* I am escorted to dinner * An excess of gastronomy * A shocking revelation

* A curious door * My host is injured

After several moments of staring, admiring, primping and preening, there was a knock on the door and one of the maids gave entrance to the Count. "I have come to escort you to dinner, My Lady, as I am certain that your ankle has not yet healed enough for you to make your own way."

"How thoughtful of you," I replied, secretly thrilled in my modern heart to be the subject of chivalry. "My ankle is feeling much improved, but it is not strong enough yet to bear me. If I were to lean on a walking stick, however, I am sure that it would be much less bother for me to get about. Certainly, it would be less inconvenient for travelling down the stairs than having to be pushed in a wheeled chair."

"That is true, milady, and were a suitable staff available, I would certainly provide one to you. Unfortunately, I have searched all the rooms on another matter and could find no stick any longer than my shin. I should be glad to have you lean on my arm if you prefer not to use the chair."

"You are too kind," I replied, "but the chair will be fine for tonight. Perhaps the added rest will find me suited for travel home on the morrow. And I am certain that the same bearers who carried me up here last night can carry me and my chair downstairs for dinner."

"That would be true," he said, "were we not having our dinner on this level of the castle." That seemed very unusual to me, but I kept my own counsel, and allowed him to push me in my chair to a room we had not entered that afternoon. It was a great room with two fireplaces and a massive golden chandelier. A long table with seats on either end occupied the centre of the floor, each place set with magnificent crystal and china and silver. The house staff was in waiting for us and moments after being seated, the captain filled our goblets with a red wine of such rich colour as I had never before seen.

As soon as our glasses were filled, the Count stood and proposed a toast, saying, "The beauty of this place will forever be increased by the time you have spent here. Ill fortune brought us together; let us hope that good fortune shall speed our freedom." It was a curious toast, but I raised my glass, nonetheless and drank deeply, savouring the hints of oak and currant and bitter cherry which gave the wine its magnificent complexity. No sooner had I put my glass down than the attentive staff filled it once again. At the same moment, the procession of waiters bearing dishes began wending its way from the kitchen to our table. For the next several hours, I was completely occupied with consuming as much as I could of the marvellous food. My jaw was sore, my arms refused to leave my side, and my stomach was swollen to an impossible circumference, yet my mind kept telling me that I wanted some more.

Despite the protests of my greedy side, I pushed myself back from the table, fully expecting to see that my new dress had spit at the seams; instead, I noticed that its ingenious construction had somehow expanded to accommodate my swollen abdomen.

"Did milady enjoy the meal?" the Count asked.

"I should think that my enjoyment was made manifest by the quantities I consumed. Surely, you could not have failed to notice my ravening hunger?"

"Certainly not," he replied. "I found the sight of you revelling in such unbridled sensuality to be most attractive and most inspiring. Certainly, there has been no woman in my experience who seemed to derive such joy and rapture from such an excess of gastronomy. I, myself, was inspired to eat more tonight than I have ever eaten in my memory, and yet I still feel this great hunger for something more..."

"I feel it, too, but were I to eat another bite, I should certainly explode," I said. "And were I to stay here another week with such a surfeit of exquisite cuisine, I would eat myself into such a state of corpulence that I would not be capable of fitting through the doorway and would then be a prisoner here of my own girth."

A frown crossed his face and then he said, "It would be a pleasant dream, to imagine being trapped here with you grown even more beautiful and sensuous than you already are were it not for the uncomfortable truth behind your statement. For, I am afraid that we are both prisoners here already. I had wished to discuss this with you this afternoon, but your beauty and your company were such a distraction, that I decided to postpone this conversation for fear that you might think that it was in some way my doing."

I was suddenly very confused and I asked him whether his statement were in jest. "No, milady," he said. "We each entered this place of our own free will, but it shall take more than will alone for us to leave."

"Who has imprisoned us, then?" I asked. "And why have they done such a thing? Who is our jailor and how do they propose to keep us from leaving?" There was an anger building inside of me and I was afraid that my furious temper would choose this moment to pour outwards.

"I do not know the answers to all of your questions, but I have suspicions about them. The persons who directed our abduction, I presume, are the Council of Four, the rulers of my homeland. I am not certain as to why they have done this. Our jailors are the same servants who obey our every order and hurry to fulfil our every request, yet will not divulge the secret of the castle. As to how they propose to keep us from leaving, the answer to that question is the same doorway at the top of the staircase which you and I passed through on our to our rooms that very night we arrived here. It is a most curious construction and the solution to the puzzle it presents is quite beyond my cleverness. That is the reason we are taking our dinner on this floor of the castle, rather than at the proper dining table in the great hall."

