locationsFirst appears in: Anne of Thornwood Academy

The Tower

Where Aatos Ilmari writes. Students are not forbidden from visiting, but they rarely do. The air in the tower smells of old paper and possibility.

Overview

The Tower is the west tower of Thornwood Academy, occupied by Aatos Ilmari for longer than anyone can precisely determine. The earliest administrative records list an "A. Ilmari" as occupying the space. No title. No faculty position. No arrival date. Just a note: "The tower is occupied. Do not reassign."

Description

The tower contains books. An extraordinary number of books. Twelve desks, arranged in a circle, each with a different book in progress. Multiple pens move simultaneously, writing in at least three books at once, in handwriting that changes depending on which book is being written.

The air smells of old paper, cold tea, and something harder to name -- the scent of narrative itself, if narrative had a scent.

Students who visit the tower report that time passes differently there. An hour feels like twenty minutes. Or a minute feels like three hours. The inconsistency is the consistency.

Significance

The Tower sits above a convergence point -- one of the places where multiple leak threads in the Loom run closest to the surface. Whether Aatos chose this location or the location chose him is a question nobody has satisfactorily answered.