The Door of Hours

The door behind the lamp is small and green, with a brass letter slot and no handle, no keyhole, no hinges you can find. Warm light leaks around its edges, and from beyond it — faint, cheerful, entirely impossible — come market sounds: a brass band, gulls, someone laughing at a joke you missed by two hundred years. The cat flows off the Keeper's lap, crosses the room, and slips through the letter…