Chapter 6: The Door is Ajar

She came back slowly.

It wasn't like waking from a dream; it was more like surfacing from deep water. The pressure eased first. Then sound returned—the hum of her house, the refrigerator downstairs, the faint tick of the hallway clock—Spud's soft, rhythmic snores. Then she felt her body’s weight against the mattress, the warmth of Spud against her leg, the soft, smooth sheets against her skin, and the wedge pillow behind her back. The book still lay across her chest where it had fallen.

She opened her eyes.

Her bedroom blinked into focus: the lamplight still on, casting its amber glow. Across from her was an art print of one of Monet's water lily paintings that she’d found online because it made her feel peaceful. And there was Spud, curled against her thigh, a tight ball of white fluff, his nose tucked under his tail. He hadn't moved. He hadn't noticed a thing. She envied him with a ferocity that surprised her.

Her blood pulsed in her ears, as if her circulatory system had gotten a firmware update while she slept. She pushed the blanket back and sat up slowly. Blinked. Everything looked normal. It was still nighttime. But something felt off. The air in the room felt almost electrically charged. 

Did it storm while I was away? She wondered.

She looked at her lap, then to the quilt covering her body. Lying beside her, next to Spud's sleeping form, and right where her hand had been resting, was a card. It looked like it came from a tarot deck, but not from any tarot or oracle deck she owned, and she owned several. This was something else entirely. She picked it up. It was only slightly warmer than her body and heavier than it should be. The edges were gilded in a metallic gold that caught the lamplight and threw it back in tiny, dancing flecks.

The art was luminous. Hand-inked in lines so fine they seemed to vibrate like a guitar string if she looked too closely, as if they weren't quite content to remain still, static lines. At the center sat a raccoon. It looked surprisingly like Thimble and was gazing at her with those knowing, steady eyes. Around the raccoon floated three quills, a scroll, a lock, and a key. And orbiting it all, like distant stars in a slow, endless waltz, were fireflies.

The fireflies drifted across the card's surface in lazy spirals, their tiny lights pulsing in rhythm with her heartbeat. She could see their glow reflected in the gilded edges. She could almost hear them.

At the bottom of the card, in delicate script that shimmered faintly as she read it, were two words:

The Sparkkeeper.

Allison could only stare at the card in her hands. She didn't know what a Sparkkeeper was. She didn't know why the card was warm, or why the fireflies moved, or why the raccoon on its surface looked exactly like Thimble. But something deep inside her understood.

Something had changed. Something had been changing, since the creek, since Thimble, since the Dreamspace, since the words carved into stone. And this card was the proof.