I would like to thank MURIEL CANDYTUFT for being the first to review this story, Thanks for the great review!

CHAPTER TWO

"You looked so sad during the party, are you alright?" Susan and I had just finished getting ready for bed, and I stopped by to say goodnight.

"Really, Susan, I'm okay."

Okay, that was a lie. But it was necessary, right? There was absolutely no reason for me to lose my head over a door that wouldn't open. "Well, anyway," Susan said, "Goodnight and I'll see you in the morning."

So I bid goodnight to Susan and walked to my room. I sat there for a moment, thinking. It is only a door! No need to waste your time pondering over it! It's nothing mysterious. I tried listening to myself, as I tried to achieve sleep. But after long moments of tossing and turning I knew it wouldn't be that easy. Then a thought came to me. Just go and see if the door is really juststuck, end your suspicions right now and get some sleep.

No sooner I found myself tip-toeing across the hall, with the light of my glowing candle as a guide. I turned the corner and there I knew the door was waiting. Fear suddenly formed in my stomach and for a moment I thought I should just give in and go back to bed. No. I convinced myself; ban your fears of this silly door once and for all. I continued, and there was the door, just as Susan, Lucy and I had left it. I tugged on the door.

I didn't really know if I was to expect it opening. I placed my candle down on the floor in order to pull with both hands. It still wouldn't budge. Okay good, just a stuck door. I seemed to have my final answer. I retrieved my candle and walked back to my room. Once I was safe and sound in my own comfortable room I laid down on the bed, and tried to fall asleep.

But something still told me this door business wasn't over yet.

(……)

The sun through my window awoke me early the next day. As I waked down to the garden I realized that everyone else was still sleeping. I breathed in the sent of the fresh air and flowers around me, trying to clear my head.

"Danny!" I heard a voice call. I looked up to see Dealias, an old man who was a friend of my parents before they died. I walked to where I heard the voice, around the corner of one of the tall rose bushes. "Dealias!" I exclaimed, happy to see the kind and cheerful face. He seemed to have that grandfatherly look to him, a large tummy and a white beard and a smile that seemed to never fade off his face. At the sight of me, he dropped the gardening tools he was holding and opened his arms. "Isn't it little Danielle Bennett. Well I guess not really little any more, are you?"

I hugged him; he seemed just the same, even though I hadn't seen him for seven years at the time. "It so good to see you!" I said. "I haven't seen you for…" He cut me off happily, "I haven't seen you in so long, about ten years or so!"

We walked in the garden for what seemed like hours, catching up on what happened for over the years. As it turned out, after my parents died when I was twelve, Dealias was asked to work as the ground keeper at Cair Paravel. I told him how, after traveling with Mr. and Mrs. Beaver (who I had met at my parents' funeral) for a long time, they introduced me to the Pevensies when I was around the age of thirteen. Susan and I had become best friends and soon later the beavers had gone on along journey, and Susan invited me to stay with her for the time, which brought me to that day.

"Danny," Dealias said, taking my hands in his, "I am so sorry for leaving you after Katherine and Willis passed away, I…"

"Really, it's alright." I said, and then changed the subject. "I still can't believe we've been in the same place for so long and haven't met." "Oh, yes," Dealias agreed, "But then again I've been very busy with my work, tending the gardens….holding the keys."

Those last words got my attention. "What?" I asked. "Oh," the old friend said, wondering what I had got so abruptly excited about, "I keep the keys." At first I thought of dancing around the subject, and then objected it. I should just get straight to the point.

"What do you know about that locked door, on the third floor?"

"Oh," said Dealias. Was it my imagination or were his hands shaking?

"Dealias…?"

"Oh, it's nothing, simply a storage room."

So he had heard of it. But why would a storage room be locked. "Why is it locked, it's only a storage room." Dealias turned to pick up his tools at a fast pace. "It's nothing to ponder over, Danny."

"But, if it's nothing then…"

"For the last time, it's nothing!"

I was shocked. I had never ever heard Dealias use a tone like that before. Before I could say anything else about it, Dealias had turned the corner. I knew that if I were to keep on talking, it had to be on another topic, so I caught up with him. "I'm sorry, Dealias," I said, trying to look incredibly apologetic. "It's alright." He said, and I knew that he wasn't faking.

(…..)

I stayed with Dealias in his hut the rest of the day. It was roomy, but obviously hadn't been cleaned in awhile. Gardening tools were all around the room, and a rung of keys were hung on a hook beside the door. As I sipped my tea at the table, I stared at the keys and thought of something.

I put my tea cup down on the table as calmly as I could, trying to look as if I wasn't up to anything.

"thank you for the wonderful tea," I said, "but I should get going, Susan is probably wondering where I am."

So after bidding goodbye to Dealias, I ran from the hut as quickly as I could so the kind old man would not see the rung of keys I held in my hand.