the original chapterhouse

Lumina led Demi through a medium sized door on the right hand wall and then up a flight of stairs, through another small door, along a very narrow hallway with checkerboard tile and a steep incline, and then down four stairs that creaked so mournfully that Demi was sure they were going to collapse imminently and felt bad for walking on them. She gingerly skipped down them.

They did not collapse, despite their sad protests.

“Don’t worry about the despairs,” Lumina said mildly, watching Demi’s skittering descent. “They always sound like that.”

Demi didn't even have to ask. It was clear that the four moaning, creaking boards behind them were called the despairs. It was a wholly appropriate name for them, she thought.

At the end of the narrow hallway and past the four despairs, were three more doors. They had the appearances of having been painted many times, in many different colors, and the paint was peeling in spots, giving glimpses of the weathered skins and shades of yesterday. Two of the doors had small sliding plaques on them that had both been moved to the ‘unoccupied’ position.

“Who designed this place?” Demi asked in a mixture of admiration and aesthetic distress.

“Apostolic monks,” Lumina answered practically. “It wasn’t only a chapterhouse,” she confided. “It was many other things besides, including a scriptorium. Now it’s a forbidden library, a treasure trove, a junkyard, and an anything room.”

“An anything room?” Demi asked curiously. The name itself seemed to suggest its purpose, but Demi still felt compelled to ask.

“An anything room is a room that can be any thing to any person,” she explained.

And that made sense, in its own way. Of those titles Demi was most interested in the possibilities suggested by the words ‘forbidden library.’ Demi was keen on libraries of any kind, and particularly interested in anything expressly identified as being forbidden. Still, the archbishop had said that she was free to read anything she liked in the chapterhouse, and she presumed this also extended to forbidden books.

Was a forbidden library still forbidden if one had permission to look at it?

The council of Demi entered into a debate over the question, but Demi did not have time to wait for their ultimate verdict, because Lumina was again on the move.

The little girl went through the door that did not have a plaque — which was currently robin’s egg blue, but had previously been gold, pink, and avocado green, among other colors. Demi followed her up another flight of stairs, and then into the attic of the chapterhouse.

The attic was a strange place.

The whole building was strange, but the attic was particularly strange.

Because of all the snaking turns, the groans of the despairs, the sometimes irregular sweep of Lumina’s flashlight, and the dizzy number of doors, Demi had lost her sense of where they were in the building. It was miraculous that she still knew up from down.

“This place seems bigger on the inside than it does on the outside,” she observed.

And it did.

The attic seemed like an immense, cavernous warehouse — the kind of place that might have generated an echo if one wailed loudly enough — and it was absolutely stuffed to the gills with unidentifiable detritus. Demi half expected to lift up a cover sheet and find the remains of previously autopsied alien bodies. There was some light here, but it was dim, mainly serving to turn the tangled heaps of things into tangled heaps of sinister things.

Lumina’s light flashed up one of the tangles before them, as if reassuring herself of what it contained. There were arms of various sizes sticking out of it.

Demi barely contained a scream that came out through her nose as a garbled squeak.

“I thought that when I first moved in too,” Lumina admitted. “You’ll get used to it.”

She stepped toward the offending mountain and flashed her light again.

“See? It’s all doll parts, and mannequin limbs,” she explained.

Demi let out a breath that she didn't know she’d been holding. Lumina flashed her light upwards, and Demi’s eye followed it. There was the soft sound of fluttering.

The sound of wings.

Demi looked above herself but could see nothing.

She could not make out much of anything in the darkness, nothing alive, at any rate.

Well, nothing she wanted to be alive.

Lumina seemed satisfied, and her light flashed down to the floor again.

Although the ceiling yawned upwards, criss-crossed by exposed wooden timbers, the floor was piled high with an impenetrable wall of junk that rose ten feet in the air at its lowest point. There was a small bit of open space around the door to the stairway, but otherwise the two girls appeared to be entirely hemmed in.

Lumina moved to a small side table, on which rested an old fashioned telephone with a rotary dial. It was bright red. There was a small lamp shaped like a candelabra next to it. Lumina assured her that it was battery operated, and therefore more generally dependable than most of the lights in the building,

“This is for emergencies only,” Lumina said, gesturing to the phone. “We’re not allowed to use it otherwise. I call it the bat phone,” she added with a very straight face. “Unfortunately it connects you neither to a police commissioner, nor to a caped crusader. It doesn't even connect you to bats: fox, fruit, vampire, or otherwise.”

