Bone Dance

There was a bed, with a high carved head and foot, and a dresser with a round mirror. On the dresser was a pitcher and bowl, soap and towels. Any minute the porter will bring my luggage up, I thought wildly. Across from the dresser was an armoire. I got up and flung its doors open. A sudden movement, a person — a mirror on the inside of one door. I closed the armoire and sat on the bed until my pulse settled down. On a table next to the bed was an oil lamp and a box of matches. One doesn’t supply a prisoner with the means to burn down the house. Unless it’s impossible to do; I thought of the inlay in the hall.

“Comfortable?” said Frances from the door, and I jumped.

“I see you’re not resting.”

“No. I’ve reconsidered the wisdom of keeping from trouble. I want to know what happens when we try to walk out.”

“You should have just made a break for it back in the Night Fair.”

“Oh, I expect to be stopped. But I think it would be instructive to know where, and how. Care to join me? We could say we were looking for the bathroom.” She seemed relaxed and casual, leaning in the doorway; but I suspected she wasn’t.

“No.”

“Care to join me anyway?”

I looked sharply up at her.

“I find I’m reluctant to leave you behind,” she said. “I think you’d best come along.”

The bathroom was at the end of the hall, perfectly agreeable, with a tub big enough to drown in. We continued to retrace our route, left and another left. But we didn’t come out at the top of the stairs.

“Over there,” Frances said softly. She pointed down the corridor. I saw the turned walnut newel post and frowned.

At the landing, instead of turning left to the next flight, the stairs turned right. “The back stairs?” I muttered.

Now Frances was frowning.

We might eventually have reached the first floor, but we couldn’t tell. We might have passed through the basement on the way to it. The halls were graciously appointed, the stairs were ornate, the rooms we peered into and passed through su

“Oh, Lord,” Frances sighed. She was pale and inclined to lean. “Shall we make book on the next scene? We open the doors to our rooms and find ourselves sleeping on the beds. We open the doors and find the pits of hell. Or someone with a sword, who kills us. Or a bag of gold.”

I stalked to the door of mine and wrenched it open. “Or the room, just as we left it.”

“Could we have been drugged, do you think?”

“I’m too tired to think. I’m going to take my damn boots off and lie down. If you want to explore, have fun. Don’t wake me ” I didn’t actually slam the door. It had a bolt, so I turned it.

The sheets, of course, smelled like lavender.

6.1: A shedding of skins

The curtains were blowing lazily at the window; the breeze was lukewarm and smelled of the garden. A shaft of light gently cooked the floorboards. I didn’t remember falling asleep, but it must have happened. There was a distinct feeling of afternoon in the air.

I sat up and swung my bare feet to the floor, and thought, There’s more changed than the hour. It might have been the light. It might have been that the filter of weariness and alarm was thi

Had the wallpaper been like that, before? Hadn’t the bedspread been a little threadbare? For that matter, had there been curtains? I couldn’t remember. The room seemed less determinedly reassuring and more… exotic? Not quite. Well, I’d been awfully tired.

I put my boots back on and cleaned up a little at the dresser. When I tried the door, I felt an instant of fright. Then I remembered I’d locked it. At least nobody had been hanging curtains while I slept.

In the hall, on the floor by the door, I found my canvas pack. So the porter had come up. I dropped it in a ladderback chair that I didn’t remember, either. The corridor was quiet. I thought about trying Frances’s or Mick’s doors; then realized I didn’t know why I’d want to.

When I came out of the bathroom, the enormous gray dog was waiting in the hall. It rose to its feet and gave that articulate single wag of its tail. Then it turned and went to the junction of the next corridor, and looked back.

“Don’t tell me,” I said aloud. “The old mine caved in, and I have to come rescue little Timmy.” The dog, mercifully, did not respond. I could test matters by trying to walk back to my room, but why bother? I followed the dog.

A left turn, and a left, and I was at the top of the stairs. It was as a

Everyone looked up when I entered, including the dog. Everyone was China Black and Mr. Lyle, Frances and Mick. They were sitting on a pair of cushioned wicker couches that faced each other, one team to a couch. I had just begun to wonder which team I was on when I looked past them.

The far wall of the parlor held a log-swallowing fireplace, surrounded by painted tiles and complicated woodwork, surmounted by a mantelpiece with what seemed a hundred unmatched candlesticks on it, and a huge, gold-framed mirror over that. On either side, taking up the rest of the wall from side to side and floor to ceiling, fronted in leaded glass, were bookshelves. Full bookshelves.

I made the circuit around the couches without exactly seeing them and stood in front of the right-hand case. What was probably the complete works of Mark Twain, in leather. The Jungle Book. The Encyclopedia of Folklore. Treasure Island. Shakespeare, Yeats, Piercy, Eliot, Woolf. Halliburton’s Book of Marvels. Grieve’s herbal. Stephen Jay Gould and Martin Gardner. And those were the ones I recognized. Who were Gene Wolfe and Alice Walker and Ke

“I knew you’d do that,” said Mick’s voice, and I jumped. I really had forgotten there were other people in the room.

“I’m sorry,” I said, and yanked my eyes from the books and back to the pair of couches. “Excuse me.”

China Black’s face was uninformative, but Mr. Lyle was smiling broadly. “That’s only part of the collection,” he said. “The rest is in the library. I’ll take you there when we’ve finished tea.”

Chango — the rest. “Do you have any” — I fished in my memory for the name — “Marquez?”

“All of his, I think,” said Mr. Lyle gravely. “One of my favorites. Now, sit down and have some tea.”

I saw a wicker chair with a cushion that matched the couches on one side of the fireplace. I carried it over and set it firmly down with its back to the bookcases. Which meant the seating was now U-shaped, with me halfway between the two couches.

Mr. Lyle hadn’t meant tea; he’d meant Tea. On the low table that separated the couches was a brass samovar, a plate of sandwiches, a bowl of dark muffins the size of dandelion puff-balls, a tray of cookies with specks of something in them, and a bowl of strawberries. There were also two cups. I looked to see who else hadn’t gotten tea yet, but Mick, Frances, China Black, and Mr. Lyle were all holding theirs. Maybe the dog had decided to wait.