Interruption

Kyle slowly floated up from sleep to an awareness of the sounds and smells around him.

As Sulaiman al-Idris, he was at home in a bedroll, in the desert, in his robes pulled tightly around him. As Kyle, the American boy, there was still a faint jolt of transition from comfortable sleep to the harsh surroundings of rock and rough cloth and rugged horizon. His body was well-accustomed to sleeping where his childhood friends would have found nothing but wakeful discomfort, but it was on waking up that the change from what he had known to the life he knew here was most acutely uncomfortable, even if only for a moment.

The light of dawn was barely a bar across the eastern edge of the sky, and inside the tent it was more of a hint of lines and edges than it was a visible illumination. Sulaiman could make out the flap to the east, and some huddled forms nearby, or perhaps they were just packs and gear piled around him.

Huzzaini was not nearby, his sleeping patch a concavity. He was probably outside lighting the stove and heating water for their morning coffee. A conduit for information back to the leadership of their band, but not a faithless man, Sulaiman thought. He had been a strong support and a courageous comrade on the battlefield in many a firefight, even if he understood that his first job was to keep an eye on the American, Kyle, whatever Sulaiman the mujahadeen might do. They each had a sat phone, and some of Huzzaini's conversations were not within his earshot, but Sulaiman was content. Truth and proof each had their own tests, and time would reveal all to Allah. Always.

It was not time yet to get up and break camp, but that time was coming. Sulaiman was usually an early riser, even if not as early as Huzzaini. Today, after the rigors of the passage over the last mountain range, it felt good just to stay in the sleeping bag an extra fifteen minutes or so.

With the mountain chill, he had kept his clothing mostly down in the foot of his bag, and without getting out, he began the contortionist writhings to get his outer clothing on. Completing that, he slid himself up and out, sitting in the top end of the bag while swiveling his hips about until he could push his feet towards the flap, and reach out in the dark to the felt location of his boots, tugging them on and lacing them back into ankle-bracing security.

Sulaiman pushed his booted feet out the flap, and wrenched himself upright just outside of the tent, reaching behind to pull down the zipper and quietly close it for those inside, when he stopped.

In the pre-dawn light, all around the bowl in which sat their trio of tents, were robed and rifled fighters, cocked and ready, all looking directly at him. Directly before him, a single figure, at port arms, for whom Kyle did not need light to know was Huzzaini. They stood and looked at each other for some time.

Chapter Four

"Dr. Marsden, so good of you to join us."

This is only part of why I disliked attending these meetings. Chance Regnerus was a township trustee, a noted wit as he would be happy to tell you, and an heir of a fortune with a truly obscure origin and disreputable antecedents. He covered such discreditable history by always being on the offensive with jibes and digs and cheery unpleasantries, considered by many to be an amusing man but, to me, always an offensive one.

If I was even a minute late, it would be an overstatement. At any rate.

Sitting down, I looked around at my compatriots on the Memorials Committee. A farmer, a widow, an accountant, a retiree from some form of public service (the postal service, I believe), and Chance himself, in half glasses that I suspect are an affectation, a knit pullover even on this warm day, and some sort of mountaineering pants with zippers around the knees. He was a man of action, or so he presented himself, although I suspect his action was entirely in the care of skilled guides and paid porters.

"We have received a call that will be of interest to you, I believe," Chance declared as I took my seat.

"Let us hope so," I responded mildly.

The widow spoke up as she often did at the beginning of these meetings, and I truly regret that I can never quite remember her name. "Shall we open in prayer?"

Chance nodded gravely. "Yes, of course. Would you do us the honor?" To which the lady did a nice job of invoking the Deity and calling us to accountability, and then we were ready to get on with our work.

"Having no other business before us," Chance said, "let me move directly to the very interesting call I received last week."

"You all know Mr. Schlieven," to which we all nodded. A noted philanthropist and do-gooder of the area. "He has a simple offer to make, based on but a single request."

The unnecessary silence that followed was clearly a stagey opportunity for Chance to draw even more attention to himself. With a smile that made this presumption even more obvious, he finally continued: "If the village and the college will go smoke-free outside entirely, he will make a gift of some six to seven figures to our mutual coffers."

The silence that followed was a bit more sincere. The offer was undoubtedly serious, but the implementation had the potential to become tragi-comic. Mr. Schlieven's interest in ending outdoor smoking was based in a number of deaths in his own family, and a very real distaste for the practice of smoking, a habit I am indeed thankful to never have taken up, but to get the students and local citizens to give up casual outdoor smoking . . . that was quite another challenge. Not to mention that smoking was the students' preferred way to ingest their favorite intoxicant, grown in many cases right here in the vicinity. Yes, in our greenhouses. I'm not happy about it, but I am when all is said and done a realist.

"How does this effect the church?" asked the farmer, whose name I do not feel bad about forgetting, given how forgettable most of his questions and comments were.

"We have been asked to be . . . stewards of this request, if you will. Mr. Schlieven would like us to lead this effort to clear the air around Upper Sharon, in return for which he will present a love offering to our endowment."

"Clear the air . . ." I could not resist.

"Yes," Chance answered. "He would like us to press the village council and the trustees of the college to declare the locality 'smoke free' and secure such legal guarantees as are feasible under state law."

"How," I asked with, I must confess, a certain level of false deference, "does he think we should enforce this proposed ban? Because I must confess that we've found it difficult to keep students and even some staff from smoking even nearby to our firetrap wooden buildings. We threaten fines and sanctions and expulsion and termination, and still they burn for their inhalants."

"Perhaps the answer is to no longer threaten," Chance smiled, as if he had expected exactly this objection. "If there is the security of financial as well as moral support behind the enforcement, might the college, let alone the village, be more willing to impose what to date they have only implied?"

We were silent together again. I reflected on what it would mean on our campus to more vigorously impose penalties on students caught smoking, and thought about an even smaller student body than we had now, which is a very small number indeed. And I thought about Mr. Schlieven's money, which was a number far from small.

The others thought whatever it was that they thought, if indeed they were thinking at all. Chance simply smiled, I am quite certain without any thoughts whatsoever.

Chapter Three

Where was I, then? Oh yes. Smoking and tattooed youth. And my church.

Within the village of Upper Sharon, where I do as little business as possible, I was across the creek to attend a meeting at the Community Church. We occupy one of an assortment of architectural gems built there in the burst of philanthropic exuberance brought to us by Miss Woodhull on her mother's behalf in the 1920s.

In the village, she erected a number of public structures in the Richardsonian Romanesque style. It's a bit of an acquired taste, but I must confess I have acquired it, and even find the somewhat dated peculiarities of the architecture comforting. It means home to me now.

Local legend has it that she went to her mother's birthplace, and offered to build them a library, and they turned her down flat. Indignant, she drove off and the next village she encountered she got out and asked "would you like a library here?" When the citizens of Upper Sharon said "why, yes," it was the beginning of a complicated but very fruitful relationship.

The library was built, then the Community Church to which I alluded earlier, and then a Memorial Hall for public meetings which went up right next to Carpenter's Hall, the Greek Revival era public building where the Masons and the Odd Fellows and all sorts of other groups had their meetings before the arrival of Woodhull money to the town.

Then came the brainstorm of St. Fiacre's Residential Library on the bluff opposite the village across Auter Creek, a vast pile of pseudo-Gothic echoing its Welsh inspiration at Hawarden, Gladstone's Library, and finally the purchase and elaboration of the then-near-ruinous Halcyon Academy building in between St. Fiacre's and the village. The Old Main of which in my opinion is still a ruin, who knows how many myriad dollars later spent to keep it erect.

And as we all must, Mrs. Woodhull Martin died, Miss Woodhull kept to her side of the Atlantic to wind down her mother's affairs, and we were left with memories and buildings and an endowment. Rather, the libraries, residential and community, were left with endowments. Cyrus College was left with buildings, old and new, and no endowment. Perhaps she meant to "get around to it," as they say. But she did not.

Upper Sharon Community Church did not have an endowment either, but we were blessed with an active membership and sufficient support through the years that we had no more and no less to worry about than any congregation with a large, old building and a dwindling, aging body of parishoners. To be fair, we had done better than most, but in this small town we were never going to be a large church, and God himself forbid we might ever insert screens and shows and drums and din into the worship space. We did have a discreetly placed speaker system, but that necessity comes from both the age of the ears in the pews and perhaps the fact that seminaries do not seem to teach their students anything about public speaking, let alone projection, before sending them off to be ordained.

The church building faced south, with the sanctuary inside facing just a little north of east, a Tiffany window catching the sunrise particularly well in the weeks around Easter. This meant the broad steps and porch took you into a vestibule which then had steps inside to either side, up to the sanctuary level (and an elevator installed thirty years ago to the west, a bleak protrusion off of the otherwise genteelly ornamented building).

It also meant that the wide staircase was a sunny and warm spot for people to sit and gather, which would seem charming were it not for . . . yes, you've anticipated me. Smoking tattooed youth. And skateboards.

We had put up signs and even called the local constabulary on more than one occasion, to the point where the "boarders" knew they could not ply their art on our steps, marking and marring the stone with their skids and hacks and chops or whatever they call their "moves." Still they would sit there, skateboards held across their laps, eyeing cooly anyone passing by not of their clan.

"Good afternoon," I said briskly passing through them on my way up the steps.

"Good afternoon, Chancellor" said one of them, looking vaguely familiar. Of course, most of them were our students. I should have been gratified that one of them recognized me at all. With a curt nod of my head in her direction, I went on in to my meeting.

Chapter Two

As chancellor, my duties do not extend to student discipline. This is a subject I neither understand nor enjoy -- to me, rules are either followed, or broken, and broken rules receive warnings first, discipline second, and dismissal third. It seems simple, although my colleagues are ceaselessly telling me it is not.

