The Threshold Problem

“Some doors you open with a key. Others kick themselves off the hinges and demand an answer.”

"For fuck's sake!" I cried out in frustration, my shoulders hunching and eyes squeezing shut as several pots crashed to the floor with a resounding clang. The noise reverberated through the cramped kitchen, ricocheting off the old tiles like an insult. I froze for a heartbeat, wincing, half-expecting one of the cats to come tearing through in a panic. But no—Snowflake had wisely vacated the premises an hour ago.

Gingerly stepping down from the three-stepped stool—an unsteady thing that creaked like it held a personal grudge—I crouched and began gathering the fallen pots and their accompanying lids, resigning them to the 'I don't remember the last time I used you' corner of the kitchen floor. It was a pile that seemed to be growing larger by the minute, like a silent testament to all the domestic ambitions I’d never quite followed through on.

I paused and straightened up, pressing my palms into the small of my back. The dull ache there reminded me I wasn't twenty anymore—hadn’t been for some time, though I still had moments of glorious denial. I surveyed the chaos of the morning’s work. The kitchen floor was strewn with a random assortment of appliances, pots, pans, and utensils, like the aftermath of a particularly unhinged yard sale. Most of the benchtops were similarly cluttered, surfaces barely visible beneath stacks of mismatched crockery and tarnished baking trays.

To anyone else, it would look like a war zone. But to me, this disaster had a purpose. Every cupboard emptied, every drawer rifled through—it was all a distraction. My patience for Cody’s return with Jeremiah, his Guardian Atum, was wearing thin, stretched taut like the string of a bow. And idle waiting was never something I did gracefully.

So I’d busied myself with pulling items from the farthest, most obscure corners of the cupboards—places I hadn’t dared look in years. Each object became a question: do I need this, or might it help Jamie? Or whoever else was still trapped in Clivilius with him. God only knew what use a rusted fondue set might be in a place like that, but I couldn’t bear to toss it without a second thought.

Not surprisingly, the piles of items to donate were significantly larger than those I used even on a rare basis.

"I really have collected a lot of shit," I mumbled to myself, the words barely registering as I clambered back up onto the stool. The metal was cold against my bare feet—I'd kicked off my shoes hours ago—and the thin layer of dust on top of the cupboard made me sneeze as my hand swiped through it.

Before I could curse again, a sudden, loud knock at the door cut my next expletive short. I blinked, the dust catching in my lashes, and clambered down, heart giving a strange little lurch that I tried to ignore.

"About time," I grumbled under my breath, brushing my hands down the front of my jeans. The dust billowed into the air like smoke from a small explosion. I coughed and waved it away, then padded barefoot through the hallway, the cool floorboards creaking beneath each step.

A second knock, considerably louder than the first, echoed through the house, rattling a picture frame in the hallway.

"I'm coming!" I called out, trying to sound brisk rather than winded.

My breath caught somewhere between anticipation and dread as I reached for the chain. Fingers fumbling slightly, I unlatched it and twisted the deadbolt with a familiar, stubborn clunk. The front door creaked open, letting in a breath of sharp Tasmanian air, cool and clean with that faint, earthy scent that always followed rain, even when it hadn't fallen yet.

To my utter surprise, it was Abbey—my favourite work colleague—standing on the doorstep, her dark curls frizzing slightly in the damp.

"Abbey!" I exclaimed, completely taken aback. "What are—"

My question never made it out. In a rare and completely disarming gesture, Abbey rushed forward and wrapped her arms around me. The hug was full-bodied, warm, and immediate, but wrong in its urgency—her muscles were tight with tension, her arms trembling faintly against my back. I stood there, caught in the moment, arms half-raised before I managed to return the embrace.

When she finally pulled away, I was struck by how altered her face was. The usual brightness in her eyes had dulled, and her skin had taken on a pallid, almost waxy tone. She looked as if she'd sprinted from something, or to something, and whatever it was had cost her.

"Abbey, what is it?" I asked, concern threading through my voice. I guided her inside with a gentle hand on her back, glancing instinctively behind me to make sure Snowflake hadn’t taken advantage of the open door—she had a talent for disappearing at the worst possible times.

