Elshanor

Lady Elshanor was the librarian of Hawk Manor in one universe.

After an extended absence from Hawk Manor when she found herself staying at the Institution, she returned to find the Manor dusty and abandoned. Making her way to the Manor's Library, she found a portal (PROSE: Our Strange and Wonderful House: The Library) into the Library of a different, infinite House. There, she observed that it was as dusty as her own Library, but that the bathroom collected to the Library was, absurdly, completely clean by contrast. (PROSE: Our Strange and Wonderful House: The Bathroom (of the Library)) An “elegant and studious woman” strolling “with melancholy” through “a tattered library” was one of the scenes from across the House glimpsed by another visitor through one of the glass panes in the Conservatory. (PROSE: Our Strange and Wonderful House: View From a Jungle)

While she was debating replacing a book — Les Misérables — which had been neglectfully left in the bathroom in question, she heard a creaking noise behind her, signaling the presence of someone or something else in the Library. (PROSE: Our Strange and Wonderful House: The Bathroom (of the Library)) She hid out in the bathroom until she received an SOS from the Artifectors in the Laboratory. She lifted up a ceiling tile and hoisted herself up to the floor above the Library and bathroom, finding herself in the sideways room. There, doing her best not to anger the Hares In Charge of All Vegetation who were having a meeting, she slid down to the plain wooden door — avoiding the rabbit hole — and ended up in the hallway, where she met the Housekeeping party who were trying to forcibly clean the Lab. She convinced them to leave the Artifectors alone for now and clean the Library instead. (PROSE: Heebie Jeebies)

Making her way through multiple portals, Elshanor eventually ended up in the Throne Room, where she was drawn to one of the fifty thrones, a silver-set throne padded with royal-blue velvet. When she sat down, a disembodied voice called on her to act as judge on a criminal of the House, a man accused of stealing from the Fountain of Youth. After looking into his eyes, she judged him guilty, pressing the red button on her arm-rest instead of the white. This caused a trapdoor to open under the man, casting him into Pandemonium. (PROSE: Our Strange and Wonderful House: The Throne Room)

Back in Hawk Manor, one of Elshanor's associates, Alastair, also returning to the House and who was bemoaning her apparent absence, witnessed a version of Elshanor stepping out of the same portal and back into Hawk Manor. However, after his initial surprise, he realised that this Elshanor was not quite the Elshanor he knew. (PROSE: Our Strange and Wonderful House: The Other Side)

Behind the scenes

Lady Elshanor of Hawk Manor was a character often used by Elsha Hawk in her writings on Ficlets and Ficly, evidently acting as something of an author avatar. Elsha Hawk's author biography on Ficly spoke of “Mistress Elshanor of Hawk Manor, Head Librarian, Keeper of the Secret Passageway to Mount Krully, and Keeper of the Ficlinomicon and Kevin Lawver’s Pen”. The Hawk Manor mythos was originally developed on Ficlets, predating Our Strange and Wonderful House.

It is not clear if the “different” Elshanor featured in The Other Side is a parallel universe's Elshanor, having stepped through a portal in her own universe's Hawk Manor Library and ending up in another Hawk Manor instead of the Strange and Wonderful House's like the main Elshanor of the story — or if she is simply an older version of the main Elshanor, changed by her experiences in the Library, stepping back into Hawk Manor after no time at all had passed from Hawk Manor's perspective, in the manner of faerie-realms.