The Lamp Room
The lamp room is round, glass-walled, and impossibly cozy. The great lamp at its center is dark and cold — and yet the room is lit, warmly, by no source you can name. There is a rug. There is an armchair. There is a kettle, just off the boil.
In the armchair sits the Keeper.
He is old the way the charter is old: not frail, just thoroughly. Sea-grey sweater, sea-grey eyes, hands like mooring rope. The cat is already settled on his lap with the smugness of long acquaintance.
"Edith's," says the Keeper, and his voice is the sound the tide makes leaving. "Sit. Tea's made. It's always made; that's one of the perks."
He nods at the walls of glass, at the fog beyond. "Two hundred and eighty-three years I've kept the bargain. One day in seven, swept up and stored, and in exchange no storm touches Wrenfell. Your aunt found the arithmetic disagreeable." A pause. The gray eyes crinkle. "I have grown to like people who count."
He gestures — behind the great lamp, where no door should fit, stands a door.