Mister Monday

The first installment in the seven-book Keys to the Kingdom series is set in a world where reality was created by a being called the Architect, who built the House to observe and record all of creation. Before departing, the Architect left a Will to ensure Her work continued, but seven Trustees broke the Will into fragments and scattered them across space and time, seizing power for themselves. The novel opens with the first fragment escaping its prison on a dead star during a routine inspection.

Arthur Penhaligon, a boy with severe asthma, collapses during a cross-country run on his first day at a new school. Two classmates, Leaf and her brother Ed, administer his inhaler. While Arthur lies incapacitated, two figures appear in a flash of light: Mister Monday, one of the seven Trustees and ruler of the Lower House, reclining in a wicker bath-chair, and his butler, Sneezer. Sneezer's plan is for Monday to give Arthur the Key, a metal blade shaped like a clock's minute hand, and reclaim it after Arthur dies, technically fulfilling the Will's conditions. Arthur grips the Key and discovers he can breathe again. The escaped Will seizes control of Sneezer, and glowing text appears on Sneezer's skin, reading the clause that entrusts Monday with the Lower House, the House's lowest region. Monday attacks, and both he and Sneezer vanish. A whirlwind of letters drops a green notebook onto Arthur. He hides the Key and notebook before help arrives.

Arthur spends days in the hospital. His adoptive mother, Emily Penhaligon, is a government medical researcher; his father, Bob, a former rock musician. Arthur was adopted as a baby after his birth parents died in a major influenza epidemic. Ed and Leaf confirm Arthur's experience was real: Leaf saw the figures, and Ed reports dog-faced men in bowler hats appeared afterward, invisible to adults. The notebook, titled A Compleat Atlas of the House and Immediate Environs, resists opening. The Key materializes under Arthur's pillow, suggesting it follows its bearer.

After returning home, Arthur spots an enormous building visible only to him. Holding the Key opens the Atlas, revealing the House with a marked entrance: Monday's Postern, a back door in the outer wall.

On Monday morning, Fetchers, winged dog-faced creatures, swarm the school but cannot cross its threshold. Many students are absent with a mysterious illness, and Leaf sends word that her family is quarantined with a disease she believes the Fetchers brought. The Atlas reveals that Fetchers are shaped from Nothing, the primordial void, constrained by thresholds and vulnerable to salt. Monday's Noon, a winged servant, sets the library ablaze and pursues Arthur with a flaming sword. Arthur gambles that Noon's power is limited to the noon hour; at one o'clock, Noon vanishes. The Fetchers tear the Atlas from Arthur during the chase.

The Federal Biocontrol Authority names the disease the Sleepy Plague: Patients fall into comas from which they cannot be woken. A message in smoke reads: "Arthur. Get near the House and I will help you. Will." Arthur triggers a minor asthma episode to reach the House by ambulance. A supernatural cloudburst stops the vehicle. Arthur slips through Monday's Postern and is pulled through darkness by the Key.

Arthur emerges in the Lower Atrium, a vast domed city of Denizens, the House's inhabitants, all engaged in chaotic paperwork. Nithlings, misshapen creatures born of Nothing, erupt from the streets. Suzy Turquoise Blue, a low-ranking Ink-Filler whose job is filling inkwells throughout the House, rescues Arthur. She is one of the Piper's children, once-mortal children taken from the real world. The Will, now inhabiting a small jade frog, directs them to a hidden office.

There, the Will explains that each Trustee holds one of seven Keys to the Kingdom and that Arthur was chosen by chance. Arthur must defeat Monday and claim the Hour Hand, the Greater Key, to cure the plague and return home. The Atlas, which contains potential cures, is in Monday's Dayroom, his private chamber. Monday arrives with his servants Dawn, Noon, and Dusk, and the Commissionaires, the House's police force. Arthur is captured, but the Key has bonded to him and can only be freely given. Dusk proposes imprisoning Arthur in the Deep Coal Cellar, where the Old One keeps the Will at bay. Suzy secretly retrieves the frog while pretending to grovel.

Noon pushes Arthur into the coal pit with temporary paper wings. During his descent, Dusk secretly follows and advises Arthur to seek the Old One and ask about the Improbable Stair, a route through the House and beyond. Arthur finds the Old One, a giant chained to a clock face whose eyes are gouged out every 12 hours by clockwork puppets. The Old One teaches Arthur to use the Stair by imagining steps while holding the Key, but warns that wielding the Key will transform him from mortal to something else.

Suzy arrives with instructions from the Will. Arthur and Suzy leap onto imagined steps and enter the Stair, passing through Landings, stops where the Stair opens into other times and places. They traverse a dinosaur swamp, ancient Greece, and a plague-ravaged London street that is Suzy's original home, where she learns her family died.

They arrive in Monday's Antechamber, the crowded waiting area outside his chambers, built on the side of a volcano. Dusk guides them through a weirdway, a tunnel through Nothing, into the Dayroom, fighting off an ambush by Noon to let Arthur and Suzy pass.

Inside the Dayroom, a volcano crater, Arthur faces bibliophages, Nithling snakes whose venom dissolves writing. The Will, composed entirely of text, cannot cross their ditch. Arthur and Suzy remove clothing with writing and wade through the snakes. A spy attacks with a crossbow; Suzy fights him off while Arthur finds Monday sleeping in a hammock. Arthur recites an incantation and the Hour Hand flies to him, but Monday wakes and transforms into a giant snake, coiling around Arthur while the Hour Hand drives its point into his chest. Suzy writes ink on Monday's body, and the bibliophages swarm him. Arthur completes the ritual, touching the Keys together with his blood and reciting the claim of mastery. The two Keys merge into a single sword, the wound closes, and Arthur becomes Master of the Lower House.

The Will instructs Arthur to execute Monday, but Arthur heals him instead, restoring his body and mind. The Will takes the form of a tall winged woman. Arthur refuses to remain as Master. He appoints the Will as his Steward, names Suzy as Monday's Tierce, a rank between Dawn and Noon, and reorganizes the servants. The new Noon, formerly Dusk, conjures a Nightsweeper, a tiny black horse that will cure the plague. Sneezer gives Arthur the Atlas and a red lacquer box containing an emergency telephone. Arthur hands the Key to the Will and returns home via Seven Dials, a set of grandfather clocks.

Under full quarantine, Arthur places the Nightsweeper on his windowsill before midnight. The horse leaps into the night, growing enormous and blowing wind that wakes everyone from their comas. Bob receives a call from Emily: The virus has been identified, and patients are recovering. At one minute past midnight, the telephone begins to ring, audible only to Arthur, signaling that the next challenge from the remaining Trustees, known as the Morrow Days, has already begun.