Keeper of Enchanted Rooms(18)

Cupping his hands around his mouth, Merritt shouted, “Can’t you ward it or something?”

Farther away, she said, “You’re beneath the house now, Mr. Fernsby. The beneath is not enchanted, and I cannot compel the place to lend you a hand. Or a . . . floorboard, I suppose.”

Her voice grew quieter and quieter, until he couldn’t hear her at all. He waited a quarter hour before she returned.

She sat down near the hole. “Unfortunately, I did not think to bring a length of rope with me.” Her tone was such that Merritt could not determine if she thought the whole thing farcical or if she was taking it very seriously. “Even so, I don’t know whether I could pull you up. I hope you can climb.”

His shoulders and elbows ached from previous attempts. “I’ve certainly tried.”

A sheet dipped over the hole, tied to another, then another. The woman must have stripped the beds upstairs. A wonder that the house had let her instead of merely pushing her into the cellar, too.

The sheets reached him, and he waited while Hulda found something to tie the other end to. However, Merritt quickly learned that climbing up sheets was very difficult. Repelling down them might have been possible, but there was nothing to really grip except the knots, and by the time he managed to scramble to the first one, out of breath, it came undone and dropped him back into the mud.

“Bother,” Hulda muttered.

“Let me try,” he offered.

Hulda lowered the sheets until he could reach the second, and he tied the fallen one to it with a water knot. It held much better, but he just couldn’t pull himself up those damnable sheets, and though she tried, Hulda could not haul him up.

Merritt stood in the cellar, hands on his hips, digging a shallow grave for his mounting despair and burying it messily. “It was a good effort.”

Hulda sighed. “I feel I am to blame. I should have sent a message ahead instead of leaving.”

“Then we might both be down here.”

She snorted. “As if I would have let you near matches under my watch. Oh.” She vanished again, only for a moment this time. “Here.”

She lowered down a wrapped cloth. Merritt hadn’t realized how hungry he was until he saw the sandwich within it.

He ate it quickly. “Thank you.”

“I brought groceries as well, and a receipt for the collection and delivery of your things. Your landlord was rather compliant. The rest of my things are being delivered tomorrow. Trunks and such.” She worked her jaw. “Perhaps if you set the wards aside, we could—”

“No.”

She frowned at him. “I’m beginning to fear that only magic will get you out of this, Mr. Fernsby. And as I said, the house has no power outside of itself, and you are outside of the house. It might not be able to do anything.”

“And it might drop one of these support beams on my head and finish the job,” he countered.

Shaking her head, Hulda said, “At least you see the importance of good staff, hm?”

“Yes.” His tone hardened. “As I plan on falling into pits regularly, it would be good to have some wizards-in-servitude available to fetch me out.”

“You needn’t say it like that,” she protested. “Servitude is the best way for the unfortunate to rise in their station and procure good wages for themselves and their families.”

Merritt chucked the sandwich cloth at the dirt. “You talk like a politician.”

“You seem to enjoy pointing out my idiosyncrasies.” She pulled her tool bag over and rummaged through it, but Merritt already knew there would be nothing in there to help him. “Despite our current conundrum,” she went on, “we will fetch you out. In the interim, I’ll lower down a blanket and food. My movers will arrive tomorrow, and we’ll enlist their help.”

“Can they also break down the front door?”

She closed her bag. “The place merely requires a firm hand. I assure you that with some time and effort it will be quite livable—”

“Mrs. Larkin.”

She eyed him.

Pulling on the ends of his hair, Merritt asked, “Why is it so important to you?”

She hesitated. “Why is what so important to me?”

“This house. My staying. All of”—he waved his hands—“this.”

She opened her mouth as though to deliver a smart retort, then closed it again, thinking. The orange of the sun dimmed, and the enchanted lamp cast shadows on the walls—the parts Merritt could see.

“Magic,” she began carefully, “is a dying art. Magicked homes even more so. They’re crucial to our history. They preserve what we cannot, spells long lost to the whims of genealogy, for when magic has no fallible body, it cannot fade or dissipate. In the modern world, magicked homes provide endless study for scholars, wizards, and historians alike. They are museums of the craft.”

Merritt folded his arms. “That’s why they’re important, yes. Not why this house is important to you.”

She hesitated. Shifted. For a moment, Merritt thought she was going to leave, but she didn’t. She smoothed her skirts. Adjusted her glasses. Smoothed her hair.

“Because this is my life, Mr. Fernsby,” she said, softer. “And because I do not have and will never have anything else.”