Where the stairs go

I had been wondering about the stairs all day.

Not what was upstairs. That was the mistake.

The question was: Where do the stairs go?

The stairs in the Haberdashery are wooden, made of a pale wood that I think is maple. They climb to a landing, turn, and continue upward. At the top are a pair of heavy dark-red velvet curtains.

They are closed.

I stand there for a moment, looking at them.

Then I hear birds.

Not one bird outside somewhere, but several little songbirds chirping on the other side of the curtains.

I climb the rest of the stairs and slip between them.

There is a hallway on the other side.

It is entirely made of wood. Wooden floors, wooden walls, warm and old and somehow alive. Ivy and other green things grow along the walls, and little songbirds fly freely through the hallway as though this is perfectly normal.

At the far end is a window with a built-in seat beneath it. The cushion is pink velvet. Sunlight pours through the glass, and just outside the window are the branches of a tree.

There are doors on both sides of the hallway. Some are closed. Some stand slightly ajar.

The second door on the left catches my attention.

The first door is firmly closed, but the second is open just enough for me to see plants inside. Lots of plants.

I push the door open. The room is full of them. They are everywhere, growing in pots and reaching toward the light from a large window on the right-hand wall.

And there is the peacock.

Not a peacock.

The peacock.

He is wandering around the room while an old woman tends to the plants. She has scattered seeds across the old wooden slat floor, and every so often he lowers his head and pecks at one.

The woman notices me.

“Oh, hello,” she says. “Would you bring me that spray bottle sitting on the table?”

There is a bottle on the table, so I pick it up and take it to her.

The liquid inside contains silver glitter.

She takes it from me and begins spraying the plants.

The plants move.

They stretch toward the mist as she sprays them, leaves lifting and reaching eagerly for the tiny droplets of silver. They seem to enjoy it enormously.

“Have a seat, dear,” the woman says, pointing toward the table.

She continues with her plants.

The table is smooth wood, pale like the stairs. Maple again, perhaps. When I put my hand on it, it feels cool.

Tea has already been set out. There are little china cups with handles, all white but decorated with different patterns. None of them match. Several used cups are stacked nearby, waiting to be washed.

One clean cup has been placed at my setting. There is a silver teapot and a little china plate, white with pink roses around the edge and a few scattered across the center. The silverware is real silver. In the middle of the table is a three-tiered afternoon tea stand filled with tiny sandwiches and petit fours.

There is a remarkable amount of silver in this room.

“Go ahead, have some tea,” the woman says over her shoulder.

I pour myself a cup.

It is chamomile. Fresh chamomile, not something that came out of a tea bag. I can smell the difference. It is sweet and slightly reminiscent of honey.

I take a sip.

It is hot, so I drink slowly.

Then I realize I am hungry.

“May I...?”

“Of course, dear.”

I take three sandwiches. Chicken salad. Tuna. Smoked salmon with cream cheese.

While I am eating, one of the little songbirds flies into the room. There is something slightly cartoonish about him, as though he might have escaped from an old Disney movie. He lands on top of the three-tiered cake stand, cocks his head at me, and whistles a little tune.

I try to whistle it back.

I am not very good at it.

He whistles again.

I try again.

Apparently deciding that this conversation is going nowhere, he flies away.

The old woman finishes tending the plants. She brushes off her hands, wipes them against her skirt, and pulls out the chair beside me.

She sits down.

“Where have you come from?” she asks.

“Downstairs.”

“Ooooooh.”

She draws the word out for a very long time.

Then she gets up again. She turns away, pauses, and carefully wipes her hands against her skirt once more.

There is an old leather book nearby. Now I understand why she cleaned her hands. She doesn't want to get gardening dirt on it. She picks up the book, opens it to a particular page, and places it in front of me.

It is a book of children's poetry. But not simple children's poetry. These are poems written by people who knew how to write poetry, fanciful and strange and beautiful without talking down to children. The illustrations are old etchings, painstakingly made and hand-colored. On the page in front of me is a forest scene filled with mushrooms and fairies.

For a moment, I think she has shown it to me simply because she knows I will like it.

Then I begin to read.

Little Birdy caught my eye,

Cocked his head, as if to reply.

I stop.

That's the bird. The little bird that was just sitting on the cake stand.

I keep reading.