Demi was disappointed. She would have liked calling bats up on the telephone, if they were amenable.

“It's an interior line,” Lumina continued. “If you need to make a private call then you have to do it either from the abbey or from the archbishop’s house.”

“I guess we can always call someone else and then ask them to call the police or the fire department, or whoever you call when you’re being accosted by arm monsters,” Demi said dryly. I suppose I ought to be glad I have a mobile phone, she thought. “That seems more than a little roundabout.”

“That’s the idea, I think,” Lumina agreed solemnly. “Everything here is roundabout.”

Given the evening’s experiences, Demi did not doubt that statement in the least.

“What is all this stuff?” she asked, turning back to the impossible heights of junk, her face a mixture of amazement and consternation.

“Old furniture, priceless historical and art objects, donations no one had any idea what to do with, books that had no place left to go, old church records that nobody wants to sort or even house properly,” Lumina said blandly. “Secrets, scandal, and shame, most certainly, if one knew the correct place to look. But as you can see, this is the haystack and we are the needles.”

“This has got to be a fire hazard,” Demi said with astonished certainty. Admittedly, she had not expected to become a deputized junior fire marshal in addition to the other bizarre developments of the day, but that was what it felt like. If she didn’t find some fault with the ridiculous situation, then who would?

“Oh, this place is a tinderbox,” Lumina agreed placidly.

“Then why on earth are we living here?” asked Demi in confusion. It seemed to be the obvious question to ask.

“Because this is where we’ve been assigned to live,” Lumina explained patiently. “All in all, there are many places in the City that are in a similar state, even here in the Uppercity. And honestly, it's a lot better than most places that we might live at St. Mary’s,” she said frankly. “It's quiet, and there’s a lot of privacy. And even given the state of the place, there’s actually quite a lot of room. Once you get used to things, the place sort of grows on you. It's something like a cross between living in the storage room at a museum and at a multistrata archeological dig.” She raised a single finger. “And it isn't completely without amenities. We do have electricity — most of the time, and our own private bathroom on the ground floor. Best of all, no one will bother us. That’s the nicest part. I thought about it for quite a long time when I first came to live here,” Lumina said. “Like you, I thought the whole situation was ludicrous. I demanded to be put some place else immediately — some place that wasn't quite as fraught with fire hazards and inconveniences,” Lumina said, and her slow smile spread briefly, like a secret she was sharing. “And my protests are the reason we currently have rope ladders and a number of fire extinguishers. It isn't ideal, but somehow, it suits. Ultimately, I decided that this place was worth the trouble of carrying a flashlight and having to break a priceless antique window and throw out a rope ladder to escape a conflagration. This was my castle,” she said seriously. “And now it is our castle. I sincerely look forward to our time together, Demeter.”

“Ah,” said Demi awkwardly, uncertain how to react to the calm and reserved gentility of the chapterhouse’s resident infanta. “Thank you,” she managed. “Me too.”

Demi looked up again at the dark timbers overhead, and the yawning abyss of darkness where the ceiling ought to have been.

“You mentioned electricity as an amenity, but I’m not entirely convinced it ought to be counted as one,” she said skeptically.

“It’s dark because it’s night time,” Lumina explained practically. “The chapterhouse thinks we ought to be asleep. This place makes its own kind of sense,” she said, echoing what the archbishop had said earlier. “If you want more light, all you have to do is ask,” she said. “It doesn't always work, but it works more often than not.”

“Ask?” Demi wondered, her brow wrinkling. “Ask who? Aren’t we alone in this building?”

Lumina shrugged. “We’re the only two humans here, at the moment, but that doesn't mean we’re alone,” she said. “There isn't any who, just a where, where we are. Try asking.”

Demi bit her lip and wondered if her miniature tour guide was having her on, ready to have a good laugh at her expense when she started talking to nothing, or to the building itself, whichever was more embarrassing. But the little girl was as pale and grave as a tombstone.

Demi looked around herself uncertainly and then decided to give it a go. The worst that might happen was that she’d look silly, and she was used to looking silly.

It wouldn't be the first time she talked to a place either, it just wasn't something she often did around other humans.

She took a deep breath and then asked, “Would you mind letting us have a little more light? It’s my first night here, and I’d like to get a good look at this place.”

And of course, nothing happened. Demi felt very silly.

