“My name is Mensan.” he began. He looked down at them, sitting on the couch and sipping their coffees, out of his blue-gray eyes and sighed. “I suppose you saw something strange in that apartment last night and that is why you have come, is it not?”
They nodded.
“I was foolish to think it would be overlooked for long. What are your suspicions about its nature?” When they did not respond he prompted, “Come, you must have a theory about it. I do not believe you would look at it and not think of something. Your suspicions are as good as mine.”
“We… well, Aerek, actually, thinks it is some sort of a portal. A Window to another world. But then, we have all read more than is healthy.” Danyana informed him.
Mensan gave each of them a piercing look out of his bright blue-gray eyes, “I will never fail to be amazed at the amount of truth there is in books. They are much more truthful than people. In this case, they have led you to the same conclusion that I and several others have come to after weeks of studying it.” He stared off into space, clearly deep in thought. While they were anxious to hear what he had to say, they knew not to interrupt and took the time to examine the room. It was not at all like what they would have expected from the outside. It was small and cozy. Books lined the walls from floor to ceiling on dark wooden shelves. A brown patterned carpet covered the floor. The windows were small with ornate bars on them and with heavy curtains hanging around them. It fit Mensan perfectly, though it did not seem to go with his role as a landlord in a busy city.
Aerek could not believe they had, well, that he had somehow guessed what the Window was. There was something strange about it. Would they not normally get much more excited if they saw something like that? They had made a guess as to what it was (a very accurate guess, he had to remind himself) and then left. They had stared at it, but they had been too scared to get close or touch it or throw something at it. Something strange was going on and it had taken him until now to realize it. Perhaps it was dangerous.
Danyana, too, was shocked that Aerek had been right. They had only been by the window for a few minutes before her yawns convinced them to call it a night, and they had not examined it the way her scientific mind examined every other interesting object they saw.
Unlike her brother and roommate, Iasmin was not thinking about the window. She was more interested in down to earth things and left the dreaming up to the other two. The books that lined the room also helped to draw her attention away from mystical portals.
Mensan would likely have sat there, lost in thought until judgment day if his granddaughter, Vocia, had not walked into the room then. She saw that there was company and smiled quietly. She was glad that he would not be alone again. It was why she had come to live there, but still, she was just one person, and the same one, day after day.
Her arrival caused Mensan to stir. He watched her pass into the other room and then spoke, at last. “My colleagues and I have a theory about the Window. We think it leads to a better world. A world without war. A world where disagreement does not exist. A world very different from ours. It has been tricky studying it. You yourselves saw that it made questioning it difficult while you were around it. Yet somehow, answers came to people while in its proximity. This is just theory, of course, but I believe that the human body is simply not equipped to deal with something like it and quickly tires.
“Now, as to its physical properties, it acts like an opening that we cannot truly see. If you were to throw something in, say an apple, it would drop in. If you were to tie a string to it, it would go in and come back out looking the same as it did before as if there was nothing mystical about it. There have been suggestions that we should put an object that would affect the area it goes to, but I rather disliked the idea of throwing in a bomb and would not permit it. It might be a very good incentive for the other world to do the same to us, and it could harm the window or our world.
“It may sound like we have studied it, but really, it has been more of an effort to protect it and hide it. We do not believe that it is safe. Simply its strange effects on any people nearby… I must ask you not to go near it again.”
After a short pause during which he gave each one of them a piercing look and they nodded in turn, Danyana spoke for them all, “We understand. But, if I may ask, how long has it been there?”
“I am not sure. A gentleman that first rented the room about ten months ago, I believe, came to me with an incredible story. He had a hanging plant in that corner of the room. One day he opened the window and knocked it down. When he bent to pick it up, it had disappeared. Needless to say, he packed up and left the same week - he second person to do that in a short period of time. It led me to examine the room.
“I am not sure how I managed to leave. If it had not been for Vocia coming down to live here that day I would probably have sat down on that floor and stayed there. As it was, I forced myself away, quickly came down the stairs and called up some of my old acquaintances from college. Thankfully, as landlord of this building, I was able to ask them off my property soon after they arrived. They were intent on testing it with explosives. Who would have thought? Scientists from the best universities, ones that taught classes to undergraduates about the morality and the safety of experiments, were coming and arguing to blow up ourselves, my building, and, most importantly, a Window and another world.” Mensan shook his head in disbelief.
~.~.~.~.~
Though the children still had many questions they would have liked to ask the old man, they never got the chance. Vocia came back in, carrying a tray of cookies and a promise of a dinner later. They easily allowed themselves to be sidetracked from the topic of the Window to that of the many novels she had read and could recommend to them. She was a delight to listen to – knowledgeable, cheerful, and humorous. Time passed quickly, and they would have loved to stay, but Mensan was an old man and it would not be polite to keep him from his nightly read and slumber. They had all but forgotten the Window by the time they thanked him and Vocia for their hospitality and gathered up their coats to go home.
They were not aware of a dark man following them down the street from Mensan’s home, nor of the three others that joined him within several minutes. All that they knew was that as soon as they passed into a narrow lane, called Green Street, in the old district of the city, someone grabbed them from behind and covered each one’s mouth.