the girl in the tower

That seemed innocuous enough, but Demi soon discovered that to access this bathroom, one had to first navigate to the emergency phone, then go all the way down from the attic to the ground floor, snaking along a convoluted path that felt as if it tied itself in several knots, and passing through six locked doors, each of which required a different ornate skeleton key from a ring that Lumina generally kept on her person.

There was no use trying to leave the doors unlocked, explained Lumina. They just locked themselves back. It was best just to tolerate it and to carry the keys when the bathroom was required.

“Now that we’ll be sharing the chapterhouse, I’ll leave the bathroom keys on a hook near the stairs,” she said. “Please do the same when you're finished with them.”

“Okay,” Demi agreed, blinking. Even given the strange path they had taken to the attic, the situation with the bathroom had blindsided her, and she wasn't entirely sure of how she felt about things.

“I've drawn up a basic map of the original chapterhouse for you,” Lumina added, passing over a neatly folded piece of paper. “It isn't complete, by any means. I'd rather not leave a documented record of all the paths here. Every rabbit needs a bolt hole, after all. I’ll teach the rest of the ways to you over time.”

Demi boggled a little as she accepted the note. The attic paths alone seemed complicated enough that a map might be useful as she was first getting her bearings. She didn't know what to make of Lumina’s more arcane statement: that she did not want to leave behind physical evidence of all the paths in the building.

Maybe Lumina was just a little girl being a little girl: building pillow forts and exulting in secret passages, investigating treasure maps, planning camping expeditions around her own home, playing make-believe princess.

Certainly, this was a building worth make-believing in. It was perverse, contrary, and a little hilarious.

Lumina had been eminently correct. This place had a sense of humor.

If playing household explorer was all that occupied Lumina, then Demi felt like she could understand the little girl’s spirit. In her dewy youth, Demi had often played that way in the halls and on the grounds of Forest Home. She had devoted herself to ‘discovering’ secret paths that everyone already knew about, spelunking under tables, finding lost treasures in the bottom of closets, and had eaten more than one bagged lunch at the top of a steep flight of stairs, as if she had just conquered Mt. Everest.

But for Lumina Calloway, the pleasure of solitary exploration and childish secret keeping might not have been the beginning and the end of it. Looking at her, Demi was unsure. She could not say it with any kind of conviction, but she instinctively felt there was something else, something less picturesque behind this little rabbit and her bolt holes. The feeling was strange, as if she had pieces of a shape that she could not put together properly.

And there was something else too.

When she looked at Lumina, Demi could not help but feel nostalgic about her own childhood. She had a yen to be in the dappled sunlight at the edge of the forest, enjoying a picnic lunch with her mother, and naming all the birds as they flew by.

Her grainy, overexposed hi8 memories aside, Demi’s living arrangements in the original chapterhouse were a completely new experience for her. The bathroom was a case in point. She had never shared a bathroom before, certainly not one behind six locked doors. She could easily recognize that having her own private bathroom was a luxury that not everyone enjoyed, but she was fairly certain that even people who shared large, communal bathrooms, like the ones at the abbey, did not have to use six keys to get to them.

Quite unsurprisingly, there was only one set of bathroom keys.

“Nobody has any spares?” Demi asked tiredly, already knowing in the depths of her soul what the answer would be.

“Nobody has any spares,” Lumina agreed.

“And we can’t make any?” Demi asked flatly.

“Oh, we can make them,” Lumina contradicted. “But the chapterhouse doesn’t like them much. They’ll stick in the doors, break, simply not work at all — sometimes they do work, every second Sunday when the moon is full, I suppose,” Lumina said philosophically, “But when one is late for an appointment with the toilet, one would rather avoid any unexpected delays. It’s much more dependable to simply use the keys we’ve been given.”

Well, at least there was a bathtub, and a toilet.

The bathroom was spotlessly clean, a marked departure from the dusty negligence of most of the chapterhouse. When Demi remarked on this discrepancy, Lumina produced a toilet brush.

