A Castle in a Basement

Wednesday. Written in the margin of page forty, beside a perfectly good recipe for a thunderstorm. I have found the Headmaster’s new sanctum, and I must record, with all the dignity of my order, that it is in a basement.

A basement! Under a shopping mall! Castles are meant to perch on crags, with a moat and some weather. This one sits beneath Hay Street, between people buying shoes and people buying lunch, and I had to ask a security guard for directions.

I am told the whole thing was made by people who build such places themselves. They draw the walls, cut the walls, paint the walls to look like old stone and carry them downstairs. I tapped one. It did not sound like stone. I chose not to dwell on it.

There was an older sanctum across the railway in Northbridge, and this one is meant to be newer and grander. Somewhere inside it is the formula for an elixir that lets a person live forever. I intend to have it by Easter.

Crumpet, my newt, says Easter is optimistic. Crumpet is a newt. Newts do not plan sieges.