Locked Doors the Hardest Lesson Of All - Chapter 3 Asha's Beginnings
Locked Doors the Hardest Lesson Of All - Chapter 3 Asha's Beginnings
by Eva Marie Woywod and friends - Dedicated to Mom.
The snow slashed sideways as Asha left the city, three monks at her heels. Behind them, the church stood glowing and locked, a mother and three children asleep in a dead car ten yards from its doors. Asha had pounded until her knuckles split. Nothing opened.
She walked fast, red burning low in her gut.
“Is this how the Grannies feel?” she asked.
The oldest monk answered, “You just found the matches.”
Memories rose with every step: hospital beds where doctors talked over her, nights when hands that should have healed only taught her to vanish, prayers whispered into the fur of Kelly the Siamese while the world looked away.
She had been those children. Invisible. Not seen.
“I know the people inside,” she said. “They hand out mittens by day. How do they sleep when their building freezes kids out?”
Youngest monk shrugged. “Liability. One overdose, one lawsuit, and the youth group loses Dollywood. Easier to lock doors than risk lawyers.”
Asha’s laugh cracked like ice. “Then we don’t ask lawyers.”
He lifted his hand. Faeries (sharp, cold, furious) spilled from his fingers, swarmed every locked door in memory and miles. Metal melted, hinges sagged. Somewhere behind them a mother woke to heat pouring out of a church that had forgotten how to refuse.
“They’ll install new locks tomorrow,” he said.
“We’ll bring better faeries,” Asha answered.
The smell found her then: pfeffernusse, warm spice under powdered snow. Berta’s scent. Kelly the cat appeared from the dark, tail high, leading the way.
The cabin door stood open, light spilling across the storm like an apology the world never learned to make.
Asha crossed the threshold. Heat, cookies, Berta’s gravel voice: “Took you long enough, liebling. Eat. The night’s long and the kids are coming.”
She bit into a still-warm cookie. Spice detonated. The red in her stomach settled into steady fire.
Outside, the storm raged.
Inside, the stove roared, Kelly purred, and every lock in the world knew its days were numbered.
The cabin was quiet now, the monks asleep on pallets by the stove, Kelly curled like a comma on Asha’s chest. Outside, the storm had worn itself out; snow fell straight and gentle, the way it does when it’s done screaming.
Berta sat across the table, rolling another batch of dough between her scarred palms. She hadn’t slept. Old women like her didn’t need to when children were still cold somewhere.
Asha stared at the last crumbs of pfeffernuss on her plate.
“I thought the hardest part would be the monsters,” she said, voice raw. “The ones with hands. The ones under beds. I thought if I got strong enough, fast enough, angry enough, I could kill them all and the kids would be safe.”
Berta kept rolling. Flour drifted like slow snow.
“But tonight,” Asha whispered, “the monster was a locked door. And the people holding the key go to Bible study with me.”
Berta set the dough down. Looked at her straight.
“Ja. That is the hardest lesson of all,” she said. “The people who love you in daylight will still lock you out at night if the insurance man tells them to. The ones who cry over poor children on Sunday will call the police on the same children Monday morning. Good people, liebling. Kind people. Just not when it costs.”
Asha’s eyes burned. “How do you stand it?”
Berta shrugged, already cutting perfect circles. “You stop waiting for them to open the door. You build your own house. You keep the stove hot and the cookies coming. And when a child shows up half-frozen, you do not ask who failed her. You give her the warm place by the fire and you teach her how to pick the next lock or at least which faeries to bring along.”
She slid the tray into the oven, wiped her hands on the apron that had seen too many winters.
“Anger keeps you walking,” she said. “But love keeps the door open. That is the part they never teach in church.”
Asha looked at the sleeping monks, at Kelly’s slow blink, at the steam curling from the kettle.
Outside, dawn was starting to think about arriving.
Inside, the hardest lesson settled in her bones like truth always does (quiet, heavy, and impossible to unlearn).
Some doors will never open from the inside.
So you become the door.
You become the heat.
You become the smell of pfeffernusse drifting through the snow, calling every lost child home.
Just then a white feather floated in front of Asha's eyes -
Selene is on watch. All is safe.
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