Beyond the Red Door

Tessa Althea hadn’t made a tile in weeks. Something in her had broken—and her overseer would surely notice. Her shame festered as she turned the tessera between her fingers, the smooth square of glass warm from her constant touch. Instead of flickering with a captured memory, the tile’s face remained agonizingly blank. Kneeling on a velvet pillow in the quiet stone room, surrounded by her fellow soul scribes, Althea felt like an imposter.

Beside her, Tessa Lanier’s slow exhalations seemed effortless. He sat cross-legged, palms facing up, the braid down his back a soft shade of lavender. A scar cut through one cheek, down to the edge of his mouth, a marker of the duel that had driven him to the sanctuary. If all he was running from was dishonor, Althea considered him lucky. Before finding this place, she had never slept through the night or felt free to speak her mind.

But if she couldn’t create tesserae, the overseers would erase her memories of the sanctuary and send her into the endless evergreens, forced to follow the River Yaasa to the nearest town three days’ journey away. She had blistered the soles of her feet beyond repair to escape that life.

“Are you all right, Tessa Althea?” a deep voice whispered in her ear.

She jolted upright, nearly slamming into the speaker’s chin. Tessa Wren towered over Althea, her hair an even darker violet than her own, almost black, curving around the woman’s head like an ocean wave.

Althea bowed. “Concentration! I’m struggling with concentration.”

“Ah, concentration should be left for scholars and shitters.” Wren sat down, pressing her feet together. Her expression always seemed playful and childlike, and Althea had long suspected Wren was several years younger than she was.

“What else would you recommend, O Great Overseer of mine?” Althea asked in a teasing, singsong voice.

Wren grinned. “Not concentrating. A paradox, I know. But it works.”

“Well, paradoxes are my specialty.” Her thoughts spilled so easily in Wren’s presence, as if she were talking to her reflection. “My emotions are all wrong. I’ve been snapping at people, even when I feel calm inside. And other times, I smile when I’m not supposed to.”

“Like when Tessa Calais got jam in her eye? I thought you might break a rib with how hard you were laughing.” Wren’s eyes glinted.

Althea attempted a smile. “I’ve lost control of myself, admittedly.”

“Paradoxes of the self are the most challenging kind.” Her expression softened. “How are your tesserae coming along?”

Wren looked pointedly at the blank tile in Althea’s hand. Her face paled. She had hoped to have more time before anyone remarked on her failures. Althea wanted to tell Wren about the memory that clung like a disease, becoming all she could see of her past lives. But that would entail admitting she had lost her powers entirely, and even Wren—with her kind eyes and infinite patience—would be forced to abide by sanctuary laws and make Althea leave the only place that had ever felt like home.

“I’ve been…unraveling a particularly complicated memory. From the Cataclysm,” Althea said quickly. It wasn’t entirely a lie.

Wren wore an unreadable look. “You’ve been with us for, what, two years now?”

Althea nodded, her heart beating so loud she feared Wren could hear it.

“In most my lifetimes, I’ve chosen to become a soul scribe, but it’s never gotten any easier. Fighting your mind is like trying to wrangle a difficult child—draining and thankless,” Wren continued. “As your overseer, it’s my responsibility to make sure you’re well-equipped to handle the challenges.”

“You’re the best overseer there is,” Althea insisted. “You’ve prepared me more than enough. And I will rise to any and every challenge you give me.”

Wren ran a hand through her hair, one strand sticking up. Althea wanted to reach over and smooth it down. “I know you will. Perhaps you should go for a stroll on the walkway. The cold often succeeds in distracting me from myself.”

Althea swallowed hard. “Actually, I’d like to keep going. On my own. If that’s all right?”

Wren said nothing, only shrugged and stood. She walked to the far side of the room and resumed her position on a pillow at the front—a square of blue in a sea of black. Those around them were still immersed in their memories, eyes closed and breaths measured.

With a sigh, Althea relaxed her tense shoulders and stretched each finger and toe. Exhausted as she was, it only took a few minutes to find that boundary between sleep and waking. Entering the soul state felt much like stepping into a river and letting the current sweep you away—the act of lending your body to a more powerful force. Life’s sound and sensation faded into nothingness, replaced with a nebulous wandering through the universal energy that fueled everything in existence—Fate. Althea’s formless essence floated between points of light that glowed with indescribable color.

