Back at school in early January, Julian and Tess spent parts of the first Saturday and Sunday in the library workroom, putting the finishing touches on their editorial. Late on Sunday afternoon, Ryan and Hieu found them, just as Tess finished the second draft. She clicked “save” with a flourish and grinned wickedly. Looking over her shoulder, Ryan read through the text, scrolling for a while until he whistled.
“Well, that’s going to piss somebody off!”
“What? You mean make them mad?”
“Uh, yeah.”
“Why?”
“Oh, maybe where you say, ‘We can only conclude that the heinous ransacking of the school archives before Christmas as well as the wanton vandalizing of the Drake clock were committed by those who wish to see the sale of Parker’s Piece. If this is how they show their love of the school, doubtless the sale of the land enjoyed by generations of students will show it even further.’”
Julian grinned too. “Well, it’s true! Whoever did it deserves everything we said.”
The others grinned in return, and then they had to get to dinner and their homework.
~
The next morning, Julian left first bell class a little early so he could arrive early to chapel. He had somewhat grudgingly agreed to serve as an acolyte for morning prayer this week. Ms. Sayer was of medium height, with close-trimmed brown hair and half-glasses that she had a disconcerting habit of looking over. In her priest’s robes, she was imposing, but she seemed quite nice the few times Julian had spoken with her. After her request to help, he met Ms. Sayer at 10:15, and she showed him where the cassocks and surplices hung in the narrow sacristy, through a doorway from the choir. She helped him pick out a red cassock that was about the right length, and then left him to put it on and pick out a white surplice to go over it. It was a struggle in the small room. The sacristy was where the chaplain kept the vessels for communion, along with extra prayer books, hymnals, and of course the robes. As Julian fought to fish his head through the surplice, he staggered a bit and knocked against the leaning piles of prayer books and hymnals stacked below the one window. Dusty books scattered to the floor and finally emerging from the surplice, Julian bent down to gather the spilt books. As he did so, his breath caught. There, between the blue binding of a hymnal and the dark red of a prayer book, he saw an old leather binding.
“Are you all right in there?” Ms. Sayer’s voice came in from the choir.
“Uh, yeah, I’m fine. I’ll be right out.”
Gently, Julian pulled the hymnal aside and picked up the old, leather-bound book. It was, Julian knew, a duodecimo volume, a little bigger than a paperback book, with a reddish-brown leather cover beginning to crumble. Turning to the second parchment-like page, he saw narrow handwriting in a copper-colored ink, somewhat faded. The writing was unmistakably Latin. He couldn’t make out anything but a word here and there, never having studied Latin. But he knew the name on that initial page of writing: “Ernest L. Drake, D. Phil.” His heart pounding with excitement, he looked around frantically for somewhere to put the journal, where it would be safe until the end of the service. Then, with a grin, he realized that it couldn’t be any safer than where he’d found it, so he restacked the fallen books, placing the journal in the middle. Then he resettled his robes and hurried out to listen to Ms. Sayer’s instructions.
Though the service was only twenty minutes, really just a few prayers, a reading, and a short sermon that Ms. Sayer jokingly referred to as a “homilette,” to Julian it seemed to last even longer than usual. After the dismissal and benediction, Julian had to wait impatiently as the school community filed out past him and Ms. Sayer, shaking hands and saying their good mornings. He had a hard time looking Mrs. Ackermann in the eye, and he strained to see any tension on Dr. Stephens’ face, but all he saw was his usual sincere interest in others. When the last person had departed, Julian raced as fast as dignity and robes would allow back to the sacristy. Once there he pulled off his robes, hung them up, and then gently removed the journal from the stacked books. He had only five minutes until class began, not much time to decide what to do with the journal. The other problem was the language. How would he read it? He couldn’t possibly learn Latin fast enough to do him any good.
Ms. Sayer appeared in the doorway, her own robes over her arm. “Everything OK?” she asked.