Abbey barely gave me time to click the door shut before she began tugging me toward the living room. "An odd man came by the office the other day looking for you," she said, her voice rapid, thin, the edge of panic crackling just beneath her words. She kept glancing at me as if to check I was real, that I was safe.

My heart stuttered. One quick misstep, like a dropped plate—sudden and jarring. "What man? What did he want?" I asked, trying to keep my voice calm, but the words came out too fast. My brain scrambled through possibilities, but it felt like trying to tune an old radio—static and ghosts of voices, nothing that made sense.

This unsettling news definitely calls for a glass of wine, I thought grimly, heading towards the kitchen like someone moving through water.

The kitchen still bore the scars of my earlier frenzied purge—cluttered benchtops, haphazard piles, and that lingering smell of metal and dust. I weaved through it all, stepping over a stack of disused pans, and opened the pantry with a sigh. My hand found the bottle of Shiraz instinctively. I retrieved two wine glasses from the overhead cupboard, the clink of glass oddly loud.

"He said his name was Blake," Abbey continued, following me into the kitchen and settling onto one of the barstools, her posture stiff, her knuckles white as they gripped the edge of the bench.

The name landed like a stone in my chest.

Blake.

A cold ripple passed over me, as though someone had opened a freezer door behind my ribs. My body stiffened without my permission, a reflex I hadn’t felt in years. My hand paused halfway to the corkscrew.

My eyes widened. I couldn't stop it—panic bloomed fast, hot, and uninvited. The name had detonated something buried.

"You know him?" Abbey asked, leaning forward, her brow creased with worry. She was watching me far too closely.

I shook my head too quickly. "No. The name doesn't sound familiar," I lied, voice barely steady. I poured the wine with a hand that was suddenly not as steady as it had been moments before.

But the truth clawed its way up, unwelcome and unsummoned: the image of a hooded figure materialising from the fog on a dark winter’s night, years ago, when the Bridgewater Jerry had wound its eerie way down the Derwent River. I could still see it—the way the mist caught the streetlight, silver and eerie, turning the world unreal.

The man had been short, his silhouette indistinct until he stepped beneath the light. He hadn’t raised his voice. That was what made it worse—the quiet menace, the way the blade had caught the light as he flicked it open, almost absently.

"Tell your sister that Blake has a message for her."

I hadn’t spoken. I’d just stood there, boots glued to the pavement, breath hitching in the cold.

He’d leaned in slightly, as if confiding something mundane.

"Tell Beatrix that if she doesn’t make good on her end of the deal, there will be extreme consequences."

Even now, the words tasted metallic in my mouth. The memory hadn’t faded. Not really. Just buried. The kind of memory that waited.

And now, apparently, it had stopped waiting.

"I don't drink much these days. Just a half-glass will do me," Abbey's voice pulled me abruptly back to the present, slicing through the fog of memory like a blade through smoke.

I blinked, disoriented for a moment by the sheer banality of her words in contrast to the chaos unravelling in my mind. The glass bottle felt cool in my hand, almost too real. I poured a half-glass for Abbey with fingers that betrayed a slight tremble, the Shiraz sloshing softly against the sides like a gentle warning.

My thoughts were still tangled in the past—Blake, the knife, the streetlight, the cold. I raised my own glass to my lips, hoping the wine might settle the slow panic rising in my chest.

Then Abbey's voice cut through again, sharp and sudden. "What the hell!"

We both turned.

The fridge had become a swirling riot of colour, the sort you might see in a child’s fever dream—vivid, shifting bands of neon light spiralling outwards across the door like a malfunctioning northern lights display had taken up residence in my kitchen.

“Shit,” I muttered, voice flat with resignation rather than surprise. My heart sank—not out of fear exactly, but in that weary, familiar way it does when the absurd starts creeping in again and you're already emotionally overdrawn.

Through the kaleidoscopic whirl stumbled Cody.

His solid frame materialised in the middle of the kitchen like he'd tripped through some cosmic revolving door. His clothes were slightly askew, his hair even more so, and he looked mildly startled, like he’d just stepped off a rollercoaster he hadn't agreed to board.

