Some days, Door thinks that there must be holes they missed. Other days, she suspects that the Ratspeakers are on to something.

In any case, the rats find their way in, notes tied to their backs with delicate bits of thread, London Below's most reliable way of communicating with the House of Arch.

Today, Door is curled up in her father's favourite armchair. She isn't crying, though she'd like to. Tom is gone, and she is empty, even of tears.

And then there is the familiar scratch of claws on the floor.

Lady Door, the note reads,

The Knights of Sloane Square have beseiged us. I beg you to come speak with them and rescue us. It's what your father would have wanted, girl.

The Earl

Something to do. Door is painfully relieved. It only takes her a moment to grab her leather jacket, to remove her opal necklace (Tom's gone - why keep it? No, don't think about it) and then she slips through the gallery and into London Below.

---

"So you don't have the Earl under seige?" Door massages the bridge of her nose, her head beginning to throb out of frustration.

"No, my Lady. I swear it. We would not hesitate to tell you if we did." Sir Quentin, leader of the Knights of Sloane Square, would have taken offense at the continual questioning of his word half an hour ago, had anyone but Door been asking. As it is, he is testier now than Door has ever seen him.

"I believe you," she sighs. "I just don't see why the Earl would lie to me."

Quentin's eyes narrow. "As I have said before, Lady, I do not think you are safe with him. He is plotting something, and until I am sure he does not mean you harm-"

Door raises a hand, and he cuts off abruptly. "The Earl is a dirty, misogynistic, forgetful old man who is very set in his ways, but he wouldn't hurt me," she says firmly. "I'm going to go talk to him. I'm sure it's all a misunderstanding."

"Then allow me to send a retinue with you, for your protection."

"I can take care of myself."

"For my own comfort, then." Quentin's expression is almost pleading, and Door would very much like to agree, but she knows she can't.

"With the situation between the two of you the way it is, there's no chance. Starting a war when it could have been prevented is the very last thing I want to do. You can send somebody with me to wait for the train, but I won't take any of your knights into Earl's Court."

Five minutes later, Door is making her way through an old service tunnel, accompanied by two fully armed and armoured knights. The chain around her neck is slightly warm, but to be honest, it's been a bit warm whenever she's been in London Below for weeks, now, and she's beginning to wonder if it's malfunctioning.

It flares sharply when she leaves the Knights to enter Earl's Court. The doors slide shut behind her, and Door realises belatedly that the compartment is even darker than it normally is, and that it appears to be empty.

She is reaching toward the door, ready to Open - the train has only just started moving, she can jump out if she moves quickly - when something cracks against the back of her head and she knows no more.

Door stepped through the huge doors and stared around the cavernous hall. The candles were all burning, and she reflexively checked for Islington, remembering how the candles had always lit for him voluntarily.

The rooms were utterly deserted. Dead leaves still blew across the floor. There was the door she had opened; there were the shackles that had chained Richard and the Marquis; there were the scrape marks from Croup and Vandemar's fingernails.

For a moment, Door stood in the middle of the floor, feeling very small and helpless. Then, with a scream of rage, she threw herself sideways, knocking over several candles and landing on the marble floor. She lay on the ground gasping for a moment, then scrambled to her feet and kicked a huge candelabra. It teetered for a moment, then fell in a magnificent firey arch, scraping against a hanging curtain on its way down. The curtain caught fire immediately, flames licking up the fabric, but door did not notice. She had already turned around, was already knocking over more candles, all the candles she could reach. Many of them blew out before they reached the floor, but a few lit the piles of leaves, and the flames on the draperies were quickly jumping to other wall hangings. Islington's Lair was filling with smoke at an alarming rate, but Door seemed oblivious.

Finally the smoke swirled around her and she began to cough. She stopped and looked around, her eyes widening slightly at the sight of the flames blazing around her, at the knowledge that in her anger, she hadn't even noticed them. She glanced around wildly, looking for the door, but the smoke was too thick, and she had lost her sense of direction. She stumbled forward, coughing uncontrollably, until she reached a wall. She leaned against it, and, with the last of her strength, she Opened.

The darkened valley looked familiar, although Door couldn't quite place it. She had vague memories of riding on her father's shoulders, of the valley washed with sunlight, but she couldn't remember who they had met there. A sharp nudge in her lower back sent her sprawling, and she rolled over, groaning slightly, and froze immediately.

She was surrounded by horses - huge, ugly, terrifying mares that were regarding her through red-rimmed eyes.

She was in Shepherd's Bush.

She glanced around, looking for an escape route, and scrambled towards the one gap in the line. Before she had moved even a foot, it was filled, black hooves churning the dirt only inches away from her. Door thought furiously, her mind whirling, but before she had even begun to think of a plan, one of the horses darted forward. She threw up her arms in a futile attempt to protect herself, and there was a sudden blinding, searing pain in her left hand.

Door screamed, and the pain was suddenly everywhere, running through her whole body, every nerve on fire. Door heard feet pounding towards her, and then she collapsed.

When she came to, she was lying on the grass, surrounded by huge legs. Door looked up slowly, knowing what she would see. The Shepherds. Cyclopses, the children of Poseidon, sworn to guard the horses of Diomedes. Door struggled to her feet and almost cried out when she put weight onto her right leg. Looking down, she realized that there was a jagged hole in her jeans, and she was bleedingly steadily from a shallow gash beneath it. Choking back her tears, she glared up at the giants, speaking as regally as possible.

