Tears

The doorway had always been there.It wasn’t carved of wood or shaped of stone, but it stood in the corner of her grandmother’s house, a thin frame of shadow between the old kitchen and the narrow hallway. To anyone else, it looked like nothing more than a trick of bad lightingsomething you’d pass a hundred times without noticing. But to Elara, the doorway breathed. It pulsed faintly, like the rhythm of a heartbeat, as if it had been waiting for her all her life. Her grandmother had warned her never to linger there too long.“Doorways are thresholds,” she used to whisper, pressing rosary beads into Elara’s small hands. “Spirits slip through them. Some friendly, some not. And sometimes, child, the doorway doesn’t lead where you expect.” But warnings had never stopped her. Elara had always been drawn to the strange, the forgotten. Even as a girl she’d sit in the hallway after midnight, staring into the dark frame of the doorway until her eyes blurred. Sometimes she thought she saw someone standing on the other side—someone waiting. A boy, perhaps, though he never fully appeared. Just the outline of shoulders, the suggestion of pale light glinting off eyes. Now, years later, the doorway was still there.And so was he. The River’s Call It had been a storm that finally pushed her through. The night had been swollen with rain, thunder clawing the sky, when Elara woke to the sound of rushing water inside her grandmother’s house. She padded down the hallway barefoot, clutching her robe, heart pounding. And then she saw it the doorway had opened wider than ever before, spilling silver light and the sound of water into the narrow hall.

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