But then there was a low humming sound, and like an ebbing wave, lights overhead flickered on in sections until the whole of the attic was lit up. The lights were strange, as mismatched as the interior: floor lamps standing like flap poles on top of piles of miscellaneous junk, elegant wall scones, bare bulbs, the long tubes of industrial fluorescent lights, comical novelty lights on the ground like emergency lighting, shaped like cats and hula dancers, and jack-o-lanterns. In one place there were twinkling Christmas lights, in another an ancient neon sign featuring a scantily clad lady with a sly smile and a kicking leg. It said CAN CAN CAN repeatedly, methodically, like a slightly inappropriate motivational speaker.

Demi looked down at Lumina, her eyes wide.

“How does that work?” she wanted to know.

The little girl shrugged. “I haven't the faintest idea,” she admitted. “But it does work, most of the time. There’s no telling when the lights will decide to go out again though,” she cautioned. “They may be on all night, depending on how this place feels about it. I hope you’ve brought a sleeping mask.”

Demi cast her eyes about to the mismatched lights that lit up the attic.

“Some of these are fire hazards,” she noted, then amended. “Most of these are probably fire hazards.”

“Undoubtedly,” Lumina agreed seriously. “But the chapterhouse takes care of the chapterhouse,” she said. “It’s not going to set itself on fire.”

“I guess,” Demi answered vaguely. The little girl seemed positive about it, and she had lived in the building for some time — besides that, the archbishop had told Demi that the place made its own kind of sense.

Demi could not help but feel a little off balance as she followed the guidance of the little miss with the flashlight.

Since she was in the company of a child, Demi had relaxed some of the pose of Lady Serraffield. Demi liked children, and got along well with them. Most children appreciated kindness and easy familiarity more than practiced etiquette. That had been her experience in the Forest Girls troop, at least.

But as they walked and talked together, Demi found herself constantly falling out of step, as if she didn’t quite understand the rhythm of their movement or conversation. She was experienced enough that she didn’t stumble, but the little girl continued to surprise her. Demi had decided to treat Lumina as if she were a jolly little schoolmate. Demi was acutely aware of her own position in society as it related to other people. If she remained formal, then other people had no choice but to remain formal also. By being casual and amiable herself, she gave permission to Lumina that she might also be casual and amiable.

But despite Demi’s friendly overtures, Lumina Calloway behaved as if she might have been in audience with an emperor, or otherwise was a very small empress herself.

In that attitude, Demi could not escape feeling a gentle rebuke from the serious little girl.

‘It is unwise of you to get into the habit of forgetting your place, Lady Serraffield,’ she seemed to say, without saying anything at all. ‘Even this place has the potential to be dangerous.’

Being out preformed in wisdom and manners was not something that Demi was particularly accustomed to. She was every bit the young lady of the Serraffield family, with all the tact, polish, and restraint that that position implied. She had been reared from birth with knowledge that she was an heir to the Curia of Lords, and that meant heavy responsibility. She was thoughtful, dedicated, and well-educated.

Her manners, wit, and poise were part of the armor that she wore when she went among other people. She was soberly aware that she needed that armor for her own protection, here, more than any place that yet remained on the earth.

The City was a very dangerous place.

And yet, despite that knowledge that had been writ into her very flesh, there was another thing that was true about Demeter Serraffield.

She was remarkably charismatic, sometimes dangerously so, and she liked getting along with the people that she liked. She also liked pleasing herself and getting her own way. She was both generous and genuine, and keen on following her own instincts. As much as she had been drilled to keep herself secure inside her armor, she had a contrarian yen to throw it off before people that she judged as her own. It was a streak of defiance that ran down her back like the curve of her spine. She was a cat with a very long tail, and her rebellion was trusting the people that she honestly liked with self-satisfied abandon.

But in Lumina, Demi could not help but hear the words of Eisenreich: it is dangerous to depend on charm.

Those deep, silvery-lavender eyes were cautioning her.

Demi, however, was stubborn. She was as stubborn as steel enforced cement, and absolutely committed to making a friend out of Lumina. She would follow her own instincts.

After all, it remained a possibility that Lumina was always cool and collected and remote, that this was simply the shape of her character.

It had seemed ordinary for the archbishop to wait on her serene majesty, after all, even though he’d been jovial and friendly to Demi, doing his best to put her at ease.

