Be Sure

Seanan McGuire’s “Wayward Children” series looks sideways at portal fantasy, focusing on two questions:

1. What kind of children find and go through these portals?
2. What happens when the children leave those worlds and have to relearn how to live in this world?

I read it in January. Yes, the whole series. As of this writing, 8 novellas and 3 short stories. The series is that good. But it also found me at exactly the moment I was ready for it.

Here’s what the series’ protagonists share: someone central in their lives (usually parents) has very narrow ideas about who and what they should be—and has made clear that their love is contingent on the young person’s ability to conform to those ideas.

Mostly, the young people comply. These aren’t books about rebels. These are quiet kids who either 1) genuinely believe that the adults in their lives know best, or 2) know they’re being sold a bill of goods but decide—quite reasonably, given their age—that the love and regard of their primary people matters more than living authentically, at least for now.

Then these young people find portals. Every one, somewhere on or near it, says “BE SURE.”

The first time I read this, my middle-aged brain shouted, “No one’s sure of anything at that age!” As I read on in the series, I realized, No, they’re not sure. That’s the point.

For the young people in the series, sureness is a privilege of adulthood. Adults are sure about things, and they’re expected to go along, to take the adults’ word that this is The Way to Go. For many of them, this is the first time surety is asked of them. In that moment, some are sure. Others convince themselves they’re sure. Some are absolutely unsure, but the novelty of the offer outweighs the uncertainty. They step through the portal.

Some of the worlds they find are dreams come true. Others are living nightmares. Some are just weird. But the young people later agree that those worlds were the first places where they could be fully themselves—maybe where they learned who “themselves” are. They were free to try new things, make mistakes, and simply be, without the weight of other people’s expectations for, or influence on, them. Some relish that freedom; others fear it; but they all know the experience shaped them in inalterable ways.

Then they come back to this world, either by choice or by force. And they have no idea how to function here anymore. They’ve forgotten how to comply. How to mask. The people they’ve become no longer fit in the boxes they’ve previously folded themselves into.

If I had read Every Heart a Doorway (the first book in the series) even one year earlier, I would’ve enjoyed it, but it wouldn’t have gripped me the way it did this January. I wouldn’t have read the entire series in a month. I wouldn’t have been ready to see myself in the characters, to acknowledge the confusion, sadness, and anger I share with them. Now, thanks to a lot of therapy and self-work, I see the boxes people in my formative years tried to shove me into, and the damage that did. More importantly, I can see, like many of the Wayward Children ultimately do, that those boxes don’t define who I am now.

My portal wasn’t a mysterious door that said “BE SURE.” It was a college in St. Paul, Minnesota, that said, “Natura et Revelatio cœli gemini.” And, y’all, I’m 45 years old and still don’t know how to behave when I go back to my “old world.” Some people from that world can’t accept or love or talk to me as I am and spend our time together getting upset about how I’m not. Because this world isn’t as neat as the worlds of books, those challenges may never go away. That’s life.

Tattoo & photo by Erin Elizabeth Hunter

But I’ve learned, and this is why I’ve chosen to have this gorgeous image from the series permanently inked onto my body (by the awesome Erin Elizabeth Hunter of Weird Ink Society), that whatever uncertainty the people in my childhood may have been trying to spare me or themselves by boxing me in so tightly, I don’t have to be 100% sure of everything all the time. I just have to be sure enough—of myself, my resources, and the people who love me—to walk through the door.