“It's clean because we’re responsible for keeping it clean,” she said. “The sisters will do your laundry for you, but you have to take it down in a laundry bag before breakfast. And they prepare meals for us, but it’s on a set schedule. We’re allowed to keep our own snacks here, but given the various fire hazards of this building that you have already pointed out, we’re not allowed to cook here, even with electric appliances. We’re also not allowed to keep or use candles. And we’re responsible for cleaning this bathroom and keeping our own spaces tidy, although it's not as if anyone comes to check on the state of the bathroom, or our living spaces. It's simply for our own comfort.”

It seemed like a great deal of responsibility for a seven year old girl.

“You like it here?” Demi asked, an attempt to verify the statement Lumina had made earlier.

She had returned the toilet brush to its stand and closed the door to the bathroom. Demi heard the unmistakable click of the lock as she did.

“I do,” Lumina repeated. “Of course, I’d rather be with my mother, but the conditions at her expedition site are too dangerous. Minors aren't allowed into the deep strata. As for the chores, it’s no more than what I was already doing before I came here,” she said. “And I’m allowed to do what I like. That is important to me,” she said. “I find it hard to tolerate adult oversight.”

“Oh,” said Demi. “Well, that makes sense,” she admitted.

Demi felt like she could also do with quite a bit less adult oversight, even though the prospect was unexpected and dizzying.

“Now,” said Lumina, with another of her small, sweet smiles, “Would you like to meet our other roommates? I think you’ll enjoy it if you have an interest in Lepidoptera.”

Lumina’s bed, such as it was, was perched on top of a mountain of books and old toys, discarded doll parts, and what appeared to be quite a lot of artificial flowers. It was a single bed clearly meant for a little girl. It had four white posts that spun up into minarets that reminded one of unicorn horns. The top half of the bed was inside an enormous birdcage, very ornate, although it had a sizable hole through the side of it which rendered it useless for keeping birds smaller than an elementary school student. It was through this opening that Lumina’s little girl bed protruded. It had to be accessed by stairs as well as a ladder.

There was a canopy of translucent mesh over the whole of this unusual arrangement, studded with small rhinestones like stars. Spidery threads anchored it to some unseen height, drawing it into points like a silvery crown. It was quite a fantastic bed.

The archbishop had been right to call this place Wonderland.

“I thought you said you didn't know where they had taken that,” said Demi thoughtfully as she looked at the remains of the birdcage.

Lumina shrugged.

“I haven't the faintest idea where they took the birdcage that used to be in the place where your bedroom is now,” she said. “This is a different birdcage.” She paused. “You didn't imagine that I arranged all of this myself yesterday afternoon, did you?”

Lumina was inescapably correct. Demi was at a loss as to how to explain the origins of the bizarre tableaux that were piled thick around her, even given a geologic timescale. It seemed to her as if a seed of the confusion of junk had been accidentally sown one day, and then had spread like kudzu.

Lumina didn't pause particularly long before answering her own question. “I believe this birdcage used to stand in the Iron Garden’s great conservatory, the Glass Menagerie,” she said. “A cage inside a cage: an appropriate place for a little girl, don't you think?”

Demi wasn't sure how to respond to that.

“Our purity is fetishized, and yet we are desired and idealized,” Lumina continued. “‘What a pretty little girl.’ ‘What a smart little girl.’ ‘What a good little girl.’ We are guarded treasures who are denied rights and autonomy. We are not even allowed to control our own narratives.”

“I see what you mean,” Demi said.

She did. It was something she sometimes thought of herself, but she had never imagined discussing the subject with an elementary school student.

Lumina Calloway was a very strange little girl.

Well.

It took one to know one, she supposed.

The lights around Lumina’s bed were dim, but the bed was illuminated by a shaft of bright moonlight that filtered down from somewhere up above.

Wait.

Wait, Demi thought. That isn't right.

Demi still felt a little confused and mixed up about her location in the chapterhouse, but she felt for certain that the angle of the light was wrong. There were no windows or skylights above that might have produced this beautiful pool of moonlight. It might have been redirected by a cunning arrangement of mirrors, but Demi could spy none.

Lumina saw her studying the moonbeams and smiled slightly.

“It’s strangelight,” she confirmed. “It isn't always here, but this is one of the places it likes to pool.”

