The Moon’s Choice

Chapter 11. The Threshold

Margosha finished the salmon, carefully licked her muzzle, and looked so thoroughly satisfied with life that one might have assumed nothing unusual had happened over the past several days.

I stood by the window, looking out at the street.

Beyond the glass, the day was entirely ordinary. Cars moved along the road, a woman on the neighboring balcony was hanging laundry, and someone came out of the store carrying two heavy shopping bags. The world continued to obey familiar rules even though mine had stopped functioning almost completely within the last few hours.

Margosha jumped onto the windowsill and settled beside me.

“You’ve been quiet for too long. I’m starting to worry.”

“Enjoy it. Not long ago, you were complaining that I talked to you as though you were a cat.”

“I complained about the food. I was perfectly content with the silence.”

I turned toward her. “Then let’s make good use of it. You said you’re connected to me, that you remember almost nothing, and yet you’re certain another world exists. Have you seen it?”

“In fragments,” she said after a moment. “Sometimes I dream of places. Sometimes I simply get the feeling that I’ve seen something before, or know something I shouldn’t know.”

“But have you actually been there?”

“I don’t remember.”

I frowned. “How can you not remember whether you’ve been somewhere?”

Margosha gave me an almost indulgent look. “You’ve spent several days meeting a man in places you can’t identify and still haven’t decided whether you’re sleeping or traveling between worlds. I wouldn’t criticize anyone else’s memory if I were you.”

I smiled despite myself.

“That’s unfair.”

“Effective, though.”

A few days ago, a conversation like this would have been enough for me to acknowledge that I lacked reliable information and stop building theories. That option had ended in the subway. Then I had vanished from the director’s office and appeared at home, and the cat who had lived with me for a month had turned into a dragon and demanded salmon.

Whatever was happening had become far too consistent to keep calling coincidence.

“All right.”

Margosha’s attention sharpened immediately.

“I don’t like that tone.”

“Why?”

“Because that is the tone you use when you’ve decided to do something.”

Instead of answering, I took off the pendant and placed the silver crescent in my palm.

“If the other world really exists, show it to me.”

Margosha looked from me to the pendant. “And what makes you think I know how?”

“I don’t. But you’re the only creature in this apartment with even a theoretical connection to magic.”

“A compelling argument, considering that as recently as this morning, that creature was officially classified as a cat.”

“Margosha.”

She sighed.

“Alice, I genuinely don’t know how to open passages between worlds.”

I liked that answer far more than another beautiful mystery.

“Then don’t open one. Just try whatever feels natural and we’ll see whether anything happens at all.”

Margosha studied me for a long moment, apparently evaluating my mental state more than the plan itself.

“So we take a pendant of unknown purpose, combine it with magic neither of us knows how to use, and observe the consequences.”

“Exactly.”

“Somehow, I knew that would be your answer.”

She jumped down from the windowsill and came closer.

“Did the pendant activate on its own in your director’s office?”

“Yes. He reached toward me, the pendant flared, and a few seconds later I was here.”

Margosha frowned. “It may have reacted to a threat. Or to your desire to leave.”

“I didn’t have time to want anything.”

“Wanting doesn’t always require words.”

For a creature who had recently been outraged over dry cat food, she had an unpleasant tendency to make sense.

“What do I do?”

“I don’t know. But when you hold the pendant, I can feel you more strongly. Maybe that’s enough to begin with.”

Margosha placed one front paw carefully over my wrist.

Her silver scales were unexpectedly warm.

“Anything?”

“You. Just differently. Closer than usual, as if there were no distance between us at all.”

I looked at the few inches separating us. “We’re almost touching already.”

“That isn’t the distance I mean.”

I was about to ask what she did mean, but Margosha closed her eyes, so I decided not to interrupt.

Several seconds passed.

“This is very impressive.”

One silver-green eye opened.

“You asked me to try, not perform for you. Be quiet.”

“You were the one who spent a year being quiet. Somehow I’m the one suffering now.”

“I’m beginning to understand why my memory was sealed.”

I smiled.

At that moment, the pendant grew warm.

The smile vanished on its own.

This was nothing like the sudden heat that had burned me in the director’s office. The warmth came slowly, as though it were being born not in the silver but somewhere deeper, inside my palm and beneath my skin. A soft glow appeared along the edge of the crescent and slipped between my fingers in a fine silver thread.

Margosha opened her eyes.

“Is that you?”

“I was hoping it was you.”

“Wonderful. So neither of us has any idea what we’re doing.”

The silver thread brightened.

The sounds of the street did not disappear, but they seemed to move farther away. Daylight spilling through the window cooled, and a pale silver reflection began to creep slowly across the wall.

The air in front of us trembled.

There were no cracks this time, no violent tearing of space like the distortion in the director’s office. Instead, the room simply began to lose its solidity. The neighboring building, the road, the balconies beyond the glass all remained where they were, but other shapes slowly surfaced through the familiar city view.

