10..9..8..7..

I start down the stairs.  It is a circular staircase with stone walls.  My right hand brushes the wall as I go down.  Ten.. step, step, step.  Nine, step, step, step.  At each number I feel the number as a raised figure on the wall about six inches tall.  I can read the shape with my hand.  Three,  step, step, step. Two, step, step, step. One.  I am on a small platform with a door.  I don't see whether the steps go down any further.  I face the door and reach with my right hand to the place where a large, old fashioned key.  I take it down, insert it into the door.  I can hear the tumblers falling into place.  I hang the key back up and open the door.

I have been in this room many, many times in my life.  It is someplace I come back to.  The room is round.  The walls a stone but they have hangings and pictures on them.  The room is warm and filled with beautiful things.  The windows are deep set.  You can sit in any of them.  I go to the window across from the door and I am surprised to see that I am much higher off the ground than I have ever been before.  Previously, this was like a castle tower and all the lands around the castle spread out before my eyes. Today I am impossibly high off the ground.  I can make out nothing below.  There are clouds and they are passing below me, Soon there is nothing but mist outside the window.

I turn to look at my room.  There is a bed in an alcove across from the door.  It is up off the floor but the mattress is placed on a kind of platform.  There is a window on the far side of the bed.  It has a heavy woven cover of many colors mostly those that go with deep burgundy red which is the predominant color.  The bed is stacked with pillows at both ends, almost as if it is a deep, padded window seat.

In about the center of the room, there is a round table.  Over the years there have been a number of things on this table which usually clue me into "what the room is about this time."  This time there is a world on the table.  Like a globe only better.  This world shows the exact shape of the continents and the current weather.  It looks just like the pictures from space except that it has the aura about it of movement because it is moving.  One side is dark.  One is light.  The oceans are blue.  There are swirling clouds.  I could look at any place on the earth and see what weather is happening there right now.

There is a small desk to the right of the door, to the right of the bed.  I know when I go there it will be filled with wondrous things written on large pieces of paper.  I go over and sit down in the chair. There is a fine nibbed pen.  I dip it in ink and start to draw.  I make an amazing drawing of a woman, like a William Waterhouse woman.  I know that in this room I can draw anything my mind can think of and imagine.

I want to look at everything but although the room is full, like a Merlin room of wonderful things, I am drawn back to the window again.

I think of  clothing to wear in this room.  I think of a dress that has an undergown with sleeves you lace on above and below the elbow.  But then I think "But I have no one to help tie the sleeves."  I think of the dress the wizard's daughter wears at the end of The Wizard's Daughter by Chris Connover and choose that.  It has a long sleeved under dress and a sheer, silk, over dress.  I think of other long dresses and fill my cupboard with them... for some other day, some other time.

A voice says to me, "So you have come back."  I turn and on the other side of the room, between the door and the desk there seems to be an entryway I haven't noticed before.  There is an archetypical wise man standing there.  Long gray hair and beard, long and layered robes.  I say yes.

"What are you looking for this time?"

"Peace.  I am looking for one place in the world where I don't feel like a fraud.  Where the good in me doesn't feel like a veneer over what I am desperately trying to keep other people from knowing.  A place where I can trust compliments and good fortune and don't have to punish myself when they come."

"Will you go down?" he asks.

I have never been down, ever. This room has always been above everything, separate, secret. But I think, "Why not?  I have never had an invitation, while in the room, to leave it."  I glance out the window again.  I feel as if I am at least a mile above the ground.

He opens the door and we go out but he vanishes and I don't miss him.  I go down the stairs, about one floor's worth and the staircase comes out onto a gallery overlooking a great hall.  I don't want to be anybody special.  There is a lord and lady at the head of the table.  I come down the stairs without drawing attention and take an open seat directly in front of me.  I am at the long table to the right of the lord and lady as they are facing into the center of the hall.  I don't remember eating but all around me people are laughing, drinking, eating.  Servants are coming and going carrying great platters of food.  But the feast seems to be winding down.

Suddenly a troop of about 5 dwarves come into the room as entertainment. They are tumbling and playing jokes.  I am offended.  I think, "Those poor people."  There is one, a woman, who particularly catches my attention.  She has long honey colored hair.  She is about 4 feet tall.  She has an intelligent face and I am ashamed that they have turned her into a clown.  I catch her eye and motion to her and she comes.  We leave the room together and no one notices.  We climb the stairs and come back to my room.

There have never been people in my room before.  The sage, wise man, is gone but he has lead me to a friend.  I ask her her name.  She says her name is Magdalena. Now I have a friend her.  I want to tell her everything.  I want to hear her story.  I think now I have someone to help tie my sleeves. Now I have someone to sit with in the window seats and look out at the world.

Magdalena is curious about the room.  She goes over the the first window I looked out of, the one on the left side of the room.  "Oh, look," she says. "There is our farm.  My mother is out in the yard hanging clothes on the line.  My father is out in the fields plowing with the horse."

I look out.  The tower room is much closer to the ground.  It is still high up but not so high that you can't see Magdalena's mother hanging up clothes.