Strangelight.

It was an eerie phenomenon of the City. Moonlight, sunlight, and starlight appeared in places where none ought to have been, inside of buildings, under stairs, in old, tired basements, in the deep canyons between towering skyscrapers. Strangelight had no interest in keeping to a schedule either. The sun sometimes shone down in the dead of night, and the stars and moon rained down at noon. It was queer and beautiful.

Demi had seen it only rarely, since she had only visited the City on occasion as a girl. It gave one a bit of a shiver to look at it.

It remained unexplained, although it had been studied extensively: by scientists, mathematicians, philosophers, even occultists. Investigations were ongoing, even now. It was the sort of mystery that people yearned to unravel, something that captured the imagination and hinted at the shape of the universe.

And yet, for the people of Metropoly, strangelight was ordinary, in the same way that all the other bizarre things about the City were ordinary. If one took notice of them all, there would be time for nothing else, and the denizens great and small would spend their time gaping and gawping at every last thing. It was in the interests of sanity that people learned to go about their business without much concern for what was strange and inexplicable.

But Demi had not yet become inured to the weird wonders of the City. She was still green, a girl fresh from the forest, and so she gazed at the queer moonlight with fascination, straining to glimpse where it came from.

But of course, she could not tell. Great mysteries were not so easily unraveled.

When Demi looked back at Lumina, she found that the small girl was laughing quietly, her smile concealed by a delicate hand.

“If past experience holds true, then you’ll have your own strangelight,” she said with a smile that touched her eyes. “I mentioned that your bedroom gets good natural light. I should have also added that it often gets good unnatural light as well. Sunlight pools there the way moonlight pools here, although rarely in accordance with any rational schedule,” she said with a brief shrug. “Yet another reason for sleeping in an eye mask.”

Lumina moved away from her bed to the base of another ladder that ran from the floor into the rafters.

“Come along,” she said. “If you want to meet the others, you have to climb.”

They climbed.

Once she was up among them, Demi realized that the rafters were larger than they appeared from the ground, wide enough for a person to walk across them without fear of an untimely death. The ones meant to be walked on even had railings, making them more like catwalks than simply rafters.

Looking down at the ramshackle labyrinth below, Demi could get a better sense of the overall layout of the areas around their bedrooms. Surely this was how Lumina had started her map. The bird’s eye view was informative.

But it didn't provide absolute clarity.

There were sections of the attic covered in tarpaulins and a patchwork of sheets and netting that made it basically impossible to discern what was underneath. The map indicated that there was a cave with a working television somewhere inside the mess of terra incognita. That surely needed exploring. A television was required for many of Demi’s most treasured hobbies apart from reading, like watching Cryheart, and Magical Girl Frail Ribbon, and of course, for playing console games. There was a small television in her new bedroom, but it was a new model with a flat screen. It wasn't suitable for playing games that required light guns. The mystery television was therefore an intriguing possibility.

Plus, the idea of crawling into a secret cave made out of blankets and overturned furniture to watch television and play video games called out to Demi’s soul.

Too bad it’s verboten to pop popcorn in this place, she thought idly.

Problems like that demanded answers. She’d just have to buy an enormous tin of prepopped popcorn and secret it away in the cave like a squirrel.

Of course, this was all supposing she could fit into the cave. The map indicated that it was passable, but Lumina was a very small individual. Demi was also petite, but not quite so petite as the doll-like young lady.

Still, it begged investigation. Demi could already imagine cuddling in with Lumina in a pile of pillows and eating candy and popcorn while she introduced Lumina to Cryheart and Frail Ribbon. Frail Ribbon was generally considered a show for adults, rather than children. It even aired late at night. But Demi had already judged that Lumina was a mature enough audience to appreciate her most favorite show. Demi was a Frail Ribbon evangelist, in the same way she was an evangelist for the Swallow.

While Demi had been day dreaming about sisterly bonding in a cozy pillow fort, Lumina had continued to lead the way.

