A staircase spirals around its twisted trunk but neither is this an everyday tree house.

The staircase spiraled upward through several narrow turnings within windowless, featureless stone walls that Kelso assured them, to Parneb's obvious delight, were of much later construction, opening out suddenly into a suite of airy, almost-modern rooms.

There he discovered that the staircases spiraled counterclockwise , the better, my dear, to fight off attackers while ascending, because of course the Kerrs fenced with foils in their left hands.

A staircase spiraled inside a stone half-circle - a grain bin in the days when sheep slept downstairs and shepherds up - up to a second floor with three small bedrooms and more deep sills and pastoral views.

The staircase spiraled down into darkness.

But a staircase spiraled upward just beyond where the hallways met.

Inside, a staircase spirals from the entrance vestibule to the second-floor lobby.

Each room tapers to a sharp point, flanked by windows that blaze with sunlight, while at the center a staircase spirals around a two-story birdcage, the home of two parakeets.

-thirty-nine, forty, forty-one," she said, and with the fortyfirst step she came through the ceiling and saw over her head, far far above, the deep blue evening sky, a small circle of blue framed in a narrowing shaft round which the narrow staircase spiralled.

The tallest staircase Saumer had ever seen spiraled upward, lit by torches and candles.