"Oh, hey," Cody said, blinking and wobbling slightly as he caught his balance. His eyes landed on me first, then flicked to Abbey—and widened as understanding set in.

I bit my lower lip, feeling it begin to quiver just enough to betray me. Abbey stood frozen beside the kitchen bench, one hand still loosely holding her wine glass, the other hanging awkwardly at her side. My instincts screamed to deflect, defuse, disappear. This was Cody’s mess, and part of me—possibly the part that had once enjoyed a more functional nervous system—firmly believed he should be the one explaining.

I kept my wine glass close to my mouth, its rim nearly grazing my bottom lip. I was ready to offer comfort, or a distraction, or an outright denial—whatever the moment demanded.

"I'm Cody," he said, extending a hand towards Abbey like we were at a bloody book club.

"Abbey," she replied, automatically shaking it. Her eyes were still wide with bewilderment, her voice a half-octave too high. The confusion on her face was so pure, so total, I almost envied it. There was something oddly refreshing about watching someone else experience the sheer madness of my life for the first time.

I watched the handshake unfold like a bizarre diplomatic exchange between Earth and… wherever Cody had just come from. Somewhere far more colourful than here, clearly.

Would Abbey believe the truth about Cody? About Clivilius, Jeremiah, the Guardians? Or would she retreat into disbelief, the way sane people are supposed to when confronted with impossible things? I wasn't even sure which outcome I wanted anymore.

Cody, ever unbothered, turned to me. "Jeremiah's not–"

His words were sliced clean in half by a knock at the front door—sharp, precise, oddly theatrical in its timing.

"That'll be Jeremiah," Cody announced, already heading out of the kitchen with purposeful strides, as if nothing out of the ordinary had just occurred.

I was left standing there beside Abbey, wine glass in hand, chaos in the background, and silence quickly settling in.

Abbey raised her glass and took a sip, her eyes steady on me over the rim. Her gaze was calm, but searching—like she was waiting for me to confirm whether she'd just hallucinated the last three minutes.

Thanks, Cody, I thought bitterly, eyeing the doorway he'd vanished through. Cheers for that. Really.

I turned, placing my glass down with a deliberate clink, and pulled two more glasses from the cupboard. My hands moved on instinct, not from decision. I filled them mechanically, the bottle tilting in my grip as if it were part of me.

"Gladys," Abbey began, setting her glass down with a soft clink, the wine untouched now. Her voice was lower, more cautious. “There’s something else—”

"I bet they're thirsty," I quickly interrupted her, my voice a notch too bright, a little too fast. I didn’t want to hear more. Not just yet. My brain was already spinning, heavy with memories I’d spent years trying to entomb. The very mention of Blake had dragged them into the light like bones unearthed in the garden.

And I didn’t have enough wine for that.

Balancing the fresh glasses of wine carefully in both hands, I walked into the living room, the wine sloshing gently with each step. The glasses clinked faintly against one another, their contents catching the low light. The hallway ahead of me framed two figures—Cody, and another man who stood slightly taller, broader in the shoulders, his posture coiled with intent. Their voices, slightly raised, carried with an unfiltered sharpness that didn't match the supposed privacy of a hallway.

As I drew closer, the words became clearer.

"She's probably better off with me," said the tall, dark-haired man, his voice calm but firm, as though stating a fact rather than making a suggestion. There was something undeniably commanding about him—he had the look of someone used to having the final say. I didn’t need to ask who he was. This had to be Jeremiah.

Cody stood a step back, posture hesitant, like a student speaking up in front of a strict headmaster.

"I could find Luke, or Beatrix?" he offered, his tone uncertain.

Beatrix?

My stomach did an odd little flip, somewhere between confusion and indignation. What the hell does she have to do with any of this? I frowned without meaning to, the lines deepening across my forehead. She was always the one to get tangled up in things she shouldn’t—always the one with secrets and slippery motives. And yet here she was again, worming her way into a mess I didn’t understand, and hadn’t invited.

"I don't think we should—" Jeremiah started, then abruptly stopped mid-sentence, his head turning sharply.