“Um. Yeah. No. Well . . .”
Ms. Sayer raised an inquisitive eyebrow.
“Ms. Sayer, did Dr. Stephens ask you to look into my great-grandfather’s clock? He said he was going to.”
She looked at him appraisingly for a moment. “Well, actually he did. But I must confess that I haven’t done so. Now it seems like I really should, doesn’t it?”
“Uh, I just found Dr. Drake’s missing journal. It was listed in the archives catalog, but someone took it when they took the school history and the other stuff and . . .” here Julian paused. “ . . . and when they busted the clock.”
Ms. Sayer looked at him, somehow putting support into her glance.
Julian went on, “I know it’s really important, the journal and the clock. I think the clock’s connected to the proposal to sell Parker’s Piece. I think the journal might say why, but it’s, it’s . . . I can’t read it.”
“Why not?”
“It’s in Latin.” Seized suddenly by inspiration, Julian continued, “You’re a priest, you must know Latin. You could read it!”
“Don’t assume that the priesthood requires Latin these days! But yes, I happen to be fluent. It has more to do with a good independent school education than the priesthood.”
“Would you read it for me? Tell me what it says? Only, only it would have to be confidential, you know, it’s kinda private.”
“Well, since it was in the archives, I don’t know how private it is. It must have been donated by your grandfather when Dr. Drake died. Probably no one has read it in years. But I understand what you mean. Yes, Julian, I will read through it, and see what I find.”
“Thanks, Ms. Sayer. When, uh, when do you think . . .” Julian trailed off.
“I think I could manage it by the weekend,” Ms. Sayer said with a smile. “It’ll help me keep in practice. Now, you’d better get to class.”
“Right,” Julian said happily. He handed over the journal, started to ask her to be careful with it, realized that she would implicitly, and then dashed out of the chapel to Ms. Paulette’s English class.
~
That week was without question the longest in Julian’s life. He had a history paper to start on (on the role of Asia Minor in East-West relations) and that kept him in the library for several evenings. And there was the usual round of crew (mostly just running now that winter had fully arrived) and classes. Nonetheless the week dragged, and each time he saw Ms. Sayer, he looked at her, hoping for a sign that she had something for him. Ryan, Tess, and Hieu had at first been excited to hear of Julian’s discovery. But though they speculated as to why the thief had hidden the journal rather than destroying it, they grew tired of Julian’s heightened sense of expectation and told him to cool it.
Finally on Friday morning, as Julian was leaving chapel, Ms. Sayer stopped him and asked him to come by her office after school. As soon as the final class ended—first draft of history paper turned in, thank you very much–Julian made his way to the Chaplain’s office. While most masters used their classrooms as offices, and the administrators all had offices in the Admin building, Ms. Sayer had an office in the chapel, in a lofty room on the other side of the choir from the sacristy. He knocked on the outside door and entered when Ms. Sayer called. Looking over her glasses, she smiled when she saw him, and said, “You know it’s still Lab, don’t you?”
Seeing the crushed look on Julian’s face, as he realized he would have to wait until the daily departmental lab or help time was over, she waved him in. “Since it’s Friday, I don’t think I’ll have many supplicants. Somehow theology is always at the bottom of the list anyway.”
Julian had never been to her office before, and looked around nervously. Since it was a part of the chapel, the room had a lofty ceiling, with walls covered in bookshelves. Julian did notice that though the shelves held many volumes, pictures and knickknacks broke up the books, giving the dark room a more human air. In the middle of the room a large coffee table sat between a sofa on one side and two comfortable looking armchairs on the other. On the table were things that looked like toys: one was one of those plastic frames that held many thin metal pins, which you could push back and forth, leaving the impression of your hand (or your face) in the pins. It was, Julian thought, a fidgeter’s heaven, which was probably the intention.
“Can I get you a drink, Julian?” Ms. Sayer asked.
“Uh, sure. Thanks.”