She swirled toward a pinprick of brightness, but before she could reach her destination, a red mass loomed above her. It spread like ink in water, consumed all light, devoured every memory except for a single moment in time.

In the memory, she stood before a red door. She had never seen it in her waking life. Most of her past selves she knew by name, yet no precise identity came to her in this place, the syllables slipping out of her mental grasp. She couldn’t even sense if she inhabited the body of a woman or a man or a form somewhere in-between.

Dread shot through her as her past self stepped forward. The door’s frame curved at the top, the blood-red paint gleaming on the wood as if it had been freshly coated. A dark metal ring hung in place of a knob. There was no keyhole. Though she held no control over her past incarnation, she willed herself to move.

I must open the door. I must open it. I must—

Then the scene shuddered, moments from the Cataclysm flashing in violent succession, as if her memories were fighting for dominance: fields upon fields of ash, a child covered in growths twitching in the dirt, a wolf’s yellow eyes glaring as flesh dripped from its jaws, a forest of human bodies strangled by blackened tree limbs. The dread inside her swelled, pounding against the walls of her mind like a beast desperate to escape. Pain cleaved her skull. Her past self cried out, collapsed on a white stone path, the red door above her, the red door that she must open, the red door, the red door—

Althea’s eyes snapped open as she returned to the sanctuary. Hands gripped her shoulders, shaking her.

“Althea!” a voice called. “Althea, wake up!”

Wren’s face was so close to Althea’s that she could count the individual hairs along the side of her face. Her overseer’s dark eyes were inscribed with a mixture of fear and astonishment.

Althea rasped in a breath, her throat raw from screaming. Every eye in the room studied her.

“I’m sorry, so sorry,” she croaked out. “I…”

Wren’s mouth formed a grim line. “Come with me.”

Her overseer strode toward the door that led deeper into the sanctuary, pausing at the threshold to turn to her with a steely gaze. On shaking legs, Althea followed, the stares of the others lingering against her skin. Between her fingers, the tessera shone clear and empty.

***

The Grand Archive breathed with life, the mosaic stretching down the seemingly infinite hallway, along the ceiling, overflowing onto the floor. Thousands of tesserae undulated in a constant stream, and the memories inside the glass glimmered with resplendent color. Althea breathed in the scent. Collections of memories oozed a distinct smell, like embers mingled with petrichor. Fire and water in an impossible combination. She had walked through these rooms a hundred times, though as of late, she more often avoided them because it hurt to be reminded of what she could no longer do.

Wren faced away from Althea, her arms clasped behind her back. “You’ve been stuck on a particular memory, haven’t you?”

Althea’s stomach twisted. She wasn’t prepared for the possibility that these might be her final days in the sanctuary. But Wren had been the one to lay her cloak over Althea’s shoulders when she had first arrived at the stone archway, half-naked and frostbitten. She couldn’t keep lying to someone she owed so much.

“Y-Yes,” Althea replied, failing to hide her panic.

“You’ve seen the red door,” Wren said in a low voice.

Althea staggered back and spoke in an awed hush. “You’ve seen into my memories?”

“Back there, you were shouting about how you must open the door.”

“But how did you know it was red?” For a frantic moment, Althea worried that Wren could read her mind and that she had somehow discovered her deepest fears and longings.

Wren unclasped her hands and turned toward her, though she didn’t meet Althea’s eye. “I remember it.”

“The red door?” Althea gasped.

“Not quite. I remember you remembering the red door.”

Althea’s brow furrowed as she tried to make sense of her words. The overseers were different from ordinary soul scribes, of course. By choosing to become soul scribes lifetime after lifetime, they had diligently studied the Grand Archive and built a vast ancestral memory for themselves, one that combined the events of their own past with those of others, allowing them to witness the same event from many perspectives. Still, for Wren to have seen her memory of the red door—one she hadn’t yet recorded—broke her understanding of their power.

Althea rubbed her temples. “Please, speak plainly. My head is going in circles.”