Given the fact that we have a simply ridiculous number of buildings on our campus with a tragically small student body, the reality is that we have far too much room for mischief to occur.

Add in buildings that are not ours to control (not that we even control our own campus in toto,) like the quaint but tumbledown Indian Mill across the creek, and the adjoining grounds and outbuildings of St. Fiacre's Library on the bluff overhead, and you can complain about many things as a student here at Cyrus College, but lack of places to go off by yourself would not be one of them.

Since our campus population is entirely above the age of eighteen, they are, at least as the law sees them, adults, and we are expected by parents and the federal government and by law and precedent to treat them as such, no matter how vividly their behavior shows this is not the case.

The shall we say liberal, progressive ethos of the campus means that fights, as generally understood, are rare. Fisticuffs are simply not the thing here. And sexual assault, while sadly not unknown here, is less frequent than some commentators might lead you think is common on college campuses. Respect for each other, and for the educational process, is paramount. Yes, even among our young adults.

But they do not respect themselves.

This is the great tragedy of youth today. Their entire perspective on life, their own lives, and the possible import of that life when it reaches maturity: well, I think first and foremost of the appalling new practice, one could almost say a habit, of getting one's skin tattooed. And while I do my best not to peer in an inappropriate fashion at the bodily forms of our young charges here, I am forced to see enough of their so-called body art to say that, if one were to get a tattoo, why would you choose the endless array of skulls, flames, and Gothic lettering that seems all the rage? And as for barbed wire . . .

At any rate, tattooing is not against our campus rules, while it might well be in a state governed by philosopher-kings. What is forbidden is smoking indoors, and that is not only for the health of one's lungs and those of others, but for the health of our admittedly decrepit and largely wooden buildings. They have a certain rustic charm going back to their origins in the 1920s, and they would no doubt look quite compellingly attractive in flames, an image I might easily indulge in if I were given to such fantasies. And if you had any responsibility for their upkeep you might just do so.

Our dean of student life, Tamara Rezik, is incessantly coming to President Doone asking for exemptions from this rule or a variation in the usual enforcement for that. Students who are caught in all manner of infractions, or are found making off with campus property, or whose academic records make it clear they have no business either here or in any other post-secondary institution, all find a willing ear and a bleeding heart in Dean Rezik's office. And to date, I have not chosen to exert my influence to sway our president's final decisions in a more decisive, emphatic direction.

The Dean has been here, truth be told, almost as long as I have. And while she has the well-deserved respect of her colleagues -- most of us recall her handling of the Wilkinson situation ten years ago with a mixture of awe and appreciation, a child of a board member who . . . well, we all signed the agreement. Nevermind. What I meant to say was that I think, in our little hermetically sealed environment, we all know each other all too well. And I am certain that my fellow faculty members would not mind seeing a few presidential decrees that turn the direction of the school back towards discipline and decorum.

Part Three - Chapter One

My name is Dr. Brett Marsden, and I'm not complaining, but I do want my side recorded, which is why I'm putting my version of events down on paper.

When Hazel left on her wild goose chase to England, I was left behind in Upper Sharon to somehow keep the home fires burning at Cyrus College. Bills were going unpaid, student information requests unanswered, disturbances taking place on campus, but she left to spend what was supposed to be a week chatting with a friend. Whatever.

As Chancellor of Cyrus College, my responsibilities are something of a combination of provost, comptroller, and all around dog's-body to the staff and faculty. They all can leave at the end of their day, but Cyrus College is my life, and my home along The Range next to Old Main is a humble retreat where any and all might come and ask for my guidance and assistance, and many do.

To be fair, the small faculty (technically, only fourteen professors and a woodpile's worth of instructors) keeps the usual rigors of a provost's life to a minimum, and our student body is well tended to by the dean of student life. President Doone and I met biweekly (I wish it were more often), and while she can have an abrupt way about her, the truth is that we often did not have enough academic business to maintain a full hour's worth of meeting.

Except for the subject we should have been discussing, which was the fate of the college itself. The dwindling student body, the small matter of accreditation, and the future of our sort of horticultural and landscape design based education . . . all these things are what we should have been discussing, and at length.

President Doone doubtless had such conversations with the board, but she did not need to ask for my sympathy for me to know that their vision of the future was as myopic as any of their attempts at decision making. Short-sighted, short-term, stultified thinking if indeed you could call it thinking . . . but I digress.

Money, I suppose, has an intelligence all its own, but it is like the sort of cognition we're told to expect from alien beings from distant stars. We may be working on different sets of criteria altogether, and not recognize the sense being made by the other. Most of our wealthy trustees have to be respected if only for the fact that they are, and have generally made themselves, a goodly fortune; when you sit and converse with most of them, you walk away wondering how on earth they did so.

At any rate, the president can count on my complete and utter support in whatever she can achieve in gaining the attention and directing the actions of those peculiar creatures. They persist, however, in having their own ideas, each of which has to be dealt with in the form of studies and dialogues and responses that each takes an eon of their own, all of which takes time that, frankly, Cyrus College does not have.

As Chancellor of our august institution, however oddly chartered, my concern is to maintain high academic standards on the part of both students and faculty, while ensuring the long-term viability of the college. Ms. Woodhull and her mother wanted to establish a women's college of horticultural studies, thinking that they could continue to thread their own particular needle of women's liberation even while affirming a very traditional view of women's roles. To do this, they thought that empowering young women to work the land, open up and manage small businesses of an agricultural sort, and continue in their married and maternal lives with the vigorous hobbies of landscape gardening and greenhouse agriculture, all would be in keeping with their . . .  philosophies.

Whether the specific nature of the college was ever truly discussed between those two fine, unusual and unusually gifted women, is a matter open for debate. But in their shared passion for spiritualism, women's suffrage, and a love of the land and all that is rustic, they created this college, named for Zula Maud's spirit guide, and devoted to a program that fits only awkwardly into the world as we have it today.

Chapter Eighteen

Her hotel was near the John Hancock Center, with windows that looked out onto the lower levels of the angular bulk of that dark, x-ed tower anchoring the northern end of the Chicago archipelago of skyscrapers. A few more tall buildings stepped their way down from the hundred-some floors of the Hancock, but the bend of the beach, the curve of Lake Shore Drive, and the extent of the Magnificent Mile ran out about there.

The Newberry was a not-unpleasant good walk to the west and north, and this particular hotel was well recommended and familiar by now to her. The view she had this visit was of a mysterious low black building between her window and the Hancock itself, on land that had to be insanely valuable, with darkened windows and few of those, just a story and a half in height.

The front desk staff smiled a "we get asked that" smile, and explained it was a very private and extremely expensive card club, which had over a hundred years of history. "The John Hancock folks wanted it back in the 70s when they were building, and they couldn't find a way to buy it."

From above, as in a plane, you noticed things about a building that just walking by six or seven times (as she must have done on visits before) did not reveal. The relative humility of the quarter-block brick structure, all the more striking among the opulent neighbors, a description that fit her hotel as well.

So many mysteries, all around us, often right in front of us, and we don't see them, and don't even know we don't see them. Houses, card clubs, people. Desk staff and wealthy bridge players. Daughters and students and even the receptionist in the administration building. What was it about her father someone had told her last week, that he had cancer or some lung disorder, was ill, was on hospice? Was that at home, or in a hospital? She hadn't really asked, and now didn't even remember whom she could ask now.

Clair, a friend who was not a friend, but the source of more friendly conversation than most people she talked to in a week or a month. The Newberry, which was a home and not a home. A connection where she didn't quite fit in, but where she knew her place and enjoyed fitting into it. If she truly belonged, if she worked there, would the distancing begin whether she intended it or not?

And this hotel. By definition, a place where one did not belong, and yet you had a room. Until 11 am tomorrow, it was hers, and after that, it was someone else's. She had an absolute right to be here right now, but in another week - no right, or she could have the right for as long as you wish, if she wanted to pay the freight.

If she went to London, even more so there, in whatever hotel would become the place she would try to fit into, and where she would feel her strangeness all the more. "Two countries separated by a common language" -- Mencken? Twain? But British English had a deceptive familiarity all its own, and strangenesses that could snag you by your sleeves like multifloral rose on an Ohio hike.

Even her rooms at St. Fiacre's: they were absolutely hers, and the moment she quit or retired or was fired (or died, she reminded herself), they would be assigned to another. Her place in the world, in this world, or her world as Chief Librarian: she would be replaced quickly. Which is not to say unmourned, but certainly without a pause in the slow but steady stream of guests and visitors. She would be missed, but not for very long.

Chapter Seventeen

Clair Baring-Schultze didn't know any more about computers than Hazel did. But he had more staff, and younger, better skilled staff that understood all the intricacies of data bases, search engines, and document storage online.

Their conversations, then, usually revolved more around departmental politics and personnel management more than they did on the ostensible subject of internet issues in archival science. She liked the people side of her work, and she liked talking to Clair, even though their conversations often left her feeling like they were just benefiting from the work of others... which, to be fair, they were, but that's what it means to be in charge, she thought.

"So you're going on after you're done here in Chicago to London?"

"That's the plan right now."

"Do you plan to stop by the British Museum, or Dr Williams' Library?"

"I hope so," Hazel smiled, "but that's not the main point of the trip. I'm going at the request of an old school friend, from college. She's a journalist, and has some questions for me."

"She's interviewing you?"

"No, that's not quite it. She's . . . you know, I'm not sure what she's doing right now. She's been in Pakistan for most of the last few years. We exchange e-mails from time to time. But I guess we both don't have many friends. I mean, not where we, here, that is . . ."

"I understand. There's work relationships, collegial connections, and there's friends. I'd call you a friend, Hazel, even if technically we barely know each other. It's a slippery word."

"It should be simple, shouldn't it."

