text: [Themes: Fantasy, platonic solids, female protagonist, transformation, metaphysics]
  
  > look around
  A long, vaulted room, lined with cages of filigree and jewels. All of the animals are motionless and still, perhaps through the art of a taxidermist. In one cage is an elephant, so short that he reaches only to your knee; you easily could lift him under one arm and carry him away. In another cage, a giant mouse lies, curled as though slumbering, his paws folded in the semblance of prayer.
  
  Mounted on a swivel on the wall is what looks like an irregular hourglass, one bulb larger than the other. There is no sand within -- nor could there be, since the contraption is open at each end. At the moment the smaller end is uppermost.
  
  > Lift cage
  What do you want to lift the filigreed cages with?
  
  > take the cage
  They're hardly portable.
  
  > examine the cage
  They look like something out of a pasha's pleasure garden: ornate in shape and workmanship, but still strong enough to withstand considerable battering, even though the animals inside are stuffed.
  
  > Xyzzy
  There have been other worlds in your experience that a few well-placed words could bend or change. But this place seems not responsive to such control.
  
  > open cage
  On close inspection, it seems that the mechanisms for opening the cages are stuck fast; no key will ever work in them again.
  
  > go north
  Tower, Bottom
  You stand at the bottom of a stone tower. Doorways open in each of the cardinal directions, except for the north; there, a spacious niche contains the statue of a woman, skillfully executed in white marble.
  
  The center of the room is occupied by a spiral staircase, but one made of such slender and delicate supports that it obscures neither light nor view.
  
  The silvery door to the south stands open.
  
  > examine the mantle
  It drapes around the lower half of her body and puddles at her feet; with her left hand she is raising it to her shoulder, but at the moment it leaves her upper torso bare.
  
  > examine the mirror
  A sunken round mirror, which reflects (but upside down and changed) yourself, and your possessions, and all the rest of the room.
  
  > touch the mirror
  You reach out and touch the mirror, and your strange double returns the gesture. Your fingers feel numb and cold.
  
  > Go west
  This is the rim of a great cistern, which is built of bricks and lined with plaster, and must be very old. Along the inside of the cistern, a spiral stair descends towards the surface of the water, more than a full story below you.
  
  The walls themselves are painted with images of the vast unsociable ocean: of the broad empty water, the clustering clouds, the thin and distant crust that is the beginning of the New World.
  
  > look at the paintings
  Which do you mean, the New World, the native village, the ocean, the trade ships, the wrecks or the pirate ships?
  
  > examine new World
  A thin strip of coastline on the horizon, showing a dense growth of strange trees, and in a few places mountains rising out of the surrounding land. A single plume of smoke rises from this shore, as though to indicate that the land is inhabited, though only just.
  
  Some of the picture is too tiny for you to make out with the naked eye.
  
  ("I don't know what you may find -- you'll have to look closely at everything...")
  
  > look at new World through the lens
  Closer inspection shows a mad variety there: native people standing under the trees, as naked and innocent as Adam and Eve; an abundance of unfamiliar fruits and crops growing, half-tended, in the shadow of the primeval trees; precious minerals and clusters of gems lying on the surface of the ground, ready for the taking.
  
  > examine the native village
  Too small for you to see without help.
  
  > look at the native village through the lens
  The village, with its small houses arranged in a circle around a central fire, the outlying fields of crops, the peculiarly populous forests, all are done in a style familiar from etchings. Stilted figures holding fruits and grains look out, solemnly smiling, advertising the carefree richness in which they live.
  
  > look at ocean through the lens
  The image swims before you, and you see down, under the surface, to the depths where the tentacled creatures live among the bones of sailors and the wrecks of ships.
  
  > look at the wrecks through the lens
  You search the faces of the dead minutely, but do not see the one you know. Perhaps he has already gone to coral and bone.
  
  > look at the trade ships through the lens
  They struggle, deeply loaded, against an angry sea.
  
  > look at the ships through the lens
  Which do you mean, the trade ships, the wrecks or the pirate ships?
  
  > Pirate
  You find yourself staring into the swarthy face of a Spanish buccaneer. He has a thick black growth of beard, and a monkey clings to his shoulder.
  
  (Time here does not correspond to time outside; you have all the leisure you like to look at the strange world.)
  
  > look at the pirate through the lens
  You find yourself staring into the swarthy face of a Spanish buccaneer. He has a thick black growth of beard, and a monkey clings to his shoulder.
  
  > Pray
  Silence. Whether you are heard or not is another question.
  
  > Down
  You have reached the lowest extent of the stair, and stand on what might best be described as a small balcony. The surface of the water is still some distance below you.
  
  Perhaps to deal with predicaments such as that in which you now find yourself, a pulley mechanism has been installed at this level.
  
  > examine the pulley
  A mossy chain hangs from the pulley: one side descends into the water below, while the other ends in a hook just at a reachable level.
  There is currently nothing on the hook.