Free An Acceptable Time by Madeleine L'Engle

Is it all right if I get the mail and go to the store?”
    “Oh, Polly, come in. I didn’t mean to snarl. I suppose it’s no use wishing Nase had never retired and come to live with Louise.” Her grandmother was sitting on her tall lab stool. There was an electron microscope in front of her, but the cover was over it and looked as though it had not been removed in years. She wore a tweed skirt, lisle stockings, a turtleneck, and a cardigan—a downto-earth country woman. And yet Polly knew that her grandmother delved deep into the world of the invisible, the strange sub-microscopic world of quantum mechanics. Her grandfather looked most comfortable in an old plaid flannel shirt, riding his tractor; and yet he had actually gone into space, orbiting the earth beyond the confines of the atmosphere. Her grandparents seemed to live comfortably in their dual worlds, the daily world of garden, kitchen, house, and pool, and the wider world of their scientific experiments. But Bishop Colubra had thrown them completely off course, Bishop Colubra and Polly’s own unexpected journey through time.
    “Grand?”
    “I don’t know, Polly. I don’t know what your parents would say…” Her voice trailed off.
    “Just to the post office and the store, Grand. I didn’t want to go without asking you.”
    Her grandmother sighed. “Have I been living in a dream world? The only piece of equipment in my lab that gets any real use is the obsolete Bunsen burner, because it’s become family tradition. Like your grandfather, I’ve been doing thought experiments.” As Polly looked at her questioningly she continued, “Alex and I have sat in our separate worlds, doing experiments in our minds.”
    “And?” Polly prodded.
    “If a thought experiment is capable of laboratory proof, then we’re apt to write a paper about it, and then either we or another scientist will put it to the test. But quite a few thought experiments are so wildly speculative that it will be a long time before they can be proven.”
    Which was more of a dream? The thought experiments in the minds of her grandparents and other scientists? Or the world of three thousand years ago which was touching on their own time?
    The lab was damp. Polly wondered how her grandmother stood it. The floor was made of great slabs of stone. There was a faded rag rug in front of two shabby easy chairs, and the lamp on the table between them gave at least an illusion of warmth. Only the permeating cold grounded her in present reality. “Grand?”
    “What is it, Polly?”
    “The post office?”
    “I suppose so. We can’t keep you wrapped in cotton wool. I’m not even sure what we’re afraid of.”
    “That I’ll get lost three thousand years ago? I don’t think that’s going to happen.”
    “Neither do I. I still haven’t given it my willing suspension of disbelief. But just the post office.”
    “We’re out of milk.”
    “All right. The store. But check in with me when you get back.”
    “Sure.”
    Polly would keep her word and go only to the post office and the store. What she wanted was to talk to Anaral again. Go to the Grandfather Oak and see Karralys and his dog and hope that this time he would stay and talk with her.
    Thursday was All Hallows’ Eve and Bishop Colubra took it with great seriousness. Samhain. A festival so old that it predated written history. Polly’s skin prickled, not with fear now, but with expectation, though for what she was not sure. All she knew was that she was touching on that long-gone age as it rose out of the past to touch on another age, a present that was perhaps as brutal as any previous age, but was at least familiar.
    Her grandparents’ car was elderly, and it took a few tries before the engine turned over and she shifted into reverse and pulled out of the garage. She went to the post office, to the store, speaking to the postmistress and the checkout girl, who were curious and friendly and already knew her by name.
    When she got