"I don't know why it would be. Any human relationship is tied up in knots with every other, and how to keep track of which one takes priority over another, which person at any given time in more important than someone else . . . I have no idea how to do that. It's a Gordian Knot that's given to the Alexandrian Solution."

"Pardon me?"

"Oh, one of those classical references I drop into conversations too often. Forgive me."

"Well, I'm a librarian. Anything Alexandrian I should know about, but that missed me."

"I'm going back to the source himself, Alexander the Great, for whom the city and the library were named. It's said that, when presented with the original riddle of the Gordian Knot, Aristotle's prize pupil took out his sword and sliced through the knot."

"Ah."

"So, for some of us, he said speaking purely for himself, we cut the cord of close connection. Keep the ties loose and make as few as possible, that way you can keep track of what and who you are supposed to care about."

Hazel was about to dispute this point when it occurred to her that it was descriptive of her as well as it was of Clair, and she sat silently, looking down into her lap.

"The Alexandrian Solution is elegant and effective, but also it leads to the Alexandrian Dilemma."

Looking up, Hazel asked "which is?"

"A dissatisfaction at the things of this world."

They both sat quietly at this for a few moments, enough to establish that they were, indeed, friends enough to be silent with each other without undue anxiety.

Hazel broke the pause saying "You're right about dissatisfaction. I'm not even sure what I'm dissatisfied about these days, except that I like my work, but don't love it; I have a good life, but I don't . . . love it."

"There's a key word there."

"Yes there is."

Chapter Sixteen

Lake Michigan curved across the lower horizon, with a flatter arc of distant horizon both darker and brighter with sunset approaching.

Hazel's flight swung out over the lake, and looped back towards land, the city, and the airport. The surface of the lake was less liquid than simply featureless, while the grid of Chicago was slowly lighting up below and to the north and south, rigid lines crossing and recrossing, extending out from the cluster of towers and pinnacles along the shore.

How other passengers could stay wedded to their phones, their tablets, the seat backs in front of them, during a landing, she didn't understand. If it was fear and a desire to avoid looking at the circumstances of one's demise, she could make sense of that, but it wasn't anxiety that seemed to keep most of the others seated near her from looking out of the windows. They just weren't interested. Hazel couldn't get enough of it -- the perspective, the occasional surprises of rooftop pools and hidden green patches, the unfamiliar angles on well-known architecture, all of the thrill of being in the air.

She had spent some time, both before they finally took off, back at the Port Columbus terminal, and during the relatively brief flight, communicating with her staff back at Cyrus College and at St. Fiacre's. For her to be gone for a week wasn't unprecedented, but it was normally something provided for well in advance, and usually tied in with funding and development calls, visits to donors (or prospective ones).

But the amount of vacation she had piled up, unused, was not small, and while St. Fiacre's could operate indefinitely without her presence, the college was a different proposition. It should, but it would work hard at not doing so. But after a dozen lengthy e-mails and a few well chosen cell calls, Hazel had opened up for herself a week's respite.

She also considered a phone call to Nicholas. In part because they had hit it off so well, in part because she didn't want him misinterpreting an extended silence after last weekend, and mostly because she had a nagging concern for his daughter. There was something Susie hadn't told her, and Hazel believed that given time, she would. On the other hand, would it seem forward, somewhat pushy for her to call and announce "oh, I'm leaving town for a few days." She decided it was a call she could make later, if then.

Plus, who knew how long this would take. She might fly to London, have a single conversation with Abigail, and fly back.

Which would still take at least three days after her day and a half here, which meant... well, she might be back by next Sunday's service, which she suddenly realized she had already been assuming she'd attend. With that realization, the announcement to shut off electronic devices and fasten seat belts changed the thoughts of everyone on board to a focus on those last few minutes of descent, and landing, and the scramble for the exits. Hazel shifted her thoughts in those same direction herself, even as she kept glancing out the window to watch the nearing rooftops and streetscapes flash past below.

Chapter Fifteen

A new week, and a welcome respite from the close quarters and hot-house debates within Cyrus College, or even the petty politics of the library staff.

Library business was taking her to Chicago, where some colleagues at the Newberry Library had ideas for managing archives in digital form that Hazel wanted to hear about with her own ears, see directly what these interfaces and scanning technologies would look like.

Audrey, her senior archivist, had offered to drive her over to the Columbus airport, but -- on the St. Fiacre's side, at least -- there were funds for travel, including for a car service to come and pick her up and drive her directly to the terminal. The savings in parking fees was not really enough to balance the cost, but the net expense was not out of line with what she knew they could afford, and Hazel liked skipping the whole extra set of steps to get into the terminal and on her way.

Looking up from the files on her lap, she was almost startled to see how quickly the wide square bulk of parking garages and terminals had come to her. Thirty minutes was not long enough to really get into a project.

Hastily folding up her work and shoving it into her holdall with tablet and earphones, she was ready when the limo pulled up to her door. Carryon, holdall over one shoulder, into the building, through the ticketing and security and on to the gate, tumbling to a halt at an open seat.

"Delayed" read the gate sign. For the first time, even though they had to have been driving towards it the whole time on the way here, she noticed the dark clouds and heard rumbling through the overhead wide windows, deep and bass and lengthy.

Hazel was not a nervous flyer, and the prospect of turbulence didn't rattle her, but taking off into a thunderstorm certainly made no sense at all. Resignedly, she sat down, arranged her bags at her feet, and pulled out the tablet, tapping it into connectivity with the airport wifi.

Emails, a few messages through other services, posts or tweets or such. One message pointed her back to her phone, and a text message from the college which she quickly handled with a pair of strongly worded text messages herself.

Setting down the phone atop her carryon, she checked the tablet again to see a new email. The address was unfamiliar, but the salutation was from Abigail, a college friend she'd just been mentioning to Susie. Apparently she was working for a cable news network these days, or so the email address would indicate.

And apparently she had a pretty good arrangement going with them, because the email simply said "Would you like to come to London? The network will pay. I need to talk to someone, and you keep coming to mind. If your little library in the Midwest can spare you a week, I've got a big project in mind." Following were the details for making contact if she were interested, and willing.

To some degree, she thought, she was more interested than willing. She was available just now, too, but not indefinitely. This didn't sound open ended, though, and Abby had always been a pretty clear and direct person. What she was asking here was probably what she actually wanted: someone trustworthy to talk to.

For Hazel, another reason to say yes was the opportunity to be that trustworthy person, after so much time in the last year spent with people who never answered honestly even if you asked them what they wanted.

Chapter Fourteen

In the chief librarian's apartment, Hazel looked out across the Welsh Hills to the south under the moonlight.

Her last few predecessors had not used this suite of rooms, designated in Zula Maud Woodhull's original design as the residence for the head of St. Fiacre's. They had been married, one with children, and chose to live in Upper Sharon or nearby Granville. During those years, the chief librarian's apartment had been used by visiting scholars. For Hazel, this perk meant a savings that was already technically part of her pay package, plus the simple lodgings suited her.

From her usual reading chair, the view to the southwest included a stretch of horizon fringed with treetops, and tonight a squashed orb sinking into view, no longer full but bright enough to keep pulling her eyes up and away from the tablet in her lap.

Setting aside the riddles of data security and password protocols, she leaned back and looked quizzically at the moon. Growing up, about Susie's age, she had gotten a small telescope for her birthday. She'd watched "2001: A Space Odyssey" or something pre-Star Wars like that, and asked to have one to scan the craters and mountains of the moon for herself. Neil Armstrong had walked on its surface a few years earlier, and Hazel began to nurture a dream of going there herself.

Those dreams had included plans to study physics and astronomy, but not one but two dreadful experiences in math classes in a row had pushed that passion aside. Science took a back seat to the humanities, and a love for literature and books bloomed in the bare spot where the earlier dream died. College and library science and experience in public and academic libraries and, in what now seemed like a mere flicker of time, she was chief librarian and director here, looking at the moon from a distance.

The fact that she wouldn't have been able to go to the moon anyhow (since humanity had stopped going for some reason altogether) didn't soften the sudden pang of recollected excitement, the hopes so long forgotten of seeing the glare of unfiltered sunlight across a grey and dusty lunar surface. It was a less exciting vision than, say, riding a sandworm across a desert planet in search of legendary spices, but it had a tang of reality that other science fiction couldn't touch.

So what do I dream of now, she asked herself? If this is, as I've said to so many, my last professional position, do I simply focus my hopes for the future on a pleasant retirement? Many of the friends she'd gained through years in library work were now retired, and they did seem to enjoy the life well enough, even those in southern, summerful lands - Florida, Arizona, Mexico. She got emails or saw Facebook posts from them, shopping and doing water aerobics and . . . shopping.

Retirement wasn't something she was afraid of so much as it wasn't what she was looking for. Leisure, relaxation, indolence (Hazel noticed the touch of judgmentalism in that thought and let it pass) were just not what she planned to anticipate.

But was there any subject or location or activity that she now aspired to? What did she want to . . . do? She really didn't know. Right now, she wanted to get herself a small telescope, and just enjoy again that long-lost dream, and the harsh beauty of the moon's landscape in the eyepiece.

Chapter Thirteen

Hazel and Susie walked down the stairs from St. Fiacre's to the campus of Cyrus College in single file.

Over her shoulder, Susie in the front said "I really appreciate your taking the time to talk to me."

"I hope we talk again. Maybe just over good things, like your college plans, or just about life."

On the one landing between the blufftop and the terrace level where the college buildings stood, Susie turned and smiled at Hazel. "I don't really like plants much; is it okay if I don't want to go to Cyrus College?"

"Honey," Hazel said, smiling even more broadly, "I don't even know that I would have wanted to go to Cyrus College."

They walked more companionably on down the last flights of wooden stairs to the broad level creekbank openness where the college lodges stood, in two rows facing each other across The Range that ended, to the west, at the mounded foundation of the four story Old Main.