He’d seen us.

Or more specifically, he’d seen Abbey.

His eyes, dark and direct, fixed on her with an unsettling intensity, as though calculating risks in real time. “I’m sorry,” he said, voice low, respectful, but weighted—as though regret and resolve were jostling for position in his throat. Then, as though on cue, the hallway wall behind him shimmered and then cracked open into a pulse of light and colour—the familiar swirl of Clivilius blooming into view. It was like the world had exhaled a secret it could no longer keep.

"But you're a witness now. It's too dangerous for you to stay here," Jeremiah concluded.

A chill crawled down the length of my spine at his words. Witness. Dangerous. Each word landed like a cold hand on my shoulder. The air in the room felt thinner.

This was no longer just my problem. Abbey, kind, practical, matter-of-fact Abbey, had been swept into the depths of something I wouldn’t wish on anyone. And I had no idea how to protect her from it.

"Cody, wait!" I called out, urgency clawing up my throat.

In my haste, I forgot entirely about the wine. Red liquid splashed over the rim, streaking down the stem of the glass, warm against my fingers as I lunged forward and reached for Cody’s arm.

But Cody had already moved—swiftly and without warning. He grabbed Abbey’s arm, gently at first, but with increasing force as she began to resist.

Abbey’s response was instant. "I can't," she cried, her voice rising to a pitch I hadn’t heard from her before, raw with panic. Her body twisted away from Cody’s grip, and in the chaos, her wine glass slipped from her fingers. It shattered on the wooden floor with a crack that echoed like gunfire.

“Abbey!” I cried, stepping forward instinctively, but Jeremiah was already there, joining Cody, his hands firm as he tried to restrain her. The two of them, Guardians or not, were clearly struggling against her resistance.

"You don't understand!" she yelled, still fighting, her voice thick with desperation. Her movements were frantic, her face pale and wet with sudden tears. She was terrified—and rightly so.

"Is this really necessary, Cody?" I asked, my own voice cracking as it lifted in pitch. I moved between them, hands raised—not to stop them, exactly, but to slow them, interrupt them, make them see. “I've seen the Portal and I'm still here,” I reasoned, hoping desperately that counted for something, that it meant there was another way.

Jeremiah turned to me, and his eyes—those eyes—met mine. They didn’t waver. Didn’t blink.

“For now,” he said, the words soft but deadly certain.

A shiver passed through me, sharp and unwelcome. The room, once warm and messy with wine and memory, now felt foreign and perilous. Something had shifted.

And there would be no going back.

Abbey, her frustration reaching its peak, resorted to physical measures. With a loud huff, she brought her boot down squarely on Jeremiah’s foot.

There was a sharp crack of contact—followed by a guttural "Argh!" as he stumbled back, releasing her arm at once.

She didn’t miss a beat. With the fluid precision of someone who had clearly done this before, she drove her elbow back into Cody’s gut. The thud was sickeningly solid. Cody let out a sharp breath and doubled over, clutching his stomach, his face twisted in pain.

“Cody!” I cried out, the word tearing from my throat before I could think. I rushed to him, instinct overriding caution. He was bent in half, one hand gripping the side of the couch for balance, the other pressed to his abdomen. His face was pale, breath shallow.

Jeremiah started forward again, that soldier-like instinct reigniting in his eyes—but Abbey raised her hands defensively, the whites of her knuckles stark against the dim light.

“Stand down!” she snapped, voice ringing with authority. It wasn’t a plea. It was a command.

To my astonishment, they both paused. Jeremiah froze mid-step. Cody, still wheezing, glanced up. The two exchanged a quick look—silent, loaded. As if recalculating the entire situation on the spot.

"Please!" I pleaded, stepping into the space between them, arms slightly outstretched. My voice cracked with desperation. "If we explain the situation, I’m sure Abbey will understand the importance of secrecy."

“I’m sorry, Gladys,” Jeremiah said, his tone clipped and final. "It's a risk we can't afford to take right now."

