Free Shade by Jeri Smith-Ready Page B

activated by the hot liquid,” she said. “Ooh, I got
ur
, or heather, which signifies healing. Zachary, you have
duir
, the oak. That usually means strength. And Aura has
quert
.”
    I picked up my mug and examined the rune. It consisted of a straight vertical line and four short horizontal ones. It sort of looked like a toothbrush. “What’s
quert
?”
    “
Quert
is apple.” Her eyes softened. “For love.”
    I froze. My hands tightened on the mug, though I wanted to hurl it against the wall and watch it shatter into a thousand pieces of deceitful white ceramic.
    Zachary held up a finger. “Could I trouble you for some sugar?”
    “Of course.” Eowyn sprang to her feet. “Be right back.” She slipped out of the office.
    “Give me that,” Zachary said in a low voice. He gently pried my fingers off the Love mug and took it from me. He replaced it with his Strength. “Just breathe.”
    I tried, but my lungs kept wanting to hitch into a sob. Desperate, I took a sip of the hot tea. It was bitter and sort of smoky. My next breath was almost normal.
    “Here you go!” Eowyn swept back into the room, her blue gypsy skirt brushing her ankles. She tossed some sugar packets and a pair of plastic stirrers onto the shiny wooden table.
    I unzipped my book bag. “I’ve made a lot of notes since the last time we e-mailed. I want to focus on—”
    “Let’s begin at the beginning.” Eowyn sat down. “Crazy concept, huh? Tell me, have you always lived in the city?”
    I nodded. “Why?”
    “What about you?” she asked Zachary.
    “I’ve lived all over.” Covering the Love symbol on his mug, he stirred his tea, though he hadn’t touched the sugar packets.
    “So you’re intimately acquainted with the night sky, and you can teach Aura. Not too much, though—she needs to learn on her own.”
    “Learn what?” I asked her.
    Eowyn reached behind her and brought forward a large black vinyl portfolio, held shut with a red velvet tie. She undid the tie and unfolded the portfolio twice to make a three-by-three-foot square. Several gray sheets of paper were clipped to the inside.
    “For your star maps.” Her voice came from behind the portfolio. “Nine sheets. One per month between now and June. Ideally I’d like to see a full year, but this’ll do.”
    I pointed to the ceiling, though Eowyn couldn’t see me. “I already know the constellations.”
    “From real life or from books?”
    I thought of my mother’s photos. “What does this have to do with megaliths?”
    “You need to understand.” She folded the portfolio, then gave it to Zachary. “Think. How does a society organize itself, make decisions, have progress? By people getting together. How do they know when to get together? They use clocks and calendars. But what if there were no clocks and calendars? You’d have chaos.”
    She took a long sip of tea, holding the mug in both hands like a little kid. “The stars and moon and planets give us order. Except forcomets and supernovae, we can count on the sky to look exactly the way we predict. Isn’t that comforting?”
    “Uh-huh.” I didn’t dare disagree with her sharp gaze. Surely this was leading somewhere.
    She pointed to the Stonehenge poster tacked to her bookshelf. “The people who built the things you want to study? They were trying to make sense out of life and death.”
    I stared into my tea.
Yeah, good luck with that.
    Eowyn spoke softly. “I think that’s what we’re all looking for, isn’t it?”
    I nodded, but kept my head down, letting my hair droop forward in a veil.
    “So.” The professor’s voice brightened. “To understand the ancient astronomers, you need to be in their place, at least one night a month.”
    “Where?” Zachary asked. “We can’t see many stars from our neighborhood.”
    “Don’t worry, I have a connection.” She rose again and went to her desk. I pulled my sleeve down over my knuckles so I could wipe my eyes.
    Eowyn continued. “A friend of mine