Page 82 - What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours

shadow mother forbade this. Absolutely not! Send this fellow on his way, son.

The boy set up a tent in the garden and courteously asked the spoon-headed
creature to enter and consider himself at home. The spoon-headed creature
offered to go away, as he didn’t want to bother anybody, but the boy insisted.
The shadow father was just puncturing the tent with a fork when the Topols’
doorbell shrilled. This was followed by urgent knocking and then the sound of
very heavy clogs clattering away as fast as they could. Myrna and Mr. Topol ran
out onto the street but all they found were ordinary soft-shoed citizens. The

lights were on in Myrna’s flat; she knocked and waved goodnight to Mr. Topol,
but when her front door clicked open, seemingly by itself, she knew that her
father wasn’t at home. Her father was not a man to hide himself behind a door as
he pulled it open.
She called out, “Dad?” anyway, but there was no answer. She only really

started shaking when she saw her key ring on the hall table. She considered
running to fetch Jindrich or Kirill or both, but she didn’t like to turn her back on
that open door, and besides, Mrs. Topol had been complaining of an especially
bad headache all evening and she didn’t know how many more times she could
politely shrug off the woman’s surreptitious attempts to touch her before the
situation became awkward. So she called Jindrich Topol on the telephone even
though he was only a flight of stairs away; she talked about nothing and kept

talking about nothing as she walked through the flat room by room. Everything
was just as usual in every room except her bedroom, where, being well versed in
horror story search procedures, Myrna looked under her bed last and found
Rowan Wayland lying flat on her back, filled with loathing for keys. A key ring
gets left in your care and you reject all responsibility for it yet can’t bring
yourself to throw it away. Nor can you give the thing away—to whom can

someone of good conscience give such an object as a key? Always up to
something, stitching paths and gateways together even as it sits quite still; its
powers of interference can only be guessed at. The wooden devil suspected keys
cause more problems than they solve, so she followed Myrna with one plan in
mind, to do her bit to restore order. Myrna’s home had seemed like a clever—
and strictly temporary—hiding place. But with typical slyness the keys had let
Rowan in and then been of no assistance whatsoever when it came to getting out.

—

ALL THAT SKINSHIP shared by friends, families, and lovers—Myrna had seen
plenty of it and had proudly despised them for needing such comforts. Now that