Through Time’s Lens

It’s still the night before the body was found and the plush carpet muffles my steps as I edge towards the enormous wooden doors. For a beat, I question my motives for being here.

The door is locked, of course, but the stolen key, slick with my sweat, sticks to my palm. How did Aida manage to lift the headmaster’s office key? She never said.

The key clicks in the lock with an ear-splitting sound to my strained nerves, but no one appears to investigate. Without daring to breathe I enter the chamber.

…

“You’ll know it, it’ll be older and more tattered than the rest. Titled Legacies,” Aida had whispered earlier in class, handing me the key beneath the back-row desk. I snuck it in my pocket.

“Why do you need this book, anyway?” I asked, staring at the marks etched into the floorboard by centuries of shuffling chairs.

“That’s not something a pledge should worry about,” is all she said, not looking at me. I should have considered that a warning.

…

“Have you lost your mind?” Alexander asked later over mashed potatoes and roast chicken. “Do you have any idea what kind of string pulling got you in here? Why risk throwing it all away? For a stupid prank? You’ll be expelled, you’ll have to reimburse your scholarship!”

I just smiled at him, without reply, dropping my gaze to the mahogany table, so unlike the one at home. So many hidden struggles elude my dear cousin.

…

Now, the headmaster’s office is cloaked in darkness, but the soft moon paints trails of misty light across the surfaces inside. The heavy velvet curtains filter most, but there is still some to guide me.

The shelves, coffee tables and even his desk are covered with works in progress. Vials, tubes and dials gleam in the moonlight, fleshing out contraptions tall or wide. Darker patches suggest liquid is meant to pass through as they function.

I fight the temptation to touch the smooth surfaces and focus my attention instead on the massive bookshelf behind the desk. Aida was wrong. In the mass of huge tomes, pamphlets, notebooks and papers nothing stands out. There isn’t a space left empty, and it would take months to peruse every book on these shelves.

I have about three hours. After that janitors and maids start patrolling the corridors, so I take a meticulous approach. Beginning in the bottom left corner I read every spine I can reach, shifting papers and trinkets.

Poetry, fiction, arcane science, all the classics and more obscure titles, some I can understand, some not. All written by men, of course. Then some stranger ones catch my eye: “The Silver Chronometer”, “The time altering properties of Light”, “Paradoxes of the natural world”. Some covers are inscribed only with mysterious symbols I can’t fathom.

Almost forgetting my purpose, I flip through some of the peculiar titles and come across sketches and diagrams, comprised of hundreds of fine lines intertwining. Going in one direction, and then back. Superimposing on each other and then competing to reach the margins.

Screeching pierces my ears. A cacophony of indistinguishable sounds follows. Clinking and banging, whirring and wheezing as my eyes desperately search the darkness for the source.

One of the constructs laid out on top of the desk has begun functioning, unsolicited. Silver fluid drips through horizontal tubes as tiny clogs whirr at each corner.

The sound dims a bit, and I remember myself. I’ve been here about two and a half hours, with no success in finding the Legacies Register.

Is the machine’s sudden animation a warning of someone approaching? Or perhaps an alarm. But no, I notice a small circular mirror with symbols etched on its surface. The light of the moon moving slowly through the chamber as the hours have gone by has reached the tiny mirror and now reflects out of it.

The reflected ray hits a small object near my hand on the closest shelf. I would have thought it an innocent knickknack, except my eyes catch on the symbol engraved on its supple handle. The same as the symbols on the machine mirror.

I pick it up to study closer and realize it’s an ancient magnifying glass

I glance up for a moment at the towering bookshelf keeping its secrets from me, and then my hand reaches for the glimmering lens.

The metal surface of the handle feels smooth and cool against my skin, and I squint to study the engraved markings. Stars and planets populate the exterior, but also lines looping back on themselves and drawings that resemble hieroglyphs more than anything.

I peer through. Nothing around me changes, but as my eye meets the glass I jump and let out a small noise, almost dropping the artifact. But it can’t be.

I lower the lens and look at the same spot on the floor. An intricately patterned rug covers the wooden floorboards, worn in places. Nothing moving. But I was sure I saw…

Slowly, I lift the glass to my eye a second time, and there they are again! A pair of feet, wearing men’s shoes, edging closer to the bookshelf. But if I remove the glass, they are gone. It’s not a picture reflected somehow on the surface, because the feet I see beyond the glass are moving, shuffling their weight from one to the other. Taking little steps right and left, as if their owner is working to keep his balance.

With a lurch of my stomach, I slowly raise the lens to see if, indeed, the feet have an owner. And little by little, headmaster Hargrove appears behind the small circle of glass. He’s fighting to reach one of the higher shelves, trying to stuff a large tome in the overfull shelf. A stack of papers becomes displaced and topples to the floor, making the candle flame on the desk flutter.

I remove the glass from my eyes again and look at the floor. No papers. Only the moonlight dimming, soon to strand me in darkness.

The figure in the magnifier fumbles with the fallen sheets, and I turn my attention to the shelf holding the book. I can barely discern some letters but still, it looks like…

I put the unexplainable object back where I found it and use the rolling ladder to climb to the shelf. I find the book that headmaster Hargrove placed there, sometime, by candlelight. The Legacies Register.

