enters the cottage. Each step kicks up more dust as he walks and it floats through the low sunlight, among leaf-shaped shadows creeping over the floors.
One of the more persistent tendrils of ivy has found its way through a window crack and curled around a table leg. Simon opens the window, allowing fresher air and brighter light inside.
Teacups are stacked in an open cupboard. A kettle hangs by the fireplace. The furniture (a table and chairs, two armchairs by the fire, and a tarnished brass bed) is covered in books and papers.
Simon opens a book and finds his mother’s name inscribed inside the cover. Jocelyn Simone Keating. He never knew her middle name. He understands where his name originates. He is not certain he likes this cottage, but apparently it is his now to like or dislike as he pleases.
Simon opens another window as wide as the ivy permits. He finds a broom in a corner and sweeps, attempting to banish as much dust as he can as the light fades.
He does not have a plan, which now feels foolish.
Simon had thought that someone might be here. His mother, perhaps. Surprise, not dead. Witches can be hard to kill if he remembers his stories correctly. It could pass for a witch’s cottage. A studious witch with a fondness for tea.
The sweeping would be easier if he swept out the back door, so he unlatches and opens it and finds himself looking not at the field behind the house but down a spiraling stone stair.
Simon looks out the ivy-covered window to the right of the door and into the fading sunlight.
He looks back through the door. The space is wider than the wall, easily overlapping the window.
At the bottom of the stairs there is a light.
Broom in hand, Simon descends until he reaches two glowing lanterns flanking an iron grate, like a cage set into the rock.
Simon opens the cage and steps inside. There is a brass lever. He pulls it.
The door slides shut. Simon glances up at a lantern suspended from the ceiling and the cage sinks.
Simon stands bewildered with his broom as they descend and then the cage shudders to a stop. The door opens.
Simon steps into a glowing chamber. There are two pedestals and a large door.
Both pedestals have cups set upon them. Both cups have instructions.
Simon drinks the contents of one, the taste like blueberries and cloves and night air.
The dice in the other he rolls upon the pedestal, watching as they settle and then both pedestals sink into the stone.
The door opens into a large hexagonal room with a pendulum hanging from the center. It glows with dancing light from a number of lamps flanking halls that twist out of sight.
Everywhere there are books.
“May I be of assistance, sir?”
Simon turns to find a man with long white hair standing in a doorway. Somewhere farther off he can hear laughter and faint music.
“What is this place?” Simon asks.
The man looks at Simon and glances down at the broom in his hand.
“If you would come with me, sir,” the man says, beckoning him forward.
“Is this a library?” Simon asks, looking around at the books.
“After a fashion.”
Simon follows the man into a room with a desk stacked with papers and books. Tiny drawers with metal pulls and handwritten plaques line the walls. A cat on the desk looks up as he approaches.
“First visits can be disorienting,” the man says, opening a ledger. He dips a quill in ink. “What door did you enter through?”
“Door?”
The man nods.
“It…it was in a cottage not far from Oxford. Someone left me the key.”
The man had started writing in the ledger but now stops and looks up.
“Are you Jocelyn Keating’s son?” he asks.
“Yes,” Simon answers, a little too enthusiastically. “Did you know her?”
“I was acquainted with her, yes,” the man answers. “I am sorry for your loss,” he adds.
“Was she a witch?” Simon asks, looking at the cat on the desk.
“If she was she did not confide such information in me,” the man responds. “Your full name, Mister Keating?”
“Simon Jonathan Keating.”
The man inscribes it in the ledger.
“You may call me the Keeper,” the man says. “What did you roll?”
“Pardon?”
“Your dice, in the antechamber.”
“Oh, they were all little crowns,” Simon explains, recalling the dice on the pedestal. He had tried to see the other pictures but only made out a heart and feather.
“All of them?” the Keeper asks.
Simon nods.
The Keeper frowns and marks the ledger, the quill scratching along the paper. The cat