“It’s really quite simple. Our history is cyclical. Like all else in the world, Fate thrives on patterns, recycling energy through our reincarnations. What you see here”—Wren gestured to the oscillating tiles all around them—“may well happen again, in some form or another. Think of the near-perfect symmetry of flowers and butterflies, honeycombs and spiderwebs, the human body and a good sweetcake.” She shot Althea one of her usual irreverent grins, though this time it looked forced. “So it goes with the symmetry in the lives we live—though it’s human nature, not history, really, that creates those parallels.”

A tessera looped around Althea’s bare feet, depicting a young girl fishing on a cliff’s edge, before flowing up the wall to join its brethren. “But you didn’t quite answer my question. How is it possible that you saw one of my memories before I recorded it?”

“Let me show you.” Wren took Althea by the hand and led her down the mosaicked hallway of the Grand Archive as the tiles shifted in their sinuous way. They stopped at the dead end, and this wall, too, was covered in memories.

When Wren let go of her fingers, Althea immediately missed her warmth. Wren touched the wall, and the tesserae scattered to reveal the blank stone behind them. As her hand sliced down the center, the stone parted like a curtain, beyond which stood a small chamber Althea had never seen before.

“After you.” Wren stepped aside and motioned toward the newfound entrance.

Althea stepped through the gray curtain, its fabric cold and rough, and entered the secret chamber, where a rotunda rose above her head, lined with its own roaming mosaic.

“What is this place?” She’d never heard anyone mention a room beyond the Archives, nor seen an annex shaped like this from outside the sanctuary.

“The Special Collections. More specifically, memories related to the Cataclysm.” Wren walked over to a column and tapped a glass tile, halting it in its course. “There’s one in particular I’d like you to see. One of mine.”

She peeled the tile from the wall and handed it to Althea, who laid it face up in her palm, smoothing three fingers across its surface, which portrayed the very room they were standing in. A familiar shiver flowed down Althea’s spine, the one that came with inhabiting a memory. Though the room shimmered, she didn’t travel elsewhere, as she usually did in a memory. She stood in the same place but inhabited a different body.

“History is cyclical, Remy,” her own male voice said. His name came to her—Silas. He addressed a bald woman whom she recognized as one of her past selves, from her name and the burn marks across her arms, earned from her days working in a forge. Seeing her past self through someone else’s eyes felt like living in a mirrored version of the world, the distortion disorienting.

The man continued. “You’ve been seeing the red door, as has happened in the past. And as will happen again.” He waved a hand, silver rings glinting off his fingers.

“When I see the red door, it’s all terrible destruction. All pain,” Remy replied, looking uneasy. “Whatever’s beyond that door…it’s the cure to some great tragedy. But I feel this dread when I reach for it.”

“Then there’s no question—we must find the red door.”

Althea’s eyes fluttered open as the memory ended, and Wren appeared before her again, her face uncharacteristically weary. So many questions snapped to mind that Althea couldn’t decide which to ask first. Before a sound even left her throat, Wren held up a finger to silence her.

“That”—she nodded at the tessera cradled in Althea’s hand—“is the only life I can access at present. Trauma from a past life can block your memories, as you well know. I often remember Silas’s death—that’s who I was in that life—and the recollection has overpowered all my other past lives. He died in a flash of white light.”

“And you knew that Remy was one of my past selves?” Her brain throbbed from the strain of trying to comprehend all she didn’t know. “That was you and me, our past selves, talking about the red door as we are now?”

Wren nodded. “All the overseers have been keeping an especially close eye on you for that reason, ever since you first began creating tesserae. I’m sorry to have kept that secret from you.” Wren’s apologetic smile sent a curious warmth coursing through her. “The true purpose of the sanctuary is not to record what came before…”

“But to predict what comes next,” Althea finished hurriedly. “From the patterns revealed across reincarnations.”

“And from the differences. To learn from our past. The other overseers have feared that telling you of the red door before you’d seen it would result in a self-fulfilling prophecy, or otherwise disrupt the natural cycle.”

Althea’s throat tightened with a sudden, horrifying thought. The Cataclysm had happened over two hundred years ago, yet the scars of its aftermath remained in the ruins of entire villages that no one had dared rebuild, and in the family lines that had been lost forever, their existence only remembered within the Grand Archive.

“Now that I’ve seen the red door, does that mean we’re in danger of a second Cataclysm?” Althea asked.

Wren cast her gaze to the ceiling, her eyes sparkling beneath the glow of memories. “Not the second—the third. Some overseers believe there was a Cataclysm before time even began, but ancient memories are much more difficult to trace.”