Just ahead, Lumina had begun to climb a beautiful wrought iron staircase that spiraled down from somewhere up above. It met the catwalk before her as if it were the most ordinary thing in the world for a spiral staircase to be suspended in open space at the end of a rafter. Demi peered over the catwalk’s railing at the attic floor below, but the spiral staircase did not descend further than the rafter where she currently stood. Like so many other ways in the chapterhouse, there was apparently only one (meandering) path forward. It was a bit like threading a needle.

She stepped onto the staircase experimentally, expecting it to shake and shimmy with her weight, but it held firm and steady. Relieved, Demi hurried to follow Lumina.

Having crested the stairs, the little girl had apparently reached a level above even the attic. Had she entered the attic’s attic? The chapterhouse seemed to be the sort of place where one might stumble into such an absurdity, where attics required numbers or letters to designate which was which.

There was another carved wooden door before them, this one set into a wooden wall that stretched in either direction, making a large wooden box that as far as Demi could discern was suspended from absolutely nothing.

Well. It wasn’t the strangest thing she’d seen that day.

Pause.

Full stop.

Demi realized at once that she really couldn’t say what the strangest thing she’d seen that day actually was.

The council of Demi could not even come to a consensus over this troubling question.

That was the sort of day it had been.

Lumina pushed through the door in front of her. It was unlocked, and required no key.

And once Demi followed her through the door, she knew at once that she had not entered Attic B. There was no reason to label it in such a way because its purpose, and therefore its name, was immediately clear. The room was surrounded on three sides by checkerboard walls scored with regular recesses, and on a fourth side by ornate wooden railing. Past the ornate railing was the outer wall of the chapterhouse, and in it were many small openings, neat little entrances that were open to the night outside. There was a drowsy feeling there on the hardwood, and the low, peaceful hum of soft voices. It smelled a bit dusty. She again heard the sound of wings, which was rather to be expected as she was surrounded by birds.

“It’s a dovecote!” Demi realized all at once, turning around in place to look at all the dozy roosting doves and pigeons.

Lumina nodded. “Yes,” she said. “There are about three hundred birds up here, not counting the late fledges who haven't left the nest yet.” Lumina paused, turning slowly to look around herself. “In fact, there are more friends here than usual today — quite a lot of tourists. I wonder if the birds decided to have a festival?” she asked curiously, apparently to herself. She looked back at Demi. “Of course, they’re mostly ash pigeons,” she said, gesturing around herself. “There are some other doves about, but they’re in their little pens, over here. They wouldn't survive out in the world, but they remain safe under care.”

Demi followed to look at the cages where doves and fancy pigeons roosted comfortably.

“It’s only soot rooks and ash pigeons in the City, isn't it?” she asked thoughtfully as she looked at them.

“Outside of conservatories and arcologies?” Lumina asked, then confirmed with a nod. “That’s right,” she said. “No other birds survive for long in the City.” She frowned briefly, and her brow creased faintly. Then it relaxed as she looked again at the caged birds. “But they’re safe here,” she repeated. “That’s just the way things are in the City.” She opened one of the cage doors and coaxed a plump dove onto her arm. “But that's all right,” she said, giving the bird a gentle rub. “My inmates aren't very interested in escape. This is Merope,” Lumina said, indicating the bird on her arm. “That is Celaeno.”

Afterwards Demi found herself introduced to many birds. All of the birds who lived in the dovecote had names, and Lumina could pick them all out easily. That was how she could immediately determine that they had so many guests this evening. She was in charge of looking after the birds, although the loose pigeons required very little looking after, as they fended well for themselves and went in and out as they pleased. It was only the fancy doves and pigeons that depended on Lumina’s care.

But they were all well looked after, and Lumina clearly considered them her true friends. The birds were very comfortable around her, and would let her do practically anything to them. As she moved around the dovecote, birds would flutter down to land on her head and shoulders, sometimes quarreling with one another over coveted space until Lumina hushed them down with quiet authority. There were times that she looked not so much like a girl as like a Christmas tree ornamented solely in pigeons.

As she watched the birds making themselves comfortable on Lumina, Demi was granted a great honor herself, as a pigeon came to sit on her arm unexpectedly. She had held it out experimentally, wondering how long it would take before the birds of the dovecote trusted her enough to come near.

