Free An Acceptable Time by Madeleine L'Engle Page A

home, her grandmother had left the lab and was making toasted cheese sandwiches for lunch. They had just finished eating and were putting the dishes away when they heard a car pull up noisily. Bishop Colubra.
    “Just a quick visit,” he said. “Louise made me promise to come right back. I just wanted to bring Polly my Ogam notebook.” He sat down at the table, indicated the chair next to him, and spread out the book between them.
    It was tidily and consistently done, vocabulary, and simple rules of grammar, and a few phrases and idioms. “Druids had a vast amount of information in their memories after long years of training, but Ogam was an oral language rather than a written one. What I have here is in no way pure Ogam. It’s what Anaral and Karralys and the People of the Wind speak today—their today, that is.”
    In three columns he had listed words used by Anaral’s people before Karralys and Tav came; then there were words which were strictly Ogam and which Karralys and Tav had brought to the language; plus a short column of words which were still recognizable today; such as mount, glen, crag, bard, cairn.
    “You can read my writing?” he asked.
    “Yes, it’s lots clearer than mine.”
    “Fascinating, isn’t it, to see how language evolves. I wonder how many of our English/American words will still be around in another thousand years or so.” He stood up. “I must go.”
    Polly picked up the notebook. “Thanks a lot, Bishop. I’m glad you’ve written out the pronunciation phonetically.” She turned the pages, nodding, while he stood on one leg, scratching his shin with the other foot, looking more like a heron than ever.
    “It’s pretty arbitrary of me to call it Ogam, but it seems simplest. The language has evolved fairly easily, a sort of lingua franca.”
    “Bishop, you did teach Anaral to speak English?”
    “Shh.” He put his foot down and glanced at Mrs. Murry, who was feeding the fire, and at Mr. Murry deep in an article in a scientific journal. He leaned over the chair toward Polly “She’s very bright. She learned amazingly quickly.”
    “But you’ve spent a lot of time with her.”
    He glanced again at her grandparents, sighed deeply. “This is no time for secrecy, is it? Yes. Whenever the time gate has opened for me, I’ve gone through. But you—” He shook his head. “I have to go.” He ambled toward the pantry door. “You will stay close to your grandparents?”
    She, too, sighed. “Yes, Bishop. I will.”

Chapter Four
    Polly spent several hours with Bishop Colubra’s Ogam notebook. In the late afternoon her grandmother went swimming with her. Nothing happened. Anaral did not come. The evening passed quietly.
    On Tuesday the bishop asked her over for tea.
    “Go along,” her grandmother said. “I know you’re going stir-crazy here, and even though I don’t think anything will happen while I’m with you, refusing to believe that three thousand years ago can touch directly on our own time, I’m just as happy to have you away from the pool.”
    “You don’t need the car?”
    “I’m not going anywhere. Louise’s house is no distance as the crow flies. Our land is contiguous with hers. But by car you have to go down to the main road, drive west a couple of miles, and then turn uphill to the right the first chance you get.”
    The phone rang. Zachary. Obviously wanting to talk. “Polly, I’m just so glad to be in touch with you again. You’re like a bright light in these filthy days.”
    “Autumn seems pretty glorious to me.”
    “Not in an office that’s a small box with no windows. I can’t wait to see you.”
    “I’m looking forward to it, too.”
    “Polly, I don’t want to hurt you.”
    Her grandmother had left the kitchen and gone out to the lab, leaving Polly alone with the phone. “Why should you hurt me?”
    “Polly, it’s my pattern. I hurt every girl I get involved with. I hurt you last summer.”
    “Not really,” she protested. “I mean,