a sickening grin, the thread dug into the scarred flesh, tugging cruelly on the swollen lips. Old blood caked the pale corpse skin around the mouth and new, sluggish red stuff oozed slowly from its wounds. The teeth that could be seen were a brilliant white and perfectly straight, as if to make up for the injury.
"What happened to you?" Kiri asked, helping Moana to his feet. She would have scorned his weak heart, but the longer she looked at the door, the more her own stomach squirmed.
"I broke the rules. It happens." The mouth grimaced, straining.
"So you're a door now?"
The lips sighed and a barbed black tongue flicked out for a moment.
"No, I am not a door. I am the Door Keeper."
"You're on the other side of the door?"
". . . in a way."
"What's on your side? May we come through?"
"Over here? There is nothing so interesting. The air itself is painful and the earth is dead. People often say that hell is hot, but I disagree. I imagine hell is just like this."
"Oh. That's too bad. I thought the world would be fantastic, beyond the imagination. The peach trees there would be massive."
"I am not in the world. I have been set in a place apart."
"So this room is the world after all?" asked Moana, finally able to look the mouth in the teeth.
"No, that is not the world either, but it is the place from which you can start. To get to the world you must pass through this door."
"But I though you said the other side was not the world?"
"It isn't. But a threshold can border many places, and one of them is often the world."
"So can we go through this door and into the world or not?"
"You can. If you like."
"Well then, we would like to."
"We would?" muttered Moana.