Hours later, Tana was safely in bed, but I couldn’t shake my unease. Lighting sizzled across the sky, the boom of thunder echoing up and down the open hallway to the woods beyond. The storm drove hard, pelting rain into the vestibule, where it pooled on the cracked grey concrete, darkening the edges of the thin welcome mat.
As the wan sodium yellow of the ancient floodlights winked out in a power outage, a strangely-dressed man entered the hallway from the darkness, his silhouette impressively tall and broad. Draped in white swaths of robes, he wore a golden circlet on his creased brow, and his odd garments parted at his shins to reveal a pair of leather sandals. Somehow, not a drop of rain had marred his clothing, silver-shot hair and beard, or deeply tanned skin. The only illumination in the dark corridor came from the man himself, glowing from within like a firefly.
I watched warily as the man approached with the firm clap of sandal-soles, ready to stick fast in my frame to prevent Tana from being disturbed. Instead, the visitor merely cleared his throat and stared straight at me, addressing me directly.
“So. Hera has told me I must make some….amends…for my affairs. Personally, I think she’s being oversensitive, but women, right? You fuck one girl as a weather event, or a bird, or her own husband and all of a sudden you’re the bad guy.” He rolled his eyes and waved his huge hands dramatically as if I could possibly respond. If I could have responded, I’d offer that this Hera seemed to have reasonable complaints, if the two of them had been committed to one another at the time.
The man sighed and raised a massive palm as if he was cutting me off, mid-nonexistent-sentence. “Anyway. Here’s the thing, I can’t just say a couple of words and change reality, tends to get the mortals in a tizzy, especially these days. Part of Hera’s whole thing is consent, which she says I need to learn.” The man made condescending air quotes with his fingers, leaving me with hefty doubts the man was actually contrite. “So, hey, good news on that front, though: I’m giving you the chance to convince your lady love in there to set you free.”
I still couldn’t respond, hope and confusion still filled me from lintel to threshold. Tana.
The man waited a long, awkward beat for an answer before he clucked his tongue and snapped his fingers. “Right. Sorry. You can’t talk, I forgot. You’re probably wondering what all this is about, your existence and everything. Uh, the thing is, you’re made of solid oak, that’s one of my sacred trees. I’m told that apparently an acorn from my grove across the ocean made it here, grew up into a big strong oak, and was felled to use for-” the man wrinkled his nose and gestured dismissively at me, “well, this. Congrats, you’re at least half dryad, my boy.”
The man looked uncomfortable and swung his eyes up to the concrete ceiling of the vestibule, sighing as he continued, speaking a little faster. “And…well, there’s a pretty decent chance you may be, you know, my son. Of sorts. See, a lot of things happened in that grove and there was this perfectly-positioned knothole on this really sexy tree and the mead was flowing freely-” he gestured in a rolling circle with his hand. “You get the point.”
I did not, in fact, get the point, but was very curious about the insinuation I could be with Tana.
“Anyway, tonight, by Hera’s grace, you can enter your girl’s dreams. You’ll need to make your case and convince her to – well, to do what I did with that knothole.” The man cleared his throat awkwardly. “The catch is, however, that it needs to happen while you’re in this form to set you free. But I have faith in you, son.You’ve got your old man’s charm, after all.” The man patted a big palm gently against my front and turned to walk away.
Halfway down the hallway, he turned and looked back over a robed shoulder, raising his voice to be heard. “And I’d seal the deal quickly, if I were you. My brother Hades mentioned that the skinny twit I’ve seen lurking around your girl sent a woman to the underworld recently.”
I rested for long moments after the visitor faded back into the storm, perception lingering on a blank wall across the vestibule. The news the strange man – potentially my father? – had given me weighed heavily on my mind. Tana was in danger, and I was more than a door. It had never occurred to me that there was a time before I was a door, or that other doors might not be aware of themselves. Was I really a dryad, then? A god?
No, I decided. Gods did not have to suffer the indignities of Mrs. Scrimshaw’s chihuahua lifting a leg on them. I was something lesser, then, but still more than human. The larger question was how could I use this new revelation to keep Tana safe?
I spent the next few hours thinking of every command that could send me into Tana’s dreams, all to no avail. After trying all night, I finally let defeat settle into my timbers and faded back from consciousness, sadly, mourning the loss of a promised chance to change my fate.
