The Tower, Part II

She walked a circle around the tower, trailing her hand against the pillars. Under the leaning side the tower loomed over her, threatening as a stern parent. The carvings were watching her: angels, flowers, birds with small bones in their beaks and bulging eyes. She quickened her step and made her way around to the opposite side, where the tower leaned away from her like a steep staircase to the moon. In fact it leaned at such an angle that Ingrid thought she might, with the proper footwear, be able to climb right up the side of it. But first. First she would push.

She placed her two hands against a column and, bracing her feet into the soft earth, pushed with all her might. Nothing. She pushed again, hard enough to move a mountain, and her foot slipped in the grass. She went down on one knee with a grunt, scraping her palms a little on the stone that now felt rough and porous. She whimpered, suddenly wishing she had stayed in the hotel room, next to her older sister’s body heat and warm breath.

But she was there. She was still in bed, wasn’t she? She could go back anytime she wanted to.

Something caught her eye. It was a carving of a solemn-looking baby, swaddled and reaching its small arms up to a woman with a face full of peace. Beneath this carving was a little door, barely big enough for Ingrid to crawl through. She knelt down, placed her hand on the door, and opened it.

The room inside was dark as pitch, and her eyes went wide, searching for any small relief of light. The moonlight cut a tunnel of light through the small doorway, and slowly shapes came into focus. It was a wide, expansive room, round as the tower itself with only white stone on the walls and floor. But it was filled, as her eyes adjusted she could see - with furniture.

Old furniture, new furniture, clean and without dust, paintings, trunks and boxes stacked high. As the light seeped in she began to walk, on freezing feet, through the piles. There was a large four-poster bed, made up nicely with velvety covers, and she climbed up on it to warm her feet and look around. She felt a strange pulling, somewhere in the back of her mind, but when she tried to identify it, it darted away. She could see dressers, and tables with chairs stacked on top and desks piled with papers. Near the bed was a wardrobe with its doors open, and as she leaned closer she saw that it was full of clothes. She crawled across the massive bed and reached out, touched one of the soft fabrics. It was a coat. She pulled it down and wrapped it around her. It had a certain scent, something like Jasmine and maybe vanilla, that she couldn’t quite place. But it was...she recognized it. The pull in the back of her mind, it was something like the gentle tug of an illusive familiarity. She knew these things. She tried to think of how that could be, how here, in the base of a tilting tower in a foreign country where she was only a tourist, there could be a room full of things that she knew. She almost felt that they were as familiar as her own possessions. It must be that she was dreaming, and still in her bed in the hotel room. If she closed her eyes she could shake her sister and wake her up, and bring her here to see if it was all real.

Books were stacked near the foot of the bed, and she picked one up. She had only recently begun learning to read, but as she leafed through the pages of the book, full of words she did not know, she realized that she had read this book already. She looked around and had the sudden sense that she had read every book in the room; she could even remember some of the passages. She closed the book, put it back on top of the stack. She would not leave anything amiss. No one would know she had been here. She dug around in the bottom of the wardrobe and found a pair of shoes that fit her. In the dim light, she could see that they were her favorite color. She would return them, and the coat, on her way out.

She picked her way through piles of dishes, odd electronic devices, toys that looked too complicated to play with. She passed a baby’s bassinet lined with blue and green blankets. She stopped there, touched a blanket and imagined a dough-cheeked baby kick its legs, reaching for her. But it was only a thought. She stepped over stacks of children’s books that she had never seen before, though she knew all the words by heart. Finally, against the far wall, a staircase. Up, she thought. Keep going.