Susie said, in an apologetic tone: "It all looks kind of seedy and decrepit."

Hazel replied: "I'm just loving that you know the word decrepit."

The two women walked across the graveled path of The Range, and then to the footbridge across Auter Creek. Before they stepped onto the bridge deck, Susie said to Hazel: "I hope it makes sense, I mean, to you, that this stuff isn't really anything I want to make a big deal of."

"If we can keep talking about it all, I'm okay with that. But if you get more of this sort of treatment online, is it okay if I get some other adults involved?"

She thought for a moment, and then said to her on the bridge "Sure. I can work with that."

Hazel added, as they began to finish the trip across the water: "Let's just hope that it all winds down with the school getting involved and going after those kids. Once they know it's not something they can get away with, that should make them stop and think."

"I hope so, too," said Susie. She looked up at Hazel with a crooked smile. "Except, they think they did get away with it. Which they kinda did."

Then she turned and walked on across onto the opposite shore, as Hazel stood frowning.

Chapter Twelve

"You really don't have to talk to me."

"No, I don't mind, really."

"This is probably awkward for both of us."

"No, I'm fine."

"It's just not the sort of thing you can talk about and solve."

"I'm sure you're right about that."

"It's nice of you, but my dad is kind of all worked up, because he assumes I'm upset because I'm not upset. You know?"

Susie was sitting very upright and stiffly. She and Hazel were in the two chairs off to one side of the desk that were where most of the business of this office took place. Across the desk, only formal interactions occurred. To one side, in the two chairs, almost knee to knee, Hazel had received donors, expelled students, and talked to weeping staff members. Right now, she was talking to a new friend's youngest daughter about internet bullying, and it felt harder than trying to get a major gift out of a disaffected alumnus.

"Susie, I had a friend in college. Her name is Abigail. She would take on challenges and do things that people would think were kind of crazy, and what really upset her was that they'd be mad at her for not reacting the way they thought she should. She said that if guys were calm and under control, they got complimented, but if she stayed cool when everything was coming apart, people treated her like she was the weird one."

For the first time in their conversation, Susie smiled, and relaxed a bit more like a teenager into the wide upholstered armchair.

"That's what I mean, exactly. I want to be like Abigail, and no one wants me to be anything other than a teenager. Or what they think a teenager is. 'Ohhhh' and 'Ohhhhh' and all kinds of stupid 'I don't know what to dooooo' kind of whining. This is something I can handle."

Hazel leant forward in her chair. "What is the something, if I can ask?"

Susie sat, silently, then squinched further sideways, looking up into the coffered ceiling of the chief librarian's office. "It's not the guys, it's the other girls. Some of them just like making fun of girls who don't run with them. I know that. I know that. And I'm not going to. But they want to make sure I know I don't belong, and so they make me think I'm one of them. Do you know what I mean?"

"I think I do."

"They can call me a slut, or tell their skanky boyfriends to call me a slut on their web pages and stuff, and they think that will make me, like, go 'waaaaa, stop it' and honestly? I don't care. What they think, what anyone thinks that's not my friend? Which is like five people? So what. So what. That's what I think."

"I understand exactly what you mean."

Chapter Eleven

Susie was due to come by Hazel's office at 5:00 pm. Nicholas would drop his daughter off, then drive back around the long way to the west across the upper bridge and back through the village to the Lunchbox. Hazel and Susie would walk down from St. Fiacre's through the Cyrus College campus, across the Range, and on the footbridge across Auter Creek where they'd meet Nicholas and the two older girls for dinner . . . if the Lunchbox was open for dinner. If not, they'd come up with a Plan B.

The stacks of structural reports on the Old Main's 1859 timbers, the accreditation review portfolio, all the board memo compilations and complications went back into their folders and into or atop the file drawers across the office. They weren't resolved Friday night, and they could begin Monday morning unresolved as well. This young woman's situation intrigued Hazel, even though she was fairly certain she knew less about social media and the challenges of being a teenager than the girl's father assumed.

Smart phones and online tools were part of her daily life as an academic and administrator, but she didn't use them much for conversation and friendly communication. Truth be told, she didn't think of herself as having all that many friends, period. That was perhaps a natural outgrowth of being in an executive position, where those with whom you have the most in common are always those who have the most they need to get from you, and to whom you most need to be able to say no.

Students, even in such a small and theoretically close knit place as this, didn't try to become friends, and it was easy enough to not even have many conversations with them. That's what was so unusual for her about the encounter at the old Indian Mill on Saturday with the mediation circle, and the morning spent down at the Salvage Yard. She had conversations, where things were shared and said about lives and choices and decisions, and it was uncomfortable to realize how entirely unusual it all was. The last twenty-four hours probably included more direct communication with students than she'd had in her two years here to date.

She'd had friends in college, and none of them had kept in touch. Various career and scholarly tracks all led off in directions divergent enough that there was no point of intersection. Off to one coast or another, working abroad or returning to hometowns for marriage and family.

The worship service, if that was the right phrase for it, didn't quite make sense to Hazel. It wasn't what she was used to, insofar as she still had patterns of remembered religion to which she was used; it didn't really give her a feeling of religious insight or personal ecstasy or cosmic communion . . . but for more than just a few moments there in that warehouse, she felt like it was a family to which she belonged.

Chapter Ten

Back to this world, these things, this now.

Hazel was more aware than most that Cyrus College was on its last legs. Options for moving in a new direction were few, and the momentum carrying them all forward, students, staff, the institution, was towards a very definite sort of cliff, or at least a drop-off like the edge of Auter Creek. The fall might not be too far, but once you were in the water, it was going to be the very devil to get out again.

Her predecessor had not managed the endowment well, to put it kindly. As student numbers had declined, rather than taking steps to either recruit more (or smarter) or to cut costs, he had simply increased the draw, pointing out to the trustees that investment income was up, and that this was a short term expedient.

The short term had been more like ten years of a nearly ten percent average draw, the student body got smaller, and while the last two faculty positions had been left unfilled, reducing costs, deferred maintenance on the aging collection of buildings that made up the campus was looming.

Then the economic collapse, the president's separation package, and Hazel's arrival combined to put her into a truly awkward position. Her predecessor, while a financial idiot, was a personable and generally well-intentioned nice guy. She had to be extremely careful with the trustees (whose behavior could fairly be described as idiotic as well) in sounding like she was blaming him for their current dire situation. This was a time when being right was no defense.

But it was also the case that she had to get the trustees to face facts. Her position here, at St. Fiacre's, just added to the blurring and distraction that probably both kept the previous president and the current board from looking directly at the situation of Cyrus College. There were two endowments, and very specific language about how they could be spent, which is to say the St. Fiacre's Residential Library funds couldn't be spent down on the college campus, and the Cyrus College endowment could not (were there any left) be spent up at the library.

Making the circumstances even odder, she had as chief librarian well-nigh dictatorial powers over policy, staff, and finances for St. Fiacre's, with the sole provision that investment decisions "should be made in consultation with the president of Cyrus College and the chairman of their board of trustees," the stipulation that led to the merging of the two positions some thirty years ago when the first flickers of the college's financial instability became in evidence.

As president of the college, she was largely under the direct authority of the board of trustees, a self-nominating body that had inbred itself into myopia and studied indifference . . . none of which mitigated their ability to block or stifle any new directions for Cyrus College. An elderly emerita of the faculty, now deceased, had shared with Hazel her understanding that this was because Mrs. Woodhull Martin's daughter Zula had planned, before her death, to return to America and settle in as chief librarian herself, keeping a weather eye on the project more her mother's passion in the valley below. But the deaths of both in relatively quick succession meant Zula Maud Woodhull never returned to this country, and her dreamt-of sinecure was now the island in the midst of floodwaters on which Hazel nervously, if securely stood.

So St. Fiacre's was stable and in fact fairly flush with money. The first merged chief librarian/president a few decades back had pushed for placing half the endowment into gold, which the Cyrus College trustees resisted and ultimately blocked, meaning that he then put more than two-thirds of the library endowment into precious metals. The staffing had never been excessive, perhaps even a bit too sparse to properly guide St. Fiacre's into the modern media era of library science, and the fees and scholarships had always been intelligently planned so that costs and budgets required no more than a three or even two and a half percent draw on the burgeoning endowment. It had grown to the point where her financial advisor, an external professional Hazel happily paid for four meetings a year over in Columbus, was warning that they had to spend some of their money soon or face consequences as a tax exempt institution.

Cyrus College's trustees were very proud, excessively and unreasonably so, of the fact that they paid no one and consulted nobody on their financial management. This was surely part of why they now had essentially no endowment to manage. The annual costs of running the college, including what tuition and fees were paid (when they were paid), and even without the maintenance some of the buildings so desperately needed, were going to run the endowment down to zero in less than three years. Other than to ask ritually of Hazel if she could use some of the library endowment to pay their bills, and to hear her equally formulaic "I'm sorry, my hands are tied," they took little or no account of the suggestions she made to them of how they might restructure the college, its mission, and the future of the school which was right now looking incredibly bleak.

Chapter Nine

The service, Hazel thought as she shuffled efficiently through her built-up stack of administrative obligations, was hard to categorize.

It wasn't at all like the sort of "follow the bulletin" worship programs she recalled from childhood. You got your paper folder at the door, and much of the service was spent checking in on the typed outline or flipping over to the right page in the hymnal.

The Salvage Yard didn't have a bulletin, and didn't really seem to have a structure. They sang two or three songs, and then someone (not Nicholas) led a prayer, then they sang another song, there was a statement Nicholas made in a soft but emphatic voice, and then everyone was up again and out of their chairs moving around, with people turning to her and extending a hand to say "Peace be with you." Hazel could tell some said "And also with you" in the background noise, which she began to respond with as well, though some were clearly saying something longer, the exact words varying but usually involving peace, and Jesus.

