When I was seven, I found a Door.
-- Narrator - January (Chapter 1)

Importance: January opens her novel with her experience of finding a Door, a portal to another world, when she was only seven. At this time, January did not understand the significance of what she had found.

January, are you paying attention? There hasn’t been word from your father in nearly three months. I got a telegram from another man on the expedition: no one has seen or heard from him. They found his camp scattered and abandoned on a mountainside.
-- Mr. Locke (Chapter 2)

Importance: January senses that Mr. Locke has bad news to tell her when he calls her to his office. He seems almost frustrated when January does not seem to understand what he is trying to tell her. He does not tell her outright that her father is dead; however, he appears to want January to come to that conclusion on her own.

The...
-- Narrator - Julian ("The Ten Thousand Doors: Being a Comparative Study of Passages, Portals, and Entryways in World Mythology")