Blackbriar by William Sleator Page B

plunging down head first. The steps were well-worn dark wood and made a 180-degree turn, so that each step was triangular, one side too small to step on. The walls here, as everywhere else in the house, were nubbly and whitewashed, and formed an oddly shaped, twisting passageway beneath the sloping ceiling. The candlelight made hovering patterns around them as they descended.
    “Please,” Philippa called from the kitchen as soon as Danny stepped down into the living room, “I don’t like people trampling through my room all the time. There is another stairway, you know.”
    She’s really in a rotten mood, Danny thought. He looked at Lark, sighing. “But I thought you didn’t want us in the kitchen,” he called, “so we had to come down that way.”
    “What are you mumbling about?”
    “Oh, nothing, forget it.” He motioned to Lark to come over to the door. “Here it is,” he said, holding up the candle.
    Lark examined the door, running her finger along the grooves in the wood. It was very smooth, almost shiny. “This is really incredible,” she said at last. “Just imagine—all these people dying here. But it does seem strange that they would have the strength or the will power to keep this record. I mean, you’d think that they’d be in such pain they wouldn’t even think about doing this.”
    “Do you notice anything else about the writing?”
    Lark looked again carefully, then stepped back for a moment. “Actually, all the writing looks the same. It looks like the same person did it all. Is that what you mean?”
    “Yes. I wanted to see if you thought so too. And you know what it makes me think?”
    “What?”
    “That Mary Peachy must have done it. She wrote it down whenever anybody else died. And she must have been the last one to die, because there was no one to put the date after her name. Can you imagine it? To have everybody dropping dead all around you, and then to be left all alone, just waiting to die?”
    “I wonder what happened to all the bodies. I wonder if she had to bury them herself.”
    “I wonder what happened to her body,” Danny whispered. Almost uncontrollably, a twisted smile crept across his face.
    Lark grabbed his arm. “What’s wrong with you? How can you smile like that?”
    “Oh, I’m not really smiling. It’s just that . . . it’s all too much. It’s so impossibly creepy. I mean her body could very well still be here, just left to rot away over the centuries.”
    Lark thought for a moment. “I wonder if that doll in your room has—”
    “Shhh! I’m not supposed to have it, remember?” He looked toward the kitchen. “Try not to talk so loud.”
    “But I wonder how it fits in,” she whispered. She looked again at the door. “You know, Mary Peachy couldn’t have been very sick if she had the strength to carve all those names, and take care of all those bodies. She really sounds like she must have been a remarkable person, awfully brave and independent. That’s how I’ve always wanted to be.”
    “Yes,” Danny murmured. “Brave and independent . . . I suppose that’s the way to be.” Suddenly he felt tired, and strangely sad. Ignoring Lark, who, bewildered by his sudden change in mood, still stood by the door, he sat down slowly in one of the chairs and gazed silently into the fire.
    Brave and independent, he thought. And I’m so cowardly and weak. Why didn’t I ever think of it before? Why didn’t I ever care about it before? And is there anything on earth that could ever make me any different?

12
    Dinner that night, as Danny had expected, was not the pleasantest of meals.
    Just before they had sat down to the onion soup in its little covered bowls, Philippa had burned her hand lighting the Aladdin lamp. Though the lamp now glowed gracefully in the center of the table, Philippa’s hand was encased in awkward cloth bandages, and her face, Danny noted with dismay, showed all the signs of a terrible mood.
    “Cheese?” Philippa said in her