Still, even if it was in her nature, it was remarkable that this little girl did absolutely everything as if she were acting in accordance with the heavenly mandate. It was one thing for Demi to be able to pull off such a feat. She would be sixteen at the stroke of midnight.

Lumina was an elementary school student.

— an elementary school student with a ponderous book with a ponderous title tucked away in her cheery little backpack, and an additional stack of them in her arms.

Even having had basically no personal experience with school, Demi could say with one hundred and ten percent certainty that Lumina Calloway was not an ordinary elementary school student. In no universe dreamt of by mortal men would Lumina Calloway have been considered an ordinary elementary school student.

She was so precocious that it was honestly uncanny, and a little alarming.

But Demi was a thoughtful person. However unusual Lumina might be, Demi was ready to accept her as she was. Surely there had been other unnaturally precocious children throughout history. She had probably been one herself.

Or, she remained one even now, according to Lumina Calloway’s way of thinking.

“Your things have already been delivered,” Lumina said, moving around an apparently insurmountable wall of objects and revealing a path that led deeper into the attic. Demi hurried to follow her.

The best thing to do, she decided, was to simply relax, and let Lumina set the pace for their tour, and their conversation. She would learn the rhythm over time.

Besides, Lumina was not the only uncommon phenomenon unfolding around her.

The attic was soon revealed to be a maze of narrow paths through the towering stacks of discarded items. Lumina seemed to know exactly where she was going.

“I ended up suggesting where I thought that they ought to set up your room,” she related, glancing over her shoulder. “I am the resident expert on this place, after all. It's a nice spot. It's out of the morning sun, but gets good natural light. It's a relatively open spot. There used to be a grand piano and a bird cage the size of a telephone booth there, among other things. Who knows where they took all that off to,” Lumina said philosophically, as if she were discussing the destination of souls of the deceased.

“Thank you for suggesting a good spot,” Demi said seriously. She did appreciate the other girl’s solemn thoughtfulness, and her guidance, although it still felt inescapably strange to rely on an elementary school student for instruction.

The small girl looked over her shoulder and smiled again. It felt like a rare treasure.

They twisted through stacks and piles of boxes, books, and sheeted furniture and at last came to a sizable cleared space. There was a neat single bed made up with a blanket and pillow that had come from Forest Home. The other pieces of furniture a lady of her age might require had also been arranged in the space. It was a little incongruous, coming upon a tidy little bedroom in the middle of the crowded attic, but it was nice. She had never seen the furniture before, but she instinctively liked it. Someone had acquired it with her taste in mind. That seemed clear.

For a moment, she wondered how all of this had been brought to the space it now occupied. It was hard to imagine furniture being squeezed through the narrow, inclined hallway, or carried down the four despairs.

She laughed in spite of herself.

This place definitely had a sense of humor.

Her two trunks and the large set of matching luggage had been arranged at the foot of her bed. Her things were ready to be unpacked.

And to her great relief, there on her bed was the dress she had traveled in, along with her petticoat and the rest of her things, right beside her beloved Lacey-tan. Everything had been cleaned and folded neatly.

She was grateful to the staff at the Seven Sighs Boutique for taking care with her things, and for returning them as they had promised. Once she finally had the opportunity to change out of this suit, she would have it cleaned, and then she would fold it neatly and put it away. It was not hers, really. It did not feel as if it were hers, and yet it was possible that at some point in the future she might have need of it. So she would be kind to it, as she was kind to all of her clothes. It was not the suit’s fault that it had been an instrument of her distress.

Demi looked up toward the roof that rose high and unseen overhead. She turned around slowly in place, revolving, as she had revolved many times before. She found that she liked the place — unexplained, ludicrous weirdness and all. It was interesting, and just like Lumina Calloway, she liked interesting things.

It probably didn't hurt that this place had not only been a chapterhouse, but also a library and scriptorium, and more than half of the piled up detritus was obviously composed of crates and boxes and stacks of old books and documents. Who knew what treasures were to be unearthed here!?

— perhaps even the lost, unfinished manuscript that Evangeline Belmont had been working on right up until the time of her death.

Demi had an inward chortle at that. She was a lucky ducky, but surely she was not that lucky.

So she turned her thoughts to more practical issues.

“I guess I’d better start unpacking,” she said.

Lumina nodded once, but then shifted the books and flashlight so that she could hold up a small, pale hand.

“Before you start, I ought to show you the way to the bathroom,” she said, unloading her books and her backpack on the floor near Demi’s bed.