An Acceptable Time (13 page)

The bishop started the ignition. “Polly, I’m sorry.”

She sighed. “Don’t be. It wasn’t anything you planned, and, Bishop, it may be scary, but it’s also exciting.”

“I wish I had something to give you for protection, a talisman of some kind.”

She had put on the red anorak. Now she felt in the pocket and pulled out Zachary’s icon. “Zachary gave me this yesterday afternoon.”

The bishop took it, keeping one hand lightly on the steering wheel. “A guardian-angel icon! It’s delightful, utterly delightful!”

Behind them the Murrys honked, and the bishop lightened his foot on the accelerator and gave the icon back to Polly. “It’s a reminder that there are powers of love in the universe, and as long as you respond with love, they’ll help you.”

She put the icon back in her pocket. “Once my uncle Sandy gave me an icon of St. George and the dragon.”

“And it didn’t stop bad things from happening?” the bishop suggested. “An icon is not meant to be an idol. Just a reminder that love is greater than hate.”

“Do you really and truly believe that?”

The bishop nodded calmly. Then he said, “You know a good bit of physics, don’t you?”

“Is that a sequitur?”

“Indeed. Do you know what physicists call the very different interactions between the electromagnetic, the gravitational, and the strong and weak forces?”

“Nope.”

“The
hierarchy
of interactions. Hierarchy was the word used by Dionysius the Aeropagite to refer to the arrangement of angels into three divisions, each consisting of three orders. Today the physicist arranges the fundamental interactions of matter into hierarchies instead. But it does go to show you that at least they’ve heard of angels.”

“Why does it show that?”

“Your grandfather pointed it out to me.”

“Does that mean he believes in angels?”

“Perhaps. I do, though not that they look like that beautiful angel in your icon. What is the first thing that angels in Scripture say when they appear before somebody?”

“What?”

“
Fear not!
That gives you an idea of what they must have looked like.”

Once again the Murrys honked. Again the bishop slowed down, then turned up the hill to Dr. Louise’s house in a burst of speed, stopped, and turned off the ignition. The Murrys drew up beside him.

They sat around Dr. Louise’s kitchen table. “It’s by far the warmest place in the house,” the bishop said.

Polly felt a wave of unreality wash over her. In a way, she was as much out of the world staying with her grandparents, or here in Dr. Louise’s kitchen, as when she moved into Anaral’s time. Her grandparents were isolated in their own, special, scientific worlds. Their house was outside the village. She could go for days without seeing anyone else if she did not go to the post office or the store.

At home, although the O’Keefes’ house on Benne Seed Island was as isolated as her grandparents’ house, school and her siblings kept her in touch with the real world. How real was it? Drugs were a problem at Cowpertown High. So were unwed mothers. So was lack of motivation, a lazy conviction that the world owed the students a living.

She suddenly realized that although there was a television set in her grandfather’s study, they had not turned it on. The radio was set to a classical music station. Her grandparents read the papers, and she assumed that if anything world-shattering was happening they would tell her. But she had, as it were, dropped out since she had come to them.

She looked at her grandparents and the bishop. Zachary’s coming tomorrow. What are we going to do about Zachary?”

“I want Louise to see him,” Mrs. Murry said.

“She’s not a cardiologist,” Mr. Murry warned.

“She’s been a general practitioner for so long in a place where there are few specialists that she has considerable knowledge based on years and years of experience.”

“All right, I grant you that, but I suspect that Zachary would like us to treat him as normally as possible. His seeing Annie may have been an aberration. Or it may not have been Annie he saw at all.”

“Who else could it be?” Polly asked.

They all looked up as they heard an urgent barking outside. The bishop went to the door, opened it, and in came the dog, tail wagging, romping first to Mr. Murry and Polly, then the others.

The bishop put his hand on the dog’s head. “We can’t escape the past, even here.”

“He’s a perfectly ordinary dog.” Mr. Murry was determined. “I’m still not certain he’s anything but a stray.”

“He’s protection,” the bishop said. “Don’t take that lightly.”

The dog pranced to Mrs. Murry and leaned his head against her knees. Absently she fondled the animal’s ears. “We don’t seem to have much choice about keeping this creature.”

