An Acceptable Time (8 page)

When her grandmother came in to say good night, Polly was deep in Bishop Colubra’s notebook.

“This Ogam’s really not too difficult, as long as I don’t try to connect it to Latin or Greek roots but think of it as a made-up language.”

“Polly.” Her grandmother sat on the edge of the bed. “It is my hope that you are not going to have any opportunity to speak this language.”

“I love languages, Grand. They’re fun. You know how Granddad loves to do his puzzle in the paper every day? It’s the same sort of thing.”

Her grandmother ruffled her hair. “I want you to have fun, my dear, but not to get yourself into any kind of danger. I hope you’ll have fun with Zachary on Thursday. But he strikes me as a complex young man, and I’m very uncomfortable with the idea that you think he’s seen someone from the past.”

“I find it pretty uncomfortable, too.”

“And you’ll stay away from the pool and the star-watching rock?”

“Yes. We will.” Polly sighed, then indicated the pile of books still on her bed table. “I went through the parts you marked and took notes. I love learning from you, Grand.”

“You don’t miss school?”

“I didn’t much like it. I was used to being taught by Mother and Daddy when we lived on Gaea, and the Cowpertown school was pretty boring after that. I wasn’t that great at school. Okay, but not great.”

“Your mother must have understood that. School was disastrous for her till she went to college.”

“I find that hard to believe.”

“Believe it.”

“But she’s so brilliant.”

“She’s good at the difficult stuff, but not with the easy, and I guess you’re not unlike her in that.”

“Well—maybe. Like Zachary, I’m better if I’m interested. The only teacher I really liked left. And last year I could go to Beau Allaire and do homework there and Max could make it interesting.”

“Her death must be a great grief to you.” Her grandmother touched her gently on the knee.

“Yes. It is. But Max would want me to get on with life, and that’s what I’m trying to do. But I do miss…” For a moment her voice trembled.

“Max was very close to Sandy and Rhea, too. Sandy says her death has left a big hole in their lives.”

“I guess the planet is riddled with holes, isn’t it? From all the people who’ve lived and then died. Do the holes ever get filled?”

“That’s a good question.”

“Grand, those people I saw when I went back—Anaral and—Maybe you don’t want to talk about it?”

“Go on.”

“They’ve been dead maybe three thousand years.” She shuddered involuntarily. “What about their holes? Are the holes just always there, waiting to be filled?”

“You have always tended to ask unanswerable questions. I don’t know about those holes. All I know is that Max gave you great riches, and we would, all of us, be less than we are if it weren’t for those we love and who’ve loved us who have died.” Her grandmother rose, bent down, and kissed Polly. “Good night, my dear. Sleep well.”

Polly woke up, freezing. Her quilt had slid to the floor. She was caught in a dream, not quite a nightmare, of Zachary driving along a winding road in the bishop’s blue pickup truck. She was in the back of the truck and icy rain was drenching her. Every time Zachary hit a bump, she was nearly thrown out. To one side of the road was a cliff, to the other a drop down to a valley far below. The truck hit a bump and—

She woke up. Hadron’s warm body was not by her. She picked up the quilt and huddled under it. Her feet were like ice. There was no way she was going to be able to escape the dream and go back to sleep until she warmed up.

The meaning of the dream was apparent to her. It was simply her reaction to Zachary’s phone call and had, she thought, no particular meaning of its own. She had dreamed of the rain chilling her because the quilt had slid off the bed and she was frozen. The wind hit against the house, emphasizing the cold.

The pool. It was by far the warmest place in the house. Forgetting her promises, forgetting for the moment the reason for them, aware only that she was shivering, she tiptoed downstairs. All the fires were banked. The house was cold. She opened the door to the room with the pool and was met with a humid warmth and a green smell from all the plants which flourished there.

Moonlight was coming through the skylights. The plants hanging in the windows made strange shadows. Then, as her eyes adjusted, she saw an unexpected shadow, a darkness in one of the poolside chairs. Someone was sitting there.

Terrified, she reached for the light switch and the room was flooded with light.

Anaral leapt from the chair like a wild gazelle, more frightened than Polly. Surely Anaral’s world knew electricity only as lightning unleashed and dangerous.

