The Whatnot by Stefan Bachmann

wide and quivering and very, very frightened. Behind her, Hettie knew everyone was staring, stretching those long white necks for a glimpse.
    Piscaltine shoved Hettie off her lap. “Maud? Leave.” She faced the others. “I think we should all go to the Hall of Intemperance and eat wild goblin until we’re sick. Don’t you agree? My hunters caught it almost a fortnight ago. It will be delightfully decayed.”
    Hettie didn’t bow to anyone. She broke into a run. Behind her, Piscaltine was talking, going on and on in a quick, annoying voice, and the red twins were staring at Hettie, and so was everyone else. She reached the door. It was heavy, but it was no longer locked. She pushed against it, out. It closed behind her with a solid clank.
    Hettie let go a long, slow breath. What had all that been? What had they been talking about? Hettie didn’t like the way those twins had stared at her, and she didn’t like the way everyone talked about her as if she wasn’t there. She didn’t like this place. She had to get out.
    The painted hallway was no longer on the other side of the door. Instead, she was standing on a huge, dark staircase that went up and down and was carpeted with wine-red carpets that were faded and threadbare in some patches and dusty everywhere. She looked up the stairs. She looked down them. Then she hurried to the banisters and looked over the edge. She was very high up. Above her, she dimly saw the roof, but everything below it was a tangle of construction. She saw rooms being built, others being dismantled, drawing rooms and sleeping rooms and ballrooms being fitted together like puzzles. Rooms hung from ropes and chains or were set on top of one another in teetering stacks. Doors opened into nothing. Hallways simply ended. And all around, creaking through the dark on little metal swings and harnesses, were goblins and gnomes, building, hammering, hauling.
    Someone who might have been a maid hurried down the stairs, carrying in her arms a load of panels painted to look like a kitchen. She stopped long enough to stare at Hettie.
    â€œOh,” Hettie said when she saw her. “Oh, excuse me, ma’am, could you help me?”
    The maid jumped at the sound of Hettie’s voice, as if she hadn’t expected Hettie would actually be able to speak.
    Hettie didn’t notice. “I’m Lady Piscaltine’s . . . well . . . I’m her Whatnot. And I need to know where a door to the outside is. I need to leave.”
    â€œLeave?” the maid whispered, and her eyeballs practically popped from her head. “Oh, you can’t leave. Nobody can.” She began to hurry on down the steps, murmuring anxiously to herself.
    â€œWhat? Wait, don’t go!” Hettie chased her. “What d’you mean, nobody can? I can. I just need to know where a door is! Can’t you answer my question?” She felt the hard little knot of anger growing in her stomach. Stupid faeries. Stupid Piscaltine, and her stupid house.
    â€œNo!” the maid shouted over shoulder. “Ask a troll. Ask the pity-faeries when they’re hungry. It will be better for you in the end.”
    Hettie stopped, glaring after her. She turned in a circle on the step. Then she decided to go up and became utterly, hopelessly lost. The house was vast, and it didn’t help that it was always changing. Sometimes she would step into a hallway that was being reconstructed and would discover a wall behind her where seconds before there had been a door, or that all the panels had been flipped and what had looked like a regular corridor before now looked like a deep forest of red and rust-colored mushrooms. Some passageways were only a foot wide and she had to go down them sideways, squeezing between the plaster walls. Others were decaying, sagging on their chains and swinging dangerously. She wandered until her legs ached, up staircases and along peeling galleries full