Peregrine could no longer ignore the gate. For years it had dogged her, in one place or another. Dark alleyways, the ends of long corridors—her own home—wherever she least expected. Once or twice the gate had materialized right in front of her and she’d tripped over herself to get away. It always vanished after a few moments, but she knew it would come back. It pursued her.
It was frustrating and humiliating, how that shabby little gate disturbed her. She’d first seen it at the age of 12 when her grandmother died. It had not seemed so frightening then, but later it had taken on a horrifying significance.
She would be doing the most ordinary things—washing dishes at the sink, having a drink with friends, walking to work—when she’d remember something. Maybe her grandmother’s words, something she’d read, or a question that niggled in the back of her mind…and then she’d see it. She’d see the gate and the path beyond it. For one wild moment, she'd panic in irrational fear, but she knew that if she walked away, the haunting image would fade and her uneasy peace return.
What was more frightening than her terror of the gate was her strange attraction to it. Some days it felt like the path beyond was calling to her. She had always walked the same road in the same city where she’d lived all her life—the road her family and friends still walked. That was all she knew. Why should she consider a different path?
There was nothing attractive about it. It was narrow—only as wide as a common garden gate—but far taller than Peregrine’s head. The wooden pickets were dirty and weather-beaten. She most often stumbled across it in the shadows, so it was hard to tell, but her melodramatic mind imagined bloodstains on the splintery slats. She’d shiver, the close gray mist clinging to her like a wet coat, and keep walking.
The great road that encircled the heart of the city was an artery pulsing with humanity. Every body surged as one in the constant flow, a throbbing circle that never clogged. Somehow it happened that they were always moving in the same direction at the same time—from home to work, work to lunch, lunch to work, work to party, party to home, home to work. An endless cycle.
Several times in her life, Peregrine had been seized by the impression that something was dreadfully wrong. Perhaps it was the feeling a bison had in ancient times as it raced headlong toward a buffalo jump following a thousand others—with a thousand following behind—plunging and pounding toward utter destruction driven by unseen powers. She’d felt the need to stop, turn around, push back against the crowd—but strangers' shoulders pressed from behind and their backs moved ahead, and she always came to her senses and trudged on with the rest.
When she turned 25, Peregrine started to see the gate far more often. That was the year she fell for Jacob. The year she smashed all her houseplants and cut grooves in her arm and drank herself into oblivion after he cheated and left her. She spent most of that autumn wandering from her workplace to the nightclubs and back to work, rarely to her silent apartment where there was no one to see and no one to listen. At least the clubs were throbbing with music and familiar faces and the smell of sweat and alcohol, and she could pretend that people cared.
No matter how many nights she spent at clubs and how many men she brought home with her, Peregrine didn’t have many friends. Not the sort of friends who could watch you smash houseplants and be trusted to pick up the pieces afterward. There was always Desirée—a good listener—but Peregrine had never been comfortable sharing her heart with anyone. Except for Jacob. And that had taught her a lesson.
Grownups didn’t have broken hearts. They dated, drank, worked hard at their careers. Peregrine was a grownup. She’d get over it. She’d be all right. But then she’d see that gate again and feel the cold dread seize her heart as she wondered if she were really all right after all.
She knew what it meant. The gate meant the end of everything she had believed in and dreamed of. A death, almost. If she were to embrace it—put her hand to the latch, swing it open, and walk through—it would be the same as admitting that everything she’d accomplished so far and everything she had was a worthless lie. She’d have to leave the city and everything she’d known and start again.
Only crazy people left the city. They were the ones who questioned the meaning of life and went on and on about a Creator—the One who supposedly made everything. The crazies insisted that there had once been a great rebellion and the Creator had condemned the city; He wanted everyone to leave it.
The only way Peregrine would leave the city was by dying. She had seen dead people. Their faces were cold, rigid in the same expressions they’d worn in life. Some were peaceful, like her grandmother’s, but others were twisted with fear and hate. The bodies were very nicely placed in pretty boxes, but she knew where they all went—the pit. A deep, shadowy place where they never came out again.
She swallowed sleeping pills every night, but the gate haunted her dreams.
That morning, Peregrine woke with sweat dripping off her face. The alarm clock was silent, the room barely lit with watery gray light. She tumbled out of bed and jerked on her work clothes: a light sweater over a button-down top and a short pencil skirt. She didn’t bother to eat breakfast before grabbing her purse and slamming the door behind her. There was nowhere for her to be at this hour, but she couldn’t stay in that place any longer. If the half-empty bed wasn’t reminding her of Jacob, the gate was opening around every corner of her mind.
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