Mira stoops to lift the crow feather, then steps down. The staircase is longer than it should be — fifteen steps, twenty, more — and with each one the smell of old paper thickens until it feels almost solid. The pulsing light grows warmer, amber rather than pale, the closer she gets. At the bottom she finds a room no larger than a wardrobe, its walls lined floor-to-ceiling with shelves of loose paper: folded slips, torn corners, old receipts — every kind of scrap — each one covered in shifting letters she cannot quite read. At the center stands a low wooden table, and on it a lantern whose flame breathes in and out with that steady, living pulse. Seated beside the lantern, head bowed over something held in gloved hands, is a tall figure in a wide-brimmed oilskin hat — perfectly still, perfectly silent, as though they have been waiting a very long time.