With my head spinning, I place the book in the soft bag I brought with me. I inspect the office one last time for misplaced items, but there are none. As I prepare to lean on the door handle, I turn back. I count the four steps to the bookshelf, grab the magnifier, and run for my life.

…

Sleep barely has a chance to overcome me, when loud bangs are at my door. Through the tiny window in the corner a bluish haze muddles through, telling me the sun has yet to rise.

I can’t have been asleep for more than an hour.

After the headmaster’s office I headed straight for the Circle’s hideaway to find Aida.

“Good, good, this is perfect!” She beamed, pouring over the pages, scanning the endless column of names. Dates of birth, proclivities. Sums donated. All men, who are not only reserved, but owed a place between these sacred walls. “Unworthy scum,” Aida mutters.

“I can’t believe you actually retrieved it, this is incredible. See,” she says, lifting her eyes to me, “this, this is what women can accomplish together! We’re truly an unstoppable force of nature. Imagine where we’d be with the resources of men. We must use any tool at our disposal to bridge the gap and take what is rightfully ours!”

“So, is this it? Did I pass?”

She smiles and pats me on the shoulder. “Tomorrow we’ll talk more, she says.”

I wanted to tell her about the incredible item I carried in my pocket but as she dismissed me, I hesitated. I would tell her later, I decided, and headed for my sleeping quarters.

…

Now the aggressive thumping on my door is threatening to rip the hinges. Bleary eyed, with a purple robe thrown over the day clothes I was sleeping in, I open up. Three officers stare at me.

“Ophelia Pruitt?” one of them asks.

“Yes?”

“You need to come with us, miss.”

“What? Why?” my voice is shriller than I’d hoped.

Panic surges in waves through my body, drying my throat and burning my cheeks. My head spins circles from exhaustion and dread. They must know what I did, what I stole.

A short and wide officer with close cropped blond hair grabs hold of me and more supports than leads me away. “Multiple witnesses report having seen you on the grounds after lights-out last night. I’m afraid, Miss Pruitt, that now makes you the prime suspect.”

The door to my chamber creaks shut behind us.

They take me to the stone courtyard, where I would read on the sunny days of autumn when I first arrived at the school.

Some days I would simply marvel at the books in my hands, ancient texts, philosophy, literature, unique volumes, rarities. And just by gaining access to these walls I was allowed to peruse them at will, to check out more every day. For a while, I felt like I was flying.

Then it started.

A failing grade on a good paper because “the female mind simply could not elaborate such a thesis.” Unbased cheating allegations. Arguments dismissed out of hand because I “was limited by my physicality from perceiving the depth of the issue.” It piled on and the situation worsened. The risk appeared that I would not graduate to the second year.

Then Aida approached me. The only woman to have ever reached the final year and to be nearing graduation.

One day before dinner, she cornered me in an alcove off the main corridor, hidden from sight by the statue of some ancient astronomer. As I was backing up into the brick wall behind me, feeling the rugged surface already near my skin, she grabbed onto my shoulders whispering “Do you know what true mysteries this place holds? You must resist long enough to find out. We will stand beside you as your sisters, as your mother and aunts before you. But first, you must prove that you are not accomplice to the male fist. And then together with the Circle you will not only stand, but correct. Make right for others, for the future. And maybe, even,” she said, glancing down the corridor, “the past”.

Now I stand in the courtyard between two of the officers as the third speaks to headmaster Hargrove. In front of me lies a patch of black tarpaulin, stretched over the lush green grass. Underneath, I am told, Charles Ashbourne lies. Though not a personal acquaintance, I know where I have seen the name before. The Legacies Register.

The two officers guarding me seem to be unconcerned by my running away, and they take a step back from me, discussing. With my hands in my pockets, I feel the edge of a small, cold object, smooth to the touch.

I lift the glass to my eyes, here in the morning light. It glints beautifully and, as I draw it closer to my face, I even imagine hearing a soft hum.

Through the magnifier I look towards a bench resting in the shade of an old oak, not far from where I stand. There, behind the glass, am I. Sitting on the bench, a thin ray of sunshine warming the side of my face, a stack of books beside me. I anticipate and then see myself pick up a volume on the history of this institution. Some light reading she, I, think, before her, my, studies. Like many mornings before, that bench is where I spent my time before classes yesterday.

…

Now, I stand in a small office with only one high set window that offers no view. Inside there is a decrepit chair and desk, at which I stand. In the corner lie some wooden crates and canvas sacks, with odds and ends sticking out, but nothing else. No books, no plants, no vials or machines.

I’ve already used the magnifier, but it shows nothing more than the room bare as it is. It probably looked just the same yesterday, devoid of inhabitants. And probably the same for a century.

The door opens just a sliver and Aida sneaks in.

“You have to help me,” I cry. “It wasn’t me. It wasn’t, and I can prove it!”

She says nothing, but searches my face, her eyes wide.

“What did you find?”

Her question pulls me out of my manic state for an instant. Does she know?

I bring out the golden magnifying glass.

“When I look through it…”

But the coloring in Aida’s face has gone out. She stares at the tiny artifact like the world around her has evaporated.

“When you look through it,” she continues my sentence, “you see through time.”

I’m about to explain how we can use the magnifier to prove I didn’t kill Charles Ashbourne, when her gaze suddenly shifts on mine. It is her expression, more than mine, that of a trapped animal.

She snatches the magnifier from me and runs, the door bolting shut behind her.