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She shouldn't have been going so fast. It didn't seem to matter, though. The streets were quiet. There was little traffic and virtually no pedestrians. For most of the time Karen might as well have been the only person in town.
She was angry, too. That's why she was riding her bike at breakneck speed, tearing through the neighborhood. She hadn't wanted to move. She hated this new place. She wanted to go home.
Her front wheel suddenly stopped, tossing Karen into a shrub by the sidewalk. Fuming, she got up, brushed herself off, and went to get her bike. As she bent over to pick up the handlebars, she noticed something lying in the road. She picked it up and looked at it.
It was a key. An old, dirty skeleton key. There was a chain attached to it. Apparently, the previous owner had used it as a necklace. Karen took off her backpack, dug around inside, and pulled out a napkin from her lunch. She rubbed a bit of the grime off the key, and could see that the key and chain were actually silver, perhaps valuable. Karen slipped the key and the napkin into her backpack, put it on again, and set out once more. However, she went a bit slower now.
She soon came upon the faded, slightly run down pink Victorian house. She rode down the side and walked her bike through a gate into the back yard.
"Hello?" she called as she walked inside. She was answered by silence. No one was home.
She pulled out the key and looked at it more closely. It had an intricate design. It probably was pretty valuable. She went to a cabinet and searched for the silver polish.
She hardly needed it. It seemed like the years left the key and chain almost instantly. She had hardly touched the polish to the metal and it shone like it was new. Karen could see now that the key had writing etched into it. It was just two words: "Pandora's Key."
"Hello? Karen?" It was Karen's mother. She walked into the kitchen. "What's that?"
"Oh, it's something I found in the street. I thought it might be valuable." Her mother nods, then she stops.
"What happened?" she asked.
"What?"
"Your face," Karen's mother said. Karen put a hand to her cheek and felt something. She looked at her fingers and saw that they had a drop of blood smeared on them. She hadn't realized that she had been scratched when she was thrown off her bike and into the bush.
As Karen went to get a Band-Aid, she could hear her mother.
"I think we should take this key thing to the police. Someone might be looking for it," she said. Karen's mother studied the inscription. "Do you know anyone named Pandora?"
"I don't know anyone here," Karen said with obvious annoyance as she put on the bandage. "Pandora is from Greek mythology. She opened a box and released all the world's suffering."
"I know that!" her mother said. "I'm going to take this down to the station. You should probably come, too."
The person at the police station took their number, and told them that if the necklace wasn't claimed he would call them, and it would legally be Karen's. Karen had almost forgotten about it when some one called. Nobody had reported a missing silver key. Karen could come down and pick it up any time this week.
* * * * * * * * *
Karen walked into her house. She took the key out of her backpack and looked at it.
"What am I supposed to do with this?" she asked the empty room. Then she remembered. All the indoor locks in her house needed skeleton keys. A little privacy in her bedroom would be nice.
She walked into her room, closed the door, and tried the key. It went in and turned easily. Karen tried to open the door and found that it was locked. She smiled. She turned the key again, unlocking the door, and opened it. Karen was immediately stunned by a bright light. She shielded her eyes with her hand, and waited for her eyes to adjust.
What lay beyond the door should have been a hallway. There should have been slightly dirty beige carpeting, cream-colored walls, and a door into the kitchen. Instead, Karen could see a grand hall. There were marble pillars, rich tapestries, and beautiful pieces of art. She was compelled to step closer to get a better look. It was too late when she realized that she had already gone through. She spun around to try to get back to her room, but the door swung closed, leaving the silver key on the floor where it had once been. Karen picked it up and looked at it. What exactly was this key? She put the chain around her neck.
"Who is this that comes to our court uninvited?" a voice demanded. Karen turned slowly and saw a dais that she couldn't see when she had been on the other side of the door. There was a couple seated on two thrones, and their attendants stood near. But they weren't human.
"Who? Where am I?" she finally managed.
"It is only a human, Lord Oberon," said one of three women wearing white robes, "easily rid of."
"Yes," said Oberon. "She's nothing more than a trespassing human. Dispose of it."
"But why destroy her," said the lady seated next to Oberon, "before we even know how she got here?"
"Tell me, Lady Titania, what good would that do us?"
"She obviously isn't any sort of sorceress. She would know of us if she were. There must have been something that brought her to our court."
"True," said Oberon as the mulled the thought over. Then he looked at Karen. "How did you come here, to Avalon?"
Karen was terribly frightened. She couldn't think straight and certainly couldn't talk. She gulped several times and backed up against the wall. Her mouth opened and closed a few times, but she couldn’t make a sound.
"She's frightened, my Lord," Titania said as she rose and walked closer. Karen hid her face, but Titania gently turned her head so they were looking at one another. "You have nothing to fear from me, child." Titania turned to Oberon. "She's too frightened to tell us anything. Shall I take her to Princess Catherine?"
"I suppose," Oberon said, waving his hand in an uninterested way.
The next thing Karen knew, she was in a small room. It was lit by a fire in a hearth, and facing the fire was an elderly woman sitting in an armchair.
"Princess, might I ask you a favor?" Titania asked.
Princess Catherine stood, turned, and nodded, surprised at the visitor.
"Of course, Queen Titania," she replied.
"This girl appeared in our court. Might you look after her until she becomes a bit more accustomed to us?"