Then everyone sat down, a few things were said by different people about events coming up here, at the college, and in town at a soup kitchen they apparently worked at. Nicholas read out of a Bible whose translation was striking, something clearly out of New Testament scriptures but in forceful, modern language, and then he began to speak.

She was sitting there, staring out her window into the tangle of branches across the one side, trying to recall what he had said. There were phrases, images that were sticking with her, but not entire sentences or a flow of argument exactly.

"A journey with others," "traveling through darkness with light enough for the next step," "hope is a gift, not an effort we failed to make if we find ourselves without it," and finally "when Jesus said 'I will be with you always' he was talking, among other things, about right now, about being with you."

Then there was a shifting, and some people moved to the floor, sitting flat or kneeling, others turned and knelt into their chairs, while a few moved to behind the group and stood, some eyes open and others closed with their hands extended and facing upwards.

Behind Nicholas a table could now be seen to have a candle, a pair of flowers in a lovely blue glass vase, and a large contemporary unframed icon, showing Jesus and his disciples in conversation depicted in the spiky, angular lines of an eastern Orthodox style image.

The music rose up softly, in a short line of chant that everyone sang over and over again. Most, but not all were looking at the candle, or the icon, or both; many, but not everyone had their hands clasped or folded (except those standing to the rear), and Hazel found herself doing the same, not quite bowing her head, but looking about more than looking at the table which now defined a certain "front" of the worship gathering.

It was almost minor key, but she wasn't sure, and the words were "O Lord, hear my prayer; O Lord, hear my prayer; In my prayer, answer me," words which she soon began to sing softly herself. After a few repetitions, she closed her eyes, and almost felt as if she was falling asleep, but did not stop singing.

A few shifted chords and the song came to an end, and then there was silence. There were sounds of breathing and occasional shifting of weight and scraping against the bare concrete floor by some of the chairs (the table with the candle and icon sat on a lovely Persian rug whose pattern drew Hazel's eye as much as the flame did).

She was not sure how long the silence lasted, and felt no desire to check her watch, a sensation she realized marked much of her average day. They all sat or knelt or stood, and the room felt calm, expectant, ready in some anticipatory way.

Then she heard Nicholas' voice gently begin a spoken, impromptu prayer, with first names coming up that she recognized as being some of those among her fellow worshipers here, and then with a slight shock heard her name - or was it another Hazel? - that he asked for "special blessing" on from God.

And then it was over, and everyone began to turn and speak in everyday tones to each other as they all rose and stretched, and it seemed to her that they were exiting one kind of space and entering another even as it had been the old chilly warehouse the whole time.

Chapter Eight

Sunday afternoon in her office up in St. Fiacre's was a moment back in the usual ritual.

Fundraising letters, student records, grading appeals, maintenance requests -- this was the best time to polish off all the detail work that never seemed to get finished through the week. Faculty and affiliate teachers, other office staff along with her one other administrative counterpart, the grandly named and hopelessly obtuse Chancellor, matters of protocol and timing for visiting scholars to the library, or the ever-elusive quest for some form of accreditation to the college, all caused regular interruptions through weekdays to the necessary operations of the day-to-day operations of the paired institutions.

Hazel was glad for a chance to sort and sift without a sound in the building other than her CD of Chopin nocturnes and the occasional creak of a window (does that need replacing?) or the groan of bit of subflooring (is it a structural matter?) as she walked back and forth from her desk to the long expanse of the conference room table where she could shuffle her piles and stacks of various "important" papers.

As she worked, she'd kept thinking about the last part of her conversation with Nicholas, about his daughters, and especially the youngest one. Apparently there had been some sort of concern over a social media issue, where some girls at school had put her picture, a shot of her face, up on a list of girls with some inappropriate language about them. He'd been awkwardly amusing about his inability to say what it was the internet pages had said about her. Apparently it was rude, but not profane.

He'd hoped Hazel had some advice for him about the subject, but her main reaction had been more along the lines of "seriously, that's all?" In the admissions conferences, and regarding disciplinary issues on campus, she'd become somewhat numb to the sheer willful stupidity of what young people posted about themselves, let alone about others. She knew Nicholas was hoping for some sort of feminine perspective on his parenting problem, but she'd not been a parent, and she wasn't even sure being feminine today was something a woman in her late thirties could even offer useful advice on.

Looking back out the north-facing windows of her office, it was a good view to reflect on these last couple days. The Lunchbox could be picked out as a lower roofline along Upper Sharon Road curving under the hill; the Memorial Church in white and gold just beyond; the mill where this latest chapter began in peeling green and rustic red obscured by brush and bushes along the creekbank, next to the steel frame bridge crossing Elliot's Run where it poured into Auter Creek, the road disappearing out of view to her right to where, a mile or so along, it met with Welsh Hills and Sharon Valley Road at the crossroads where the Salvage Yard sat.

Unaffected by these last few days were College Hall below, its central cupola four stories high yet still below her and to the left, and the rows of low-slung buildings, timber framed and cedar-shake roofed, plodding two by two from the historic brick hall to the west down The Range until its eastern end at the cast iron bridge across Auter Creek.

College Hall had roof problems, timber problems, and all around age problems. Hazel was not yet old enough to have them herself, but she was old enough to be thinking about them more than she had in her twenties. The years took their toll, and the hall had seen a century and a half of them.

Oddly enough, when Mrs. Woodhull Martin had left the endowment for St. Fiacre's, she had been very specific that it was for the library and the library's operations, and nothing else. Cyrus College had been left effectively nothing; Miss Zula Maud had left the college such nest egg as they'd ever had, but it hadn't been much, and their graduates had never been big on giving. Or maybe, Hazel reflected, Cyrus College had never been big on asking. The legend was that Mrs. Woodhull Martin had simply not acknowledged in her late 80s that she might be near to passing from the scene, and she had intended a generous endowment for the college, and just never got around to it before her not entirely unexpected death. Not unexpected, at least, to Zula Maud and the staff at Bredon's Norton, if a very real shock to Victoria herself.

She had made a special provision not long before her death, executed just after, which benefited not the bereft college, but a rather indifferent town. Just at the point where Upper Sharon Road branched beyond the steel frame bridge over Elliott's Run, where a small triangle of land had long stood, Zula Maud had executed a wish of her mother's. She had erected a life-size bronze statue of Mary Hartwell Catherwood, Ohio's first best selling novelist, one of the first bronze statues of a woman for any reason at all, honoring her life and work -- she was born more than a dozen miles south of Upper Sharon, but had set some of her writing back in the 1890s and early 1900s in this town, perhaps having taught here as she had in an assortment of small schools around the county thirty years previous.

There was no indication that Victoria Claflin Woodhull Martin had ever met Mary Hartwell Catherwood, but she obviously read her books, and that admiration had led to the prominent plinth and bronze sculpture at the entrance to the town.

At any rate, the statue had a maintenance endowment in the county bank (one of Hazel's multitudinous responsibilities to manage), but Cyrus College did not. Creating something of the sort out of nothing immediately at hand was one of the main reasons she'd been hired for the job. It was Hazel's opinion, at this point, that the trustees had made a definite mistake.

Chapter Seven

"How did you end up having a Salvage Yard in your salvage yard?"

Hazel found herself back again at the Lunchbox in Upper Sharon, sitting across from Nicholas at a booth where this time she (and he) were first in and tucked into the wall, with the mostly younger students from Cyrus College and elsewhere filling in and hanging off the end.

They'd ended the service and piled into an assortment of cars, including her Prius, and driven back up the road to what was clearly this fellowship's home away from home. They'd come in together and immediately taken the last four booths and adjoining small tables, with the obvious assent of the hostess, who was the senior of the two waitresses moving back and forth from tables to the grill and back again, with loops past the coffeemaker.

Nicholas smiled and looked up somewhere over Hazel's head. "Yeah, that's a funny sort of thing. It's not what I had . . ." He looked directly at her. "You've heard, probably, that my wife died last year."

"Yes, I'd heard some sort of strange, horrible accident. I'm sorry to hear it, of course."

"Strange, horrible, all those adjectives. She was darting back into the house: we have these three girls (he pointed generally towards enough girls to add up to more than three, but she assumed they were somewhere among them), and they were always forgetting things, and Natasha went to get something, slipped and fell backwards, hit her head, and laughed, got up, came back to the van -- we took the girls to school, I dropped her off at work and told her to be careful, and two hours later the hospital calls to tell me she's gone."

"Oh." There was a great deal of shock, sympathy, and felt pain in Hazel's small exclamation."

"Exactly," Nicholas answered with gentle acceptance. "It took me days to just get past the unreality of it all. I'm still not sure I really understand that she's gone. But it had been just a few weeks before that she'd run into some of the folks (and he gestured towards the booths filled in behind them, the older half of the group from the Salvage Yard) from an AA group that used to meet at the Memorial Church."

"You mean the one next door to here?"

"That's the one," Nicholas said wryly. "There was some sort of problem, a clogged toilet or something of that type, and next thing they knew, they'd been asked to meet somewhere else."

"Oh, that's so unfortunate," Hazel said, thinking she'd seen the same sort of thinking in academia, but hoped that churches were a little less hidebound.

The wry smile grew wryer as he replied "Yes, especially since just a few years before that, your predecessor had kicked them off of the Cyrus College campus."

"Oh." It was an entirely different "oh," with a new set of meanings to the same monosyllable.

"Yes. So they weren't sure it was a good idea to go back across the creek and see if the new president was any more reasonable (could his smile get any broader, she wondered), and were simply ready to give up, when one of their number mentioned their dilemma to Natasha. And that night, she came home and told me we were having an AA meeting in the shop."

"The shop?"

"Sharon Architectural Salvage, to be precise. Or the shop, as I usually call it."

"Oh."

They reflected together for a moment on the many uses of that term, then Hazel went on, a tiny bit uncomfortably: "So this was an AA meeting? Should I have been there? Because I . . ."

