A clear solution was applied, one drop at a time, in a circle on the floor.  My strand of hair, a catalyst, lied pinched between my fingers. This was it. Sydney made eye contact from the other side of the room to indicate that she was ready. Four days had passed, and four trials had failed. The  results of this test would come hours from this moment, either proving all that we had learned from these last few days or forcing us to start over from scratch.

On our fifth attempt at entry, we would be proven correct, and finally access the third floor.

———————-

Following the explanation of the journey she had undergone, I similarly gave  a description of my circumstances, albeit one omitting a considerable amount of my personal history.

Look, I had already experienced at least one strange reaction to the confession of my previous identity as a man, and was not eager to experience that again. Not that I distrusted Sydney or suspected her of having strange inclinations but...

I am distracting myself. The core of the matter is that we exchanged dialogue: to recollect on our time on earth, compare our shared experiences , and to empathize with each other. We did each of these things, and in doing so, gained mutual trust and solidarity, as well as a sense of collective purpose: together, we decided, we would escape the forest with our lives.

But first, we had to address some more immediate concerns. My wound, though dressed and pressurized, was still bleeding, and would probably need its bandages changed throughout the night. This would be manageable ordinarily, but there was no telling how the caretaker would react to me staying up past midnight and with another human nonetheless. 

There was also the matter of the cookies. According to Sydney, the cookies could not be classified as human food, which was somewhat alarming. Also, they apparently  smelt of blood, but only when I ate them. Submersion in water or heat could not recreate the effect.

It meant that we would need to find another food source, so, to that end, I took Sydney on a tour around the house. Though I had not personally seen any specimens of “shadow creatures”, I trusted that Sydney would be able to distinguish their presence or absence more surely than I. Doing so also allowed me to better inform her of the resources at our disposal, which would be a boon to our cooperation .

I  noticed that she was oddly knowledgeable about the particulars of glassware, supposedly owing to her recent passion for wine. Why a sixteen year old such as herself was interested in such a particular and expensive hobby was beyond me, but, seeing as I was seventeen and cross dressed in children’s clothes, I could not in good conscience call out the dissonance .

The latter half of the tour consisted of repeated and frustrating failures, wherein she would enter a guest room, spend five minutes looking for what she called “traces of shadow”, find nothing, and leave. Nearly twenty rooms and nothing. If she had searched an equal number of cabins, she assured me, she would have found five.

While I was somewhat glad that I didn’t have to see someone eat a half pound of raw insect with their hands, I also was concerned. From what little I knew about the geography of this place, we were surrounded by dangerous, cabin-less forest. It seemed unsustainable to repeatedly send her out to hunt for bugs, and unrealistic to try and tackle the “creator of the crater” or any of the other silent, invisible giants she believed populated this place. 

Which brought us to square one. What, inside the house, could we use to feed her?

The first solution we utilized was less of a solution than a gambit, although it was reasonable to expect that it could work. The thinking went that, for a well to exist, there must be a water table underneath. And where was live likelier to thrive than in the presence of water?

Normally, attempting to access such a pool would be suicide: literally throwing oneself down a well. But with my light bodyweight and Sydney’s assistance, it was not unfeasible for me to be sent down on the pulley and safely brought up. Of course, with an arm disabled, I couldn’t exactly go fishing, but it was a start.

We first tested to make sure that Sydney could lift me with her arms, a test she easily passed, and then once more to ensure that I could support my body weight should the flimsily attached bucket fall off. I might have been able to do it with both arms, but…

Needless to say, we deemed it too risky to my safety and moved on.

Tree sap. That old foe of mine, that thing which refused to surrender its nutrients, today would be conquered. We had water, a source of infinite heat, and a knife. How hard could it possibly be?

The answer was very.  The capability to boil large quantities of sap into syrup relied upon the presence of large quantities of sap, a condition that the knifes struggled to provide. Being more suited to slashing than piercing, it was barely functional as a tap, and the trees themselves were not the necessary species. So in many ways, the prospect was doomed from the start. But it reminded me of something potentially useful: in times of extreme poverty, it was not unheard of to eat bark. The procedure wouldn’t be as gruesome as you might imagine. Although bark might seem inedible, it is actually made up of multiple component parts: a hard, dead exterior is adhered to the trunk by soft, living connective tissue. It is the latter which is edible, and was of interest to us. Or, should I say, me. Sydney was, understandably, not very enthusiastic about the prospect of eating wood. I was willing to remind her that the alternative was house-cookies, which, perhaps too swiftly, persuaded her. Should I have felt offended?

Stripping bark was much easier that puncturing it, and within a quarter hour she collected enough material to create her would-be meal. She then hoisted up the necessary buckets of water and carried down the great big pot from upstairs. All the while I provided moral support from the background.

In my defense, I wasn’t being lazy; there just wasn’t anything helpful I could do. Pots and water are heavy things, generally requiring two hands to lift, and, crippled as I was, any contribution on my part was more likely to get in the way.

I did feel bad, however, and so offered to handle the “cooking process.” Sydney accepted without complaint and handed me the “ladle”, a stick which she also procured.

As far as I knew, there was no guidebook when it came to cooking bark, so I did what I thought best and treated it like pasta.  That is to say, I brought the pot to a boil before tossing it in and ignoring it for ten minutes, stirring it occasionally and then pouring everything out. Sydney seemed distressed at the idea of pouring out boiling water without a strainer, but ultimately resigned without saying anything. Onto the floor it went.

After letting the cloudy puddle steam off for a little bit, I reached over and grabbed one of the sopping pieces of bark. The white, fleshy bit had been softened by the heat, and now peeled away easily from the hard, dead exterior. It was somewhat mushy, probably overdone and unlikely to be tasty. Still, with a valorous heart,  Sydney accepted the dish and promptly bit into it. And then, the words I least expected came out of her mouth.

“It’s sweet!” 

It certainly didn’t smell sweet. It smelled like a tree had just taken a shower, or maybe a failed line of soap products. But to my surprise, she dug through the pile of white scrapings eagerly, apparently pleased by the taste. Well, to each their own, I thought.

————

With that out of the way, we could begin the main project at hand: understanding all there was to be understood about the physics of the house.

I say physics instead of magic not to downplay the degree of impossibility of the phenomena I’m referencing, but because they seems to be bound by a set of rules which can be at least partially deduced by observation. For instance, the “ever-lasting fires” can actually be extinguished by water, but doing so renders the remaining wood completely inflammable. Even after drying it completely off or subjecting it to the much hotter coal fires(these have to be conducted in the ballroom due to ventilation hazards), an extinguished piece of enchanted wood will be unaffected: only by waiting  for the caretaker to reset the house will cause it to be relit.

Through some innovative application of known properties (a clock to measure time and a cup to measure equal volumes), we were able to determine and compare the rate at which three cups of water boiled when placed over embers from various sources. Mysteriously, the temperatures of embers were almost completely consistent with each other, even when brought via pan from all the way across the house. I should note; I was mostly recording observations in the notebook as Sydney once again did most of the actual work. She didn’t seem to mind, though. As she understood it, these were necessary measurements to take if we ever wanted to create an inexhaustible engine or perpetual motion machine, both of which were essential to her designs of turning the house into an airship. I wasn’t  sure the two of us would be capable of that particular undertaking, but, needing the help, I silenced my objections and simply went forward with the assumption that she was just going to forget her idea anyway.but , I decided to let it