The Magic Circle, Katherine Neville [parable of the sower read online .TXT] 📗

said, shaking him until he opened his eyes. How dizzy could you get, I thought, tuning in to the dreams of your cat?

But I had awakened with at least today’s first decision resolved in my mind. I’d pick up the package from the post office. I had no other choice. I’d never recover if I put it off and the damned thing vanished. Where to hide it was another question. My office wasn’t safe: too many people in and out all day. And until I actually saw the parcel I wouldn’t be sure I could even put all the documents in one place—a drawer or briefcase, for example—since it hadn’t fit into my mailbox.

When I went out, I was relieved to find that Olivier’s huge borrowed truck was no longer blocking the drive, so I could back my car out without going off the side. He must have had to pick up Larry the programmer extra early.

I pulled up before the post office about ten minutes after they opened for the morning. There were no cars yet parked in front as I pulled into the lot. I got out and nodded greetings to the postal worker who was scattering rock salt on the steps. The pounding of my heart and my head sounded from inside like a tympani section hooked on Latin American rhythms. Why was I so uptight? Absolutely no one here could have any idea of the contents of what I was about to collect.

I went up to the desk and handed George the postal clerk my yellow slip. He went in the back room and came out carrying a large parcel—bigger than a ream of paper, wrapped in brown paper with twine tied around it.

“Sorry you had to come all the way down here to pick this up, Miz Behn,” said George between wide-gapped teeth as he handed it to me. He scratched his head. “I’d a been happy to give it to that fella you sent for it just now, but he said you lost the claim slip. I told him then you’d have to come in person or send a signed note that it was okay to give it to him. But I guess you found your claim slip anyway.”

I was standing there deaf and dumb, as if all sound had been shut off, as if I were in a glass jar. I held the package in my hands, not speaking. George was watching me as if maybe he should give me a drink of water or fan me or something.

“I see,” I managed to choke out. I cleared my throat. “That’s okay, George, I had to come this way anyway. It’s no inconvenience.” I started for the door casually, trying to think of a way to ask the question I desperately needed the answer to. Just at the door, I found it.

“By the way,” I said to George, “I mentioned to a couple of folks to pick it up if they came this way. Who finally came by, so I can tell the others not to bother?”

I expected him to say “new fellow in town” or some such. But what he said made my blood run cold.

“Why—it was that Mr. Maxfield, your landlord. His postal address is just down from yours. S’why I felt bad not to be able to give him the parcel. But rules is rules.”

Olivier! The bottom fell out of my stomach. In my mind flashed the image of those truck high beams last night—and the drive empty of anything but tire tracks when I left this morning. I tried to smile, and thanked George. Then I went out and got into my car, and I sat there with the parcel on my lap.

“It’s all your fault,” I told it.

I knew I shouldn’t, but I had to do it. I reached into the glove compartment and pulled out the bone-handled deer knife I kept there, that had never touched a deer. I cut the twine and pulled the paper open. I was desperate to know the brand of my hemlock before I had to drink it. When I saw the first page, I started laughing.

It was written in a language I couldn’t read, with letters that weren’t even letters of the alphabet, though they did seem oddly familiar. I riffled through the rest like a deck of cards: about two reams of paper, and all alike, each page printed in black ink by the same hand. The pages were filled with feathery stick figures with little circles and bumps protruding here and there like forms dancing across the pages, like the symbols painted on an Indian teepee. What did they remind me of?

And then I knew what they were. I’d seen them in a cemetery once in Ireland, where Jersey had taken me to visit her ancestors. They were runes: the language of the ancient Teutons who’d once lived all over northern Europe. This bloody manuscript was written entirely in a language that had been dead for thousands of years.

Just as that knowledge dawned, from the corner of my eye I saw the flash of something dark moving in the parking lot. I glanced up from the manuscript and saw Olivier walking across the pebbly, salted ice, headed for my car! I tossed the manuscript on the passenger seat, where it slid partly out of its wrapper and a few pages fluttered to the floorboard, which I ignored. I was trying to jam the key into the ignition, but in my hysteria I missed twice. By the time the engine turned over, he was almost at the passenger door. Frantically I shoved down the door lock with my elbow, which caused all the car doors to lock in tandem, as I threw it in reverse.

Olivier grabbed the handle of the passenger door and tried to yell something through the window, but I ignored him and threw the stick forward. I tore out of the lot, dragging Olivier along until he finally