What the Room Requires

Chapter Eighteen

All of you are just fantastic. I love you all!!! I hope you continue to enjoy, and NO, this isn’t the last chapter! Let me know what you think!

 

 

 

VVVVVVV

HERMIONE

 

 

 

 

 

            The path ahead of me led me straight. It didn’t bend or wind or even get thin. The forest, dark and hazy, sat silently to either side of me. No light beckoned from its depths. No door appeared where there hadn’t been one before.

            I couldn’t see where the path ended, though. I just gritted my teeth and marched on, my feet rustling on the pine needles and leaves on the path.

            Then, the trees crowded in beside me. Light began to fail. I stretched my hands out in front of me and widened my eyes, trying to see; trying not to trip.

            It went dark. I couldn’t tell the difference between my eyes being shut and my eyes being open. I kept walking, shuffling my feet.

            I felt trees hug very close to my shoulders. Or maybe they weren’t trees. They felt like…walls…

            My hands struck something cool, smooth and wooden. It instantly gave way—

            And a hinge squeaked.

            Light cut my eyes.

            It wasn’t bright light—it was gray, and ghostly, but I jerked to a stop and blinked several times to let my eyes adjust.

            But when they did, I stopped moving

            I stood inside something like a closet, my feet on a wooden floor, the door in front of me hanging partially ajar.

            And beyond that door was a room.

            A stone room, with a tall, arched ceiling, filled with all sorts of strange odds-and-ends: a bookcase, a phonograph, bird cages, stacked chairs, candlesticks, globes, a string of bells, a model ship, a skull, a wolf hide, a rumpled tapestry lying on the floor just outside where I stood…