Free Through the Door by Jodi McIsaac

How does she open the sidhe?”
    “The ‘she’?” Cedar asked.
    “Yes. S-i-d-h-e, not s-h-e. It’s the name of the portals, the gateways Eden can create,” Riona answered.
    Cedar started pacing. “It happened a couple of days ago. She was emotional. She ran to her room, and when she opened the door, her room turned into, well, Egypt. I know it sounds insane, but we could see the pyramids. Inside the doorframe, the air was all shimmery. We went in, and it seemed real. It was warm and there was sand and we could walk around. The door stayed there, and we came back through it just fine. I tried closing the door but the portal, the sidh or whatever you call it, was still there when I opened it again. I didn’t have any effect on it. But when Eden closed the door and then opened it, it became her room again.”
    Rohan’s eyes were narrowed in concentration as he nodded slowly. “So she can both open and close. Could she close the sidh from the other side? From Egypt?”
    “We didn’t try,” Cedar admitted. “I was afraid we’d get stuck, that the door would disappear. So we always left it open until we were home.”
    “Always?” Riona asked.
    “We tried a few other places,” Cedar admitted. “The library, the cottage. We tried to go to Vancouver, where I went to university, but it didn’t work, not even when I drew a sketch of it. It seemed like we could only go somewhere Eden could picture perfectly in her mind, places she’d either visited or seen on TV or in a picture. But wherever we went, she could always just close the door once we were back home again, and things would return to normal.”
    Riona looked thoughtful. “So Eden uses an actual physical door to open the sidh?” she asked. Cedar nodded.
    “Interesting. And when you go through the sidh, the physical door can still be seen on the other side?”
    Cedar nodded again. “I worried that it might go away if we closed it. And that we’d be stuck.” Cedar felt the panic rising up again and tasted bile in her throat. “She’s probably stuck right now, and we have no idea where she is.” She paced faster.
    “Shh, don’t think like that, dear,” Riona said. “If, as you say, she uses a door to open the sidhe, she just needs to find another door she can open. She’s probably looking for one as we speak.”
    “But what if she’s hurt? Or in the middle of a desert or New York City? What if she can’t get back?” Tears started to run down Cedar’s face, and her whole body trembled. “There has to be a way to find her!” Cedar looked through tear-blurred eyelashes at her mother, who was still standing a few feet away, arms crossed. “Mum, tell me, what can we do?”“I told you what I thought we should do, Cedar. But it seems that you’ve decided to throw your lot in with these people instead of with your own mother. That’s fine. It’s yourdecision. But I have my own way of doing things, so I will go and do them.”
    “What? You’re leaving? Now? Aren’t you going to help me?” Cedar asked.
    “I
am
going to help you, Cedar; I just can’t do it here. I’m going to do everything in my power to find Eden and keep her safe. And believe me, I have considerable power.” With that, she turned and left the apartment, leaving Cedar to stare at the closed door, mouth open.
What did she mean by that?
    Rohan cleared his throat. “We should go as well, and brief the others so they can help. We’ll spend the night searching, and reconvene in the morning to question Jane.” He looked expectantly at Riona.
    Riona put her hand on Cedar’s arm. “We’ll call you as soon as we know anything.”
    “No, I should go with you,” Cedar protested. She walked over to her desk and grabbed a notepad and pen. “We should make a list of all the places she could have gone. If Jane is in New York, shouldn’t we start there? Or, she really wanted to go to Disney World…” Cedar sat down and put her head in her hands. “She could be