“I’ve just made a pot of tea.”
“I’ve never had anything but iced tea, but I’ll try it.”
Ms. Sayer frowned slightly. “I learned to drink tea in college, when I spent a year in Britain. It’s slightly depressing that the habit has never caught on here. It’s a calming ritual to make tea.”
Not sure what to say to this, Julian watched as the chaplain removed a hideous tea cozy from the brown, chipped teapot on her desk and slowly poured out tea into two china cups. She reached over and opened a small refrigerator next to her desk, removed a small carton of cream, and poured a bit into each cup.
“Sugar?” she asked.
“Uh, sure.”
Spooning some light brown, large-grained sugar into each cup, she stirred them and then handed one of the cups to Julian. Noticing his restrained impatience, she took a sip from her tea, and then said, “Let’s get right to it, shall we?” Setting her teacup aside, she bent over her desk to gingerly touch the old, worn leather binding of Dr. Drake’s journal. “I’ve been reading this journal pretty carefully, since you so kindly lent it to me. I think it’s pretty important, both for understanding what’s been happening on campus lately, and for understanding what you–and I–have experienced.”
Julian stared. “You mean you know about . . . how . . .”
“Dr. Stephens did ask me to look into the nature of the clock. When he asked me, he told me how the clock made you feel, and though I did nothing else, I did go over to the library and look at the clock. I believe that I felt the same thing you did: a profound sense of calm, of peace, of imperturbability, right?”
Julian nodded, frowning. “But I don’t understand how it works, or what my great-grandfather was trying to do with the clock. I mean, I know he wanted the clock on campus, but where’d he get it? How does it work? And why? It’s pretty weird . . . I don’t believe in magic. At least, I never have before. Science explains things pretty well. But this seems like magic.”
The chaplain responded: “Well, what do you make of the clock and how it makes you feel?”
“I can’t explain it. I really can’t. No idea. I know the feeling I get is real, though, since others can feel it too.”
She paused and looked intently at Julian before going on.
“I have to say, if I hadn’t experienced the same powerful feeling in the clock’s presence, I wouldn’t believe it. But I can’t deny my own experience. And there is nothing wrong with it, nothing irreligious about the experience or about your grandfather’s writing. He seems to have been a very intelligent and learned man. His writing is pretty hard to follow, but ultimately it reveals a pretty reverent point of view. Where it really gets interesting is the magic.”
Julian looked intently at her. “So you do think it’s magic?”
Ms. Sayer paused, seeming to consider how much Julian could take. “Maybe it would be easier if I tried to put it in my own words. Would that be OK?”
Julian shrugged. “Yeah, OK.” He took his first sip of tea and gasped at how hot it was. Pleasantly sweet, but hot.
“All right.” Ms. Sayer took a long sip from her drink and seemed to compose herself. “Now, to understand Dr. Drake’s thinking, it’s helpful to think about this question: Why do you get out of bed in the morning?”
“Huh? What do you mean?”
“Just that: why do you get out of bed in the morning? And I don’t mean, what wakes you up. I’m not talking about your alarm.”
“Well . . . because I have to, I guess. I mean, we have to get up, to be in class, you know.” Julian grinned a little sheepishly.
“Touché. Fair enough. But is that really why you get up each day? Is what motivates you simply the expectations of others?”
Julian shrugged, “Some days it is.”
“Sure. All of us feel that way sometimes. But your great-grandfather would argue that it’s more than that. He’d say that we get up, and we do things, because of a conviction we have that life is worth living, that things we can do and achieve are valuable and mean something. It’s another way of saying that life has meaning.”
“But who knows what the meaning of life is? Jeesh, it could be anything. And isn’t it different for different people?”
Ms. Sayer smiled. “Old Dr. Drake wasn’t trying to dictate the specific meaning of life for you, but he did believe—quite passionately, I gather—that life in general is meaningful. He taught here at St. Eligius at a time when it was fashionable to be agnostic—to say that one does not know if God exists—but he believed that life holds meaning because what he called the “Inner Unity” or “the One,” something like what we mean when we use the word “God,” does exist.”
