The moonlight from the window was falling directly on the gateway in the mural. But he couldn’t see the road and horse and buggy and the distant hills. Instead, he saw — a chair. A high-backed wooden chair, with red velvet cushions on the back and seat and arms, and to the left of that, part of what looked like a sofa or armchair.

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The Mural and the Cabinet

part 2 of 21

by Trismegistus Shandy

Thanks to Lucario and Maplestrip for feedback on story ideas, and to Yuki Kitsune for beta reading the manuscript.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

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That night, Davey woke up and needed to go to the bathroom. When he got back, he realized the moon was full and shining directly into the window. He looked out the window at it for a minute.

When he turned around and took a step toward his bed, he saw that the moonlight from the window was falling directly on the gateway in the mural. But he couldn’t see the road and horse and buggy and the distant hills. Instead, he saw — a chair. A high-backed wooden chair, with red velvet cushions on the back and seat and arms, and to the left of that, part of what looked like a sofa or armchair. And it wasn’t flat, like the mural, but as he stepped closer, the perspective changed and he saw more of the sofa, and another wooden chair to the right of the first.

Weird. Weirdly normal, actually. It was like a secret passage had opened up into a normal room with normal furniture. But there couldn’t be a secret passage there — right behind that wall was Amy’s bedroom. And none of that furniture looked like Amy’s.

And the light and shadows on those pieces of furniture was weird, too — it wasn’t just the moonlight shining on the gateway part of the mural. There was another source of light on those chairs and sofa, softer than electric light but much brighter than moonlight — kind of like sunlight filtered through several rainy days in a row.

Davey stepped right up to the gateway and put his hand into it. He felt a shock, and stumbled forward — passing all the way through it. He seemed to step down as he did, and almost lost his footing.

He was closer to the chairs and sofa, and from here he could see that there was a long row of pieces of furniture — chairs, sofas, cabinets, shelves, even the pieces of a bed frame with no mattress. Some of them looked battered or stained, he saw, like the old sofa they’d gotten rid of before they moved here. He turned around and looked back at his room — and found it framed inside a cabinet several feet taller than him. The cabinet’s wooden doors were standing open, and inside it was his bed, dresser, the shelf full of toys and books, and the moon shining in the window at the other end of the room.

What was odder still was that his Transformers pajamas were suddenly super big on him. Part of the reason he had stumbled was that he’d tripped over the pants legs. And when he rolled up the cuffs of his sleeves, he saw that the skin of his hands was a shade darker. He rolled up his pants legs, and twisted and tucked in the waistband of his pants to keep them from falling off and tripping him. He looked up to see where the light was coming from and saw a raftered ceiling with little round light bulbs or lamps placed here and there in the rafters. There weren’t any obvious wires connecting to the light bulbs.

“It’s like the wardrobe into Narnia,” he said, “if Narnia had furniture stores.”

On closer examination, he saw that the cabinet had a little paper label stuck to its left door:

“Mahogany cabinet, strong unknown enchantment. Provenance available on request. 35,000 crowns o.b.o.”

It wasn’t in English, or even in English letters, but somehow Davey could read it. At least mostly. There were a couple of big words he could sound out but didn’t recognize. Davey didn’t know how much a crown was compared to a dollar, but 35,000 of them sounded like a lot of money.

All the other pieces of furniture seemed to have little labels as well. And many of them had at least one big word Davey didn’t recognize. The cabinet was the cheapest piece on the aisle, it looked like, as the other prices ranged from 50,000 crowns for a little “Massaging footstool” to 480,000 crowns for the “Aphrodisiac bedframe,” whatever that was. Davey put his foot on the massaging footstool, and it felt really weird, but kind of nice.

Obviously, the thing to do was to explore. Little or no time would pass back home while he had whatever adventures you could have in a magic furniture store.

As he walked down the aisle of furniture and turned the corner, he realized the store was stocked with a lot of things besides furniture. The next aisle had shelves full of miscellaneous stuff. There were a lot of little statues and pictures, like Mom kept in the windowed cabinet in the living room, and some jewelry, and what might have been toys, and ornamental boxes. The next aisle was full of books —

— and there was someone in it, a girl; from her face and figure she looked older than Amy but younger than Tanya, but she was tall, taller than Tanya or even Carson. Her skin was darker like Davey’s new skin, and her hair was shorter than Amy’s but longer than Davey’s. She was sweeping the floor with a broom and dustpan. A moment later she noticed him, and her jaw dropped.

“Oh, you poor dear! Did your mother or father go off and leave you here? We closed half an hour ago! How did you escape notice until now?”

She wasn’t speaking English, but he understood her perfectly. “I didn’t come with Mom and Dad,” he said. “I came through this portal, it was in the wall of my bedroom, and then it came out of this cabinet over there —” He pointed.