She had not expected that a bird would immediately take her up on the offer. As she marveled at the fat little pigeon on her arm, several other birds decided to investigate her. These weren’t brave enough to perch on her body, but they did form a circle around her on the floor, milling about slowly and considering her.

They probably expect me to toss them some feed, she thought with an inward smile.

Still, it was touching to have them accept her they way they did, even if they likely had ulterior motives.

Lumina was also impressed by the pigeons’ interest in Demi.

“If the pigeons like you, then I’m sure we’ll get along,” she said seriously.

That was quite a vote of confidence.

Demi did not meet all three hundred of the resident birds that particular evening, owing to the fact that it was already late, there were an excessive number of visiting birds, and Lumina did not want to disturb the pigeons more than they already had, but Demi did meet them all in time, and others besides, as the population of the dovecote grew steadily the entire time she lived at the chapterhouse. The dovecote was a very relaxing place, not because it was still, but because it was alive. It was a nice place to sit and think while the goings on of living carried on all around.

But there was more to see and Lumina was ready to exhibit it. So the dovecote was closed up neatly and down the staircase they went, criss crossing on rafters until they came to a metal ladder. This ladder offered passage back down to the floor in a wholly different part of the attic.

They ended up in an entirely enclosed space, one that could only be reached by the ladder from above (or from a small concealed tunnel that one had to take on hands and knees, but Demi would only be introduced to this handy escape some time later). There were wire shelves along the walls made of oddities, and each of the shelves was stacked to the very top with aquariums.

Or rather, terrariums.

“Welcome to the larvarium,” Lumina said solemnly.

Besides keeping doves, Demi’s little girl roommate was apparently a serious collector and cataloger of butterflies and moths. There were a dozen specimen cabinets in their own little area, and a desk with fine tools laid out across its work space. There were also paints, and other small sundry materials, along with sketchbooks and notebooks, magnifying glasses, pins, and prodigious looking reference books.

Apart from the terrariums full of eggs, caterpillars, and chrysalises, and the neat workspace, there was also a butterfly house that had a square footage that Demi estimated was larger than a small apartment. It was a proper room entirely devoid of junk, made with screen netting stretched over a frame of plywood and metal pipes and fitted with a double gated door. The butterfly house was lit by lamps that produced simulated daylight, Lumina explained. Strangelight could not be counted on to provide the amount of sunshine that the green growing things required to stay healthy. There was a veritable garden in the butterfly house, all silver blue because the lights were dimmed to simulate moonlight. Moths fluttered softly in the dark.

The sound of wings, Demi thought.

It was all strange and beautiful.

It was quite astonishing to discover all of this wedged into a corner of the attic, but it really wasn't any stranger than the dovecote, suspended as it was in some unseen way over otherwise empty space.

It did strike her as queer that a larvarium and butterfly house had been installed in the attic, presumably at great expense, but that changing the locks remained forbidden. She remarked upon it and Lumina shrugged idly.

“I was given to understand that changes are all right, so long as they are non-destructive changes, and that everything can be put back to the way it was at the beginning,” she said.

“What was it like at the beginning?” Demi asked with wide eyes.

It was hard to imagine what this place had been like before it had been stuffed to the gills with all the detritus of a hundred generations.

“That is a very good question,” Lumina remarked, but had no further answer. She cocked her head slightly and smiled her mysterious smile. “And if you’re wondering, the archbishop likes pigeons. He also likes moths and butterflies, which is why the dovecote and the larvarium exist, although I am the primary proprietor of both. He claims that he satiates his curiosity by indulging in the sponsorship of these special places.” She looked up for a moment before adding, “The dovecote was here before the both of us, though,” she said. “I imagine it will remain even after we’re both gone. The pigeons have a way of looking after themselves. I’m just their temporary caretaker.”

Then she yawned quite hugely, bringing her hand up in an attempt to delicately cover her mouth. She wasn't entirely successful, but that made the entire sequence even more charming and cute. She sleepily rubbed at one of her eyes.

“And that’s the tour for this evening,” she said with another yawn. “I’ll take you back to your bedroom, but then I'm afraid you’ll have to excuse me for the night. It’s past my bedtime.”