In my mind I called that the shadow end, and I almost always stayed away from it. I didn’t like the farther end, where it grows dark and the ceiling comes down lower. I stayed in the lighter part of the room, near the door that’s not a door. I always put the books back exactly where they belonged on the shelves that was important. I liked to get under the table and build a kind of wall or shelter with some of the books. I remember how big the reading table looked to me then, and how high the bookshelves were. The memory isn’t of one time I went there, but many. The secret room is my secret, the place where I can be alone, and not scolded and bothered, and not afraid. I pass the Waylord’s door to come here, but he’s sick and lame and stays in his rooms. They never come to these corridors far in the back of the house. It’s a very long room, with shelves down its wall, and books on the shelves. The light in that room is clear and calm, falling from many small skylights of thick glass in the high ceiling. I reach up and move my writing finger in the motions I know, in the right place, in the air, not quite touching the surface of the plaster. But I’m not afraid I’m never afraid there. It smells of earth and age, and it’s silent. The wall is coated with thick grey plaster, cracked and crumbling in places so the stone shows through. I am so small I have to reach my arm up to make the signs in the right place on the wall of the corridor. The first thing I can remember clearly is writing the way into the secret room.

Voices le guin