“I—Remy—said what was beyond the red door was the cure to a great tragedy. You haven’t seen the memory of us opening the door?”

“No, and I don’t know what lies beyond it,” Wren replied. “The only way to know is to find it.”

Althea shook her head forlornly. “I have no idea where it might be, or where to even begin. If I could access more memories, then maybe I’d find a clue. I know other soul scribes have used exposure techniques—”

“I don’t want you to get hurt, Tessa Althea.” Wren’s voice sounded strained. “There must be some other way. I can’t put you in danger.”

Meeting her eyes, Althea saw in them a sincerity that made her breath hitch. For as long as she’d known Tessa Wren, the woman had shown her a kindness she’d never encountered anywhere else in her life, from guiding her through the rigorous soul-scribe training to saving her the last slice of honey bread because she knew it was Althea’s favorite. All those small moments they’d shared coalesced into a yearning within her that could never be quenched. But from the uncertainty in her overseer’s expression, she could sense Wren was warring with herself—between the desire to protect Althea and the need to prevent a tragedy that went far beyond the two people standing in this room.

“I’m not sure we have a choice,” Althea said slowly. “If another Cataclysm arrives, thousands of people could die. We’ll need to warn them. You still speak with your family, don’t you? Your brother lives in Blackacre?”

Wren looked uncomfortable. “He sends me letters, yes. My nephew is apparently training to become a swordsmith. And they say people are flocking to Blackacre more and more, thanks to the mines. I can only imagine the number of casualties if…”

“Then we must do something. If the Cataclysm happens even close to where it did before, they couldn’t escape it.” Althea grasped Wren’s hands, wanting to absorb all the worry etched across her face. “I’m strong enough for this. Let me try.”

***

An icy gale from the mountains threaded through Althea’s robes, touching her down to the marrow. Snow seeped into her crossed legs as she lifted her bare feet to rest on her knees and turned the blank tessera in her hands. From all the screaming, she sensed that Tessa Calais did not approve.

“You have truly leapt from the mountaintop this time, Wren!” she shouted. “What if she freezes to death, and we lose our connection to the red door for another lifetime? By then, it might be too late to stop what comes next.”

“She understands the risks. And I will be here, looking after her.”

Wren had advised Althea to ignore the discussion and begin her meditative exercises, but Althea opened one eye to see Wren barricading Tessa Calais from leaving the sanctuary.

“So you will sacrifice yourself as well!” Calais snapped, hands on her ample hips.

“What do you propose as an alternative? Wishing very hard for a new memory to appear?” Wren countered.

Calais gave a frustrated grunt Althea recognized all too well from her cleaning inspections. The two overseers stared each other down like bucks ready to charge.

“Fine. I shall leave Tessa Althea in your care, and bury you both by way of throwing your bodies off the mountainside.” Tessa Calais strode back inside the sanctuary and slammed the entrance shut behind her.

Althea closed her eyes again, becoming the perfect picture of focus as Wren’s footsteps crunched toward her.

“She reminds me far too much of my mother,” Wren muttered, settling down beside Althea. “Moralizing about right and wrong. As if the answer is always so black and white.”

“Do you believe we’re doing the right thing?” Althea opened her eyes to look at Wren. “What if finding the red door is the cause of the Cataclysm, not the solution? I’ve been worrying about that—how to explain the dread I feel when I see the door.”

“My intuition tells me that’s not the case. It’s a deep gut feeling, like a forgotten memory.” She smiled. “It’s why the other overseers are allowing us to pursue this mad quest, even though Tessa Calais might be wary of our methods.”

“In truth, I…” Althea swallowed hard, not daring to voice the thought that had plagued her since their conversation the day before.

Wren peered at her as if she were a puzzle to solve. “You what?” she asked patiently.

“I wonder if…if I’m the one somehow responsible for the Cataclysm in these past lives. We never did find the cause. Maybe that’s why my mind won’t let go of these memories.”

She tilted her head like the bird of her namesake. “Responsible? How would you be responsible?”

“I don’t know. I just have this terrible feeling.”

“You have a truly good soul, Althea,” Tessa Wren murmured. “Fate didn’t put you on this earth to do harm. Trust me on that.” She knelt beside Althea and held her frigid fingers, her expression imploring in a way that made Althea’s heart skip.

