Itwas the week before the feast of the Birth of Life, a time when the city of Cré was usually bustling with activity. Everybody rushed to finish the preparations for the feast, get the gifts wrapped, and most importantly, get ready for the big social gathering that happened at the Hearth each year to mark this event.

Onthe longest night of the year, the women of Cré gather quietly, dressed in their festive garments, whiter than snow, to walk the gentle hill towards the Hearth of the Gemini, whose limestone walls glow ghostly in the distance. They have no lights to guide them, other than those of the stars and the moon, as they slowly join in long files, which in turn join larger streams, which in turn join the main procession to pass through the gate of the Hearth together, like confluences of rivulets and rivers finding their way to the sea.

Nobody utters a single sound, as it has been the tradition for thousands of years, and with each year passing, the significance of this silence amplifies and lends more decorum to the sacred ritual. It isn’t forbidden to talk, there is no mention in the law that everything has to happen in silence, but every woman and girl past the age of thirteen knows and abides by this unspoken rule, as a measure of respect and pride in their tradition.

“Taylor? Taylor Bradford?” a voice called from behind the counter, with non-dissimulated boredom. “I’ve got the reference materials you requested. Where do you want them?” Taylor pointed to the table in the middle of the reading room and one of the assistant librarians who were working in that section dropped the thick stack of books on it, went back behind his counter and adjusted his ear buds to disappear into his own musical world.

Taylor was at a loss as to where to go from here. How do you search for something as unthinkable as a door that doesn’t exist, especially when you can’t ask anybody about it? Logic kicked in, impeccably, and suggested that if there was any information to be found about such a thing, even folk tales or urban legends, the library would be a good place to start.

“Whoa, what’s on fire?” Taylor woke up the next morning to painful, unholy banging on the door. “What’s gotten into Christine, and why doesn’t she just come in, she knows the lock doesn’t work?”

She stumbled towards the door, nursing a bear of a headache, surprised to see that somebody had already repaired the broken lock. The door burst wide open, slamming into the wall, and in came Matthew, carrying a giant pizza, steaming hot. The sheer amount of meat on top of it was enough to make Taylor’s stomach revolt.

“Wake up, man! Coach is going to bench you if you’re late again. I brought help, your favorite, meat lovers’. Edge to edge, my friend!” He stared at Taylor, who was about to protest on behalf of vegans everywhere, and a doubtful look appeared on his face. “What on earth are you wearing?”

Taylor looked down to find out what was wrong with her pink jersey pajamas and was shocked to notice a pair of unusually large and very hairy legs emerging from their bottom.

“Where are we?” Taylor looked around, trying to recognize her surroundings. There was something very familiar about the place, it felt as if she had spent a lot of time there, but so long ago, maybe in a dream.

“For lack of a better word, dead,” he clarified, too calm for comfort. “Not dead-dead, just on the other side of the river Styx, visiting, sort of. Don’t worry, we’re going back.”

“I didn’t know one could visit,” she thought, “without being, you know…”

“Sure you can,” he reassured her. “Well, I can, some people can, that’s beside the point. Welcome to the great beyond!” he smiled and raised his hands to present the environment, in an attempt to be a gracious host. “To give a more specific answer to your original question, we aren’t anywhere, at least not anywhere that can be pointed on a map in normal reality. We’re in the world inside your mind,” he suggested, “you can make it look any way you wish.”

“Then why does it look like this? I’m sure I’ve never been to this place, nor did I imagine it. Why does it feel so familiar?” she kept looking around.

“Of course it feels familiar, it is your mind, you just didn’t know what it looked like before. It feels a little bit like seeing your own face for the first time. Without a reflective surface you have now way of knowing what you look like, but you can sort of recognize yourself, even if you don’t understand why. Cozy,” he commented upon looking around. “What’s that smell?”

“Sugar plums. They’re over there,” she pointed to the corner of the table from which the scents of vanilla, cinnamon and orange wafted. “So, we’re in Heaven?”

“That depends. Do you like sugar plums?” he asked, very serious.

”Are you sure you are ready for this? It may be a little unsettling,” he asked.

“As sure as I’ll ever be,” Taylor answered, doubtful. She hadn’t slept well the night before, well, with the sea lion visiting and whatnot, and was a little concerned about the extra preparation required for this door. “What is it this time?” she tried to anticipate her challenge.

“Just remember, whatever you see or feel, it’s all in your mind. You are perfectly safe and you can leave anytime if it gets to be too much. That being said, here goes,” he said, and got up to open the door. A wall of water flooded the room, so fast that Taylor didn’t even have a chance to react to the prospect of imminent drowning. They both got swept by it, despite their best efforts, and carried away in a white water stream that rushed violently between large boulders, where they struggled to keep from getting pulled under, grasping at anything they could get their hands on.

Taylor wanted to speak, but her voice didn’t carry over the deafening roar of the stream. For a second she felt suspended into a quasi-imponderable state, where all of her being was freed from any pulls or pressures, and then tumbled into the void at great speed, almost gliding over the surface of a tall waterfall whose bottom got lost in the mist.

She wanted to be scared, every rational thought told her she should be scared, but she couldn’t feel fear at all; as it turns out it is the emotion itself, and not the thought behind it, that really matters. She kept falling, dazzled by the surreal beauty of her surroundings, melting into a million drops of water, becoming the stream itself, its wild rush, its jump over the rocky edge, and the mist at its bottom.

The thing about the human mind is that it trains itself to be very efficient, so it automatically eliminates the events that have an extremely low probability of happening so that the brain doesn’t get burdened with useless information to the detriment of day to day activity. When these very rare events happen, the mind gets confused and resentful, trying in vain to reconcile what it thought it knew about the world with the new image that simply doesn’t fit into that knowledge. Stepping into the hall of doppelgängers without warning definitely fit into this category for Taylor, so she wrapped her arms around the first reasonable justification that came to her mind in order to discount whatever it was that she was seeing with her own eyes.

“I must be drunk, I never should have had that beer,” she closed her eyes to make the image go away.

“Oh, don’t worry, they don’t really look like you, I just altered your perception of them to make it easier for you to notice,” her neighbor whispered behind her.

Taylor woke up to a timid knock on the door, followed by a soft fumbling with the door handle. It was Christine, who was trying to balance a large box of jelly donuts and two cups of coffee. She entered, sheepishly, waiting for Taylor’s reaction.

“Peace offering?” she said, from behind the donut box.

“What gives?” Taylor asked, more curious than upset.

“I”m so sorry, Taylor! I realized yesterday afternoon it wasn’t you, it was that girl, Jessica, I told you she’s following Matt and his friend around like a shadow. Turns out I was wrong about which one of them she was after. Sowwy?” she took a comical Tweety bird pose to lighten the mood.

“Exactly how nuts are you? And how can you mistake me for Jessica?”

“What do you mean?” Christine said innocently.

“Well, for one, she’s a foot taller,” Taylor pointed out.

“I just saw them from a distance,” Christine explained.

“She’s blond! Like really Nordic!” Taylor pointed at her own skin and hair.

“People make mistakes,” Christine looked down. “Friends?” she asked.

“Sure,” her friend shrugged off the logical inconsistencies.