![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.heroicfantasyquarterly.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/Doorways-2.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Touch the wood, rough with age<\/p>\n
and peeling paint. Sun has poured<\/p>\n
its afternoon heat into the grain,<\/p>\n
the brass knocker hot enough<\/p>\n
to sear flesh. No eye peers at you<\/p>\n
through the cracked glass<\/p>\n
of the little window, and beyond<\/p>\n
you see only darkness,<\/p>\n
the promise of a long corridor<\/p>\n
awaiting your arrival. A stone wall<\/p>\n
holds the door in place,<\/p>\n
each side crumbling to reveal<\/p>\n
a basement half full of dead leaves<\/p>\n
and memories. Lift the latch<\/p>\n
as sunset burnishes the day<\/p>\n
to rose-gold. It will take all<\/p>\n
your strength to move the door<\/p>\n
on its rusted hinges, and they shriek<\/p>\n
at your efforts. When at last<\/p>\n
it gapes wide enough to let you pass,<\/p>\n
you take a step, hand drifting<\/p>\n
to touch the hilt of your sword<\/p>\n
because this place holds magic<\/p>\n
older than its foundations,<\/p>\n
and fate awaits you beyond<\/p>\n
the shadowed hall you walk.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
________________________________________<\/span><\/p>\n Jennifer Crow\u2019s<\/a> work has appeared in a number of print and electronic venues over the past quarter-century. Her short poem, \u201cHarold and the Blood-Red Crayon\u201d was a co-winner of the 2023 Rhysling award from the Science Fiction Poetry Association. Curious readers can catch up with her on Threads @kythiaranos, or on Bluesky @writerjencrow.bsky.social.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Simon Walpole has been drawing for as long as\u00a0he can remember and is fortunate to spend his freetime working as an illustrator.\u00a0He primarily use pencils, pens and markers and use a bit of digital for tweaking. As well as doing interior illustrations for various publishing formats\u00a0he has\u00a0also drawn a lot of maps for novels. his work can be found at his website\u00a0HandDrawnHeroes<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" DOORWAYS, by Jennifer Crow, art by Simon Walpole Touch the wood, rough with age and peeling paint. Sun has poured its afternoon heat into the grain, the brass knocker hot enough to sear flesh. No eye peers at you through the cracked glass of the little window, and beyond you see only darkness, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[83,3,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4141","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-issue-59-archive","category-main","category-poetry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.heroicfantasyquarterly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4141","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.heroicfantasyquarterly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.heroicfantasyquarterly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.heroicfantasyquarterly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.heroicfantasyquarterly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4141"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.heroicfantasyquarterly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4141\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4154,"href":"https:\/\/www.heroicfantasyquarterly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4141\/revisions\/4154"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.heroicfantasyquarterly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4141"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.heroicfantasyquarterly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4141"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.heroicfantasyquarterly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4141"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}