Polly’s heart stopped pounding in her throat. “Lights. Electric lights. Don’t be afraid.”

Anaral capsized, rather than sat back down. “Bishop told me about lights. Yes. Still, it frightens me. No one can hear us?”

“Not if we’re quiet. How did you get here?”

“I came from our great standing stones to this place of water in a box.” Anaral was referring to the pool, the pool that was over an underground river. “Where your water in the box is in your time circle, in my circle it is our most holy ground, the stones that stand over the scent of water. I lay on the sarsen and I thought about you and I called myself to you. And I came.” She looked at Polly with a delighted smile. Then she got up and walked slowly around the room, looking at the poolside chairs, the stationary bike Polly’s grandmother used when the weather was too inclement for walking outside. “Bishop says you live in house. We are in house?”

“Yes. This is the new wing, built for the pool—the water in a box.” Of course Anaral would know nothing about a house or its contents.

Anaral picked up a paperback book lying on a small table by the chair where she had been sitting. “One day Bishop brought book to show me. Bishop says you have stories in books.”

“Many stories.”

“Karralys says that for stories the writing has to be more—more full than ours, less simple.”

“Yes, more complex.”

Anaral touched her forehead. “Druids have stories here. Many stories. We keep the memory. Without our memory we would be—less. I do not know the word.”

“Our books are like keepers of the memory. In them we have the stories of many people, many times, many cultures.”

“Cultures?”

“People who live in different circles of place, as well as time.”

Anaral nodded. “You are certain you are not a druid?”

Polly laughed. “Positive.”

“But you have gifts. You cross the threshold of time. To do that requires much training, and Karralys was concerned that, though I have the training, no threshold was open to me. But then I saw Bishop before he did, and now I am practicing using the gift and the training by coming to you. And you crossed into my time.”

Polly spread out her hands. “I don’t know how I did it, Anaral. I haven’t any idea. I don’t know if I could ever do it again.”

“Karralys has been to many places, to many different times. I have crossed only one threshold, seen only you and Bishop. Karralys says that there is meaning that you have come, meaning for the pattern.”

“What pattern?”

“The pattern of lines drawn between the stars, between people, between places, between circles, like the line between the great stone and the water in a box.”

Polly thought of the book of constellations in her room, with the lines drawn between the stars.

Anaral looked at her, smiling. “It is nice, what I sit on.”

“A chair.”

“At the great stones there are chairs, but very different, carved out of stone. This holds my body with more ease.”

Polly wondered what Anaral would think of the rest of the house, of the bedroom, the kitchen. All the things that Polly took for granted, hot running water, toilets, refrigerators, microwave, food processor—would they seem like miracles to Anaral, or would she think them magic, perhaps evil magic? “Anaral, I’m very glad to see you, even in the middle of the night. But—why have you come?”

“To see if I could,” Anaral said simply. “Everybody else was asleep, so I could practice the gift all alone. I came and I called you. To know you. To know why you can come to my circle of time. To know if you have been sent to us by the Presence.”

“The Presence?”

“The One who is more than the Mother, or the goddess. Starmaker, wind-breather, earth-grower, sun-riser, rain-giver. The One who cares for all. Karralys says that it happens only once or twice in a pattern where the lines touch so that circles of time come together with the threshold open in both directions. When this happens, there is a reason.”

“Have you asked the bishop?”

“Bishop, too, says there is a reason. But he does not know what. Do you?”

Polly shook her head. “Haven’t the foggiest.”

“The—”

“I don’t know the reason, Anaral. But I like you. I’m glad you’re here. I would like to get to know you better.”

“Friends?”

“Yes. I’d like to be friends.”

“It is lonely for druids, sometimes. Friends care for each other.”

“Yes.”

“Protect each other?”

“Friends do everything they can to protect each other.”

“But it is not always possible.” Anaral shook her head. “In a terrible storm, or when lightning starts fire, or when other tribes attack.”

“Friends try,” Polly said firmly. “Friends care.” She felt deeply drawn to Anaral. Was it possible to develop a real friendship with a girl from three thousand years ago? “I would like to be your friend, Anaral.”

