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…

It could happen to anyone. Granted, there are so many people now that the odds of it happening to any one person are astronomically low, but that does not mean impossible. I mean, it is why we say God Bless You, or Gazundheit, or whatever your culture chooses. It is just one of those things that we used to know, but seem to have forgotten, or dismissed, as science has taken hold. I sneezed. When I was little, we used to say that if you stopped yourself from sneezing, it killed brain cells. I do not know whether or not that is true, but what I do know is that…

Katja stood in the Freehold cafe, seeing it not so much with her eyes as with her memory. She had spent almost all of her free time during undergrad, over fifteen years earlier, here at the Hold. She had always sat in a comfy chair near the piano. She would bring her guitar, and with Cindy at the piano, they would play whatever they felt like, and sometimes requests, too. The piano was nowhere to be seen now. And tables outnumbered comfy chairs. She remembered evenings on the couches by the fireplace, sipping jasmine tea, joking with Gabe about his latest adventures in fencing class. So often they featured Lynn,…