Daily Book Excerpt: YA/Children’s books
Next book on the shelf is An Acceptable Time
This is another book in the “time series” – meaning: the story of the Murry family and now the O’Keefe family. Polly O’Keefe, daughter of Meg and Calvin, has gone to live with her grandparents in the country – they’re the Nobel Prize winning scientists, the parents in Wrinkle in Time. She’s been sent to live with them because of her aptitude for science – and the science program in her local high school is way too slow and rudimentary. Her parents think she would benefit from time studying and working with her grandparents – so Polly takes time off and goes to live with them. The book opens slowly – meanderingly – Polly walking through the autumn woods, admiring the foliage … and suddenly there in the woods – she sees Zachary – the guy she had met in Athens. What the … what is he doing there?? He apparently is doing an internship at a law firm in Hartford and he tracked her down. He wants a romance. She pushes him off. Also, in the first chapter – during her walk – she sees a man first – standing there with a dog – he looks … out of place … odd – his hair is long and in a braid – and then later – she has a brief encounter with a girl … also odd-looking ….
Anyway, it turns out that Polly has basically strolled through a time gate in the woods. There’s a rip in the space-time continuum and Polly keep strolling through it … back 3,000 years in time. There are basically Druids roaming through the New England woods.
It turns out that a Bishop in the nearby town had also discovered this time-gate and has been traveling back and forth with some frequency – collecting Ogam stones, doing research, etc. Bishop Colubra is friends with the Murrys – and when Polly mentions, casually, at the dinner table (before she knows about the time gate) that she saw these two odd-looking people in the woods, Bishop Colubra freaks out. He fears that Polly might get caught back in the past- that she will not be able to find her way back. There are other things going on back then, 3,000 years ago: warring civilizations, human sacrifices, Samhain is somehow involved … the details are lost to me. I haven’t read the book in almost 10 years.
What I can say about it – and what I do remember about it – is the loveliness of the writing. The vividness of all of the worlds created (the Murry farmhouse – the Druid world) … and also the characters. Zachary, again, in his specificity and complexity – L’Engle has been including him in books for 30 years now, and you never feel that it gets old. He is incredibly consistent. But also the Druidic people – especially the two that Polly befirends – Anaral and Karralys … They’re foreign to us, they’re from another time completely … but L’Engle has this way of letting us into their experience, they become real to us. You start to get the sense of the continuity of human experience – that even back then, all the same shit was going on. People are people. People were loving, living, learning, growing back in remote times as well. Time flows backwards as well as forwards. I wish I could remember more of the book but you know what I wish even more? I wish she would write more books about Polly. I wish I could learn what kind of adult Polly would be, who she ended up as. An artist? A scientist? A CIA operative? For Polly – anything would be possible … I love her, too. I’m sad that this, probably, is it. No more about her.
Anyway – here’s an excerpt from the beginning of the book – when it becomes clear to the Murry grandparents that Polly has tripped through a rip in the space-time continuum and also that the Bishop has been going there all along.
Excerpt from An Acceptable Time
Polly’s grandparents were in the kitchen. Everything was reassuringly normal. Her grandfather was reading the paper. Her grandmother was making pancakes. Breakfast was usually catch-as-catch-can. Mrs. Murry often took coffee and a muffin to the lab. Mr. Murry hurried outdoors, working about the yard while the weather held.
“Good morning, Polly, Nason.” Mrs. Murry sounded unsurprised as they pannted in, Polly scratched and disheveled from her plunge down the precipice. “Alex requested pancakes, and since he’s a very undemanding person, I was happy to oblige. Join us. I’ve made more than enough batter.”
“I hope I’m not intruding.” The bishop seated himself.
Polly tried to keep her voice normal. “Here’s another Ogam stone. Where shall I put it?”
“If there’s room, put it beside the one Nase brought in last night,” her grandmother said. “How many pancakes can you eat, Nase?”
“I don’t know. I’m not sure I can eat anything. I don’t think I’m hungry.”
“Nason! What’s wrong? Don’t you feel well?”
“I’m fine.” He looked at Polly. “Oh, dear. What have I done?”
“What have you done?” Mr. Murry asked.
Polly said, “You didn’t do anything, Bishop. It just happened.”
Mrs. Murry put a stack of pancakes in front of him, and absently he lavished butter, poured a river of syrup, ate a large bite, put down his fork. “I may have done something terrible.”
“Nason, what’s going on?” Mrs. Murry asked.
The bishop took another large bite. Shook his head. “I didn’t think it would happen. I didn’t think it could.”
“What?” Mrs. Murry demanded.
“I thought the time gate was open only to me. I didn’t think –” He broke off.
“Polly,” her grandfather asked, “do you know what all this is about?”
Polly poured herself a mug of coffee and sat down. “The man by the oak, the one both Zachary and I saw, lived at the time of the Ogam stones.” She did her best to keep her voice level. “This morning when I went off for a walk, I — well, I don’t know what it’s all about, but somehow or other I went through the bishop’s time gate.”
“Nase!”
The bishop bent his head. “I know. It’s my fault. It must be my fault. Mea culpa.”
Mrs. Murry asked, “Polly, what makes you think you went through a time gate?”
“Everything was different, Grand. The trees were enormous, sort of like Hiawatha — this is the forest primeval. And the mountains were high and jagged and snow-capped. Young mountains, not ancient hills like ours. And where the valley is, there was a large lake.”