"Oh, come on!" I protested, helplessness clawing up through my chest. My voice wobbled on the edge of incredulous laughter. “Surely—”

"It's okay, Gladys," Abbey cut in gently, her tone unexpectedly calm. She looked at me, her expression oddly serene, like someone who’d known a truth all along and had simply been waiting for the moment to say it out loud.

I stared at her, lips parted in confusion. The room had gone oddly quiet, save for the soft, pulsing hum of the Portal. I could still hear Cody breathing hard behind me.

And then Abbey slowly lowered her hands. As her fingers relaxed, her left fist unfurled to reveal a small, familiar object resting in her palm.

“Abbey!” I gasped, recognising it instantly. My stomach dropped.

Another Portal Key.

"I'm a Guardian too," Abbey revealed, and the words hung in the air like a church bell struck in a still valley.

I couldn’t breathe for a moment.

Abbey? A Guardian?

Cody straightened up slowly, blinking in disbelief. Jeremiah, who had begun to move again, stopped dead. They both turned to face each other, their faces identical mirrors of exasperation and shock—two men who had just discovered the game they were playing wasn’t the game at all.

"But how? When?" I stammered, my voice high and breathless, unable to keep pace with the revelations. My thoughts were galloping in all directions, each one slamming into another before it could land.

Abbey reached out and touched my elbow—lightly, grounding me with a gesture so simple it nearly brought tears to my eyes.

"It’s been a few years," she said. Her voice was steady, but underneath it I could hear the strain. The burden. Secrets held too long always carried their own weight.

My brow creased, trying to force some kind of structure onto this new information. But questions kept rising, one over the other—Why didn’t she tell me? How many others were there? What else had she kept hidden?

"I'm the last member of my Guardian Group," Abbey added, her gaze dropping briefly. The statement landed with a quiet finality. There was grief behind it, though she didn’t speak of it directly.

Jeremiah cleared his throat, his tone shifting from threat to protocol. "What’s your settlement?"

"Enders Climb. It’s near the Capital, Port Stower. Well, it was the capital," she said, the last part weighted with loss, like someone recalling a ruined home.

"Yeah, we know about the unfortunate fall of Port Stower," Jeremiah acknowledged, the sharpness in his voice dulled now by something almost respectful. Something mournful.

The names, the places, the history—it all stacked like bricks, building a tower far taller than I could see the top of. I realised, suddenly and fully, how little I truly understood about Clivilius. How much had been hidden from me, even as I stood beside the Portal.

My eyes flicked to Cody, just as he opened his mouth, no doubt ready to launch into another explanation, another layer of convoluted Guardian logic.

I cut him off with a sharp wave of my hand. "Not now." My nerves were a frayed wire, and every word that spilled into the air felt like a gust of wind near a flame.

I reached for my wine glass—and found it empty.

These bloody Guardians are going to be the death of me, I thought, half in exasperation, half in jest. If the world didn’t end, my nerves would give out long before it got the chance.

“And close that bloody Portal!” I snapped at Jeremiah, jabbing a finger toward the pulsating swirl still warping the hallway wall.

Bending down, I scooped up Snowflake, who was inching ever closer to the glowing light, tail twitching with excitement. I held her tight to my chest, pressing my cheek to her soft fur.

“I can’t afford to lose a second baby!” I exclaimed, clutching her protectively as I backed away from the light. Her ears flicked in disapproval, but she didn't struggle.

At least someone in this house still had their instincts intact.

Leaving the three Guardians, I retreated to the kitchen, clutching Snowflake like a lifeline. The soft padding of her paws against my arm was the only tangible comfort I had left. I set her down gently, and she wasted no time—immediately twining herself around my legs with the urgency of a starving actress demanding an encore. Her meows rose in volume and insistence, cutting through the fog still thick in my head.

I reached for two more wine glasses from the cupboard with the robotic precision of someone operating on borrowed nerves. The clang of glass on wood felt unnecessarily loud. I filled one with another overly generous pour of red—deep, dark, and as rich as my rising sense of dread. The bottle gave a hollow glug as if it, too, was running on empty.

"Fine," I muttered to Snowflake, giving in. "I’ll feed you first."