She paused again before continuing, ignoring Julian’s obvious impatience. “That’s part of the reason he ended up leaving St. E’s. He was one of the founding masters, the history department chair. He was apparently the one who picked St. Eligius as the school’s saint, and now that we have the clock on campus again, and now that I have read the journal, I can see why, since St. Eligius is the patron saint of watchmakers.”
“So why’d he leave?” Julian asked.
“Well, as I said, it was quite fashionable in the 1920s to be agnostic, or even atheist, and I gather that many of the early masters had that bent. Some of them were very keen on pursuing fads in education, to make changes that Dr. Drake disagreed with. From the sounds of his thoughts on it in the journal, he may have been a bit overboard there (I do think teachers need a good kick in the pants every generation or so!), but his real reason for leaving was that for a while there the Episcopal nature of the school was in real debate, and he did not want to teach at a school where agnosticism was openly taught to the students. He didn’t seem to be opposed at all to critical thinking or questions, but he wanted students to be confronted with a range of facts and choices. He wanted them to be able to reflect honestly on their own experiences and decide, rather than simply be told that theism was not a possibility, as some of his colleagues were doing. So he ended up leaving, and taking his clock with him. It’s quite sad really, especially when we know the subsequent history, that moderation prevailed and the school evolved into what it is today, an Episcopal school, yes, but a place that encourages free thought and open questions.”
Somewhat impatiently, Julian asked: “But what does this have to do with the clock?”
“Have patience, young Padawan. I’m getting there. Dr. Drake believed that life has meaning, that there is worth in getting out of bed every day and doing things. He thought that achieving intellectually or artistically or athletically—being creative—is valuable, a meaningful thing, worth doing. He thought the same about having good relationships with others. He thought that we find meaning in these ways, by creating and by loving and by appreciating the creativity of others. Now where the clock comes in has to do with why he thought this was the case. Why does creating—writing well or acting or singing or rowing a crew shell just right—and relating—loving and helping others—bring meaning to our lives?”
Almost interrupting, Julian said, “Wait a minute. He thought writing an English paper could be the meaning of life?”
“No, not in itself. But he would have said it could be a meaningful activity. But my question was why do these types of things bring meaning to our lives? He would have said that all those things can be meaningful because they involve self-transcendence.”
Ms. Sayer grinned at Julian’s blank stare before going on: “What’s the feeling you get when you get intensely involved with something you love to do?”
“Well, when I write code—you know, computers—I get pretty absorbed. Sometimes I don’t notice things around me, and I end up being late for things or not doing my homework.”
“Ah,” said the chaplain, seemingly satisfied. “Dr. Drake would say that you get that way because in the creative process you have transcended yourself. You lose track of time and your surroundings because, for a short period, you have lost or gone beyond yourself. You’re ‘in the groove’ and don’t even notice yourself. He thought the same kind of thing happens through love as well; when we truly love someone, we lose sight of ourselves and our own importance.”
“But how can that be? When I code, I’m still there. . . .” Ms. Sayer stared at Julian while he thought about this. Julian went on: “I guess you mean that I’m just not aware of myself and my problems.”
“Exactly! In that moment you lose awareness of yourself because you are fully aware of the other or the object. In fact, in those moments, rare as they are, you overcome the division between the subject and the object that usually characterizes our existence. And he believed that each individual finds meaning in those moments of self-transcendence. So much of life just goes by and vanishes, is transient. The things of value, the lasting meaning, we find only in creation and relation. It’s really a very old religious idea, present for instance in the gospels, kind of recast in a philosophical way. Does it make sense?”
“Yeah, kinda. I think I see what you mean. It’s supposed to be ironic, right? We find meaning in our lives by seeing beyond ourselves. OK. But what about the clock?”