“That is good. I am your friend.” Anaral stood up. “Bishop calls me Annie.”

“Yes. Annie.”

“I willed for you to wake up, to come here, to water in a box. And you came. Thank you.”

“The quilt fell off my bed. I was cold.” Quilt. Bed. It would make no sense to Anaral.

“You came, Polly. Now I go.” Anaral went to one of the north windows. “See? Now I know how to open it.” She jumped lightly down and ran off into the night.

Polly looked after her until she disappeared into the woods. Then she closed the window. She stayed by the pool for several more minutes, but nothing happened. The water was quiet. She sat in one of the poolside chairs, wondering, until she grew drowsy and her eyelids drooped. She was warm now. Even her toes. Had Anaral been part of a dream? She went upstairs. Perhaps she would understand more in the morning.

She woke later than usual, dressed, and went downstairs. Her grandfather was sitting at the table drinking coffee and doing his puzzle. Polly poured herself half a cup of coffee, filled it with milk, and put it in the microwave. For the moment she had forgotten her bad dream, forgotten going down to the pool to warm up, forgotten Anaral’s visit. “This does make
café au lait
much easier. I hate washing out a milky saucepan.”

“Polly.” Her grandfather looked up from the paper. “Tell me what you know about time.”

She sat down. “I don’t know that much.”

“Tell me what you know.”

“Well, there’s the—uh—the space/time continuum, of course.”

“And that means?”

“Well, that time isn’t a separate thing, apart from space. They make a thing together, and that’s space/time. But I know that there isn’t any time at all if there isn’t mass in motion.”

Her grandfather nodded. “Right. And Einstein’s famous equation?”

“Well, mass and energy are equivalent, so any energy an object uses would add to its mass, and that would make it harder to increase its speed.”

“And as it approached the speed of light?”

“Its mass would be so enormous that it couldn’t ever get to the speed of light.”

“So in terms of space travel?”

“You can’t separate space travel from time travel.”

“Good girl. So?”

“I don’t know, Granddad. How did I go back three thousand years?” Suddenly she remembered Anaral’s visit the night before, but this was not the moment to talk about it.

The pantry door opened and her grandmother came in.

Her grandfather said, “That’s the billion-dollar question, isn’t it?”

“And I seem to have broken Einstein’s equation. I mean, didn’t I get there faster than the speed of light? I mean, I was here, and then I was there.”

“Department of utter confusion,” her grandfather said.

Mrs. Murry sliced bread and put it in the toaster. “One theory I find rather comforting is that time exists so that everything doesn’t happen all at once.”

“What a picture!” Polly had ignored the microwave timer’s ping. Now she opened the door, took out her cup, and sat at her place. Hadron got up from his scrap of rug at the fireplace, greeted her by twining about her legs, purring, then returned to the warmth.

Mrs. Murry took the bread from the toaster and put it on a plate in front of Polly. “Eat.”

“Thanks. Granddad’s bread makes wonderful toast.”

Her grandmother continued, “Your grandfather and I have lived with contradictions all our lives. His interests have been with the general theory of relativity, which is concerned with gravity and the macrocosm. Whereas I have spent my life with the microcosm, the world of particle physics and quantum mechanics. As of now these theories appear to be inconsistent with each other.”

“If we could find a quantum theory of gravity,” Mr. Murry said, “we might, we just might resolve the problem.”

Polly asked, “Would that explain the space/time continuum?”

“That’s the hope,” Mrs. Murry said, and turned to answer the phone.

And now Polly remembered her dream. Zachary. She hoped it would be Zachary on the phone.

But her grandmother said, “Good morning, Nason…Yes, we’re all here in one place and one time…That’s dear of you, but why don’t you two come here? You know you and Louise like to swim…Nase, I like to cook…No, don’t bring anything. See you this evening.”

She turned to her husband and Polly. “As you gathered, that was Nason. Louise has filled him with chagrin and remorse, as a result of which she hasn’t been able to talk him out of feeling that he can protect Polly from the past if he’s here with her, which is certainly logic no-how contrariwise. They’re coming over for dinner.”