“Talk sense, child, now isn’t the time for games. Who are your parents? Do you know their names? And why are you dressed like that, and barefoot?”

“Of course I know their names, I’m not a little kid. They’re Carson and Amanda Platt, and I’m Davey Platt —” But somehow the names weren’t quite coming out right. Some of the vowels sounded wrong, and he couldn’t seem to pronounce “Platt” without putting an extra little whispery vowel in at the end.

“I suppose you can spend the night with us, and your parents must surely come back to look for you in the morning,” the girl said. “More likely they’re searching the quarter for you even now, silly child, and they’ll come knocking on our door soon enough.”

“No, they won’t, they’re asleep, and they’re in another world, the world I came from. What do you call this world?”

“What do you mean?”

“Come look,” he said, and walked back around to the aisle of furniture. The girl followed, carrying her broom and dustpan.

There was the cabinet, and there was his bedroom inside it. He could go back through, but he hadn’t had his adventure yet. “Look,” he said, and the girl looked in astonishment into the cabinet. She reached out a hand and he reached up and held it.

“Don’t put your hand in unless you want to go through,” he said. “I stuck my hand in and I fell all the way into your world.”

“I must tell Mother about this,” the girl said. And a moment later, Davey’s bedroom vanished and the cabinet was just a cabinet, full of empty shelves.

Davey was a little bit worried, but not much. The girl seemed friendly, and in the stories, the portal always opened up again once the main character had had their adventures in the other world.

“Come with me, child,” the girl said. “I’m Syuna-lan Zindla. Did you say your name was Deviplata?”

“Plata is my family’s name,” Devi said, “Devi is my own name.” Though he was pretty sure he used to pronounce his names a little differently, when he was speaking English. Well, when in Narnia, speak Narnian, he supposed. (Somehow, he knew that Zindla was the girl’s personal name, even though it came last, and Syuna-lan meant that her mother’s name was Syuna.)

The girl glanced aside at him strangely, and led the way through a “Staff Only” door into an office and storeroom. Its shelves were even more cluttered and crowded with miscellaneous stuff than the front part of the store. In the middle of the room was a table or desk, and side by side there sat a man and woman, about Devi’s parents' ages, looking together at a big open book and some papers spread out beside it.

“Zindla, have you — Oh. Who is this little child? Where did she come from?” asked the woman, probably Zindla’s mother.

“I’m a boy,” Devi said angrily, “and I’m not little. I’m ten years old.”

But Zindla looked really tall for a girl who’d just barely started developing a woman’s shape, and probably Davey’s clothes hadn’t gotten bigger — he’d gotten smaller. And this man and woman looked kind of tall, too, once he got closer to them. And now that Devi thought of it, he realized that the furniture across the aisle from the cabinet had looked a lot bigger once he got close to it. Had he gotten smaller and younger — young enough to be mistaken for a girl?

“Oh, I’m sorry,” the woman said. “Boys and girls are hard to tell apart at your age, especially with the strange way you’re dressed. But there’s no way you can be ten, unless your growth was stunted by some disease...?”

“No,” Devi said with a sinking feeling, “I guess the portal made me younger.”

“What are you talking about, child?”

“He’s telling the truth,” Zindla said. “He said he saw an opening in the wall of his bedroom, and went through it and came out in the furniture aisle, out of that cabinet you bought from Tirishkun’s estate sale. And I went and looked at the cabinet and I saw a bedroom in it — a bed and chest of drawers and other furniture, and a window at the other end of the room with the moon shining in. And then the bedroom disappeared and the cabinet had empty ordinary shelves in it.”

“Show us,” the man said, standing up. So they all four trooped back into the front part of the store, and they looked at the cabinet. Zindla’s father touched several of the symbols that were carved into the cabinet, and closed and reopened the doors several times, but nothing made Devi’s bedroom reappear.

“We’ll have to get expert help,” he said. “Or maybe we can send you home on the train. Where do you live?”

“Douglasville,” Devi said. “It’s near Atlanta.” But again the sounds didn’t quite come out right.

“I’ve never heard of those places,” the man said. “I’ll look them up in the gazeteer tomorrow —”

“I don’t think they’re anywhere near,” Devi said. “What city and country is this?”

The woman looked at him curiously. “Rishpara, in the Inupara Republic,” she said as if explaining things he should already know.

Devi nodded. “I’ve never heard of those places, but it figures. Magic portals always go to different worlds, not just different countries.”

“How do you know? Are magic portals common where you come from?”

“It’s in all the stories,” Devi said.

“I’ll go consult a wizard tomorrow,” the man said, and Devi’s face broke into a wide grin.

