Through the Wardrobe

I have journeyed far beyond what I previously thought possible. Walked right up to the edge of the world and simply leapt forward with reckless abandon. And yet, when death chimed in my ears, when it called out my name, I was unprepared for my own ending to be written. Unwilling to give up on exploring existence and the realm that wardrobe had lead me to. After dreaming through my childhood of this very passage, from our world into another, I had found the path forward. Had found my very own key to the world, but now found myself hesitant to continue to use it. Because what was I actually doing? What dangers was I inviting not just into my own world, but into the shared reality of all the ones I loved so dearly?

I was four years old when the dreams began. Strung together epics that felt more like playing back memories than any dreams I’d ever heard tale of. As a small child, I simply excepted these journeys into my own mind. There was no trepidation, for I did not know better. I simply assumed everyone dreamt the way that I did. But as I grew older and found a friend I could confide in like the sister I had longed for the majority of my life, I began to realize I was different after all. That once again, my mind was not stitched together “right”, or so I was told by anyone who wasn’t Catlin.

She was my rock. My home away from home, and in far too many ways, the only family I had ever truly known. But we were as different as different could be. For starters, she had lived several lives already before meeting me, a secret I held so deeply enveloped within my own soul, it too often felt as though I forgot I knew the truth of her existence at all. But that was the promise I had made her. An unbreakable vow that was meant to keep her safe and allowed me to know what it was like to be loved, to be seen by another soul. I’d longed to know more about how it was she could have lived so many lives, and yet still seem to age right along side me, but I didn’t dare to prod for fear of losing Catlin all together.

And that was just where our differences began. Where I was so eager for someone, anyone to know me, Catlin would rather swallow glass than let another soul in further than necessary. Perhaps it was all those lives she’d lived, or maybe it just took one debilitating heartbreak for her to decide keeping all her cards clasped to the vest was the best way forward. Either way, I found myself having to constantly play a track of reassurance on a loop within my own mind. “She loves you, Sadie. She wouldn’t keep you around if she didn’t care”, I’d tell myself in the moments my own insecurities and overwhelming fears of being abandoned would take hold. What I couldn’t have known, was that those differences were going to be what saved us both, the fateful night we ventured through the wardrobe.

Catlin had always cautioned me against the room with the wardrobe. She’d told me it belonged to her great grandmother and was important to her family, but that she could not and would not divulge anything further. Most people would have simply left it at that, because who really cares about an old wooden wardrobe? But something kept nagging at me to investigate. To delve as deep as I dared into unraveling this physical manifestation of all the secrets Catlin kept from me. All the unanswered questions, most of which I never even dared to ask her.

As much as Catlin kept me at arms length, Gillian was far more insistent and cared very little for sparing my feelings in the process. She had never taken kindly to my intrusion upon their lives. At first, I’d thought she simply didn’t wish to share her younger sisters’ affections and attention, but as time passed it felt so much more personal. It wasn’t that Gillian didn’t want to share her sister with anyone. She didn’t want to share her sister with me. I was the thorn in her side, the proverbial elephant in every room that Gillian entered, and she had no qualms about letting it be known how very much she wished I would simply disappear. And as any good friend would, Catlin attempted to spare my feelings, weaving tales of how Gillian simply needed more time to get to know me, to truly trust me. But it had been ten years, now. An entire decade of me practically living under their roof part time, and Gillian had not softened at all towards my presence in their lives.

That fateful day had begun innocently enough. I’d come over to go through a set of dresses Gillian had picked up from some distant, nondescript relative for Catlin to choose from for an upcoming family gathering. A gathering that Gillian had made abundantly clear I was not invited or welcome to attend. And so I settled for helping my best friend look her best for what seemed to be making her a level of nervous I’d never seen in Catlin. To be quite honest, I’m not sure I’d ever truly seen Catlin nervous at all. She just wasn’t the type. She had been sure about herself from birth, and only grew more certain with each lifetime, of which she was now on her fifth. I’d surmised that something must be special about that fifth lifetime to garner an all out extended family gathering. People were traveling in from around the globe to ring in the full moon with them in two nights time, and I could feel Catlin growing more distant with every hour that ticked by.

