#OriginalFiction – November 13, 14, 15

Disappointment filled her. She sighed and started to take the key out.

“What are you doing?”

“It won’t turn Dorian. It is not the right key.”

“Maybe the lock is just rusted. Maybe you just need to turn it a bit harder. Let me try.”

She shook her head, but let go of the key and turned the box toward her brother. “Grandpa collected keys, Dorian, but the chances we actually have the right key for this box aren’t exactly good. And the odds that it would be in the very first bag? It is not the right key.”

“And what are the odds that a person can walk through walls, Mina? Magic changes the odds.” Dorian tried to turn the key. But it would not turn.

“Don’t break it. If you break the key off in that lock, we’ll never get it opened.”

Dorian did not look happy, but he stopped trying to turn the key and shoved the lock box back at her. She pulled the key out and studied it. On one side there were numbers. On the other, a brand name. She tilted the lock box up to get a better look at the lock itself. She could tell that something had once been etched into the lock, but between rust and time, she could not read it.

Disappointed, she set the lock box down and reached for the next key. Only three more to go from this bag. She looked at the three remaining, flipped them over to see if any had the same brand name or numbers as the one that had fit. None did. And none of them fit in the lock, either.

She scooped all the keys back into the first bag. She remembered a project she had done as a child, part of a community effort to preserve local history. They had sent the kids out to the local graveyard with crayons and paper to make rubbings of the gravestones. One had always stood out to her, a double headstone of a man and wife. It had said “Her heart was a lock with many keys, but his was the only one that opened it.”

She remembed asking about it, even then. The woman had apparently been a very famous beauty in the area. She had drawn suitors from all over but had been interested in none of them. Her father had forced her into a couple of engagements, but she ended up breaking them. At the time, it was hugely scandalous. And then one day, to local locksmith was at her father’s house doing some work. He was a plain man, even ugly, some had said, and way below her station. But for whatever reason, they had fallen in love. It was another scandal, but they married and remained happily together for a number of years. They had died within days of each other during a measles outbreak.

She still loved the story. And she kind of wished she was dating a locksmith. But the important part of her memory, she realized, was the crayons and paper. She stood up and nearly fell into her desk. Her foot had fallen asleep. She regained her balance, and started searching through her desk. Regular paper would be too thick, but she was pretty certain she had some small squares of tissue paper left over from a crafts project.

She found the tissue paper and dug through until she found a white square. She grabbed a pencil and sat back down.

“What are you doing?”

“Making a rubbing.” She carefully held the tissue paper over the lock and held the pencil so the side of the led, not the point, ran over the paper.

There might have been numbers once, but if there had been, they could not be read now, even with the rubbing. But the brand name of the lock was clear. It matched the name on the key. She held it up to show her brother.

He grunted. “I guess that’s something.”

She glared at him. “You don’t have to stay in here, you know. I just need you to get the keys.”

He rolled his eyes and started sorting through the keys from the second bag, looking for any with the right brand name on them.

Two keys from the second bag had the right brand name. One only fit partway in the lock. The other fit, but also did not turn.

Minuet put the keys back in the pouch they came from. “Mom isn’t up yet. Can you got get another bag or two from the shed?”

Dorian stood up, the original two bags in his hand, but he did not move. “Can you try something, Mina?”

“What?” He had a look that made her wary.

“Just reach your hand through the top of the box and pull out what is in there.”

“You want me to just reach right through solid metal and pull whatever is inside out?”

“Don’t look at me like I am crazy, Minuet. You walked through a wall to find this thing. And then you walked back through the wall, carrying it, to get it out. If you can walk through brick carrying metal, why can’t you reach through metal and pull whatever is in there out?”

She still thought it was crazy. She did not control the magic. The magic controlled her. If the magic had wanted her to be able to reach through the box, then it would have happened already. But she tried. She tried because her brother asked her to, and the way he phrased it, it did not seem quite as crazy as it could be.

It did not work though. The box was solid. Her hand would not go through it.

Dorian shrugged. “Worth a try.” He headed back to the shed.

She could not help herself. While he was gone, she kept trying to reach her hand into the lock box. It did not work.

Dorian came back with three bags this time, and they instantly got to sorting. First, they pulled out the obvious misfits, and then looked for the keys with the right brand name. Six keys matched. None worked. In the second bag, there was only one key with the right name. It also did not work. There were eight keys in the third bag. Key number seven turned.

She had not been expecting it to. It was not quite that she had given up hope. They had not been at it that long. It was just that she really had convinced herself the odds were a bit too long. She had been trying to think of what she would say to the locksmith to get him to open the box for her, when the key moved in the lock. There was a soft click.