“We definitely don’t live in the same world,” he said. “There aren’t any wizards where I come from.”

“Then how do you know so much about magic portals?” Zindla asked.

“From the stories,” Devi said. “I didn’t know they were real until now.”

“Well,” Zindla’s mother said, “let’s deal with all that tomorrow. Zindla, you still need to finish sweeping the floor, and your father and I need to finish the accounts before supper. I suppose Mother can look after the child and put her to bed. Him,” she hastily corrected herself at Devi’s glare. “Sorry, child, but if your mother didn’t want people confusing you for a girl, she should have give you more boyish clothes and put something in your hair.”

That sounded weird to Devi, but he didn’t say anything about it right away. He’d noticed that Zindla’s dad was wearing a couple of sticks stuck through braids of hair, and her mom wasn’t. Both of them had long hair, like Uncle Rob, but her mom’s hair was loose where her dad’s was braided.

Zindla went back to sweeping, and her mom — Syuna — led Devi through the office and up a flight of stairs into a nice cozy living room, packed with comfy chairs and sofas, and through that into a kitchen, where an old lady was cooking something. She looked kind of like Devi’s Grandma Platt, except her grey hair was long and loose, and she was wearing a loose robe like the other adults.

“Good evening, Mother,” Syuna said. “This is Devi, a child who’s been left on our hands. We’ll be looking for his parents tomorrow, but can you take care of him while Tyemba and I finish the accounts?”

“Of course,” the old lady said, looking Devi over. “A boy, you said?”

“I know he’s wearing blue, and has no ornaments in his hair, but he says he’s a boy. I’ve got to go — I’ll explain more during supper.”

“All right.” The old lady looked at the pot on the stove and said to herself, “That will keep for a bit.” Then to Devi, “Let’s sit down and have a talk, shall we?”

Devi sat in one of the big cushiony chairs. His legs didn’t reach the floor, which also made him think he’d gotten younger and smaller when he came through. It wasn’t fair. The kids who went to Narnia got to grow up and be adults, and he got turned into a little kid. The old lady sat down in a straight-backed chair across from him and asked, “How did you end up stuck in the shop after closing? Did your parents go off and leave you?”

“No,” Devi said, and explained everything over again. The old lady seemed surprised, but not disbelieving.

“...So that’s why my clothes are too big on me; I got younger and smaller. I don’t know why it didn’t change my clothes, too. And Zindla’s dad said he was going to go talk to a wizard tomorrow about the cabinet and how to get it to open up into my bedroom again. Do you think I can go with him? I’ve never seen a wizard before.”

“Let’s see if it suits,” the old lady said. “I expect the wizard will want to talk to you about this world you come from. You said there aren’t any wizards there?”

“No, not in the real world, just in stories. At least as far as I know. Some of the stories say there are secret wizards in the real world, but Dad says they’re made up, too.”

“Hmm. Tell me some more about your world. If you don’t have wizards, how do people get around? In carriages drawn by horses and oxen, I suppose?”

“No, we’ve got cars,” Devi said. For some time he and the old lady (who introduced herself as Pasyala) told each other about their worlds, and he learned that they had cars and trains and airplanes that ran on magic instead of gasoline. He remembered hearing Zindla’s dad, Tyemba, mention a train earlier. From time to time, Pasyala went and stirred the pot on the stove, and returned to continue the conversation. Devi was asking Pasyala another question about magic when the other three came trooping upstairs, ready for supper.

They all sat down around a small table and ate, and Devi asked and answered more questions about their different worlds. By this time he was getting really sleepy, and he nodded off twice during supper. He was sure he missed a lot of the conversation, as half of the others' answers to his questions went in one ear and out the other.

“Sorry,” he said, the first time he jerked awake with his head leaning toward his bowl. “It’s the middle of the night back home.”

“Yeah, I saw the full moon shining in the window of your room,” Zindla said. “It’s not the full moon yet for six days, here.”

After supper, Zindla’s mom Syuna put some blankets and sheets on the sofa in the living room and Devi curled up under them. He soon fell asleep.

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If you want to read the whole novel (51,700 words) right now without waiting for the serialization, you can find it in my ebook collection, Unforgotten and Other Stories. It's available from Smashwords in epub format and Amazon in Kindle format. (Smashwords pays its authors better royalties than Amazon.)

You can find my earlier ebook novels and short fiction collection here:

The Bailiff and the Mermaid	Smashwords	Amazon
Wine Can't be Pressed into Grapes	Smashwords	Amazon
When Wasps Make Honey	Smashwords	Amazon
A Notional Treason	Smashwords	Amazon
The Weight of Silence and Other Stories	Smashwords	Amazon