When the painter reaches the Heart she can see the Keeper at his desk in his office but his attention remains on his writing. She considers asking him to find an appropriate place to hang the painting she has left in her studio, recently completed, but she does not. She knows someone will find it and hang it. She can see it already, on a wall surrounded by books.
She does not know who the figures in the painting are, though she has seen them many times in fractured images and half-formed visions. There is a part of her that hopes they do not exist, and another part that knows they do or they will. They are there in the story of the place, for now.
The painter glances up at the gently shifting clockwork universe. Through one eye she sees it shimmering and perfect, each piece moving as it should. Through the other eye it is burning and broken.
A golden hand points her toward the exit.
If she is going to change the story, this is where she starts.
(The Keeper will look up at the sound of the door as it closes behind her but he will not realize who has departed until much later.)
The painter passes the spot in the antechamber where she rolled her dice when she first arrived. All swords and crowns.
She sees more swords and crowns now. A golden crown in a crowded room. An old sword on a dark shore wet with blood. She has the urge to return to her paints but she cannot paint all of the things that she sees. She could never paint all of them. She has tried. There is not enough time and not enough paint.
The painter presses the button for the elevator and it opens immediately, as though it has been waiting for her. She lets it take her away.
Already her eye with its sight is clouding. The pictures are fading. It is a great relief and it is terrifying.
By the time the elevator deposits her in a familiar cave lit by a single lantern, there is only haze. The images and events and faces that have haunted her for years are gone.
Now she can barely see the door outlined in the rock in front of her.
She has never seen herself leave. She once swore she would never leave. She made a vow yet here she is, breaking it beyond repair. The achieving of this impossible thing emboldens her.
If she can change this part of the story she can change more of it.
She can change the fate of this place.
She turns the doorknob and pushes.
The door opens onto a beach, a stretch of moonlit sand. The door is wooden, and if it was painted once the sand and the wind have conspired to wear the wood bare. It is hidden in a cliffside, obscured by rock. It has been mistaken for driftwood by everyone who has glimpsed it for years, ever since the last time the painter was here, before she was ever called the painter, when she was just Allegra, a then young woman who found a door and went through it and didn’t come back. Until now.
Allegra looks up and down the empty beach. There is too much sky. The repetitive beating of the waves along the shore is the only sound. The scent is overwhelming, the salt and the sea and the air crashing into her in an aggressive assault of nostalgia and regret.
She closes the door behind her, letting her hand rest on the weather-worn surface, smooth and soft and cool.
Allegra drops her bag on the sand. The fur coat follows, the night air heavy and too warm for fur.
She takes a step back. She lifts the heel of her boot and kicks. A solid kick, enough to crack the old wood.
She kicks it again.
When she can do no more damage with her boots she finds a rock to smash against it, the wood cracking and splintering, slicing her hands, fragments stinging beneath her skin.
Eventually it is a pile of wood and not a door. Nothing behind it but solid rock.
Only the doorknob remains, fallen into the sand, grasping ragged bits of wood that were once a door and before that were a tree and are no longer either.
Allegra takes the matches from her coat and ignites the former door and watches it burn.
If she can prevent anyone from entering she can prevent the things that she has seen from happening. The object within the jar in her bag (an object she saw and painted before she understood what it was and long before it became an object within a jar) will be insurance. Without doors she can prevent the return of the book and everything that would follow.
She knows how many doors there are.
She knows that any door can be closed.
Allegra turns the doorknob over in her hands. She considers throwing it into the sea but places it in her bag with the jar instead, wanting to hold on to any part of the place that she can.