"I refuse to believe this," I said. "The solution to any puzzle is merely a matter of applying logic to the situation. A locked door must have a key, and therefore we must simply find the key in order to gain our freedom. Is this not true?"

"This door admits no key, at least not any key the likes of which I have encountered."

"Yet the servants pass through," I said. "Or if this be not the case, then there must be another means of gaining entrance to this place."

"No," he replied, "there is no other entrance. The servants do, indeed, come through that doorway, but they make their passage through the small inset door you may have noticed. I have observed them contorting their lithe bodies into such a compact shape that they may fit through a hatchway made for a child of three. I know not how they do this, and when I attempted the same manoeuvre, I was unable to fold myself into that position necessary for easy egress."

"You have obviously made a great deal of study of this doorway," I said, "but I only had the opportunity to glance at it in passing through. I should like to see it once again immediately that the two of us, working together shall make quick work of such an infernal puzzle." I bade him come around the table and wheel me in my chair to the small anteroom surrounding the doorway.

The little room was as wide as the massive door, yet too narrow to permit the two of us to stand side by side without our hips pressing against one another or the granite walls. The stone of the door was polished to a high grey sheen, leaving it a smooth surface with no character or markings except for the outline of the inset door. I pushed on the little portal and was rewarded by its smooth slide outwards. Unfortunately, the opening was too small even for my head to pass through. My face pressed against the smooth stone, I spied one of the dinner servants through the opening and I summoned him. He placed his face against the door on the other side and asked what I required. I told him that I needed him on my side of the door and was quite amazed to see him appear quite suddenly in the room with us. It happened so quickly that I was unable to watch the process by which he tortured his body through the tiny opening, but it almost seemed as if he had suddenly shrunk to the proportions of a side-show midget, then grown back to his own full height once he had come through. I had him repeat the passage back and forth several times, but no matter my determination to concentrate fully on his motions, it happened in a blur of motion and I was unable to see the full procedure. It made no difference, because I was certain that no matter what method he used, I would be incapable of repeating his actions.

My attention next focused on the two iron handles set on the opposite sides of the larger door panel. I twisted one, feeling slight resistance, but certain that the sliding sound I heard was some hidden mechanism moving into place with the torque I applied. When I had reached the end of its motion, I let go and felt the spring action return it to it's original position. After trying the other handle and observing that it, too, moved easily, I felt a premature triumph when I turned them both together, fully expecting the door to open as easily as the small door had done. But, push as I might, it refused to budge even a hair's width.

"There must be yet another catch to this mechanism," I said. "I am certain that should I find that lever, this door shall open and we shall be free. There was a depression in the centre of the door at the level of my swollen stomach, like a large press-plate, sheathed in metal. When I applied pressure to that from a standing angle, it refused to move, but when I kneeled down and pressed on it from the exact perpendicular, it moved easily, as if it were on an oiled track, and when it had reached the extent of its travel, a sharp clicking sound was easily audible. Nonetheless, the door still remained steadfastly shut.

"Perhaps it requires some combination of these three apparatus to effect its opening," the Count said, and I agreed, suggesting that since I was already in position to move the press-plate, he take hold of the two handles and twist them at the same moment as I pressed. "Are the handles made of iron?" he asked and, though I thought it was a peculiar question, I told him that I surmised that their composition did include iron. He swallowed nervously, then said, "This may present some difficulty, but I shall don my gloves and try it nevertheless."

I could not understand his apprehension, so I dismissed it, saying, "I shall count until three. Upon the count of three, you shall turn the right handle counter-clockwise and the left handle clockwise." He nodded his comprehension and I began counting. "One," I said. "Two. Three!" I pushed the plate forward, but I failed to hear the sound of the knobs being turned. When I looked up to see what was the matter, I gasped at the picture of the Count, holding up his gloved hands which bore, each in the impression of the twin handles, a spreading stain in dark red blood. His face was frozen in pain and horror and I stood quickly, pulling the gloves from his hands to see that the flesh was burned away from his palms where he had come in contact with the metal. "What has happened?" I said. "I touched those handles myself only a few moments ago."

"My people," he replied through the clenched jaws of pain, "cannot bear contact with that base metal. I have been reminded of that tonight in a most vivid manner." The servant who had come back and forth through the small door at my behest a few moments prior, now came bursting through the opening with a stack of bandages and dressings, followed closely by the doctor, who also made his way through the impossible opening. The doctor was very quick in his treatment, saying only, "You should know better than to try such a foolish thing. For you, Count Meta, freedom must be given, not gained."

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