I will not pretend the cellar was not frightening.

It was.

The dark was complete, the cold came up through the slate into my bones, and there is a particular animal terror in hearing a bolt slide home on the far side of a door you cannot open.

But I had learned, in a different life, that terror and clear thinking are not opposites, that fear is simply a quantity of energy the body produces, and that the only real question is where you spend it.

You can spend it on panic, which feeds the person who locked the door, or you can spend it on inventory, on patience, on paying attention to the exact sound of the bolt so that you will recognize it later.