Clem,
I should have written about this sooner, but things have been… shifting. Not in the dramatic, thunderclap way (though the Cottage did flicker the lights twice, which I’m choosing to interpret as “concern” rather than “critique”). No — this is quieter. A kind of settling before the reveal. Like the air right before a storm or the air and how it electrifies when there is a story trying to be told.
You remember how I told you the wardrobe had started pacing? Well. It’s stopped.
And somehow that’s worse.
Last night, around that blue‑grey hour when the world forgets what shape it’s supposed to be, I heard the faintest click. Not the latch — I know that sound by heart now — but something deeper. A hinge behind a hinge. A mechanism that wasn’t part of the original build. I checked the joinery again this morning, and Clem… there’s something in the grain I swear wasn’t there before. A pattern. A seam that’s starting to appear. A line curious enough to be follow. But where it will lead and when I will find there is what’ keeps the unsettled feeling from allowing my fingers to trace the faint line. I haven’t even touched it once.
The Cottage is no help. She’s in one of her moods — the “I know something you don’t know” variety, which under the circumstances is particularly annoying. The floorboards near the wardrobe are warm, as if someone has been standing there for hours. Watching. Waiting. I even caught Marmalade staring at it with her tail puffed like a bottlebrush, which she only does when magic is misbehaving or when I’ve forgotten to feed her on time and the later can be removed from that equation.
And then there’s the dream.
I wasn’t going to tell you, but Clem, I need your help, so here it is. I dreamt I opened the wardrobe, and instead of the secret door I built, there was another door. Older. Carved with symbols I didn’t recognize — not alchemical, not Victorian, not anything I’ve ever studied. They looked… grown. Like roots. Like veins. Like something alive had pressed its shape into the wood from the other side.
When I reached for it, the handle was warm and I swear I could feel a slight pulsing sensation against my trembling hand.
And someone whispered my name.
Not in a frightening way. More like… a haunting invitation.
I woke up with sawdust on my hands and sweat framing my entire body.
I know what you’re thinking — that I’m letting the project get under my skin again, that I’m reading too much into the magic, that I’m being dramatic (which, rude, but fair). But Clem, this feels different. This feels like the wardrobe isn’t just holding a secret.
It’s preparing one.
And I think — no, I’m certain — something is going to happen soon. Something that’s been waiting a very long time to be found or released. I’m not entirely sure what. Can you feel or see anything I’m missing?
Write back quickly. Tell me I’m not losing my mind. Or tell me I am, but that you’ll still be here when the wardrobe finally decides to open its mouth and speak.
With love, paint‑stained fingers and a very uneasy cat, Marigold
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