Little Doors Read Online Free Page A

Crawleigh s spine with the velocity of chilled honey.
    How in the hell—? What synchronicity could account for the close parallel of this song with Princess Ordinary’s lament? Was it simply that these pop-prophets had somehow read the obscure book he was currently researching, or was it all coincidence, a mere common concatenation of certain sounds, simply a new linguistic shuffle bringing up the same sequence, after nearly a century?
    Crawleigh probably would have let the mystery bother him if Audrey hadn’t yelled loudly then, and begun to swear.
    “Yow! Oh, Christ, I broke a frigging fingernail! Why the hell aren’t you helping me Jerry, if we’re so late?”
    Crawleigh hastened to Audrey’s side and together they got the stuffed suitcase closed and locked.
    Aboard the jet, Crawleigh tried a dozen times to find a way to tell Audrey of the peculiar conditions that bore on her accompanying him. But she was enjoying her first air-journey so much that he hadn’t the heart right then.
    In the middle of the flight, as their plane crossed a seemingly limitless desert, she turned a radiantly excited face toward him and said, “Oh, Jerry, this is all just like a dream. I feel like—I don’t know. Like the princess in that book you let me read a year ago.”
    Crawleigh’s stomach churned.
    In the lobby of the hotel, he had a nervous fifteen minutes as they registered together, fearing that some acquaintance would surely see them. Crawleigh’s luck held, however, and they got up to their room without being accosted.
    Audrey threw herself down on the queen-size bed, bouncing and squealing.
    “What a palace,” she said. “This room’s bigger’n my whole apartment.”
    “Glad you like it,” Crawleigh said, fiddling nervously with the luggage where the bellhop had set it. “I picked it with you in mind.”
    With this as an opening, he plunged ahead and told her.
    Crawleigh had always thought that crestfallen was just a word. But when Audrey’s face underwent the transformation he witnessed and her whole body seemed to cave in on itself, he knew the reality behind the word.
    For a minute, Audrey sat as if devoid of breath or spirit. Then she shot to her feet and faced Crawleigh quivering with rage.
    “You—you fucking liar!”
    She pushed past Crawleigh, elbowing him in the gut, and raced out the door.
    Crawleigh sat on the bed, an arm across his sore stomach. His free hand—behind him for support—felt that the cover was still warm from Audrey.
    Well, this was not turning out as he had planned. But perhaps he could still salvage the star-crossed seminar somehow. Audrey had to return to the room. He held the plane tickets and all the money. And when she did, he would have an eloquent speech ready that would soothe her ruffled feathers and have her falling all over him.
    When Crawleigh’s midriff felt normal, he got up and unpacked his bag. Lying on top was Little Doors . He had hoped to get some work done amid everything else this trip, and he had still not finished the book.
    After pacing anxiously a bit, Crawleigh determined to read to pass the time until Audrey came back. He settled down in a chair.
     
When the Crow approached Princess Ordinary, she was nearly dying of hunger.
The Crow, fully as big as a human, alighted beside the famished Princess in the midst of the desert she was then traversing. His appearance was quite frightening, and Princess Ordinary wished she still had either the magic stone or the magic leaf to protect herself with. But the stone had been used up saving her from the Jelly-Dragons, and the leaf had crumbled up after expanding into a flying carpet and carrying her over the Unutterable. Consequently, lacking either of these two tokens, she had to hope that the Crow possessed a nature belied by his exterior.
“Oh, help me, please, good Crow,” cried out the Princess. “I am dying in this wasteland, and will surely end my days here unless you come to my aid. Let me mount you so that