“Well, he made the clock to be a kind of conduit for that meaning. We need to understand just a little more for that to make sense.”
“All right.”
“I think Dr. Drake asked what made it possible for self-transcendence to bring meaning. And he concluded that for meaning to be a reality in our lives, the universe we live in must be a meaningful place; that life itself has a meaning that transcends life, which we only find when we transcend ourselves. And that could only come from something at least partially beyond the individual parts of the universe.”
“Whatd’ya mean? Like God?”
“God. Or, at least, what he called the Inner Unity or the One.”
Julian looked earnest now. “But I can’t see him being some kind of fanatic.”
“He wasn’t! What makes you think belief in God equals fanaticism?!”
“Well, there’s so much bad stuff in history due to religion, and those whacked guys on TV.”
“That’s right, you love history, don’t you? Well, don’t you mean there’s so much bad stuff––evil––in history due to human beings?”
“Well, yeah, I guess. I guess you’re right––you can’t just blame religion for what people do. But still, it seems like an awful lot of evil has happened in the name of religion.”
“As it has in the name of countries. Do you suggest that we abandon the concept of the nation because of that?”
“Well, no, I guess not.”
“OK. Now that that is settled! So Dr. Drake basically thought that the meaning in our lives, the worth and value we find in creating, in loving, in caring, all that finds an explanation only in the existence of some lasting or eternal something that is at least partially beyond the everyday world. Why do people willingly give their lives for those they care about if there is no lasting meaning in it? Why do we pour our hearts—our souls—into creating something, unless the meaning found through doing so transcends what we create, transcends even death? Because if it doesn’t transcend death, then the significance of what we do ends with the thing we make or the person we love, period. He believed that meaning is greater than that, and his explanation of where that lasting meaning comes from was what he called the Inner Unity or the One. When we transcend ourselves, we overcome the division between ourselves and what we create, or between ourselves and others. We find unity, the connection between all things. But he thought this unity was eternal. It exists as an eternal source of meaning for the universe. He thought this unity is the good and the source of being, that which gives the universe order and purpose and thus makes our own experience of lasting meaning possible and real.
Another way to think about it is to think that everything that exists has some connection with everything else, is a part of something larger that connects everything. And while no one individual thing lasts, the union of everything does; it is the one thing that is eternal. When we transcend ourselves in love or creativity, we overcome the divisions in our existence and find that lasting inner unity, and so we find lasting meaning. That’s why it feels worthwhile and meaningful. It is literally “full of meaning” in a way that our other, isolated experiences are not. So God, he thought, can’t be proven to exist by the many arguments that people have made in history, but God can be shown to exist by reflecting on our own experience of profound and lasting meaning.” Ms. Sayer paused, and then said, “Really, it’s a pretty good argument.” She sat back in a satisfied way, as if impressed with a well-delivered sermon.
“Well, I guess that makes sense,” Julian said. “I mean, it’s the best explanation anyone’s ever given me for why God exists, much better than ‘because the bible says so.’ But I still don’t see what it has to do with the clock.”
“Well, as I said, he enchanted the clock to be a kind of conduit of the peace that finding meaning and connection brings. He believed that God not only is the source of meaning in our lives, but that God and the universe need each other, are intertwined in a way. The universe depends on God for its existence, but God needs the universe to be completed. To put it another way, God alone is kind of abstract, like an idea. God is eternal, always present. But with the individual existences of people and things in the universe, God becomes more manifest. It’s when we find meaning that we are, in a sense, making God complete.”
