Theodore & The 7 Layers of Space, Book 1: Brick & Bird

CHAPTER 2: Up the Stairs

In short, because the House of the Magician Detective is a Thru-spot, as Theodore traveled up the stairs, he also Traveled through five of the aforementioned 7 Layers, a fact that he sensed intuitively, and had to some degree puzzled out, but did not understand at all. This was not his fault, as once again it had never been explained to him properly. He'd heard of places like Gup and Then in the stories he'd read, but for him they might as well have been foreign countries. He had no real knowledge that this House held doorways that connected directly to them.

Theodore started his journey to The Roof on the floor that held a door to the Layer known as Gup, where, for some very particular reasons that we'll get into later, the Magician Detective kept his Forbidden Office. There it is on the map with all of those cozy little branches and such.

One flight below The Magician Detective's Office, in the damp and bone-littered basement that doubles as a storage room for mostly-pickled foods, Theodore once again avoided the floor that holds a red door to the Layer called Then. Instead of down, Theodore went up.

Strictly speaking, while Traveling through a Thru-spot, one isn't actually entering into a new Layer, so much as passing by it. Depending on the construction of your Thru-spot, this can get a little fuzzy and a touch wonky, but let's say it's like pressing your face up against a very weird window pane into another world. You must find a red door in this metaphorical pane in order to properly enter.

As he sauntered up the stairs, he thought again of the previous and all-too-fleeting summer when he and Isobel had rushed up and down them together. He could still hear the gritty warmth of her sharp voice as she dared him to go faster with each step. Isobel's wheelchair had countless interlocking special apparatuses of gears and springs and mini-rockets that he couldn't begin to understand, more flying machine than chair, and it amounted to her being faster and more nimble than him on his best day. He could never catch up, often losing her for hours at a time.

He paused and smiled to look around as he recalled how desperate and lost he'd been when he found himself on the cold sprawling floor which connects to the Layer known as Pow. He could still see himself standing frozen, just past the Room of Various Heroic Compasses and Capes, where endlessly turned about he'd seen that same statue of the Eleven-headed Manticore of The Great Beyond too many times to count. Just as tears threatened, she'd come up from behind him with a shout and a shove, and they'd both laughed as they tumbled back down to relative safety. Now, the statue was missing a tooth.

"She's such a jerk," he said to the statue, and shook his head to rouse himself from his reveries and continue upward. He pushed the ghost of his insecurities down, telling himself he'd outgrown them, but they chased him up each step, ever ready to push back.

He moved up through the next flight without noticing it. To be honest, few had. This ambiguous place felt more like a shift in the air than the floor of a House. The door that connected to The Shimmering Place, or the Layer of Shimr, was the most mysterious of all, and it takes a keenly trained eye and mind to even find, let alone unlock it. Even Isobel had missed this place, despite her insatiable desire to find her way to the secret spaces of the House.

Sometimes Isobel would disappear for days and return, wild-eyed and exhausted. He'd ask where she'd been, but she'd brush him off and buy his quiet with a mysterious exotic sweet or iridescent singing geode.

One day he woke up, and with no other word, she was gone for good. In his heart he'd felt it right away, she'd escaped, just as she'd said, like the butterflies. He'd still waited days and then weeks until finally he'd all but given up. No grown-up had offered any explanation. The nip of autumn's teeth threatened again, and he knew it had somehow been almost a year since she'd left. He missed her every day.