About This Volume
The first crossings. Every tale in this volume opens at the bar and closes at the bar, and in between somebody goes through the back door.
These are the ones about grief mostly. People who walked in carrying a weight they'd stopped being able to name, and got sent through to the exact world that would make them decide what to do about it. Xerves doesn't hand out worlds that go easy on you. He hands out the ones that ask the hard thing plainly and then wait.
Some of these he lived himself, out on the other side of the door. Some of them spilled out two tables over and he only had to overhear. Either way he tells them the same, warm and unhurried and never overselling, a man who has seen enough worlds that nothing shocks him and grief still gets him every time.
Read them in any order. The door doesn't care which one you needed first.
Travelers walk in carrying a grief they can't set down, and the tavern's back door opens onto the one world that will make them decide what to do about it.