This close, Wren’s gray eyes revealed a ring of blue. Althea’s mouth went dry. “I feel you are the only person who truly understands me in this world,” she whispered.

Wren closed the distance between them, their lips melting together, their breaths mingled in the cold, creating a warmth that existed beyond their bodies.

***

The red door loomed larger than before, the black metal ring now a silver handle and the paint peeling like strips of bark. A different door from a different time.

Fueled by their kiss, Althea had entered the soul state with renewed clarity. Her own past lay far behind her as she let the cold distract her from herself. She needed to shed her present consciousness and fully inhabit her past. Who was she? A woman, bald and strong, staring at the red door. She grasped a thought from her past self: It’ll all happen again.

Fear, regret, a yearnin’ she couldn’t define. Sweat dripped from her forehead as the fierce summer heat bore down. And beyond this door? A feelin’ in her gut told her that whatever it was would prevent the “event” from happenin’. But that dread. She couldn’t shake it. She didn’t want to. That was nature tellin’ her somethin’ was wrong.

“Are you ready, Remy?”

She turned at the sound of Silas’s lilting voice. He had the gift of a silver tongue—could make anybody obey his command. But he’d never used it on her. She asked him why, once, and he’d told her, “Because I don’t have to. Because you love me, and you’d do anything for me. That is all the power I want over you.” And he was right. Even now, her heart only had room to fear for his safety, not her own.

When he had first walked into her smithy shop, she had thought he was just another idiot from the big city with too high an opinion of himself. But unlike the other gentry types, he didn’t just choose the sword that looked the most expensive. Instead, he appraised her wall of wares with a studied eye. Took his time admiring the details of every pommel, the balance of each blade. When he declared her craft the best he’d witnessed across the seven heartlands, Remy had swelled with so much genuine pride that she thought her chest might grow three sizes.

Now, standing before the red door beside the man who had always respected her, she almost couldn’t stand the uneasiness about what might happen next.

Openin’ this door will show us how to end it before it starts. Remy didn’t know how she knew that, but it felt like a fact. She nodded at Silas, though she wasn’t ready, would never be.

With her standin’ helpless behind him on the path, Silas stepped forward. All the silver rings on his fingers flashed in the sun as he pulled the handle. The door creaked open, a blindin’ white light beyond it, hot and pure. Silas screamed in pain, as if he were being burned alive, and Remy couldn’t—

***

All sense of dread disappeared, replaced with tranquility and loss. Somehow, Althea knew that opening the door had stopped the Cataclysm—this time. Her true consciousness crept in, and the image distorted, shifting into another red door, this one closed, a black ring hanging to the side. The same one she’d seen in her recurring memory.

Silence surrounded her, and her pulse quickened. Fragments of the Cataclysm—blackened lakes, birds falling from the sky—threatened to consume her, blocking her off from this past self, but she fought to concentrate. In the real world, her body had likely stiffened to numbness from the bitter wind and approaching night.

Althea searched for a thread to this past self, any thread of him. Him. A man…a name…Eoin. They called him Eoin. The red door. How he despised it. He did not understand its power, but he had no need to. He knew it would be the end of him, because he had nearly frozen himself to death to unearth what his past selves had done. Almost all of his incarnations had opened the door. But he would rather the world burn than face the alternative.

“It will kill you,” Eoin said, turning to his companion…his Kavesh.

Kavesh faced him, dark curls swaying in the summer breeze. He wanted to tuck them behind his ear and kiss him silly, as he had almost every morning since Kavesh had found him, after searching the world for the person in his memories. Kavesh who pushed him out of bed when he overslept for his performances. Kavesh who scolded him for treating strangers like servants. Kavesh whose laugh made him happier than any man deserved to be.

“You don’t know that for certain,” Kavesh replied. His cheeks pinkened, making him look even more delectable. “And please, will you stop staring at me like that!”

“Like what?” Eoin asked innocently.

“Like you plan to devour me at a moment’s notice. Do you ever take things seriously? You just mentioned my death, and now you look as if you want to kiss me!”

“I do want to kiss you.”

Kavesh growled, and Eoin fought a smile.

“If what is beyond the red door prevents another disaster, then we must open it,” his companion said firmly.