“You have been chosen.” The bishop smiled. As though in response, the dog’s ropy tail thudded against the floor. “Now you should name him.”

Mr. Murry said, “If we name him, we’re making a commitment to him.”

“But we are, aren’t we?” Polly asked.

Her grandmother sighed lightly. “So it would seem.”

Polly added, “And Dr. Louise said you needed another dog.”

The bishop suggested, “Would you like to name him, Polly?”

She looked at the dog, who, while he did not seem to belong to any known breed, was handsome in his own way. His tan coat was sleek and shiny, and the black tracing around his ears gave him a distinguished look. His rope of a tail was unusually long, tipped with black. “He ought to have a Celtic name, I suppose. That is, if he has anything to do with Karralys.”

“He may be just a stray.” Mr. Murry was not going to give in.

“Ogam. How about calling him Ogam?”

“Why not?” Polly’s grandmother asked. “Naming a dog is a normal, ordinary thing to do, and we need normal, ordinary things right now.”

The dog settled at Polly’s feet, snoring lightly and contentedly.

“Okay, Polly,” her grandfather said. “Let’s have some normal, ordinary lesson time. What is Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle?”

She sighed, relaxing into the world of particle physics, which, strange as it was, was a welcome relief. “Well, if you’re measuring the speed of a particle, you can’t measure its position. Or if you measure its position, you can’t measure its speed. You can measure one or the other, but not both at the same time.”

“Right. How many quarks does a proton have?”

“Three. One of each color.”

“Position?”

“Two up quarks and one down quark.”

“And quarks are—”

“Infinitely small particles. The word
quark
is out of
Finnegans Wake
.”

“So Murray Gell-Mann, who named them, obviously read Joyce. I find that rather comforting.”

So did Polly. Working with her grandfather was ordinary and normal, but it was not ordinary and normal to be sitting in Dr. Louise’s kitchen.

Her grandparents felt the dislocation, too. The lesson petered out. Her grandmother took the wilting bunch of roses from the table and emptied the water from the vase. “I’ll just go throw these on the compost and see if there are a few more to bring in.”

Mr. Murry looked at his granddaughter. “You all right?”

“Sure. Fine.”

“If I go out to the garden with your grandmother, you’ll stay right here?”

“I won’t go anywhere.”

“Nor I,” the bishop promised.

“We’ll be only a few minutes.”

As the door slammed behind Mr. Murry, the bishop said, “What happened last night—”

“It was very frightening.”

“
It
was frightening?” he asked. “Are
you
frightened?”

“A little.”

“A little is not enough. We can’t have you going through the time gate again.”

Polly looked down at the dog. Ogam. His black nose was shiny. His eyes were closed, and he had long, dark lashes. “I went through the time gate last night because I went down to the pool and put on the silver circlet.”

“Don’t do it again.”

“Of course not, Bishop. But the first time I went through I was just walking along on my way to the star-watching rock.”

“I wish you could go home.”

“Bishop, I’m in a tesseract. Granddad believes it could really hurt me if I were taken out.”

“He’s probably right. Does he believe that Tav would put you on the altar for a sacrifice?”

“I don’t know. I’m not sure I believe it.”

“Believe it, child. The idea of blood sacrifice is gone from our frame of reference, but it’s not that much different or worse than things that go on today. What else is the electric chair or lethal injection than human sacrifice?”

“We’re told that it’s to protect society,” Polly said.

“Isn’t Tav trying to protect his society in the only way he knows how? He believes that if the Mother isn’t appeased, his land and his people are going to be taken over by stronger tribes.”

“Tav likes me,” Polly said softly.

“Who could help it?” the bishop asked. “His liking for you will just make it harder for him to do what he believes he is called to do. Do you understand? He has to obey the Mother whether he wants to or not.”

“She doesn’t sound very motherly,” Polly said.

The bishop continued, “I don’t want to speak this way in front of your grandparents. They’re already distressed enough, and if it would be seriously harmful to you to send you away, there’s no point in upsetting them further.”

“I agree,” Polly said, “and I promise not to do anything stupid.”

“Now. About Zachary.”

“I don’t understand what he has to do with all this.”

“Karralys may be right. If he’s near death—”

“I don’t think death is imminent, or anything. But he’s scared.”

