Told by Flinch · 2nd November 2026

A Window That Looks Nowhere

I’ll tell it from the bookcase, ’cause that’s where it started.

My hole in the cellar was always a good hole. I’ll not hear a word against it. It had the green lantern, and my writin’ desk, and the damp in the corner that I knew the shape of, and nobody come down there that I didn’t hear on the stair first. That’s what a hole’s for. But it was a hole, and I knew it, and so did Master.

This evenin’ he come down the stair with somethin’ under his arm and somethin’ in his eye, which is the look he has before a Project, and he said, “Flinch, stand in the corridor and don’t look.“

So I stood in the corridor and didn’t look. There was bangin’. There was a word I won’t write. There was a long quiet, which is worse than bangin’ with Master, and then he said, “Right. Come and see.“

It’s a room now. I can’t call it anythin’ else and be fair. There’s a rug down, and a bed that’s a proper bed and not a sack, and a chest by the wall with a scroll on it that I’ve not opened yet ’cause I want to save it. And against the back wall, where the damp corner was, there’s a bookcase from Sinfall.

I knew it the second I saw it. Tall and black, with the pointed top, like the ones they ‘ave in the halls back home in Revendreth, where nobody’s ever in a hurry and the candles go on for ever. I put my hand on it and it was cold the right way. I’d not felt that cold in a long time. I didn’t say nothin’ for a bit, and Master let me not say it.

Then there’s the window.

It’s in the wall beside the bookcase, a long thin one with a point at the top, and it glows red, the deep red you get over Revendreth of an evenin’ when the sky’s thinkin’ about somethin’. Only there’s no Revendreth behind it. There’s the cellar wall, and behind that there’s dirt, and behind that there’s more dirt. Master says it’s a window that looks nowhere. I says that’s the best sort, ’cause nothin’ can look in.

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The table

Master sat on my new bed, which I let him, and asked was there anythin’ wanted.

Now I’ll say it plain, ’cause it’s my corner and I’m allowed. There’s a table I’ve had my eye on. A Sinfall Dining Table, the long dark sort with the claw feet, that you can get off the Venthyr if you’ve done right by ’em and you can stand the price in anima. I’ve wanted one for my writin’ desk since before there was a room to put it in. The old desk’s a good desk. But it leans, and the Journal slides off it when I’m not watchin’, and a table like that wouldn’t let a book fall if the house came down.

I said that, once. Master wrote it in his book, which is how I know it’s real.

Then I said the other thing, which wasn’t for me. If I had the table, I said, there’d be room at it for two. And if there was room for two, there ought to be another chair.

Master looked at me a good long while.

“This is about Percy,” he said.

It is about Percy.

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Mister Percy

There’s a gentleman wrote to me through the Journal, from a long way off. I won’t say all of it here, ’cause it’s his and not mine, but he wrote from a cellar like this one, at the end of somethin’, and he said he could see a green lantern through his wall, and a small person at a desk. That’s me. Nobody’d ever written me down before.

I wrote back. I told him to stay where he was and I’d find him. I meant it when I wrote it, and I mean it now, only I don’t know yet where where is. The page said a cellar that belonged to a master called Medivh. Master says he knows the name, and that the fellow’s been dead a good while, over Duskwood way, and he went quiet after, which is how I know he’s thinkin’ about it. Master calls the gentleman Percy. That’s the name on the notice at the back of the book. I turned back and found it in the mornin’, after.

So we talked about whether there’d be a hole for him here. Master said, “If we can find him, that is.” I said if we can find him he’ll want somewhere that’s his, ’cause a person who’s been in a cellar that belongs to somebody else’s master a long time will be tired of bein’ a guest. Not my room, I said. I’ll say that plain too. My room’s mine. But there’s the space past the pipe room, where the old coal went, that’s dry, and nobody uses it but the spiders, and the spiders can be talked to.

Master said that was fair. Master said I was to keep an ear on the dredgers in case any of ’em had heard anythin’ about a cellar full of servants who never stop layin’ the table. I said I would. I can’t swear what they’ll bring back. Dredgers hear a lot and get about half of it right, and they always swear it’s the other half.

Then he said, “Don’t spoil it, old chap,” which I think meant don’t go runnin’ ahead of what we know. So I won’t.

But I’ll tell you what I’m goin’ to do, ’cause it’s a practical thing and I can do it now. When he comes, I’ll show him the green lantern first, ’cause he’s seen it already from the wrong side and he ought to see it from the right one. Then I’ll show him the window that looks nowhere, and tell him nothin’ can look in. Then I’ll sit him down in the other chair, when there is one, at the table, when there is one, and put a cup of somethin’ by him and let it go cold, ’cause I don’t think he takes it, and it’s the thought.

Master says there’s a new book comin’ for my room soon, too, for the bookcase, and maybe another chair. I’ve wrote that down as well, under the table, and underlined chair.

The lantern’s lit. The window’s red. The Journal’s on the desk where it won’t slide, ’cause I’ve put a stone against it, which’ll do till the table comes.

I’ll leave the page open, in case.

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Last updated 2nd November 2026, 19:09