Down The Rabbit Hole

At dusk, the third brass star in Old Marrowgate Public Library’s front step began to sing.

Mara Ellison stopped with one boot on the pavement and one on the lowest slab. The sound was no louder than a fingernail dragged around a glass rim, but it threaded through the traffic hiss and the pigeons’ indignant cooing with impossible precision.

She glanced up at the library.

Its windows reflected the bruised purple sky. The front doors had been chained shut for the evening, though a rectangle of lamplight still shone through the lobby. Somewhere inside, the old pipes clanged. The building looked as it always did: broad, soot-streaked, and faintly disappointed in everyone who entered it.

Mara crouched and pressed two fingers to the brass star.

The singing stopped.

“Well,” she whispered. “That’s either a clue or the library has finally developed opinions.”

“Mrs. Vale says it’s a door.”

Mara turned.

Jon Bell stood beside the newspaper box, his bicycle helmet dangling from one hand. He had the damp, rumpled look of someone who had been chased through several hedges, which was not unusual for Jon. His other hand held a paper bag from the bakery.

“Mrs. Vale says everything is a door,” Mara said.

“She said this one opens.”

“Mrs. Vale also told me the fountain in Bellweather Square was a sleeping giant.”

“It is a sleeping giant.”

“It’s a cracked stone basin with three dead minnows in it.”

Jon lowered his voice. “She found the door when she was shelving atlases. Beneath the front steps. There’s a stairwell going down.”

Mara looked at the steps again. Twelve slabs of gray limestone, each worn into a shallow dip by a century of shoes. The third brass star gleamed under her fingers.

“What’s behind it?”

Jon shrugged, though his eyes had sharpened. “That’s the part she didn’t say.”

“Then why tell me?”

“Because you’re the only person I know who would go looking.”

He held out the bakery bag. A crescent of sugar had leaked through the paper.

Mara took it. “And you?”

“I’m the person who tells you where to look, then waits somewhere with windows.”

“That’s not friendship.”

“That’s excellent friendship. I’m preserving our future conversations.”

The library’s front lamp flickered. Once. Twice.

Mara slipped the pastry into her coat pocket and knelt again. The brass star was not a star at all, she saw now. Its points were tiny screws, worn nearly smooth. Between two of them ran a hairline seam.

She drew the little brass key from the chain around her neck.

It was the only thing she had brought from the locked drawer in her grandmother’s house, apart from a headache and three unanswered questions. The key was no longer than her thumb, with a loop shaped like a rabbit’s ear. Its teeth were strange: uneven, delicate, almost decorative.

Jon watched it appear. “That’s new.”

“It isn’t.”

“It wasn’t around your neck yesterday.”

“You weren’t looking at my neck yesterday.”

“I was looking at your bicycle tire. You had a nail in it.”

“Which you failed to mention.”

“I was distracted by the neck.”

Mara fitted the key into the seam.

Something beneath the stone clicked.

Jon’s smile vanished. “Mara.”

The brass star rotated a quarter turn. The limestone gave a low, reluctant groan.

“Go home,” she said.

“I was already planning to.”

“Then start.”

“Mara - ”

The front door of the library rattled behind them. From inside came a muffled thump, followed by the unmistakable scrape of a chair being dragged across tile.

Mara looked at the dark windows. No figure moved behind them.

The seam widened.

Cold air slid over her knuckles.

Jon took one step backward. “That’s not normal cold.”

“Cold has a normal?”

“Yes. This is basement cold. Basement cold knows things.”

Mara pressed her shoulder against the stone and pushed.

The lowest step lifted with surprising ease, tilting inward like a trapdoor. Dust sifted down. Beneath it lay a narrow opening, black except for a thread of amber light far below.

The library bell over the front doors rang once.

Mara froze.

Jon whispered, “Did you hear that?”

“Yes.”

The bell rang again, though the doors remained chained.

Mara lowered herself into the opening.

Jon caught her sleeve. “You said go home.”

“I changed my mind.”

“You do that at terrible moments.”

“That’s when it’s most useful.”

The stone shifted under her weight. Mara grabbed the edge, boots scraping against brick. The passage below was scarcely wide enough for her shoulders. A metal rung waited beneath her left foot, slick with condensation.

She looked up at Jon.

For one instant, his face was pale in the failing light, his bakery bag crushed against his chest.

“If I’m not back in ten minutes,” she said, “tell Mrs. Vale she was right.”

“About the door?”

“About the giant.”

Then she dropped.

The rung struck her boot. She caught the next one, then the next, descending into the smell of wet stone and old paper. Above her, Jon muttered something that sounded like a prayer but was probably an insult.

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