"No, no -- the church came later. It began with the AA group, and they still meet there. Tuesdays. Then NA, Thursdays. And then Al-Anon on Mondays. Which somehow became a group that was made up of a number of Memorial Church castaways who asked if they could use the chairs and space and coffee machine on Sunday mornings, and we'd done that all of twice when Natasha . . . died."

"Has it helped, this group, or does it . . .?"

"It does help. It hurts, not infrequently, but it hurts sometimes in the morning to see the girls coming out to the van, but that doesn't change how much I love them. The Salvage Yard is something that Natasha didn't know she was leaving me, but it's become like my fourth child."

"And your children are adopted?"

"Yes, we had been foster parents, and then we became foster parents who just couldn't let go, and the Children's Services folk couldn't have been happier. They helped with everything, and the adoption was final almost two years ago. This adoption, the church . . . I don't know if it's really a church, but the group, the community, it . . . well, my family has been, really, I guess blessed by it. And we want to find ways to bless others, and that's what our reason for getting together is. That, and remembering that we should be thankful, and remembering who to be thankful to."

"God, you mean."

"That's the name. If you aren't a God person, we're okay with that, you can probably tell. But most of us think God's a pretty important part of how we understand ourselves."

"Oh, no, I didn't mean to imply; I mean, God is . . . this isn't something I guess I've given much thought to. I'm a scientist and an academic, and Sundays stopped being something I spent in a big room singing in the morning back when I was in high school. Other than the stray wedding, or funeral . . ."

A particular funeral, one Hazel had not seen but could readily imagine, hung in the air between them. As if they'd spoken out loud, Nicholas said "Yes, we did her funeral right there in the shop. It seemed right. The funeral home was very helpful, if quite confused when they first showed up. But once we got them used to the idea, they were fine. I hope it's a long, long time before we use what we learned that day again to hold one of those."

Chapter Six

After steering her Prius the next morning into the parking area in front of Sharon Architectural Salvage, Hazel sat a moment behind the wheel drumming her fingers along its curve.

The radio still played, since she hadn't popped the door open yet. Krista Tippett was interviewing a spiritual leader of some sort on NPR, as she did pretty much every Sunday morning. When Hazel had listened to her before, it had been with a sort of academic detachment, not in the sense of prelude to actually having a spiritual experience, or whatever was going to happen inside.

She had loaded the keyboard into the hatchback trunk on her way down here, having forgotten how heavy it was, or really more unwieldy than weighty. She'd practiced a bit last night, and was pleasantly surprised to find that the rust fell away rather quickly. A few old show tunes, some light Beethoven, and an Ellington rendition of "Sophisticated Lady."

Now she was here, where she'd be expected to play . . . what? There were snatches of old hymns caught back in her head somewhere, pieces and parts but no full songs, not this long removed. And is that what they sang at the . . . Salvage Yard?

With a snap of the head, she swung out the door and marched to the rear, plucking the keyboard out and thinking she might ask for a hand in coming back to get the ironing-board-type stand. Tucked under her arm, she crunched across the gravel and to the fairly uninviting door with a very friendly looking sign on it, hung in an obviously "not all the time" fashion across it, hand-painted with "The Salvage Yard - Visitors Expected!"

As she approached the door, it swung out and Priscilla from yesterday stood there with a manic wave of her free hand, and warm greetings mixed with a grab for the handles of the carry-bag of the keyboard. Priscilla levered it neatly around the door frame, and as Hazel held onto the door, Cicely stepped through and gave her a hug.

"We're so happy you decided to come and play! This is going to be . . . do you need help with anything?"

"Well, there's still a stand in the car, but I have all the other cords in the carry-all, unless we need an extension . . ."

Cicely had already darted on past to the car, so Hazel returned with her, helped her lift the heavy metal stand and swing it up and over the sill of the trunk, then plucked a reel of extension cord out of its depths just to be on the safe side. Heading back (again) this time she entered and passed through the front door, yet another new face smiling and holding the door open for her.

Inside, the broad room across the front of the big block building was a step up, concrete floored and drop-ceilinged, with plenty of strong florescent light fixtures overhead. Some display tables and tall barrister bookcases lined the walls, with another step up on the other side to yet another large, solid door; as she and Cicely headed for it, she noticed a counter and office area off to her left.

Up through the next doorway, simply open and staying that way (the front door had some sort of automatic closer on it), they entered a wide and very deep room, the whole of the arched ceiling's trusses visible above, and the far wall barely visible beyond various objects and tall divider walls ahead.

In the middle, with a large life-size trio of statues dotted around as if they were part of the growing circle of chairs, was the . . . worship space? A ring of folding chairs, at any rate, in two concentric circles, and an opening on the opposite side, where a music stand of indeterminate but rustic vintage stood in the middle of the break in the circle, a guitar leaning against it with a cord running on over to an amp and a pair of speakers. Priscilla had already staked out a spot to one side of the music stand, and was animatedly waving at the area while talking to a tall man with longish, dark brown hair liberally streaked with grey, a long rugged face, and a very worn denim jacket against what was definitely some remaining chill in the room.

"Hazel, meet Nicholas," said Priscilla.

"How do you do, hello."

"Welcome to our little gathering here. We're honored to have you, and to play . . ."

"We'll see how honored you are after you've heard me."

The semi-formal pleasantries continued as they looked to the plugs and connections and set-up, and when they were done, Hazel was startled to find herself looking at a roomful of seated, friendly faces, and having Nicholas at her elbow swinging his guitar strap over his shoulder.  In almost a stage whisper, he asked her "What do you know that you're comfortable with?"

Hazel answered, with a joking intent, "'Sophisticated Lady' sounded good when I was practicing last night, but . . ."

Nicholas beamed and replied "Perfect. Let's start with that, and see where we go." It was clear he was entirely serious.

Bemused that she would be starting a . . . worship service? . . . with a jazz tune of uncertain intent, Hazel shrugged in a "sure, why not" fashion, and began to play. As she glanced up, it was clear that of the students and adults in the circle of chairs, those who didn't obviously already know the song were clearly welcoming it, and she lost herself then completely in the playing of it.

Chapter Five

As their booth and the booth across the aisle that was with them settled into eating, the voices around them and occasionally among them began to weave themselves into a running chorus.

"As if! She didn't even know."

"I'm not going to have that man mow my lot this year. I'm not interested in all the complications."

"Mickey Power will be dead by Christmas."

"Do you see her often, or did you just run into her?'

"We'd best get some rain, or I'm going have to start buying hay again."

Hazel picked at her salad, just letting herself listen and pick out the various statements floating around her, feeling the sense of life and community around these tables. Around the formica and tubular steel and naugahyde, people whose lives were all different from hers, and from each other, had in common a need to eat, a desire to find listening ears, and a hope to catch a response to their words that confirmed they were being heard themselves.

That's what these students were telling her they hadn't found on campus, she thought. Our food might be better, the buildings designed for communal living, with each lodge meant to be a sort of family the students would be part of for their whole time at Cyrus College, but there wasn't that much going on to promote people coming together for simple communication. Or for caring, for that matter.

Those women behind her, talking about Mickey Power. Who was she? Why would she be dead by Christmas? Should Hazel care, or is her situation no different than fifteen other global tragedies on the TV too distant to care about?

The younger woman, the girl really, who had wedged in last on Hazel's side of the booth, awkwardly turned her head and asked "Would you like to join us tomorrow?"

"Join you?"

"Come, I mean. To the Salvage Yard. I think you'd like it."

"So this is that warehouse building down at the crossroads, towards Newark, right?"

"That's it. We have a few of us who drive, maybe eight or ten of us who go. It's probably about forty people, mostly from Upper Sharon and the area, a few who come up from Newark."

"And what's a service like?"

The young woman directly across from them both chimed in: "They usually start with some songs; Bobby plays guitar, and sometimes there's a dulcimer or a bass and a keyboard. Cicely plays keyboards, but it depends on if someone brings out the Fender Rhodes from the storeroom."

"No," said Cicely, "Nicholas sold the Fender Rhodes. So we don't have anything but that giant out of tune upright piano, and I don't think it sounds right."

"Oh, I didn't realize. I missed a month when I was in England." The girl across from her turned to Hazel. "I got an award from the Linnean Society to study lichens in Syria, but since you can't go there, they let me use the funds to look at their archives and do a cross-referencing with the British Museum."

"I'm sorry, help me with your name?"

She smiled without any suggestion that Hazel should already have known it, putting her at ease before hearing "I'm Priscilla," and stretched her hand out across the table. They shook and nodded to each other, with Priscilla adding "I really do hope you'll come join us. Maybe you play keyboards?"

"As a matter of fact . . . " All three women smiled broadly. Hazel went on ". . . I have an electric keyboard in my hall closet that might just need some dusting off, literally and musically."

Chapter Four

Hazel and about half of the students from the meditation circle walked from the mill along Upper Sharon Road to the Lunchbox.

Wedged between Cunningham Hall and the Community Church, the Lunchbox was a diner that was open for breakfast and lunch, but occasionally was open well into the dinner hour, just not on any regular basis. The owner was also the short order cook, and some mix of where the supply levels were at in the walk-in cooler and his own energy level determined where between 2:00 pm and evening the Lunchbox closed.

The lights were on, the vent fan was pushing grill scents out onto the sidewalk, and the half-dozen or so of them went in the door and turned to fill the large booth in the front of the long, narrow restaurant.

Once Hazel had realized that things were not quite as she had assumed, her diplomatic instincts had kicked in quickly, and she meant to offer coffee or tea all around, and some conversation. During the short walk over, this had turned into a purchase of dinner, which she'd decided not to contest but instead pretend that it had been her intention from the outset.

"How did you all start meditating together?" she asked after they all got settled into their positions around the table. "Is this a club, or some other activity?"

