The House That Ivy Built Encyclopedia

The pool

The pool is a very useful tool. On the surface, it appears to be a fairly shallow pond with a very strange silvery glint in its waters, like it is full of liquid mercury. At the bottom of the pool—at its deepest point—there is a rather large hole that disappears into . . . who knows where! Adele and Nina can control where its portal points, and anyone who goes through the hole can end up in a new city, a new state, or even a new country.

The pool always opens into another body of water, and the portal it makes opens in the deepest part of the new body of water. This can cause a couple of problems: One, a person wanting to return can have difficulty finding the opening; and two, if it is particularly deep a person can come out and be very far underwater.

To ease the difficulty and increase the convenience of using the pool, several measures have been taken. First of all, there is the very useful Alix. Because he can breathe underwater, he can go through a pool and scout out the depth. If a pool’s passage opens into a body of water that is not above the traveling person’s head, then no further action is taken.

However, more often than not the pool opens into a lake or pond whose opening requires a hatch. A hatch is what the house members call their convenient passageways, which Alix also builds. They consist of a series of interlocking plastic barrels topped by a hinged covering on top of the tube, and the tube is accessed by ladder. The water is then pumped out of the tube so that a person can go through the opening, arrive in an enclosed air-filled tube, and climb the ladder, opening the hatch to emerge into a lake. It is not the most convenient of ways to travel, but it certainly has the advantages of being quick and inexpensive!

Diagrams:

[Diagram of hatch][Diagram of water passageway]

The Schedule:

Sometimes the pool has a very tight schedule! There is a regular schedule that doesn’t change much, but then there are daily changes requested and also a “current default.” All of this is kept organized by Adele’s dry-erase board. This board is where members of the house make their requests and display their schedules. If you leave by the pool and you don’t tell Adele when you want to come back, you’d better be prepared to be stranded! Many times the default is either Nina’s hometown or wherever Ivy happens to be since she is one of the more impulsive and more difficult-to-keep-a-hold-of residents.

A typical pool schedule:

  Sunday Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday
5:00 AM Peyton—NJ     Peyton—NJ Peyton—NJ Peyton—NJ Peyton—NJ
6:00 AM   Bradleigh—WV Bradleigh—WV Bradleigh—WV Bradleigh—WV Bradleigh—WV  
7:00 AM   Cecily—NYC Cecily—NYC Cecily—NYC Cecily—NYC Cecily—NYC  
8:00 AM Nina—NC           Nina—NC
9:00 AM   Miki—MA Miki—MA   Miki—MA    
10:00 AM              
11:00 AM   Zeke—CA Robin—MI   Robin—MI    
12:00 PM       Miki—MA   Miki—MA  
1:00 PM   Zeke—CA          
2:00 PM     Robin—MI Miki—MA Robin—MI Miki—MA  
3:00 PM   Miki—MA          
4:00 PM   Nina—NC Nina—NC Nina—NC Nina—NC Nina—NC  
4:30 PM Peyton—NJ Ivy—NYC   Peyton—NJ Peyton—NJ Peyton—NJ Peyton—NJ
5:00 PM   Ivy—NYC Miki—MA        
6:00 PM   Bradleigh—WV Bradleigh—WV Bradleigh—WV Bradleigh—WV Bradleigh—WV  
7:00 PM   Cecily—NYC Cecily—NYC Cecily—NYC Cecily—NYC Cecily—NYC  
7:30 PM   Zoe—FL Zoe—FL   Zoe—FL Zoe—FL Zoe—FL
8:00 PM              
9:00 PM              
10:00 PM       Perry—NC      
11:00 PM       Perry—NC      
Overnight   Zoe—FL Zoe—FL   Zoe—FL Zoe—FL  

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