She gave a triumphant chirp and padded to her bowl, tail high like a flag of victory. I retrieved the biscuit tin and poured out a handful. The dry crunching of kibble as she tucked in was oddly comforting. For a brief moment, it was just the two of us again, me and my absurdly demanding cat, in a kitchen that had once only known burnt toast and unopened mail—not Portals and declarations of inter-dimensional destiny.

When she was content, licking her paw and eyeing me like she’d solved all my problems, I gathered what was left of my composure and returned to the living room with the wine glasses.

I handed one to Abbey, who accepted it with a small nod, the calm in her demeanour still unsettling in its contrast to my spiralling thoughts. Jeremiah made a motion of refusal, waving his hands slightly as if the very idea of wine offended some higher code of conduct. I ignored it.

“Yes, thank you,” I said firmly, and pressed the glass into his hand, ignoring the flicker of protest in his expression.

They began talking again—the Guardians, voices low and clipped, threading through words I didn’t understand, names I didn’t recognise, decisions I hadn’t been consulted on. Their conversation blurred into a foggy haze in my mind, like radio static through water. I stood apart, wine in hand, sipping in silence. My body remained upright, but my mind was somewhere else entirely. Detached. Suspended in that surreal in-between space that always follows catastrophe or life-changing news.

They were speaking in a language I couldn’t—wouldn’t—decode. I wasn’t part of it. Not yet.

"There is only so long you can remain a bystander, Gladys," Jeremiah said, his voice cutting through the haze like a scalpel. His hand landed on my shoulder—reassuring, perhaps, if not for the weight behind it. It didn’t rest; it pressed. His grip was firm, almost possessive, and I didn’t like the intensity in his gaze.

"Soon, you will need to make a choice on which role you want to play."

My brow furrowed, a delayed response stuttering out. "Huh?" It was all I could manage. My brain was waterlogged. Nothing was going in anymore.

"Either you become a Guardian or a Clivilius citizen. Remaining on Earth is not an option for you, Gladys," he continued. His tone didn’t waver. His eyes didn’t blink. And I felt exposed under that gaze, as if he could already see the choice I hadn’t made yet—could see me flailing toward it.

Before I could gather a single thought into something resembling a reply, the hallway wall came alive once more. Colour and light bloomed into existence, casting long, warped shadows over the floorboards. Jeremiah stepped into the swirl and was gone before I could say another word.

"Sorry, Gladys, Jeremiah is right," Abbey chimed in. Her voice was softer but no less firm. She glanced at Cody, who nodded once. “You need to make a choice. And soon.”

The words echoed, as though they’d been spoken inside my skull.

A dull ache began to pulse behind my eyes—sharp, rhythmic, like a warning bell. I raised a hand to my temple, wincing.

"Please go," I whispered, barely able to get the words out. I didn’t want to look at them anymore. Their presence was too heavy, too bright. Too much.

Cody hesitated. His eyes caught mine, full of something I didn’t know how to name. Guilt? Affection? Regret? It flickered there, brief and unsettling. And then, like Jeremiah, he vanished into the portal’s glow. Abbey followed, her departure quieter, the colours swallowing her with a gentler hum.

And just like that, I was alone.

Except for Snowflake, who was winding her way back between my legs with feline indifference, her tail brushing my calves like none of this had happened at all. She looked up at me with those steady, green eyes, her body pressed against mine like she could feel the tectonic shift in my world and meant to anchor me to it.

I brought the glass to my lips and drank deeply.

Guardian or Clivilian?

The words echoed again, louder this time. Not a question, but a forked path. Each direction seemed steeped in consequence, neither lit well enough to make out what lay ahead.

Even if I said yes—yes, I’ll be a Guardian—what would that even mean? Would I train? Be sent away? Would I join Luke, if he was even still alive? Cody, who had just barely earned back my trust? Abbey, who now seemed like a stranger behind a familiar face?

Shit. It was too much.

I drained the last of my wine, hoping to chase away the rising tide of thoughts with alcohol. But it didn’t work. It never really did. The reality clung, thick and close. The room felt smaller now. The world, wider. My life, unrecognisable.

And the choice ahead of me was terrifying not because I had to make it—but because it would make me.