"A bunch of us go to the Salvage Yard," said one young woman who hadn't said much so far. "That's where we started talking to each other."

"The Salvage Yard?" asked Hazel; "The junk shop down near the crossroads?" she went on.

They all smiled a variety of smiles. "No," said the first girl, "that's what we call our fellowship group, our church. But it meets in the Sharon Architectural Salvage building."

The young man who had said he was the "convener" of the group spoke up, no longer sounding as wary and defensive as he had back in the mill; "The Salvage Yard is a group of community members including some students who meet for worship and prayer. It started with an AA group that got kicked out of the Community Church, and started meeting down at Nicholas' warehouse, and just grew from there after Natasha died."

Hazel could tell the students all assumed she knew who Nicholas and Natasha were, and felt obscurely guilty about never having encountered the names before. The only reasonable response seemed to be a brief nod of the head, and when she had, the first young woman added "They just started welcoming people, and it turned into a church. Nicholas doesn't really like calling it that, but it's what people are familiar with. He calls it a meeting for worship, it's kind of a Quaker thing."

"So you're all Quakers?" asked Hazel.

"Oh, no" said two or three of them. Someone over to one side of her down the side of the booth said "Sort of, but..."

The young man leaned into the table and looked over at Hazel. "We're just a supportive community. Some of us are Christians of different sort, and some not sure what they are. But we just needed to find a place to get some reassurance. You know, about what we're doing, where we're going."

There was just a hint of "and we don't get that at the college" in both the statement and the look he gave her, to which Hazel felt it prudent to just nod. As she did, the other students nodded with her. They were all agreeing to something, she just wasn't sure what.

And then the waitress came with two arms full of plates, and everyone started sorting out whose was whose.

Chapter Three

The door slowly swung in.

"Uh, yah?"

"May I come in?" asked Hazel.

"Sh-sure. C'monin."

The student looked vaguely familiar to her, as they all did one way or another. Sophomore, she guessed. He didn't quite seem to have recognized her as president of the college, but that wasn't the point. A non-stoned, non-student adult person meant trouble, or maybe they didn't see it that way.

Or see her that way.

"Is this a party? Can anyone come?" she asked brightly.

"Uh, sure. Sure, yeah. C'mon."

The young man walked, not too unsteadily, down a long rough paneled hallway to another unfinished, aged-to-grey door, and stopped to hold it open for her. As she walked through, the room opened up to a high ceiling and a breadth over to a wide pair of windows looking out onto the downstream gully of the creek.

About a dozen students, some looking more familiar than others, sat in a circle. Most all of them were sitting on mats, some with extra wedge or roll-shaped cushions. A few sat cross-legged, others back on their haunches, and a very few in what Hazel recognized as the actual lotus position. They were all looking up at her, looking quite un-stoner-ish, whatever that was.

A taller, older, more intent looking student leaning forward said "Did you come to join us in today's meditation session, President Doone?" The name Pilkington came to mind.

"No, Mr. Pilkington, I appreciate the invitation," Hazel answered, thinking that there wasn't really an invitation in the question, but it seemed wise to treat it as one. "I'm here because someone nearby called me with a concern over loud parties in this mill, which is not college property."

"Mrs. Finnerty." The compact young woman across the room from her said it as a statement of fact, not as a question. "She tried coming over and telling us we were trespassing. I started to show her our letter of permission from the historical society, but she just tried to grab it, so I put it back in my backpack."

The young man next to her, the intent looking one, asked "You knew we had permission to be here, correct, ma'am?"

Hazel thought. She did not know about it, but their story and the suggestion of a letter led her to expect that their story was a true one. "Yes, but when I get a community complaint...."

"She thought we were worshiping the devil or something like that." This from the young woman.

"And the music?"

"None. We just hit the bowl twice to start, and a third time when we're ready to close."

"The bowl? asked Hazel.

"Yes. We could . . . " The tall intent young man leaned forward, stretched himself further to reach a pen, and relaxed back into position.

With a fluid movement, he reached down next to him, and struck a silvered object sitting on the floor next to him, and the wood framed room began to hum with a bright, vibrant tone that seemed to sustain itself for a time, then slowly eased down into a softer, deeper ring.

Chapter Two

If Hazel had to respond to one more party across the river, she was going to...

She'd had this conversation with herself often enough, and there were many answers to that proposition, none of which she would follow through on.

The two hundred some odd students at Cyrus College (and yes, the joke was made and made often) were a complicated group, united mainly by their lack of fear over a lack of accreditation, and mostly by their unwillingness or inability to go through an admissions process at other post-secondary institutions, ones with extras like a grounds department (the students took turns mowing and trimming and not picking up the trash around the lodges), a reliable wifi system, or accreditation.

They also were very close to united around their passion for horticulture, with a practical interest in marijuana. This crop was still illegal in Ohio, and schemes to use the college as the basis for getting permits to grow legally usually sounded scholarly and feasible until running up against the problematic lack of accreditation.

So the students tended to get their weed the way most college students anywhere did, albeit a bit more out in the open. Upper Sharon was unincorporated, and Concord Township was not well-off enough to have their own law enforcement (especially given that so much of their real estate was tax exempt what with Cyrus College, St. Fiacre's, and the Brotherhood of Rustic Pioneers, the Public Library, the Community Theatre, and both churches in town being non-profits). The County Sheriff's office responded to 911 calls, and the volunteer fire department kept busy enough, but there just weren't many reasons for anyone to come through to make a bust for a baggie.

When the more prosperous (and accredited) college to the south had students wanting to obtain some herb for happiness, they just told friends "Goin' up to Cyrus. Need any?" And the rest was understood.

Some of those transactions were drawn out enough that the students would mix, and the mixing might become a party, and when a party got big enough that the resident lodge wardens had to take notice, the usual practice was to cross Auter Creek and duck into the Wyandot Mill. Owned by the state, noted in local history, but secured lightly, the large open spaces within were ideal for college parties. The few windows were, ironically, barely visible within Upper Sharon, but clearly to be seen from the office and apartment of the Master of St. Fiacre's, which is to say, Hazel, who was also president of the college, an arrangement that had been true since 1954.

In all fairness, the students, local and commuting, who partied inside the mill were scrupulous about cleaning up and not doing damage; it was part of the "close to the land" ethos of Cyrus, and even the students from down the road knew that keeping things cool was essential to being able to keep holding their gatherings there. Hazel marveled that, considering how much smoking was going on in and along the porch above the mill run, the aged wooden structure hadn't long ago burned to ashes.

But if Mrs. Finnerty across the creek saw lights on after dark, and more importantly could hear the music from an "event," she would call Hazel. How the angry old woman had gotten her cell number she wasn't sure; she might have given it to her in a moment of weakness, at some community gathering when she'd been buttonholed about "you must do something about your students, Mrs. Doone."

Never mind that she was not and had never been a Mrs., and was generally Dr. something when she wasn't just Hazel (Cyrus being a very egalitarian place, St. Fiacre's just a touch less so), but Mrs. Finnerty had been on a rampage last night, even going out onto her porch to wave her arms at St. Fiacre's across the valley as she vented to Hazel about what was, and what she imagined was going on in the mill.

So, lacking also a security service (fascist, she'd heard one of her handful of faculty say when the subject came up), she put on a coat and marched grimly down the stairs to Cyrus, across The Range (the well trodden path between the two rows of lodges), onto the cast iron bridge across Auter Creek, and down and around a footpath just below the curve of Upper Sharon Road to the side door of the mill, where she stopped, collected herself, stood up a bit straighter, and knocked loudly on the door.

Part Two - Chapter One

Hazel was the president of Cyrus College. It sounded impressive that way, but given that her institution had no more than fourteen faculty counting herself, it meant less than it might have elsewhere.

Her authority, in fact, was less as president of the post-secondary educational establishment than it was in her second but more significant role as chief librarian of St. Fiacre's Residential Library.

St. Fiacre's was an imposing neo-Gothic quasi-Tudor melange of a pile modeled in part on the English manor house of its benefactor, Victoria Woodhull Martin. Mrs. Martin had an earlier career as the first woman to run for President of the United States in 1871, but later had come to London, continued her career as a public speaker and spiritualist medium, and ended up marrying a banker (her sister managed to marry a Lord, but the Lord was nearly broke while John Biddulph Martin had, as noted, a bank).

After Mr. Martin's death, Mrs. Martin nee Claflin aka "The Woodhull" retired to the countryside above Tewkesbury Abbey in the west of England, but never ceased to think about the Ohio countryside that gave her birth. She had wanted to do some good for young women like she had been, without family support or financial prospects, but whose talents and energy fitted them for finer things. Victoria's daughter Zula was sent back to New York and on to Ohio in hopes of establishing something grand in the town of her birth, but Homer, Ohio had sent Zula May Woodhull packing.

So she went a little ways south, came to Upper Sharon, and found township trustees and local leaders a bit more malleable, so it was that a rough replica of Mother's manor house was built in central Ohio, overlooking Auter Creek. Mrs. Martin and her daughter had visited St. Deiniol's in Wales the year before, a library established by former Prime Minister Gladstone before his death, and was inspired to do something similar, but in her former home country.

St. Fiacre's was a library designed for research and endowed for perpetuity, with a later development, the college, attached on less grandiose outward lines, but with the same burning passion to help mold young lives. In the case of Cyrus College, its roots were in horticulture, a plan to create a school for young women to learn to work the land in ways that cared for the earth and gave career prospects to the students; the humble ranks of simple structures looked more like an overgrown Civilian Conservation Corps camp than a college campus, but as the last bequest of Victoria Claflin Woodhull Martin, the hope was that the program would reach out to underprivileged women and men in the rural Midwest. Zula May had purchased a defunct college with an 1859 "Old Main," the administration building, and gone on to erect a large greenhouse and other housing and classroom structures, in a rough hewn timber-heavy style. There the young students, especially the women (Mrs. Martin had considered making it women only, as the establishment in Bredon's Norton had been back in England) would learn a trade, and there would be means by which the families and humanity involved could be bettered through attention to genetics, husbandry, and nurserymanship, skills that those learning there could take home with profit to their hometowns around the state.

