Part 23

        I stepped softly on the floor, feeling as hesitant as I would on freshly-fallen snow, not wanting to disturb it any more than I had to. I almost hesitated to breathe, not wanting to push away anything that was a part of this strange place. I lifted my camera to my eye, looking through to check the light levels. Pretty dim... I doubted I'd be able to get a clear shot if I held the camera, my hands would shake too much in the amount of time the film would need to be exposed, blurring the image. I'd have to stay close to the windows, or find something to set the camera on. (A portable tripod was something still on my photographic wish-list, not something I often needed, but really should have for times like this!)

        I had no idea where to actually start taking pictures... I wanted to get an overall shot of the room, to have a reference later, and for my own memory, but it was so hard to get a good angle on that large a space. I didn't know if I could contain my curiosity long enough to focus on a single room without having even glanced at the rest of the house, but at the same time... I was so eager to learn the villa's secrets. Though now that I was inside, I realized my chances of doing so were incredibly slim. What did I expect to find, someone's home videos playing on loop in the living room? I had to laugh at that, but I found myself only smiling silently, unwilling to disturb the stillness. The atmosphere of the place was sinking quickly back into me, its air infiltrating my body with every breath.
        I aimed my camera up at the chandelier, which caught some of the light from the window over the door. I took a few steps around, trying for different angles, finally settling on one with the window behind the hanging pieces of crystal, the metalwork looping gracefully along one side of the frame. I knew I could always adjust the lighting a bit in the dark room, that would help some.
        I tread softly on the ancient carpet as I moved forward, its once-warm colors muted by dust and age. There was a hat tree to my right, in the corner beside the door, elaborately carved in the same dark wood as everything else. There were a few empty hooks on the wall nearby, then an open archway into another room, which I guessed was a parlor of some sort. The stairs to the left had an ironwork railing running up them, with a handrail of dark wood. As my eyes followed the stairway up, I realized that it didn't just cut off from sight where the second floor was. Instead, there was an arched opening to the left, where the second floor should be. I frowned a little - it hadn't looked from the outside like there was a second story to the large room, the windows had stretched up much higher than that, and I didn't see a floor drawing a line across their middles. Odd.
        Ahead of me, the hallway extended forward to what looked like a wider, open space, light spilling in I assumed from windows. There was a narrow table running along the right side of the hall, its legs of dark wood and its top of... marble, maybe? It looked a little more ivory than the flagstones outside, but it was difficult to judge with the light and the dust. A delicately-wrought vase of spun glass sat on top of this, with an arrangement of dried flowers poking stiffly out from it. I wondered if they had been dried when put there... or simply dried as they stood, left unattended for so long. I moved closer to the table, trying to get into a position where there was enough light to capture the dead bouquet... but no luck. I stepped back and opened the door wide, letting light spill in, and I grinned as I checked my light meter. It made just enough difference that the shot might work.
        From there, I looked around a moment, then decided to move ahead down the hall. If I went right, it would take me into the wing of the house filled with smaller rooms - which would be interesting, I knew, but I was absolutely dying to figure out what the huge room to the left was. I followed the hallway past the table, and into the open area.
        The first thing I saw was a huge archway to the left, marble pillars with intricate vines wrought of iron twined around them. The pillars were a deep ivory, and were huge, they must have been ten feet tall. The opening between them was also large, about the width of two or three normal-sized doors. But there was no door, only the golden wood floor passing between the pillars into a huge open expanse, small scraps of colored light dropping from stained glass windows...
        I didn't even take the time to look around the area I'd stepped into, I moved forward as though physically pulled, walking as if in a dream, drawn in through the pillars... My fingers brushed against them as I stepped through the entryway, the metal was so cold, like ice, and I knew that neither sunlight nor the warmth of a human hand had touched those cold vines since long before I had been born. Once I was through them, my eyes went wide, and I stood silent and motionless for a long while, just drinking it all in.