I was laying on her bed writing another one of my stories that never quite seemed to go where I wanted them to, my feet in the air as I worked, when Gillian came marching into Caitlin’s’ room. She of course ignored my presence all together, as though I could not hear the two of them speaking. “I hope you recall our discussion about this evenings festivities, Catlin Grace. No exceptions, and I mean it.” Her voice was firm but a softness could almost be felt creeping in when she would speak to Catlin. Gillian was a wall with everyone I ever witnessed her interact with. Everyone except for Catlin.

“How could I forget when you’ve reminded me every hour, on the hour, oh wise one.” The laugh that seemed to reside within the inflections of Catlins’ voice were almost impossible to resist. I found myself biting the inside of my cheeks more times than I could count, in a futile effort to render myself invisible to Gillian. “But yes,” Catlin continued, “I remember that Sadie isn’t allowed to attend, in spite of being just as much my sister as you are.” I tried to hide my smile at this inclusion, but I couldn’t seem to help myself. Catlin was where I felt the most at home in this world and over the past year or so, she had started to openly express her love for me in return in a way I’d dreamt of for far too long. But my smile must have lingered a moment too long, or beamed a bit too brightly for Gillian’s liking. Because in the next instant, I could feel her immense need to strike me down where I lay.

“You’re smiling now, but this isn’t a laughing matter, Sandra.” And just like that, the warmth I felt vanished. Gillian knew I hated being called Sandra. Knew that it was a reminder of the woman I was named after. A woman who never wanted to be my mother to begin with, but was forced to carry me to term and then vanished at the first moment the watchful eyes of my Aunt Becca and Uncle Dom weren’t trained upon her. And it wasn’t that I blamed her, not really. I’d lived through a version of what she had endured in growing up under their roof. The constant monitoring, the never being quite good enough to be trusted with freedom, of movement or your own mind. It was suffocating and my mother simply longed to be free. I could not fault her that, but being named after her by Aunt Becca and Uncle Dom, like I was her replacement, never did sit right with me. I’d given up on winning Gillian over just as I’d given up on getting my aunt and uncle to see I was not my mother.

“Sandra, have you even bothered to pay attention to what I’ve been saying the past few minutes?” I looked up to see Gillian had moved herself over to stand directly above where I was laying on the bed. How long had I vanished into my own mind while she was lecturing me? It was something I’d always done. Disassociating, retreating into my mind without a moments notice, only to reemerge, akin to breaching the surface of the water after sitting too long on the bottom of the pool as a child. I’d do my best to not let anyone see me sputtering back to life, but there wasn’t much that escaped Gillians’ observation. “I um, I heard you say something about the ceremony being private, which Catlin already told me so I—“ my voice trailed off as Gillians jaw began to clench so hard, I was certain it would break. “Look Sandra—“ Catlin suddenly turned in her seat at the vanity to lock eyes with her older sister. The long silent pause was heavy but clear and I watched as Gillian adjusted her approach to me accordingly. “Right, Sadie…this needs to be a night about family. It isn’t personal, just the way things must be done. If you’d like to stay, all I ask is that you respect what this day means to our family. What it means for your best friend.”

“I’ll be invisible, as always, Gillian. You don’t have to worry about me embarrassing you in front of them, though I do have to say I think your great aunt Charlotte did take a liking to me last time she was here.” Catlin snickered and turned back to the finishing touches on her makeup at the vanity. She knew better than to laugh openly at my rebellion towards Gillian, but we used our humor to get by. We were both just girls who didn’t feel at home in our own families, but had found one in each other. Gillian never understood that. Why Catlin would align herself with a human when we are such fragile, mortal beings. Knowing she would lose me to time and go on to live yet another life. But we both realized what Gillian never seemed to grasp. It was better to have one another in this life, than to live in fear of love and miss the chance to feel its warm embrace all together.

