hostel
A long low dormitory along the bottom row, where the pledged sleep: ninety cots under a tin roof, a stove, a table, one unlicensed lamp that the Wardens have put out eleven times and that is always lit again by morning. Nobody here casts a shadow, so nobody here is obliged to answer anybody, and everybody does. The walls carry no stains and never will. The lamp-trimmer is a girl of nineteen who has never had a shadow at all, and whose line in the Ledger is a blank page; the Registrar keeps it cl...
Located in The Ledger of Shadows.