Seeing Julian looking a little confused, Ms. Sayer went on: “Let me try that again using more of Dr. Drake’s language, rather than my own. The Inner Unity is not complete without that plurality of parts, and each part needs the Unity to become all that it can. Or to put it yet another way, the One is not complete without the many, and the many need the One to be complete, to be whole. When we love, when we create, we are breaking down the barriers between parts, we are finding that Inner Unity, and we are making its oneness more real in our world, and that brings meaning. And that, in turn, gives us a good feeling, one of connection to a larger whole, one of peace. He enchanted the clock to convey that feeling, to convey the reality of God, the reality of the inner unity of all things that transcends the divisions between us. The peace it brings, the sense of depth and rootedness, is conveying the reality of our connection with the eternal, of the fact that we are at home in the universe. If I understand all this correctly, the clock’s kind of like a talisman, like the Holy Grail of King Arthur.”
“Wait, wait. You mean he was some kind of wizard? Dr. Drake enchanted the clock?!”
“Yes. There is more in his journal than just the clock. There is a whole understanding of magic based on his point of view.”
Julian looked to see if Ms. Sayer, the chaplain and one of the most respected figures on campus, was joking. She didn’t seem to be. “Do you really believe it?”
“Well, let me explain the rest of what’s in the journal. It’s certainly rational. And we’ve both experienced the clock and what it does. It starts to add up. It’s worth being very clear about something. Dr. Drake wasn’t suggesting that science is incorrect. He seems to be saying that in certain limited circumstances, the laws of nature that science reveals and depends upon are suspended.”
Julian’s face held an expression of skepticism. But it mellowed when he thought again of the feeling the clock created. There was certainly no scientific explanation there. And what Ms. Sayer was saying about the clock rung very true. “Tell me more,” he said quietly.
“Dr. Drake believed that in that moment of self-transcendence, you are essentially experiencing the divine and eternal. In that moment, you lose yourself, and you lose the division between yourself and the object you are creating, or the person you love. That’s why you are so wrapped up in the creative process. That loss of division, the loss of what philosophers call subject-object duality, is an experience of God, who by definition is the One, the absolute good, the eternal source of the being of all things, who transcends time and space and the separation of oneness into the manyness of the universe as we know it.
“It’s out of this that he came to believe that magic is possible. He seemed to think that it is possible to make the underlying interconnection of all reality manifest. In other words, in certain limited circumstances, it is possible to use magic to transcend the limitations of time and space. The natural laws of science, though they reign most of the time, sometimes can be violated.”
“Why do you keep saying ‘in certain limited circumstances’? What does that mean?”
“Well, two things, I think. Since he thought that reality consists of both unity—the One or God—and the plurality of everything else, the limitations of our existence can only be transcended temporarily. Otherwise, the distinction between God and creatures, between the absolute and the relative, would dissolve, and there would be no point to any individual existence. In other words, if magic operated all the time, then there would be no difference between creatures and God, and in the way he saw things, individual existence has a purpose: completing the divine. The other limitation is that “good” magic only works when a person is surrendering the self in the process. One can’t use it for gain, or at least, one can’t use it for personal gain and be undamaged by it.”
“Undamaged?”
“Well, the kind of magic he is talking about, and used to enchant the clock, is good. What the clock does is manifest the peace that our connection with the eternal brings, when we realize it. It’s a peace that we only can find permanently through putting others first, through transcending the self. But evil magic is also possible, though not without cost to the user.”
By this point in the conversation, Julian was on the edge of his chair. His skepticism had become fascination. “Do you mean black magic?” he said.
“Well, if you mean roosters and black cats, then no. But if you mean enhancing natural powers for evil ends, then yes. Essentially evil magic is the inverse of good. Evil, in Dr. Drake’s view (which he borrowed from St. Augustine) doesn’t exist except as a corruption of the good. Evil comes about when goodness falls, when it makes choices that seek power for itself rather than interconnection and self-transcendence. In other words, evil grows like a cancer, like a mutation, when we choose to put ourselves first, to not transcend ourselves, to be independent of the One and thus ultimately alone. Thus evil, though powerful, is ultimately empty, it is nothingness, an abyss, the power of that which is not except as a corruption of what once was good.