        It was a ballroom. It had to be. The expanse of floor was incredible, the room really did take up the whole area denoted by the tall windows, and it looked even larger on the inside. The walls were the same creamy ivory as the pillars leading into the room, and were covered in the same twining vines... only here and there, they burst into flower, with tiny gold stars of blossoms, and golden birds peering out from the dark leaves. It was incredible - like that old-fashioned wallpaper or fabric you sometimes see, covered in tiny little details, what was it called, some French word, toile maybe? Only wrought much larger, and with more depth, and... real. The flourishes and windings were all tangible, I couldn't even imagine how long making something like this would have taken...
        And the ceiling! Two huge chandeliers hung from it, dripping millions of tiny crystals and pearls like beads of water after a rainstorm. But stunning as they were, my eyes barely lingered on them, my gaze was drawn on upwards to the elaborate murals covering the ceiling...
        It was a garden of pleasures, exotic tropical plants reaching up toward a gleaming sun between tall pillars and graceful archways, elegant figures draped in Grecian robes, women and men of equal beauty. There were animals as well, leopards and white tigers, unicorns and black stallions, cats and peacocks, everything with fur as luxurious as the attire of the people. Pearls and gemstones, so many intricate details I was sure I would never even be able to see...
        The windows were still difficult to see properly, as the vines growing over them outside blocked the light, hiding many details and colors, but they seemed to show the lower levels of the garden painted above. I could make out dense ferns, rainbow-colored leaves, and a hundred kinds of flowers, orchids and others I couldn't hope to name, all cast in the most brilliant colors I'd ever seen... at least, I was pretty sure that was the case. I knew there had to be as many layers of grime on these windows as on all the others, and they were shaded by leaves, so I could only imagine just how vibrant they would be if cleaned and cleared. There were tall pillars set on either side of each window, I realized, and arches stretching over them, all painted (or sculpted in something that was) a warm gold.
        I don't think I blinked for a solid five minutes.
        Eventually, I took a long breath and shook my head. I looked down at the floor, saw that it was clear apart from dust, and I sat down. I leaned back on my hands, looking up and around. This was incredible... how had a place like this been left untouched for so long? There was a gorgeous old opera house in town that had been restored maybe a couple of decades ago, and pretty as it was, the craftsmanship of it was nothing compared to this. And that was like a public landmark, a bragging point for the town. And all the time, this had been hiding, forgotten, in the middle of the freaking woods!
        I managed to drag my eyes down to floor-level, now that I was sitting there. I could see, in front of me and up to the left, the doorway that led out to the little side porch I'd walked on the week before, where I'd taken the nice picture of the chairs and the vines behind. Oh God, where was I even going to start with pictures in this room??? I pushed the thought aside, letting myself just drink in the place for now. To the left of the doorway, tucked into a corner, was a raised dais, maybe a foot or so above the rest of the floor. I was puzzled at this, until I realized there were a few music stands (of the same intricate ironwork as everything else) pushed up against the wall. A bandstand! Well, orchestra-stand, more likely.
        The main expanse of the floor was empty, to provide as much space for dancing as possible, but there were plush-looking chairs and sofas scattered along the walls here and there, mostly in small clusters of four or five. Small tables of dark wood and marble tops stood near some of the chairs. Down at the far end, to my right, was the biggest fireplace I'd ever seen, or even heard of. Marble, again, with a fancy iron grate, which matched the ironwork tracing up the walls. Set on top of the mantle were huge sculptures, one a man, one a woman, clad only in wind-blown drapery, in graceful poses like ballet dancers, but looking toward each other longingly, reaching out toward each other's hands. I wondered vaguely how on earth I'd get a good angle to take photos of them, they looked like they might be life-sized, but I had a hunch the top of the mantle was going to be way above my head.
        The wall beside me, to the right, had more chairs and loveseats scattered along its length, with a smaller doorway down at the far end, bracketed by pillars like the ones I had come in through, only with a gold arch over it---
        I leaned my head back to look behind me. There was a gold arch over my doorway, too, I just hadn't seen it. Then my eyes went wide, and I turned to look toward the one area I hadn't looked at yet, the space that had been at my left when I entered, across from the door to the patio. Those stairs had been leading to a balcony! Maybe more like a box seat, like those in opera houses, there were immense burgundy curtains that hung from the ceiling all the way down to enclose the sides of the balcony. They were open at the front, though, so I could see the gorgeous gold railings, decorated with more vines and leaves, that ran around the box. I couldn't see much more from here, but it looked like there might be stairs that went even farther up from there - maybe those went to that overgrown balcony, out on the roof? I'd have to investigate.