There is a dusty, raised wooden pedestal for a model to stand on; if you stand on the pedestal, it does not disturb the dust. However, a bowl of wax fruit– pear, orange, apple, split pomegranate– are not dusty at all. There’s a big flip-easel with many intricate charcoal drawings, but the faces are always blank. Some of the drawings look as though they match up with masks from the Mask Hall.
Bookbinding Room
This room is full of vellum, canvas, leather, and boards, the supplies of the bookmaker’s trade. The walls are hung with tools. There is a work table by the window, which is caked with old blood that runs down into a drain.
Chapel
The stained-glass windows are black with soot. There are a few hymnals, but all their pages have been torn out. Hanging above the altar is an enormous crucifix, four or five times life size, and hanging from Christ’s right hand, tied on with a harp string, is a plain key. The harp it came from is in a corner.
Dining Room
The windows of this hall are wide open, and let in a cold dry wind. On the dining table is a sumptous meal, half-eaten, and now desiccated and crumbling.
Kitchen
There is no food in the kitchen, but there are lots of empty iron pots. One is sitting on the fire.
Stone Nest
This door opens onto a rooftop, where there is a jumbled pile of columns, pillars, buttresses, and pediments. If one climbs into it, one notices that the pile is shaped like a shallow bowl, and in the centre there is a huge boulder shaped like an egg.
Younger Girl’s Room
This plce has peeling pink wallpaper. There’s a tea set on a wicker table; one cup is halfway full of tepid water and always warm to the touch. The dollhouse is an exact replica of the mansion as it first was, except there’s a wooden door in the boy’s room in the dollhouse-analog. The door is painted on.
