The House

The House provides all that is needed. There are clear fountains and deep waters where fish may be gathered, and along the shores great beds of seaweed are washed up with the changing tides, which can be collected, dried and kept. There are sheltered chambers for sleeping, vast halls where the air is cool and clean, and courtyards where pale light falls from heights that cannot easily be measured. Towering statues occupy the galleries, standing in silent ranks beneath the arches, their faces worn and solemn, their feet surrounded by pools and drifting birds. Water moves everywhere through the House, murmuring beneath the colonnades and gathering in quiet basins. It is a place that seems to have no edge, yet there is always another chamber, another gallery, another stairway leading onward. And yet the House has not always been empty. There are traces of those who came before: a vessel left beside a fountain, a piece of worn cloth, markings scratched into the stone, small arrangements of shells or stones whose meaning has been forgotten. Sometimes a door stands open when it was certainly closed before, or the water in a still pool is disturbed. At times there are footsteps in distant galleries, or the faint impression of someone passing beyond a colonnade. It is impossible to know whether these are merely echoes of former inhabitants, or signs that others still move quietly through the House, coming and going without being seen. The House gives shelter, food and water, but it keeps its own counsel. With its endless halls, its silent statues and its countless traces of lives that have passed through it, it is difficult to believe that it is ever truly empty.