“Of?”

“Death. He’s frightened of death.”

“Yes.” The bishop nodded.

“He thinks death is the end. Poof. Annihilation.”

“And you, Polly?”

“I can’t imagine Max entirely gone from the universe. I don’t need to know
how
she is being, somehow, Max—learning whatever it is she needs to learn, doing whatever she’s supposed to do. But I can’t just imagine her totally wiped out.”

“What you believe is what I, too, believe,” the bishop said. “It is enough.”

The Murrys returned then, Mrs. Murry carrying a few yellow roses which were still blooming in a sheltered corner. She cut their stems, put them in the vase, and set it on the table. They were all on edge, out of place, trying to make normal that which was not normal.

“At least you take it seriously,” Polly said. “You don’t think the bishop and I are out of our tree.”

“We would if we could,” her grandmother said.

“I just wish”—Mr. Murry spread out his gnarled hands—“that we could be in this with you.”

Dr. Louise came in with two brown paper bags, which she set down on the table; then shucked off her outer clothes, hanging them on the antlers. “Bread—not as good as yours, Alex, but reasonable. And an assortment of cold cuts.”

The bishop unpacked the bags, setting out plates of bread and meat, while Dr. Louise took condiments from the refrigerator, and a pitcher of milk. “I’ll make tea,” the bishop offered.

They sat around the table, making sandwiches.—And we don’t know what to say, Polly thought.

Dr. Louise sighed.

“All Souls’ Day,” the bishop said. “Always a poignant day for Louise and me.”

There was a silence, and Polly looked questioningly at her grandparents. Mrs. Murry spoke in an even voice. “It was on this date that Louise’s husband and baby boy, and Nason’s wife, were killed in a train accident. Louise survived. Nason was away.”

“It was a long time ago.” Dr. Louise’s expression was calm. “I was pregnant again and I miscarried. I thought I had lost all that made life worth living, but Nason kept prodding me, and I went to medical school, and I have had a good life. I
have
a good life.”

“And I,” the bishop said, “with friends who keep the stars in their courses for me, and a faith in God’s loving purpose and eventual working out of the pattern.”

“And all this?” Dr. Louise asked. “This three thousand-year-old time capsule you’ve opened up, what does this do to your faith?”

The bishop smiled. “Why, widens it, I hope.”

Dr. Louise laughed softly. “Nason, if you’d been a druid, you’d probably have been excommunicated for heresy, just like Karralys.”

“Yesterday’s heresy becomes tomorrow’s dogma,” the bishop replied mildly, and Polly thought once again of Giordano Bruno.

After lunch they went for a walk in the woods behind Dr. Louise’s house, Ogam close at their heels, occasionally tearing off in great loops, but always circling back. “Behaving just like an ordinary dog,” the bishop said. “Bless Og.”

“He may give you a sense of security, Nase,” Dr. Louise said, “but he reminds me of the reason we’re keeping Polly here all day, and that’s something I’d rather forget.”

They found some beautiful pale pink mushrooms, saw the bright red clustered berries of jack-in-the-pulpit, and tried to pretend they were focused on a nature walk. The rising wind and their own restlessness drove them in. The bishop made tea from a selection of herbs in the garden. They played Botticelli and other word games, but they could not concentrate. When the sun slipped behind the mountains, Mr. Murry stood up. “It’s time we went home. We’ll keep a close eye on Polly. And, as you say, Nase, Samhain is over. Keep the dog here.”

But not long after they were home there was a sharp, demanding bark outside.

“He stays in the garage,” Mrs. Murry said.

They had a quiet dinner, with music in the background. Afterwards Polly helped her grandfather with the dishes. When they were through, he suggested, “Let’s go for a brief stroll around the house.”

They put on anoraks and as soon as they were out of the house Og pranced up beside them. “We always used to walk our dogs three times around the vegetable garden,” her grandfather said. “We might as well continue the tradition. It helps keep the woodchucks away. I’ve plowed and composted half the garden, but we still have some good broccoli and sprouts and carrots and beets. The twins’ garden was magnificent. After they left home for college they grew Christmas trees for a while, but when they were all sold I found I wanted a vegetable garden again. What time is your young man coming tomorrow?”