A black mountain peak rose beyond the rooftops.

Then another appeared behind it, higher still. Silver light traced the edges of the cliffs, and above them an enormous moon gradually emerged, so close that the ordinary daytime sky beside it looked like nothing more than a thin layer of paint laid over another world.

“Margosha…”

“I see it.”

A stone arch appeared where the neighboring balcony should have been. A car passed straight through its base, red taillights briefly mixing with the silver of ancient stone before disappearing around the corner.

The arch remained.

I could not look away.

Two worlds again.

But in the subway, it had happened without warning, in the middle of noise and crowds and confusion.

This was different.

I had asked for proof.

And I had received it.

Margosha carefully lifted her paw from my wrist.

The other world faded at once. The mountains lost their sharpness, and the edge of the moon turned almost transparent.

“Put it back.”

“Not even a please?”

I looked at her.

“Margosha.”

“I’m already doing it.”

Her warm paw touched my wrist again, and the space before us seemed to draw breath.

The stone arch gained depth. Beyond it appeared a broad platform of almost black rock, with a staircase descending from its far edge. Sparse lights glimmered between the cliffs, while moonlight spilled over the steps, collecting in cracks and silvering the edges of ancient stone.

Then wind touched my face.

I froze.

The window was closed.

The next gust was stronger, carrying the scent of cold rock, damp mountain air, and something unfamiliar—sharp and faintly bitter.

In that moment, the other world stopped being an image.

I looked over my shoulder.

My apartment was still behind me: the couch, my bag on the floor, my phone on the table, Margosha’s empty plate in the kitchen. Everything remained exactly where it belonged. A few steps backward and I would be surrounded by familiar things again.

Ahead of me, almost within arm’s reach, another space began.

“Can I go through?”

Margosha stared at the silver boundary for a long moment.

“Possibly. I wouldn’t recommend testing it yet.”

“Because it’s dangerous?”

“Because I don’t know whether it is. When the subject is crossing between worlds, ignorance seems like a perfectly good reason not to rush.”

This time, I did not argue.

I still reached out.

The silver boundary met my fingertips with a faint chill. For an instant, there was resistance, like the surface of water, and then my hand passed through.

Wind closed around it immediately—real, cold, alive. It slipped between my fingers, carrying the scent of mountains and a distant low sound rolling somewhere among the cliffs.

A few seconds later, the sound came again, deep and drawn out, far too powerful to belong to any bird.

Margosha raised her head sharply.

“That was…”

“What?”

She gave me a sidelong look.

“I was about to say I don’t know. Sometimes it helps to let people finish speaking.”

Even her sarcasm barely reached me now.

I slowly drew my hand back and rubbed my thumb across my palm.

My skin was genuinely cold.

Not cold because I expected it to be, not because imagination had suggested it.

I had physically brought that cold back with me.

“The world is real.”

Margosha was still looking toward the mountains.

“It certainly appears to be.”

There was almost no mockery left in her voice.

“You’re surprised too.”

“Very. Apparently, being a dragon does not automatically include a working knowledge of the universe.”

“Disappointing.”

“I’ll survive.”

I moved closer to the boundary again.

Now only one step separated me from the dark stone platform. All I had to do was shift my weight forward, and perhaps for the first time I would be standing there completely.

That possibility was what stopped me.

“If I cross, can I come back?”

Margosha looked not at the mountains but at the room behind me.

“I can still feel you here very clearly, so I think so. But I don’t know how long the passage will remain stable, or what changes once you move farther away. I would prefer not to test your immortality today.”

“Finally, sensible advice.”

“Remember the moment. You may never get another.”

We stayed beside the boundary.

Behind me was everything familiar: the apartment, the street, work, my car at the repair shop, my phone on the table. Ahead, black mountains gleamed under silver light, an enormous moon hung over the stone road, and every so often the cold wind of another world slipped into my living room and stirred my hair.

No one was calling me forward. No one was pulling me by the hand. The way back remained open.

Perhaps that was exactly why I stepped closer and stopped at the very edge without crossing it.

Silver light touched my skin, the pendant rested warm and steady in my palm, and the distant rumble rolled through the mountains once more.

“Well?” Margosha asked.

“I’m thinking.”

“Dangerous habit.”

“Give me a minute.”

She snorted but stayed beside me.

I looked at a world that had not existed for me only a few days ago and, for the first time, did not waste energy trying to explain the simple fact that it was there. I still did not know why I had been hidden, what was happening to my power, or why Damian could feel me across an impossible distance.

But those were different questions now.

The other world no longer required belief. I could feel its wind against my skin, hear distant sounds between the cliffs, and reach through the silver boundary with my own hand.

More importantly, for the first time the choice in front of me was real.

I could take the next step.

Or I could remain where I was.

Either way, the decision was mine.