Free The Time Fetch by Amy Herrick Page B

debated with himself about claiming ignorance, but again, there was his inconvenient belief in telling the truth. “Well, ‘Sol’ means ‘sun.’ ‘Stice’ means ‘stop.’ ” That was as far as he would go.
    But Mr. Ross nodded at him happily. “Exactly right. From the Latin. ‘Sun stoppage.’ The sun appears to stop in its tracks. There are two solstices each year. One occurs in December. One in June. In the northern hemisphere the days are now growing shorter and shorter. The ancient peoples considered this an extremely powerful time. In a few days the sun will appear to stop in its tracks and attempt to gather the strength it needs to begin its return. If things go wrong and we’re all plunged into darkness, well then, good-bye, my young friends. Back in ancient times, as humans were growing more at home on earth, they came up with all sorts of tricks and stories and rituals to encourage the sun to gather the strength to win out over the darkness. Some were harmless enough. They decorated evergreens in the hopes of bringing back the green things that gave them food to eat. They hung wreaths to keep the circle of life going. They peered into the darkness watching for the enormous great-horned stag who they believed was strong enough to win the battle against winter.
    “But other traditions evolved that were more—colorful. The Greeks, for instance, would choose a strong, handsome young man around this time of year and bring him to the handmaidens of their god Dionysus. The handmaidens would ply him with wine and send him running naked into the woods. They’d give him a good head start. Then they’d pray and burn incense, drink themselves into a fine madness, and strip themselves naked.”
    He had the class’s attention. Edward was awake.
    “They’d put little wreaths of ivy on their heads and go after him. The poor guy didn’t have a chance. According to legend, they’d hunt him through the woods and when they caught him, they’d hold him down.”
    The class waited.
    Mr. Ross narrowed his eyes. “Some say they’d then tear him apart and eat him. When they were done, they’d return to their temple, singing and chanting, and holding aloft an infant child. A great celebration of feasting and merrymaking would take place among the people then and, voilà, by great coincidence, the sun would be noticed to be growing stronger in the days that followed.”
    There was a long silence and an uncomfortable shuffling of feet.
    “But where’d they get the baby from?” someone asked.
    “Yes, indeed. Where did they get the baby from? Well, it was said that somehow it sprang from the blood of the one who was sacrificed.”
    Robert now piped up and asked with some impatience, “What does any of this have to do with science?”
    Mr. Ross ran his hand through the hair on his head. He didn’t have a lot of it and what he had now stuck up in uneven wisps. “Thank you, Robert. Where does science bring us? The ancient peoples didn’t know what we know. Early on, many of them began to chart the regular movements of the sun across the sky, but they didn’t understand why the sun moved as it did. They explained things with stories of wild women and Holly Kings and gods fighting the monsters of winter for twelve days. They could be pretty certain from the stories and observations they passed down from generation to generation that the cycle had been repeating itself over and over again. But at this time of the year, something appeared to be eating away at time itself, something that refused to make itself seen. The dark was so dark and the cold was so cold. How could they be sure that the end wasn’t upon them? It seemed wise to continue doing whatever it was that their parents and grandparents had done in the years before.
    “But now it’s different, right? We have more information. We are able to look at things from the perspective of space and we can use telescopes. We can see that the seasons change because