Cyrus College was down closer to Auter Creek, and indeed many of the overgrown cabins, or "lodges" that made up campus had been flooded repeatedly since the founding back in the 1920s; they were built up on short stilts, which kept the damage from the waters to a minimum inside the structures. Old Main, the original Halcyon Christian College, was on an island of raised earth just back from the two rows of lodges running along the creek, built back in 1859 and on the inside, looking every year of it.

St. Fiacre's sat atop the bluff above, looking north across the deep valley of the creek to the protruding ridge end on which Upper Sharon was arranged. Hazel's office in St. Fiacre's gave her a near panoramic view of Upper Sharon, from Cunningham Hall and the Memorial Church in lower town, and the tiers of homes rising to the conical Native American mound crowing upper town, fifteen feet tall and surrounded by two hundred some year old gravestones.

At the edge of her window, from where she sat, down in the lower right, the dark red walls and rusting green roof of the Wyandot Mill sat down hunched into the waters of Auter Creek. The state had once again asked Cyrus College if they would take on the care of the Wyandot Mill as a "management partner" for interpretation and education: Hazel had replied with a "no" that was less abrupt and more open to some possibilities than her last few, but she knew their budget and personnel only had so much stretch left after a weekend of unauthorized parties like the one now past.

Chapter Eighteen

Al-Ghazzali had written "The Alchemy of Happiness" a thousand years ago, a long pamphlet or short book that a Sufi friend had asked her to read. Abigail was awake now, and knew she wouldn't fall asleep easily if at all, and there were four hours to go before landing at Heathrow.

Her neighbor in the aisle seat was contorted around away from her, which seemed fine except that it meant that, in her sleep, she kept kicking back at Abigail's ankles. That alone meant she wasn't going to try and doze again.

The extended essay was on her Kindle now, and she idly tapped it open. "Knowledge of self," "knowledge of God." The section headings were not encouraging.

Abigail had many friends, or at least recurring acquaintances from her time in Pakistan. She had made all of one venture into Afghanistan, and felt no need to return: that wasn't where this story, or the action was. If her reporting had told her anything as she inquired and appealed and asked questions across the various women and a few men she had interviewed, it was that Afghanistan may have been the hinge of Islamic extremism over a decade ago, but today the activity and education and motivation for radical Islam was all rooted deeply in Pakistani soil.

The men, so typically, always asked if she had a husband, a fiance, a suitor (or if she wanted one). Even the most liberal, enlightened, progressive Paki men would go to that subject the moment business ended and the conversation became more personal. And conservative men simply would not talk to her.

Among women, it was more complicated, but still marriage and the need to have a clear attachment to a male was still the heart of things for them. It was a fun-house mirror version of Jane Austen, she thought for the twenty-ninth time. Her marriageability, her prospects, her plans -- it was the same as talking to an American male during football season and everything was about their teams and the upcoming game of the decade.

Or century. Anyhow.

She knew she was not happy, but she was profoundly skeptical that it was a man who would make her so. But the subject of happiness was certainly of interest to her. Opening the first section, Abigail read:

"KNOWLEDGE of self is the key to the knowledge of God, according to the saying: "He who knows himself knows God..."

She had read the Qur'an, in various English translations as well as in Arabic, and had dealt directly with the reality that the Arabic of the Qur'an made Shakespearean English seem like a mere shimmer on the face of clear, easily plumbable language. The ancient, classical Qur'anic Arabic shone and reflected and redirected the reader to where it was understandable only that you needed a guide, an imam, to help you read it with understanding. No doubt somewhere in the Qur'an was a statement that could, with a little effort, be read as "He who knows himself knows God." Or she.

A little further down: "The first step to self-knowledge is to know that thou art composed of an outward shape, called the body, and an inward entity called the heart, or soul."

The outward shape she had, if not as in shape as she would like. A few weeks back in London, with gyms and weights and some yoga at hand, would return most of that shape to where she thought it belonged. But the "inward entity." The heart, the soul. Did she have one?

With that question turning over and over in her mind, Abigail fell asleep. Until her neighbor kicked her again.

Chapter Seventeen

Goodge, Tottenham, Leicester; Charing Cross, his station to get off.

Father Will had drawn him up a rough map, and Todd had his Oyster card in his pocket. He'd wanted a walk in London, and the plan was for him to stroll up the Strand, around the edge of Ludgate Hill, and to St. Paul's.

"The Cross and Orb atop the dome will guide you."

Getting off the train, the routine of looking for escalators and exits was similar if no less baffling than Washington's Metro system. Up on the surface, he was no more guided by a cross and orb than he was the pencilled map crumpled in his hand (Todd feared the first time someone would turn and ask him "are you lost?"); his furtive glances at the lines and letters on it were uninstructive at first, but then he rounded a corner on a multi-branched intersection, and then he saw it.

A dome, hovering above the cityscape, two lower towers to the front, closer to him but of course equally distant. In the grey milky light the bulk of the cathedral looker further off than a mile, but not forbiddingly distant. Turning left, he walked east, still feeling odd about the traffic nearest him on the street flowing with him, and not coming at him.

Now the jottings on the torn sheet from the pub's placemat started to make a regular, progressive, advancing sort of sense. Street by street (Strand, Fleet, Newgate), landmark after landmark (St. Bride's, Old Bailey, Paternoster Square), he made his way along first the Strand's broad path and then into a brief tangle of streets that weren't quite alleys, but didn't feel like what Todd was accustomed to call a street.

The age of the buildings was steadily older, with the occasional burst of modernity and glass erupting into the rows across the way, or along his left hand. Glancing up, which he tried to do as infrequently as possible ("are you lost?"), he saw a mix of three and four story frontages with a looming bulk of taller buildings peering over their shoulders from the block behind.

At a last marked turn on his sheet, he came out into an open area, a last street crossing, and then the two towers were high above him, with broad stairs before him. The dome loomed beyond, impossibly wide and curving into invisibility, the curves pointing his eyes up to the Cross and Orb that Father Will had promised him.

Up the stairs, through the door already open just to the right of a wide rank of vast doors, and inside to find he needed to pay to go beyond a chapel open to the public on his left. The cost was just enough to make him pause a moment. He pulled out his international Visa, tapped it on his left knuckle twice, then handed it to the brisk looking lady at the register.

A brochure in hand he already knew he wouldn't look at until back in his room tonight, if then, he wandered up the center aisle, and hesitated on seeing a phalanx of children in grey skirts or slacks and maroon sweaters or jackets moving towards him at what couldn't quite be accurately described as a run. He turned right, and saw two elderly tourists moving his way, and swiveled back to the left, and slid along the rows of chairs to the left-hand aisle.

Here, the ceiling was lower, which meant it was only amazingly high and not incredibly so. The windows were, to him, surprisingly lacking in stained glass. He'd imagined they would be rich and full of image and color. Instead they were mostly clear, or at least translucent with light coming through directly. The color was in the gold and grey and dark contrasts all along the ornate carvings and reliefs and ornamentation from the floor to the vaults above.

It was still early enough in the morning that most light was angling across above his head, and on the ground level shadow and dimness were the rule. The high arches framed his views, and occasionally were themselves blocked, a huge monument with a man on horseback atop one such, the statue in clear illumination even as the floor around it was still dark. Todd found himself walking along towards the heart of the cathedral, towards the emptiness under the great dome, but with only occasional glimpses of just how large and open the central space was, let alone forward beyond the center of the church.  Just as he came even with that area, and thought about turning back to the main aisle, there was a shuffling of feet or something like that off to his left, and so he thought to take a look into this arm of the church, before heading on into the main course.

Around a stately pillar, he saw before him another cluster of chairs in neat and regimented rows, a table or altar just beyond them, and behind it, a sort of tall, towering cabinet. The giant doors were open, and from somewhere behind him just enough light shone to illuminate was was a tall, life-size painting, the portrait itself enclosed in an even larger gold frame.

The man, who was obviously Jesus, was looking directly at him. Todd could not recall ever having had such a sensation of being observed when looking at a picture ever before. Not like one of those movie gags where holes behind the eyes had a person looking through, but this whole painting, right down to the eyes as depicted, was looking at him, considering him.

He stood at a door, his hand up to knock, and all around grasses and weeds grew up as a dark, tangled background was behind him. In his other hand, Jesus held a lantern, almost lifting it up towards Todd more than he was using it to shine on the door. There was an evening light behind his crowned head, and the lamp's glow shone off of a simple robe with a more ornate, jeweled piece of drapery around his shoulders and hung down behind him. And he was looking at him as if to say "will you help me knock?"

The point of the painting, Todd knew, was not just the knocking on the door; he remembered his grandmother having a painting, less decorated, more simple in outline, of Jesus knocking on an old-fashioned door not unlike this one, but gazing closely at the window in the timbers waiting for someone to slide the peep-hole and look back at him. This version of Christ knocking at the door drew him into the action, with Jesus wanting someone to answer, but also wanting you, the viewer, to join in the conversation somehow.

Todd stepped over, without looking down, and sat down in one of the first row of chairs. He had to look at this picture a little bit longer. He ended up sitting there for the next few hours, walking away as a group entered with a guide, and then coming back for a bit longer after they left. As he sat there, he thought about many things, and about what he needed to do next. It wasn't clear, but he knew his thoughts, at least, were clearer about the future than they'd been in some time.

http://www.stpauls.co.uk/Files/downloads/Light_of_the_world.jpg [To see the painting Todd is looking at, click the link.]