And so as the procession of relatives and gifts began to arrive, I gazed down from my little nest in the attic bedroom I’d come to call my own. Watched as one relative after another embraced Catlin, gave her gifts I’d assumed had been passed down through generations before reaching her, and made their way into the room with the wardrobe. The one room in the house I was forbidden to enter, though I’d of course wandered in more than a time or two when I was alone and curiosity had gotten the better of me. I sat in my little nest and waited, like a caged bird longing for permission to soar once more, as the day rolled into night.

i must have fallen asleep at some point, because the next thing I knew, Gillian was shaking me awake, a desperation in her voice I’d never heard in all the years I’d known her. “Sadie…Sadie please, you have to get up. We need you.” I shook off the daze of the dream I’d been having, forgetting it all the moment my eyes opened and settled on Gillians’ face. “What happened? Why are you up here? You never come in—“ Were those tears building in her eyes? All at once, I didn’t know what to do. Gillian was a rock. Nothing ever unsettled or disturbed her enough to change the timber of her voice, let alone to bring her to tears. “Please, Sadie. You’re the only one that can go in after her.” It clicked in that very moment. Something had to have gone terribly wrong with the ceremony. Whatever this night was meant to be about, Catlin was in trouble and that was all I needed to know.

I flew out of the room and down the two flights of stairs to the second level of the victorian home where the forbidden room with the wardrobe was located. A procession of people filled the hallway on either side of the door, their faces twisted and distorted by what seemed to be grief. It was as though they had all given up and were mourning Catlin, wherever she was now. Gillian shoved me through the open doorway, careful to not cross the threshold herself, a desperation across her face that left me more than a little worried. “Step into the wardrobe, make your way through to the back and the portal should still be open. You have to find Catlin. I’m…I’m ashamed to say I have no idea where she could be or what the inside of her realm might look like. I can’t help because I don’t know her as well as you do, and I can admit that.” My head felt like it was spinning on its axis. “I don’t understand, Gillian. Her realm?”

“We really don’t have time to go over this, Sadie. She only has a few minutes in our time before the portal will be sealed forever. Just….You know her heart. You know where she would go if she was afraid and she has to be terrified right now.” I stepped forward towards the doorway, reaching to rest my hand on Gillian’s arm to comfort her but she stepped back before I could reach her. I sighed, “I’ll find her. I promise”.

And as quickly as I’d entered the wardrobe, I was whisked away into another world. It was just as we had dreamt it. From the white picket fence down to the sunflower filled garden that bordered the entire cottage. This was the home away from home that Catlin and I had longed for, and there she was standing in the beautiful bay window we had always said we would spend our days curled up in, reading through more books than we ever had before. She didn’t look scared, confused, or alarmed by the world or by my entering it. She looked like she had been waiting for me all along, meeting me at the front door with a smile broader than any I’d seen back in our own reality.

“Your sister is kinda freaking out back there, Catlin. She thinks you’re in here lost and cowering in a corner somewhere.” I tried not to let the smile in my voice at her obvious peace in this place, creep onto my face. “Do I look terrified and in need of saving to you, Sadie girl?” She quipped back to me, the smile on her face beaming back at me. “My sister wants me to be the next holder of the torch for our family of phoenixes. Wants me to give up my life and the one person I love more than anything in order to do so, but why do any of that when we can have our very own happily ever after here, through the wardrobe?”

I suddenly realized why Gillian knew it had to be me to come through to get her. It wasn’t because of any special ability I would have. It was simply because this was what Catlin wanted. A place where we could be together, away from my family who wanted to move me across the country come the new year. We could hide here, be ourselves here. We could be in love here without fear of the outside world that still couldn’t grasp that love could come in all shapes, sizes and genders. She told me that time would pause for us within the wardrobe. That we could be together here until it was safe again to leave for good, and without a second thought, I accepted. In this realm, I would age at the same rate as Catlin. It wouldn’t be a perfect happily ever after, but it would be a start, and it was Gillian who gave us this chance to be happy. Gillian, who I was so sure hated me more than words could ever convey, had put her sisters’ happiness first and by extension mine. On this night of the full moon, in Catlin’s fifth lifetime, she finally got what she had always wanted more than anything else. She got to be loved as fiercely as she had longed to love another. And I was proud to be the one to fulfill that dream, for both of us.