It was noticeably cooler, like I was somehow underground. Or maybe it was the stone walls - though one section at the base of the landing was a solid sheet of iron. I could be in a castle for all I knew. My heart quivered, both terrified and ecstatic. I began to climb, my steps echoing up the spiral. Iron-and-glass oil lamps were nestled in recesses in the stone, casting strange shadows around the tight corners. Strangely, some of the sections of stone were glued together with what seemed to be glass instead of regular mortar – like the walls had veins of glass. And I climbed.
I must have ascended at least four or five stories, maybe more, before I reached a landing with a curtain. I pushed it aside and blinked at the sudden brightness. I shielded my eyes with one hand and stepped forward in wonder.
Sunlight streamed through an open arch directly ahead of me, where a lush garden awaited. To my left and right were two other curtained arches. I stood in a foyer made of white bricks, maybe marble or alabaster.
“Hello?” I called instinctively. “Hello, is anyone here? I don’t mean to intrude, I just sort of...walked in...” I sort of hoped no one answered. I mean, there was no social protocol for this kind of situation. What would I say? Oh, I do apologize, I simply had to step into this mirror I found that turned into a portal to your home. I shook my head. Then again... I thought of my mother, and tried not to get my hopes up.
But the place was silent, not even a breeze touching the garden up ahead.
I should leave, I thought. I don’t belong here. But despite the words in my head, I couldn’t shake the feeling that I did somehow belong here – that I had every right to be here. That I was home. I swept aside the lefthand curtain.
I beheld an empty gothic cathedral sanctuary, every inch made of dark stone, with high vaulted ceilings and support pillars, but no furnishings of any kind. No chair, pews, benches, tables – just cold stone floor, pillars, and a series of unlit colored glass lamps hanging by long chains from the ceiling. The only other adornment was the surplus of stained glass windows that populated every wall.
And what magnificent windows they were. I stepped forward, dazzled. Wherever I was, it must be bright and sunny outside, because the light was streaming through the carefully assembled shards of colored glass. It made the darker glass smolder in rich royal blues, blood crimson, and amethyst purple, and it made the pale colors almost blinding. And then, as I studied each pane individually, I began to realize that they were all connected, almost as if they told two sides of the same story, with the giant pane at the front of the sanctuary showing the point where the stories intersected.
The furthest left pane showed a man at a brookside. The next pane showed him meeting a fox – the fox seemed to be talking to him, and stood on its hind legs. It reminded me of an illustration I’d seen in a children’s book once.
The far right hand pane showed a woman – or was it a girl? The figure was too small to be sure – kneeling in a vast field of flowers. The next pane showed a wolf in the bushes watching her.
They were beautiful, and excited to see what the rest of this place held, I went back through the partition into the foyer, and crossed to the other curtained room.
When I pushed the fabric aside, my breath caught in my throat.
Books. Ladders of books. Towers of books. Sliding ladders leading to more tiers of books. Tables with piles of books heaped on them. There were couches upholstered in heavy fabric nestled in the crooks of shelves for browsing. Lamps of all shapes and sizes hung from the ceiling, stood in random corners, and topped tables and shelves. It was magnificent, and couldn’t be the slightest bit organized, and made me happier than anything in years. It even smelled right – like paper and ink and worn wood and dust and light and shadow. But most of all, possibility.
Oh, I would be coming back here, all right.
Heart lightening, I skipped out to the garden. There were fruit trees here, though I couldn’t name what they bore. They were strange, jewel-colored, and similar to plums, if plums were scarlet or blue or orange. The flowers that grew at their bases were more recognizable - daffodils, irises, and violets, among others. Various colors of rose bushes made hedges and ivy climbed over the garden wall, too high for me to see beyond. What could be on the other side?
My happy revelry was disrupted by a noise.
I heard steps on the stone floor in the entranceway and ducked to the side of the garden wall, out of sight of the atrium. Could it be the owner? Would they be angry that I’d found this place? Oh god...anyone who owned something like this – who knew what they could do to me?
Please don’t come outside, just grab a book and go, please, I silently begged, even as I thought, Mother?
But the steps on the stone didn’t turn to the library. Instead they turned the opposite direction, and went into the sanctuary. The echo became louder in the huge space.
But that room is empty, I wondered, my heart still pounding in my chest. What could they want in there?
The footsteps had ceased and there was silence for several moments. In the absence of sound, I could swear I heard my own heartbeat. Who was it? Was it even a person? What else could exist, if something like this Tower did?
Then, the faint tinkling of glass filled the silence. I blinked. Glass. The lamps in the ceiling? What could be going on in there? My curiosity overrode my fear and I crept along the side of the wall further into the garden, aiming for one of the stained glass windows that overlooked it. I could peek in without being seen, surely...
There was a human-shaped figure beyond the dark glass, standing perfectly still in the center of the sanctuary with one hand outstretched, palm forward. The shadows of the lamps overhead were swinging as if there was a mild breeze running through the place. I squinted from my carefully angled vantage. The glass was too dark...it was hard to make out what he was doing – it looked like a man, I decided, with some disappointment. His head was bowed, and while the rest of him remained still, his outstretched arm swung to the far side of the sanctuary. The colors in the glass there began to change, and the fragments themselves took on new shapes, their edges twisting and elongating, the images there making a new, active scene.
I watched with rapt attention. He didn’t seem to be saying anything. He didn’t even seem to be looking at what he was doing. His fingers twisted in a gesture and the shapes of glass of the man at a brook ordered themselves into a horse and rider, the beast impatiently pawing at the ground with its hooves. He raised his right arm in front of him, towards the giant pane at the front of the sanctuary, and the glass there shifted to take on the scene of a castle on a hill, a stylized sun shining brightly at the top of the large circular pane. He swung his left arm around and the rider spurred the horse into action. Following the movement of his hand, the horseman galloped across all the panes on the left side of the room, disappearing when he hit the edge of a pane and reappearing in the next. His hands came together and the rider appeared at the base of the hill ready to charge towards the castle.
He flicked up his left hand in a halting gesture, and the window froze in place, just as the horse reared back. It was a beautiful frame, stunning in its color, use of motion, and the tangible sense of the rider’s determination. The man’s methods struck me as familiar. It was...not exactly like photography...more than that...it was almost like directing, or composing – that was it – he was composing! But with something other than sound...how did he do it? And he never looked up.