She woke up before the rest of the house. It was quiet and still. She loved that. She got up and retrieved the lockbox from where she had set it on her desk the night before, then settled back on her bed. Slowly, she turned the box over, not exactly shaking it, but feeling and listening for contents moving inside. She could definitely feel motion, but there was not a lot of noise. Whatever it was, she doubted it was breakable. From her spot on the bed, she could reach some of her school supplies. She managed to find a paperclip and poked it in the lock. She did not…

The dinner shift was just getting into full swing when Mina stopped by the table of Mr. & Mrs. Whitehaven, the local real estate agents. “Steak dinners for both of us, Minuet. We’re celebrating.” Mrs. Whitehaven disdained nicknames and would not use them for anyone. Mina smiled. “Of course.” As she took the order to the kitchen, though, she wondered what it was they were celebrating. The Whitehavens had no kids and were too old to be having kids. It was not their anniversary or either of their birthdays; she knew because the whole town was invited to those parties. And given that it was a small town, everyone knew…

As she got near the house, she could see her mother’s car still in the driveway. Soon her mother would be gone to work the dinner shift at the restaurant, but until then, she knew her mother would be moving unpredictably about the house. . It would not do to have her mother see the lockbox. There would be too many questions, and her mother did not understand the magic. There was a wood pile at the side of the house, covered with a tarp to keep the logs from getting too damp. She balanced the lockbox carefully atop a section of stacked wood and then pulled the tarp back…

It felt good to feel the air on her face. She never really noticed how still closed spaces were until she came out of them. The air, the sun, it all felt right. She gave her eyes a minute to adjust to the sunlight, then did a closer examination of the box. It was dull gray and rusted. The outside of the lock was in fairly bad shape. She wondered how she would get it open. It was tempting to just drop the box on the ground, or perhaps even walk the few more feet to the river and drop it in there, but she had learned better. When the…

The hole was not even as deep as it was wide. Taking up most of the space was a metal lockbox that reminded her of safe deposit boxes she had seen in the movies. She knelt on the floor and set the lamp down close to the wall, far enough away that she would not accidentally knock it over. She ran her hands over the metal box. It was cold and damp. There were handles, but they had rusted in place, tight against the sides of the box and did not want to budge. If she had a file with her, or some other slim tool, she probably could have…

She slapped the floor again, in front of her, to try and figure out if this was a hollow before a single loose board, or something bigger. The sound was still hollow. She set the lamp on the floor and slapped the floor on her other side. Careful to not knock over the lamp, she continued to bang the floor until she got a rough idea of the dimensions of the door in the floor. She reached and grabbed the small broom from the hearth. Starting from a handprint in the dust where the sound was still hollow, but closest to where the sound of solid dirt under the floor…

She sighed and let her eyes search the room. If she was here for a reason, and the fact that she had not been able to back out meant that there was a reason, it would be best to find it, to do what the magic wanted and then move on. The problem was, there was not anything to search. The space was tiny. She could step into the center of the room and spread her arms wide, and have her fingertips on both sides be only centimeters away from side walls. From the front door to the back wall with the fireplace, there was a bit more space, enough…

She walked through the wall like it was not there, which always bothered her. Walls were meant to be physical barriers, keeping places separate – outside from inside, public from private. The fact that the universe occasionally decided that walls did not exist for her made it even more important that she build up the distinctions in her mind. She had not been trying to walk through the wall. She loved to hide behind the tiny shack, resting as it did on a thin piece of land jutting out into the river. Whenever she wanted to spend some time alone with her thoughts, she would come out here and sit…