Dragonfly Mansion

Mr.Everill has owned the mansion since the month before his marriage and is still surprised by rooms he has entered only once or twice before, as it is the sized larger than five or six London town houses. The surrounding grounds (also owned by Mr.Everill) are a sprawling mansion’s worth of grassy meadows and moss filled woods. Slightly smaller than the countryside division of his land is the gardens.

The garden is inconsistently neat and wild. There are paved paths flanked by lines of crocuses and dogwood roses, and in some parts the garden is so overgrown and rampant it is difficult to discern where the garden ends and the forest begins.

There is a pond lined with reeds that sound like whispers when blown to and fro by the wind. Crushed weeds line the pond, a green skin or marshy aquatic blooms and the nectar of carnivorous plants spread over the surface.

The garden is boxed into sections, separated by hedge mazes and iron gates coiled with vines. They seem endless to Hazel even as she grows: there is a tea garden, a herb garden, an orchard, a division Hazel refers to as the dragon garden, which is full of stone statues of retiles, including a komodo dragon. It is her favourite of the gardens and Hazel spends a significant amount of time traversing them with her father, when she can drag him away from his work. The vines that sometimes grow around the giant stone beasts look like mottled snakes and Hazel tells her father stories of how the statues came to be their prisoners.

The flower garden is a riot of colour. There are flowers like peacock tails, others with umbrellas of sunset coloured silk, and some blossoms with rainbow eyes on their petals. There are some more blooms of the exotic variety, jungle flowers with transparent stems and cups that appear to be made of glass.

It is the second closest garden to Hazel’s room. In the summer Hazel does not bother closing her window at all, and through the night she sleeps with the smell of roses and raspberry leaves, accompanied by a brontide. Her circular window with a rainbow of stained glass opens above the dogwood roses. They clog the outer wall of the spire and were they not cut back each summer they would reach into her bedroom.

The forest that stretches beyond the gardens is ancient and golden, a kingdom of towering trunks with entire glades and valleys of the woods blanketed with moss and starry with bluebells.

The actual dwelling is a combination of Victorian build, classical arches and French cathedral stained glass. It is enigmatic, so large that Hazel gets quiet lost in the earlier years of her life, and she sometimes suspects it is made of the interplay of shadow and colour rather than actual metal and wooden foundations.

It has dark floors and wood paneled walls shrouded in luxurious carpets or lapis-blue hangings. Embroidered cloths are draped over the furniture in a multitude of rooms.

The blues of the house are punctuated by colours that pour in from the stained glass windows dotting hallways and room. There are entire alcoves ablaze with scarlet and gold and the colours of a dying fire. One walking down a hall of the Everill house may appear to be walking through flames on seconds and through an ocean wave the next.

Hazel’s room is perfectly situated in one of the highest levels of the mansion. The entire room looks as though it has sunk into the ocean.

Hazel’s room is a circular collection of glass and porcelain curiosities. Her bed and additive furniture is made of the same rich dark wood that fills the rest of the house, though it is ornamented with tiles painted with flowers and shrubbery. There are blossomless plants on the windowsill, and vases of cut flowers on the nightstand next to a plain frosted glass oil lamp. There are discarded dolls from Hazel’s childhood, toys she has not touched in years, strewn across a section of the floor near an almost empty costume trunk, dilapidated with age. The bookcase holds a section of coveted and educational tomes that Hazel has never touched, they are only protected from the dust and drafts of the house by the maids who occasionally wipe them down or drape them with blankets. Hazel reads only books from her father’s library, fairy stories she finds more fascinating than a glimpse at history and accounting. What amuses her about her room, how Hazel often entertains herself when she is sent to her room or cannot sleep, is the ledge that runs around the periphery of the room. It is big enough to put her feet right on, right next to each other. She balances and holds the wall as she makes rounds of the room, stepping on the headboard of her bed or the shelves of her bookcase to avoid touching the floor.

The room is unfamiliar to her, and no amount of time spent in it makes the chamber more cozy. The only thing that correlates the room to Hazel is turquoise. The frames and panels of the room are decorated with inlaid slats of pure turquoise. A mobile of carved turquoise turtles is suspended over the bed, blue and green animal kingdom. Pieces of rough uncut turquoise are strung on thread running across the ceiling in overlapping lines like a spider web. And all the walls are painted blue with white trim like the foam on the crest of a wave.

Hazel prefers the more populated areas of the house, or rather the rooms next to them. She likes to hear words spoken by others drift toward her, though she often is lost in her watercolour paintings.

The study, which is not rightfully a study, merely a cozy room filled with books and illuminated by a fireplace, is another favourite of Hazel’s. She likes the shadows in the inglenook, and during cold wintry nights it is where she is most often found, her watercolour palette devoid of yellow, red and black after overuse.

The most impressive area of the house is, however, the dome of stained glass over the opulent lobby. Above the dark wood staircase is a curve of blue and green glass in an iron frame, deep and serene.

Art by Ellie

Text by Lucie MacAulay