“How about we dance instead? As we did at the citadel.” Before Kavesh could protest, Eoin pulled him close and clasped their hands together, and they moved in time with a silent song. During a masquerade at the citadel, Eoin had convinced him to perform the first dance, despite Kavesh’s insistence that he would embarrass them both with his terrible rhythm. Which was true, but Eoin would take a thousand stomped toes if it meant he could dance with the love of his life.

Kavesh attempted to pull away, but Eoin squeezed his fingers, and his body relaxed.

“This has happened before,” Eoin murmured into Kavesh’s ear and witnessed the hairs stand at the nape of his neck. “When we opened the door the first time, centuries ago…you were gone in an instant. I do not know how or why. Only that it was.”

“You cannot sacrifice the world for one person.” Kavesh looked toward the red door.

Eoin touched the other man’s cheek. “Do not open the door, Kavesh. I beg of you. I do not care what it means for the world. There is only one person who matters to me.”

They walked away without sparing a glance back.

***

Before the moment ended, a bell tower rang in the distance, spurring memories of cloudberry jam and white stone paths. A familiar city. She was Althea again, and she knew where to find the red door.

But why?

Why find it? Why act on that horrible knowledge? Why force herself to face it and the choice that came with it? A throbbing, fevered pain raced through her, ripping through her heart. Agony turned her blood to fire, and white-hot knives stabbed as if trying to shred her into a thousand pieces.

The Cataclysm came again, those flashes of death, and she understood now what it all meant. The initial uncertainty about her name, about her gender, the way memories of the Cataclysm had interlaced with the red door—it had been a composite of more than one of her past lives. She had been present at every Cataclysm. And so had Wren. They had been Remy the swordsmith and silver-tongued Silas. Before that, they had danced as Eoin and Kavesh. It defied all explanation, but somehow, Wren had been the harbinger of every great tragedy, without the purifying light beyond the red door to destroy her.

Perhaps the trauma of those memories had suppressed parts of Althea’s past lives. For Wren, it had hidden all moments beyond Silas’s death—a time when another Cataclysm had been prevented, as he had made the ultimate sacrifice.

In many lives, Althea had chosen to open the door. Yet history never repeated itself exactly, did it? Wasn’t there a chance it could be different this time?

As she awakened, she felt cold tears wet her cheeks.

“We need to get you inside,” a panicked voice yelled. Someone lifted her from beneath her arms. Wren.

Though the sky had darkened and the wind had grown harsher, Althea’s skin burned with the fire set inside her from her memories. She had been so afraid of losing her place in the sanctuary. Yet the sanctuary’s isolation wasn’t what had gifted her a sense of safety. No, it had everything to do with the woman beside her whose cheeks were flushed with the cold. Wren was her home. And opening the red door meant her home would be destroyed.

She stumbled to her feet and turned to Wren, who had worry written across her face.

“I found it,” Althea gasped. “I found the red door.”

Wren rubbed Althea’s arms, her eyes wide. “Where is it?”

She shook her head. “They burned it. There’s no way to find it now. There’s nothing we can do.”

All hope drained from Wren’s eyes. “You’re sure?”

“Yes. I saw the ashes. All we can do now is hope that this time the outcome will be different. We must have hope.”

“Let’s get you inside,” Wren said softly, taking Althea by the wrist. Her touch was so gentle, so loving. Althea never wanted to be without it.

“I need a moment out here. I’m burning up.” Althea looked toward the gossamer clouds wrapped around the mountain peaks. “Please, go inside. Your lips are turning blue.”

Wren shivered and glanced toward the sanctuary. “One minute. Then I’ll come back for you. As I always will.”

Althea smiled at her wanly, and Wren kissed her cheek before going inside. Standing there, Althea opened her palm, which had remained clasped around the tessera during her soul state; it burned against her palm. Inside the glass, a memory sparkled—of Wren and her, their past selves, walking away from the red door.

Her bare feet melted the snow with each step toward the cliff’s edge, below which rocks and trees and snow unfolded endlessly. She let the tile fall from her palm, into the maw of the waiting world. Althea did not see where the memory came to rest, but she hoped the summer’s melting snow would carry it far beyond her sanctuary.

First appeared in Aurelia Leo, May 2021