Adoption into the House is the acceptance into a line of a person who is not connected to the House by birth. It is neither synonymous with child adoption nor a reward for service: it changes the mutual obligations of the person and the House. The person adopted into the House receives a place in the inner circle, and the line accepts their decisions as part of its own continuation.
Acceptance on Both Sides
Adoption into the House is considered only after a person has lived under its roof for a long time. The candidate must already be able to distinguish the House’s responses, but must not yet invoke them as a right. The householders name the place they are prepared to yield within the line; the candidate names what they are relinquishing for the sake of the new place. The House responds by altering its established order: it opens a room that was previously closed to the outsider, accepts an object, or retains a new name.
For the first time that day, the householder named what the family would yield if Plitsa entered the line: a place in the evening circle when the use of rooms was decided. There her decision would remain part of the household's order after the day's work was done.
— Plaice at the Seventh Opening, Chapter 12
Preparation and Witnesses
First, the collators test not the similarity of habits, but the compatibility of differences. The person is deliberately left alone with a household task that the family performs differently: closing the evening circle, sorting old dishes, receiving an uninvited guest. What matters is whether the House can retain the new way without correcting it back into the old one.
Two witnesses attend the rite. One observes the family’s words; the other, the response of the space. Relatives may not serve as both witnesses. After acceptance, the person spends the night in an ordinary room: they are given no keys and no explanation of the signs, so that the line’s first action is not prompted.
Adoption Outside the Line
Failure does not always look like rejection. The House may accept the name but not the actions; it may open the circle while continuing to regard the person as a guest. The breach emerges later: objects return to places reserved for outsiders, the adopted person’s decisions do not survive the night, and family memories begin to exclude them from scenes in which they were present.
The rite may not be repeated immediately. The collators determine whether the people were mistaken in their promise or whether the line itself is incapable of expanding.