The weaving of worlds is not shy.

It grabs you by the arse

And makes you cry,

But thrice shall come the bell that tolls.

It tolls not for you,

It tolls for I.

That's the end.

I stare at the page.

There is a peculiar feeling that whoever wrote this poem knew that I would read it.

The bell isn't tolling for me.

It is tolling for the person who wrote it.

I look around the room again.

Downstairs.

That word means something different here.

Downstairs is not simply the floor below this one.

Downstairs is somewhere else.

The place beyond the red curtains doesn't work the way downstairs works. Here, plants enjoy being sprayed with silver glitter. Birds behave as though they have wandered out of cartoons. Time doesn't seem to behave properly either.

And yet there are also smoked salmon sandwiches.

The book feels like a stitch in time.

Not a stitch between places.

Between times.

The book is the stitch.

The poem is the thread.

“This book is a stitch in time,” I say.

“Yes,” the old woman says. “And you don't need to decide which time you want to belong to. You are only beginning to learn.”

Something begins to shift.

I look at the stack of dirty teacups.

And suddenly I know.

They're mine.

I drank from them.

I don't remember drinking from them. There is no memory I can retrieve, no little scene I can play inside my head. I simply know.

Some of those cups I drank from in the past.

And some of them I drank from in the future.

Except past and future don't mean quite the same thing here. One does not necessarily come before the other. Something can have already happened even though, downstairs, it hasn't happened yet.

The old woman sees that I understand. She gives me a little look. It doesn't seem particularly important to her. Of course I remember the cups. I am remembering.

“I've been here before?” I ask.

“Well yes, child,” she says. “This is your home.”

Home.

I look around.

There is a little kitchen along one wall of the room. A sink, a small refrigerator, a stove. The kitchen feels vaguely like the 1950s, although the stove is older, heavy cast iron covered in glossy green enamel.

There is a pot on it.

Autumn Chowder.

I know that soup.

Potatoes, carrots, white beans, onions, garlic, bacon and sharp cheddar cheese, served with sour cream.

An old family recipe.

There are things from different times everywhere.

They are all here together.

Even the table seems to obey some rule I don't understand. It isn't particularly large. Four people could sit around it comfortably.

And yet I know that if more people came, there would be room for them.

There would always be room.

Then I remember something else.

I am learning.

Not here.

Downstairs.

When I go downstairs, I forget this place. I have to. If I remembered completely how things work here, I couldn't experience downstairs on its own terms. Everything I encountered there would be altered by what I knew here.

So I forget.

I don't always go downstairs. Usually I stay here. I go into the other rooms. I sit at the window. I play.

There are other places I can go too.

But every once in a while, I decide to go downstairs.

And when I do, I forget.

I live there. I experience things. I learn.

Then I come home.

At first, home seems completely unfamiliar because I have forgotten it again.

But slowly I remember.

The curtains.

The hallway.

The birds.

The plants.

The cups.

My mother.

I look at the old woman.

My mother.

She knows that I remember.

She smiles.

Her smile is warm, and so are her eyes.

I go to her and hug her.

And that is when I realize that I am eight years old.

I have been eight years old this whole time.

I wrap my arms around her waist. She is wearing a full pale dusty-green skirt with a white apron over it because she has been working. The folds of her skirt seem to wrap around me as she bends down and gives me a great big hug. Her hair is blonde with a little gray in it. She wears it up, but when she bends over me, some of it tumbles loose. It is long and wavy.

She kisses me on the top of my head.

Then she turns me around.

There are things I am supposed to be doing.

I remember that now too.

And she sends me back out into the house.

About the Creative Process

This story wasn’t planned. It began with a single question: Where do the stairs go? From there, I simply followed whatever appeared, one detail at a time, without trying to decide what it meant or where the story should lead. I didn’t know what was behind the curtains, who the old woman was, what the teacups meant, or even that I was eight years old until those things revealed themselves. In fact, several times I thought I understood what was happening, only to have the story correct me.

You can try this yourself. Begin with an image, an object, a tarot card, a rune, a doorway, or simply a question that makes you curious. Notice the first thing that comes to mind, even if it seems silly or makes no sense, and then ask one small question about it. Follow the answer with another question. Don’t try to make a story. Just keep following the thread and see where it takes you.