He looked wary, suddenly, as if he had given too much away. “Yes. We are all given a house when we are ready. What we do with it is up to us.”
“You and the sorceresses?” I pressed.
He suddenly became very interesting in cleaning under his thumbnail.
“The cat told me you and the House are one and the same,” I said.
“Thecat?”
I suppose Cornelius’s gift of speech was news to him. “He said this great black House grew up around you, from your magic.”
“Clearly the cat should have remained voiceless,” the sorcerer said, still seeming a little perturbed.
“Is it true?”
“I suppose that’s one way of putting it,” he responded. “It started out as part of me, of my magic, but it has ... taken on a life of its own. I let it do what it likes, now, mostly.”
“But are you aware of everything it does?”.
“Impossible. It has grown so large and sprawling that even I don’t know how many rooms it has. In theory, I suppose, it could be an infinite number by now.”
“But from the outside ...”
“Space and time work differently in here, as you may have noticed,” he said. “The House is much larger on the inside. I tried to map it once, out of curiosity, but it was quite impossible.”
Since he seemed to be in a chatty mood, I ventured another question. “What’s your name?” My heart beat faster at my own audacity.
He wrinkled up his forehead and cast his eyes upward. Was he trying torememberit?
“I rarely use it,” he said. “It begins with an ‘S,’ I think. Yes, I’m almost certain it is an ‘S.’ It’s on the tip of my tongue.”
Another long pause.
“Sylvester. That’s it.”
What kind of a person forgets his own name?I stared at him. And was he a person at all? That was an uncomfortable thought. We stared at each other for a moment.
“You may go,” said the sorcerer—Sylvester—at last, waving his hand grandly. I fought the urge to roll my eyes and made my way out of the throne room as best I could while balancing the plates. I made it to the kitchen without incident.
Cornelius was waiting for me.
“I didn’t eat your breakfast,” he said. “I wanted to. Shouldn’t have left it out like that.”
I sat and poured myself some of the coffee and started on my eggs. I twitched a couple more rashers of bacon off the plate and onto the floor for Cornelius.
“Ta very much,” he said.
It was an odd first day, but not a bad one, entirely. I was used to work, having spent my whole life in the butcher’s shop—first underfoot, as a sprout, then behind the counter, when I was big enough to see over the top of it—and the work distracted me from the more bizarre parts of my predicament. It wasn’t too different from cleaning a non-magical house, except for the occasional appearance of a new item when I needed it. I did find that one or two of the rooms I had explored had either disappeared or moved to a different part of the House when I tried to return to them, but was relieved to find that the kitchen, my bedchamber, and the commode stayed where I had put them.
I scrubbed the kitchen to within an inch of its life, while Cornelius watched. I heard him start to snore, eventually, a tiny, comforting noise, while I rifled through the cupboards to make a plan for lunch and dinner. It was a luxury, having so many different ingredients all at once, and I intended to make the most of it.
While I cleaned, I thought about my heart and how to retrieve it. If the sorcerer truly didn’t remember me, he wouldn’t expect me to be hunting about for it, and I should be able to explore the House on the pretext of cleaning it.
I was surprised he had so easily allowed a stranger access to his home, however, and that he seemed so uncurious about my origins or motives—but I suppose that, to him, I was no more than another inconsequential stray who had just wandered in, like Cornelius, and the cat and I were diverting enough in his shapeless days that he tolerated our presence.
As soon as I had finished cleaning up after breakfast, I started the search for my heart in the kitchen.
No matter how many drawers or cupboard doors I opened, more appeared, sidling in at the corner of my vision and then solidifying when I turned to look at them.