"I am the Lady Door, of the House of Arch. I have been granted free passage through your lands. I demand you let me go."

The cyclopses looked at her in surprise, then held a muttered conversation far above her head. Door's terror momentarily overrode her pain. She didn't recognize any of this group. If they didn't believe her, they could very well kill her on the spot, or feed her live to their horses. Finally one of them reached down and grabbed Door around the waist, pulling her up to their level.

"We take you to the elders," he growled. "They will decide."

Three of the giants - the one holding Door and two others - peeled away from the main group and ran off towards the eastern mountain. Door winced as every step jolted her severely, and she was soon in tears despite her efforts to hold them back. After about a quarter of an hour, the group finally slowed, and Door was deposited unceremoniously in the middle of a clearing.

Looking up, she discovered that she was surrounded by a solemn-looking group of cyclopses, each half again as large as those in the first group. Each was regarding her balefully with a huge eye. Door quailed inwardly, but she knew that if she showed any fear, they would kill her instantly. She once again pushed herself to her feet - noticing with dull, detatched surprise as she did so that her left pinky finger was missing - and stood as straight as she could.

"I am the Lady Door, of the House of Arch. This treatment is not acceptable. My family has a peace with you. You must let me pass through your lands."

A female, the largest of the group, replied after some deliberation. "I knew Lord Portico," she growled, "and I met his daughter when he brought her to us. It was many years ago. You do not look like her."

Door closed her eyes tightly, waiting for the giantess to pronounce her sentence.

"But," the cyclops continued, "We have a box we cannot open. If you are the Lady Door, you will be able to open it. If you cannot, you will be fed to the horses. They have not tasted flesh in a long time. They are hungry."

This was even worse, Door decided. When she had been stabbed by Croup and Vandemar's goon, she had barely managed to open a door into London Above. Now, with one finger missing and a gouge in her leg, almost blinded by the pain, she was not sure she would be able to open anything at all, regardless of her need.

The cyclops who had carried her went into a cave, and returned a few moments later, cradling a large trunk in his hands. He set it down before Door. Door raised her right hand and placed it gently on the trunk's lock, willing it to open. Nothing happened.

"You are no Opener!" the female cyclops growled. "You cannot open the box!"

"I am a very young Opener," Door bluffed frantically. "It takes me longer than it took my father. Give me a moment."

They settled down again, and Door studied the trunk frantically, still willing it open with half of her mind.

Then she saw it - a tiny latch, far too small for the cyclopses to manipulate, hidden amidst the intricate carvings on the lid. Door pushed it surreptitiously and the trunk sprang open.

The circle of cyclopses were immediately on their knees. "I am sorry, my lady," the female said, contrition in every line of her body. "I did not realize it was you. Next time, we will know."

One cyclops hurried up to Door and handed her a large jar of ointment. She spread some of it on her still-bleeding wounds. The bleeding and a good deal of the pain stopped immediately.

Still forcing herself to look and sound regal, Door responded. "I will forgive you this time," she said, "but see that it does not happen again. I now require transport to the nearest exit from your lands."

Five minutes later, Door was deposited at a sewer grate which opened into a sheer cliff. She strode through it and around a corner, and then collapsed against the wall.

Door knew paths nobody else in the underside knew. They were dark and dangerous and only an opener could get to them, as far as she was aware. Door was aware of a great many things that went on in London Below - far more than anyone could ever imagine. The pigeons told her things; the rats passed along messages they did not even share with the Ratspeakers; the Marquis provided her with whispers and gossip.

Door was unnoticable, when she wanted to be. A tiny slip of a girl with a huge leather jacket and flat grey eyes didn't attract much attention at the Floating Market, especially when she was not recognizably a member of any major fiefdom. She heard things: conversations, rumours, muttered threats.

She did not know everything that went on, but she was one of the most well informed people in the city.

Her father began teaching her at the age of three. She learned to control her opening powers, learned her way around London Below, was introduced to the most important people and places. Knightsbridge would never take her. The Shepherds would allow her to pass unharmed. The ringmaster at Picadilly Circus would provide her with a front row seat and free candy floss.

While Door would almost certainly never see all of London Below, she had seen more of it than most people knew existed.

Now she was moving through a series of meadows that had gotten stuck in London Below thousands of years before. Here was the one she and Tom and Ingress went flying in - and yes, the grass was still bent down from their picnic. This meadow had huge trees made of gold; the next was filled with unicorn skeletons, laid out in neat rows, each horn still intact and glowing. She was quite sure that both of these meadows were all but forgotten. If they were found, they would be stripped bare.

Door slipped from room to meadow to hallway to rooftop, avoiding being seen, moving steadily towards Down Street.

Door doesn't sleep.

She spends the night in her father's study, staring at his notes, watching his diary, reading the same page for an hour without taking anything in.

She drinks cup after cup of coffee, until she is deathly pale and twitches at any small sound.

Door doesn't sleep.

I've gotten several requests to join house_of_arch from people who haven't asked to live in the house.

For my own insane reasons which make sense in my head, I'm only accepting as members the character-journals of those who will actually be living in the house. Everyone else is welcome to friend the community and watch it - and it is even set, I believe, so that anyone can comment, but I'd rather keep the membership to the actual residents.

If you do want your character to live in the house, they need to talk to Door, after which I will accept their request.

Thanks so much, everyone. We're looking to get the sister community off the ground in the next couple of days.