We met no one.
That seemed – not right.
Once there was a very odd noise, a kind of grating rumble.
I said, ‘What’s that noise?’
Grembilard said, ‘Just the palace.’
‘Is it unsafe?’
He didn’t answer. After that I kept thinking I’d see and feel galleries shaking or wobbly stones or plaster falling off the walls. But mostly the whole place seems in goodish repair. Even the water spills have only grown some attractive indoor mosses and ferns.
Anyhow, the sound died away.
We must have walked for about twenty minutes. Then he opened a door.
He handed me my bag. ‘Here are rooms where you can stay,’ said Grembilard. ‘For now,’ he added. (Ominously?)
These rooms are high, and pale banana yellow. There are three – no, four.
I sit in them or pace around.
Again, few furnishings. Low couches, a table or two, some fruit, water and wine, a sunken bath-tub – hot and cold water – a jar of some essence on the side, towels laid ready.
No doors in these rooms. Only curtains to screen the doorways.
And nobody about. Grembilard, having bowed me in, had bowed out, and I’d said anxiously, ‘Where are you going? Now what happens?’
And he shrugged with a long face. ‘Who can say?’
‘What do you mean? When will I meet this Prince Venaridory-whatever?’
‘Perhaps, soon. Or later. Whatever else, madam, please don’t leave the rooms.’
‘Well I thought you’d no doubt lock me in.’
‘No. Unless you’d prefer it?’
‘No I wouldn’t! I might like another stroll.’
‘Lady Claidi,’ said Grembilard, ‘there are … certain dangers in the palace – for this reason you shouldn’t go outside the door.’
‘Oh. I won’t then,’ I airily replied.
When he’d gone and I’d wandered around a bit, I did go and try to open the outer door to the corridors. And it did open.
What dangers? Do tigers and panthers run wild through the passageways?
Nothing out there – but then I heard that odd rumbling again. What was it? This time there was a definite vibration through the wall.
So I came back in.
I eventually noticed some of the fruit in the onyx dish has gone rotten.
Most of the windows in here have panes of milky non-see-through glass. They could face out on to anything – even other rooms.
Then I found this window, behind a gauzy curtain I’d thought was just a drapery.
Clear glass. You can look straight down and down to the blue slow-worm of river.
Sitting by this window, I’ve written everything up.
What can I say. The most – well, it’s—
Did I go to sleep and dream it?
No, because she’s still there, the girl slave, sitting all innocent and cross-legged on the floor.
And the cat’s here too, somewhere.
Sorry – that’s confusing. What happened was this:
I got bored sitting. I had a bright idea. Since I’d found the window behind a curtain, there might be other things behind other gauzes hanging decoratively down the walls.
Not much to start. A mirror was behind one, and I saw myself and frowned hard at me. I looked changed and not myself. Behind another curtain was a door, an actual door made of wood and painted like the walls. I tried it but couldn’t make it open. Left it, feeling irritated.
In the fourth room there was a cupboard behind a gauze with gold threads. In the cupboard I found piles of books, all in other languages and without pictures. Some did have maps, which made no sense to me. I wouldn’t expect them to, never having been educated at the House.
The last gauze was also in the fourth room, and when I dragged it aside I found another door. Another cupboard, I thought, as I easily pulled it wide. It wasn’t.
Outside was a vast hall of echoing stone. Granite pillars soared up, smooth as glass, and there was a great marble stair. Light streamed in at a round ceiling-window, a sky-light. It was high above, and through it I could see faint chalkings of cloud.
On the stair was this girl, with short black hair, sitting crying her eyes out.
I said, idiotically, ‘Are you all right?’
And I took a step out of the doorway—
What happened?
It’s hard to describe it, really.
It was like being on that ship again, and like getting off the ship for the first hour or so, when the ground seemed to be moving as the deck had.
Everything lurched. I nearly fell flat, and then I did, but the other way, backwards, because the girl came hurtling off the stair and jumped at me. We tumbled into the room and got wrapped up in the curtain, which tore right off the wall.
The floor hit me in the back and the girl had landed on my stomach. Luckily she wasn’t very heavy. As I lay there, gasping, saying things I usually try not to, I saw this:
Midway up, the stairway separated.
The top part then flew slowly up into the ceiling, and when it was almost at the sky-light, a large area of wall glided away, and the stair slid through. Then, from somewhere else – the other wall, only I hadn’t seen it start – came what looked like half of a room, with a fountain in it in a stone bowl, trickling away. And this wheeled past and filled in the space between the door and the now-in-half stair.
Then everything stopped.
I couldn’t see the pillars or the stairway any more. I couldn’t see the sky-light. This other room, which now looked like a whole room, had fitted on to my rooms.
The girl had rolled away, and I sat up, and I stared. Then I too got up. And I was just going to go out into this sudden new room with a fountain, had one foot over the threshold, when the girl jumped me again and grabbed both of my arms.
I tried to push her off.
She shook her head so violently I thought it might come loose. She’d stopped crying. She had been streaming tears, but her eyes weren’t even red. After we’d struggled a while, I snapped, ‘All