"Anything ye wish, m'lady." Titania was gone. Karen was left with Princess Catherine. “Ye poor lass,” Catherine said as she walked over to her. “What is a darlin’ lassie doing in a place such as this, eh?” Catherine gently put an arm around Karen and guided her to the armchair and had her sit. “Tom!” she called through an open door. In response, a man appeared. “Could ye fetch our guest something warm te drink, per’aps?”
“Of course,” he said with a slight bow and a curious glance toward Karen. A moment later he returned with a cup of tea, handed it to Karen with a bow and a gentlemanly, “M’lady,” before he pulled a stool to the hearth and sat. Though Karen didn’t care for tea, she took a sip, anyway. It wasn’t that bad.
“Now, m’dear,” Catherine said as she seated herself in a smaller chair near Karen’s, “tell me about ye self. How did ye come te this place?” Karen explained herself as best she could. Though Catherine didn’t understand much of what she said about things like the police, bicycles, or things like that, thought Tom seemed to have some idea of what she was talking about. “Pandora’s Key, eh?” Catherine said when Karen had told her story.
“I don’t like the sound ah this. It’s obviously very powerful, and it was just lying out on the street, ye say?”
“Yes. It was just sitting there,” Karen said. “It’s all too weird for me.” Tom nodded.
“Aye, there is great pow’r ‘ere,” he said.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Karen couldn’t sleep. The place was far too unfamiliar, but what contributed to her insomnia even more were the numerous questions piling up in her mind that she didn’t know the answers to. Was her key really magic? Would it work on any door? Does it only take you to this strange place, Avalon Princess Catherine had said, or would it take you to other lands?
She climbed out of the bed in the room that Tom had taken her to. The nightgown that Catherine had loaned her was warm, but she still felt a chill as she walked across the stone floor. She picked up the silver key, looked at it in the dim light of the fire, banked for the night. There was nothing about the key that would suggest that it had been responsible for this extreme dislocation.
Karen walked over to the door. Would it work? The key slid in easily, turned, and locked the door. She unlocked it, and opened the door. Again there was a bright light, nearly blinding her. The light faded a bit, and Karen pulled her hands down from over her eyes.
Through the door, she could see what looked like another castle. This one was a mess, but it looked like the kind of mess that someone had had a lot of fun while making. There were rafters criss-crossing the high, vaulted ceiling. Through a door, she could see what looked like a pool filled with Jell-O. Unseen beings lurked in the shadows, but the room was otherwise mostly empty.
A gargoyle stood near the door, looking at her. Karen knew about gargoyles now. Catherine and Tom had introduced her to the brood that they had been protecting since before they hatched. Even though she knew about them, she still wasn’t entirely at ease with this race.
“Uh, hello,” Karen said to the gargoyle, who seemed to be able to hear her.
“Mahret, what are you looking at?” a voice called. In a moment Karen could see the speaker, a short gargoyle with golden skin and long, black hair.
“A hooman,” Mahret said with an evil grin. She pulled a pie out of the air, tossed it a couple of times, and looked straight at Karen, still grinning. Karen could barely close the door in time for the pie to hit it with a squishy thud. She opened the door a crack and looked back at the gargoyles. No sooner had she looked out, however, than her face was covered in banana cream. She closed the door again, locked it, and decided not to do that again.
She took the key out of the door. That was definitely a good place to avoid, at least until she could convince Mahret not to pie her. She went back to her bed, and laid down, looking at the ceiling. A few minutes later she heard a knock.
“I was wondering,” said a young gargoyle named Gabriel when she opened the door to him, “if you knew why there are cherries stuck to the outside of your door?”
"Oh," Karen wasn't sure what to say as she stared at the cherry-covered door. "Huh. That's funny." Really, Karen couldn't understand why the cherries had remained stuck to the door, even after she had de-activated the magic. Well, hadn't she?
"You seem to have something on the side of your face, too," Gabriel added, noting the banana cream. "Shall I bring a pitcher of water so you can wash?"
"No… That's okay. I think I've got some in here." She had forgotten about the pie on her face.
"May I ask what you've been up to?"
"I guess," Karen was bust studying the banana cream in her hair.
"Then what have you been doing?"
"Oh, um, nothing." She was still inspecting the mess in her hair. "I don't like banana cream." Gabriel sighed as he gave up on the conversation.
"Then good night to you, and please refrain from doing nothing unless you intend to clean nothing up," and with that, he left. Karen closed the door. As she walked across her room, she caught a glimpse of herself in a mirror. Gabriel was right, she was a mess.
A moment later Karen stood at the washstand, trying to work out how to wash her hair. In the end she hung her head over the basin and poured water from the pitcher onto her head. Finally, sleepy, confused, and soaking wet, she crawled into bed.
All this, the magic key, Avalon, gargoyles, gargoyles named Mahret throwing pies at her, was just a dream. Or that's what she told herself. When she woke up in the morning she would be back in her normal everyday room in the normal everyday house in plain ol' normal everyday Alameda.
Sometime in the early morning she discovered she was wrong, and spent a good half-hour staring at the ceiling, waiting for her life to make sense again. It was too much. One day someone told her that everything she knew was wrong and it was too much to take in. Finally, she decided that she had gone insane and decided to enjoy the ride while it lasted. Gargoyles, fae, magic, what a kick! She wondered what medication she would be put on in whatever hospital she would be sent to.
Karen had always said her mother was driving her crazy. Well, now she had been proven right. Feeling vindicated, she climbed out of bed and dressed, hanging her borrowed nightgown by the glowing embers in the hearth. She regretted that she didn't have a strait jacket, or at least a pink tutu and tiara so she could dress like she was crazy.
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