“Evil magic makes manifest the reality of denying the underlying connection of all things. Rather than allow the individual to temporarily transcend the laws of space and time, it only feeds a person’s greed and desire for power. Thus it can give power, power to supernaturally control and to hurt others, for it unlocks the power of “non-being,” the threat of the nothingness that isolation truly is. But in the end its power is empty and destructive because it devours the person who attempts to use it, because she is unleashing pure nothingness.”
Ms. Sayer paused. “I think,” she said, looking closely at Julian over her steaming teacup, “that this possibility is why Dr. Drake thought it was so important to have the clock here at St. E’s and why someone has disabled its power.”
Julian was again on the edge of his seat, listening.
“It’s clear from the journal that Dr. Drake put the clock here because its nature as a conduit of the eternal served to protect the campus from the senseless, and ultimately evil, desire for power and the inevitable corruption that comes with it. The clock has a pendulum, but it itself is a pendulum, tying this place to the rhythm of the eternal. It makes you realize that you are not in control of the universe, and can be at home in it, wherever you are. By its very nature, the clock’s magic resists the temptation of power to change and corrupt and control what is around it. Thus it protects the campus by giving us a sense of peace and restraining the desire to control which ultimately leads to corruption.”
Julian was listening, his eyes wide. “That means that Stryker wants the clock destroyed because his plot to sell off Parker’s Piece will be blocked as long as the clock is here and running. It would be much harder to persuade people of the need to sell off the land with the clock’s magic ticking away at the heart of campus.”
“It looks that way.”
“Why didn’t he destroy the clock and the journal? Why just stop it and hide the journal?
“Well, first of all, you don’t know that Mr. Stryker did those things–” Julian interrupted this with a snort.
“–and it may be that your great-grandfather’s enchantments protect both the clock and the journal, so they can’t be destroyed, at least not easily. From what I have read, that would be possible.”
Julian was quiet for a while, thinking about all that the chaplain had said. She left him in silence. Eventually, he asked, “Is there any way you could translate the journal? I’d really like to read it.” Before Ms. Sayer could respond, he continued, “Partially I’d like to know more about my great-grandfather, and the clock, and partially I want to know if we could use magic to stop what is going on, especially since the clock is stopped. I mean, if,” (and here he glanced sarcastically at Ms. Sayer) “if Mr. Stryker sees the clock as a threat, doesn’t that mean that he is using magic, or at least knows about it? How else would he know to neutralize the clock and its effects?”
“Well, Julian, I hadn’t thought of that, but it does make sense.” She paused again, as if weighing the pros and cons of going on. “There are two things you should know. First, I anticipated this, and I have prepared a hasty translation.” At this she glanced over at her very untidy desk, where her laptop sat. Turning to it, she tapped the space bar, and the laptop woke up, displaying a document. “Here it is, and I don’t think I can in good conscience forbid you to see it. I’ll e-mail it to you.”
She watched the hopeful expression of Julian’s face for a moment and then went on: “But you need to realize that as much as you want to fight what’s going on, you have to be very careful. Careful because the board has every right to sell Parker’s Piece if it so chooses and careful because magic is, I think, dangerous, dangerous for the reasons I just explained. It can only be used properly when it is used selflessly. Otherwise you risk damaging your soul.”
“I understand,” Julian said. “I don’t want to break any rules, and I certainly don’t want to do anything dangerous, but I at least need to understand.”
“Fair enough. Now, you should be getting along to practice, and promise me that you’ll come back and ask questions once you’ve read the journal and not do anything rash.”
“I promise.” Julian hesitated, and then asked “What happens to the journal now?”
“I will give it to Mr. Perry, and I’ll tell him that you found it and give it to me. He may want to hear the story from you.”
“OK. As long as it ends up back where it should be, with the clock, I’m happy.”
“All right. Get going now, I don’t want Coach Yates complaining to me.” “Thanks, Ms. Sayer. See you.”
Copyright 2021, Alfred Reeves Wissen