She grew in my mind...
I stopped sneaking out and wandering the underground corridors not by choice, then, but through necessity. Still, not a single day passed that I was not consumed by my thoughts of this strange woman.
She grew in my mind like an elm tree, her taproot extended down my spine and into some place far more ethereal. I imagined her watching me as I worked figures on a chalkboard that took up one of the walls in an upstairs study. I had to stand on a chair as the math grew more complicated, working my way up the wall. I imagined her with blue eyes that crinkled up at the corners when she saw how very clever I was. I bowed to an empty chair, and inquired it after her health.
In that same study, I was now standing upon a sturdy stool that my father had fetched me after watching my balancing upon one of the finer velvet-cushioned chairs that dotted the room. Geometric proofs spilled over the surface of the chalkboard, imperfect circles and grinning parabolae stretched over what might be called the punctuation of the whole thing: pi, figured to five places along the bottom of the board. This achievement sounds wholly unimpressive to me now, but at that time--having nothing but Herr Leibniz's papers upon which to base my calculations--I had shocked and staggered the Esoteric Brotherhood, who seemed to find this series of numbers fascinating, even more so when they came from the mind of a ten year old child.
When my father entered the room, he spent several long moments staring at my mathematical drabble, likely searching for a symbol he understood, but when he spoke it was of things wholly unrelated to geometry.
"You had best put on your good clothes. Sir Isaac wants to see you."
At those words, it was as though someone had upended a glass of icy water over my head. I nearly toppled from the stool from my panic. "Me?" I repeated stupidly, as though he would suddenly recall it to be a different ten year old son of a Calvinist in the midst of this society of alchemists.
My father answered this with only a roll of his eyes, and I realized suddenly how childish I was being. I climbed down from the stool, straightening my smock and wiping my chalky hands against my thighs.
What happened next is hazy. There are annunciations and the events that follow, but our minds do not so easily grasp the activity that intervenes. I was put into my finest black suit so that I resembled a much smaller version of the Barkers in Change Alley, I was given a bath and a round, red apple, and I was led to the study of Sir Isaac Newton; though I presume not necessarily in that order.
She grew in my mind like an elm tree, her taproot extended down my spine and into some place far more ethereal. I imagined her watching me as I worked figures on a chalkboard that took up one of the walls in an upstairs study. I had to stand on a chair as the math grew more complicated, working my way up the wall. I imagined her with blue eyes that crinkled up at the corners when she saw how very clever I was. I bowed to an empty chair, and inquired it after her health.
In that same study, I was now standing upon a sturdy stool that my father had fetched me after watching my balancing upon one of the finer velvet-cushioned chairs that dotted the room. Geometric proofs spilled over the surface of the chalkboard, imperfect circles and grinning parabolae stretched over what might be called the punctuation of the whole thing: pi, figured to five places along the bottom of the board. This achievement sounds wholly unimpressive to me now, but at that time--having nothing but Herr Leibniz's papers upon which to base my calculations--I had shocked and staggered the Esoteric Brotherhood, who seemed to find this series of numbers fascinating, even more so when they came from the mind of a ten year old child.
When my father entered the room, he spent several long moments staring at my mathematical drabble, likely searching for a symbol he understood, but when he spoke it was of things wholly unrelated to geometry.
"You had best put on your good clothes. Sir Isaac wants to see you."
At those words, it was as though someone had upended a glass of icy water over my head. I nearly toppled from the stool from my panic. "Me?" I repeated stupidly, as though he would suddenly recall it to be a different ten year old son of a Calvinist in the midst of this society of alchemists.
My father answered this with only a roll of his eyes, and I realized suddenly how childish I was being. I climbed down from the stool, straightening my smock and wiping my chalky hands against my thighs.
What happened next is hazy. There are annunciations and the events that follow, but our minds do not so easily grasp the activity that intervenes. I was put into my finest black suit so that I resembled a much smaller version of the Barkers in Change Alley, I was given a bath and a round, red apple, and I was led to the study of Sir Isaac Newton; though I presume not necessarily in that order.