“This is absurd.” Mrs. Murry put a plate of pancakes in front of her husband, then fixed a plate for Polly.
“Nason!” Mrs. Murry expostulated.
The bishop looked unhappy. “Whenever I’ve tried to talk about it, you’ve been disbelieving and, well — disapproving, and I don’t blame you for that, so I’ve kept quiet. I wouldn’t have beleived it, either, if it hadn’t kept happening. But I thought it was just me — part of being old and nearly ready to move on to — But Polly. That Polly should have — well! of course!”
“Of course what?” Mr. Murry sounded more angry with each question.
“Polly saw Annie first at the pool.” The bishop used the diminutive of Anaral tenderly.
“Annie who?”
“Anaral,” Polly said. “She’s the girl who came to the pool last night.”
“When you were digging for the pool,” the bishop asked, “what happened?”
“We hit water,” Mr. Murry said. “We’re evidently over an aquifer — an underground river.”
“But this is the highest point in the state,” Polly protested. “Would there be an underground river this high up?”
“It would seem so.”
The bishop put down his fork. Somehow the stack of pancakes had disappeared. “You do remember that most holy places – such as the sites of the great cathedrals in England – were on ground that was already considererd holy before even the first pagan temples were built? And the interesting thing is that under most of these holy places is an underground river. This house, and the pool, are on a holy place. That’s why Anaral was able to come to the pool.”
“Nonsense –” Mrs. Murry started.
Mr. Murry sighed, as though in frustration. “We love the house and our land,” he said, “but it’s a bit farfetched to call it holy.”
“This house is — what? –” the bishop asked, “well over two hundred years old?”
“Parts of it, yes.”
“But the Ogam stones indicate that there were people here three thousand years ago.”
“Nason, I’ve seen the stone. I believe you that there is Ogam writing on them. I take them seriously. But I don’t want Polly involved in any of your — your –” Mr. Murry pushed up from his place so abruptly that he overturned his chair, righted it with an irritated grunt. The phone rang, making them all jump. Mr. Murry went to it. “Polly, it’s for you.”
This was no time for an interruption. She wanted her grandparents to put everything into perspective. If they could believe what happened, it would be less frightening.
“Sounds like Zachary.” Her grandmother handed her the phone.
“Good morning, sweet Pol. I just wanted to tell you how good it was to see you yesterday, and I look forward to seeing you on Thursday.”
“Thanks, Zach. I look forward to it, too.”
“Okay, see you then. Just wanted to double-check.”
She went back to the table. “Yes. It was Zachary, to confirm getting together on Thursday.”
“Something nice and normal,” her grandfather said.
“Is it?” Polly asked. “He did see someone from three thousand years ago.”
“All Hallows’ Eve,” the bishop murmured.
“At least he’ll get you away from here,” her grandmother said. “Strange, isn’t it, that he should know about the Ogam stones.”
Polly nodded. “Zachary tends to know all kinds of odd things. But what happened this morning is beyond me.”
The bishop said gently, “Three thousand years beyond you, Polly. And, somehow or other, I seem to be responsible for it.”
Mr. Murry went to the dresser and picked up one of the Ogam stones. “Nason, one reason I’ve tended to disbelieve you is that, if what you say is true, then you, a theologian and not a scientist, have made a discovery which it has taken me a lifetime to work out.”
“Blundered into it inadvertently,” the bishop said.
Mr. Murry sighed. “I thought I understood it. Now I’m not sure.”
“Granddad. Please explain.”
Mr. Murry sat down again, creakily. “It’s a theory of time, Polly. You know something about my work.”
“A little.”
“More than Nase, at any rate. You have a much better science background. Sorry, Nase, but –”
“I know,” the bishop said. “This is no time for niceties.” He looked at Mrs. Murry. “Would it be possible for me to have another helping of pancakes?” Then, back to Mr. Murry: “This tesseract theory of yours –”
Mrs. Murry put another stack of pancakes on the bishop’s plate.
Mr. Murry said, “Tessering, moving through space without the restriction of time, is, as you know, a mind thing. One can’t make a machine for it. That would be to distort it, disturb the space/time continuum, in a vain effort to relegate something full of blazing glory to the limits of technology. And of course that’s what’s happening, abortive attempts at spaceships designed to break the speed of light and warp time. It works well in the movies and on TV but not in the reality of the created universe.”
“What you ask is too difficult,” the bishop said. “How many people are willing to take lightning into their bodies?
Mr. Murry smiled, and to Polly it was one of the saddest smiles she had ever seen. “You are,” her grandfather said.
The bishop said softly, “It was as if lightning flashed into my spirit … and with the light such a profound peace and joy came into my heart. In one moment I felt as if wholly revitalized by some infinite power, so that my body would be shattered like an earthen vessel.” He sighed. “That’s John Thomas, a Welshman in the mid-1700s. But it’s a good description, isn’t it?”
“Very good,” Mr. Murry agreed. “But it also shocks me.”
“Why?” the bishop asked.
“Because you know more than I do.”
“No — no –”
“But you don’t know enough, Nase. You’ve opened a time gate that Annie — Anaral, whatever her name is – seems to be able to walk through and which has drawn Polly through it, and I want it closed.”
