Read Online Hunger's Brides by W. Paul Anderson - Free Book Online

for me just the barest outlines of that craven blow to the back—and from a
god
—his voice grew husky and tottery under the burden of Apollo’s disgrace. So when the dark day again fell across those pages, I prodded his shoulder till he woke, and shared with him my outrage. No, Abuelo, you were right, this was not at all a thing for a god to do.
    For a week or two that first winter we puzzled together over a volume by an Italian, Pico della Mirandola, which I thought a marvellous sort of name. It was a treatise, Grandfather believed, on updating the hexachord to the octave, which he was very keen to read. This splendidly named
musicus
had written it in Latin, which my
abuelo
read easily. The trouble was that by inadvertence he’d purchased an Italian translation of an Italian who wrote in Latin.
    At one point, we had fairly run the gamut when Grandfather sounded a note not far from fury. “Ut!” he sputtered. “This … this is finally and completely enough!”
    I responded with a great severity of my own. “A terrible translation, no, Abuelo? That it should give two such scholars so much trouble?”
    At this he coughed and patted my hand. “Yes, Angelita, a bad translation. That must be so.”
    By then an eternity had translated itself into a year. It was autumn and time to enrol in school, which brought me crashing to earth. I sat—dazed, in a sort of horological horror—in the forecourt of the school, under the motto Charity, Chastity and Grace. Just inside, Grandfather was arguing that I should be placed if not with the teenagers then in the third year at the very lowest.
    Yes, don Pedro, but grandfathers were, after all,
expected
to think their little
nietas † very
precocious.
“Más, fíad, señor
, in our long experience with children.” Since this would be my first year, I must of course begin with the beginners, but—
but—
they, the reverend sister teachers, would know just how to bring me along at a satisfactory pace.
    The fourth week ended prematurely, on the Wednesday afternoon, though it began exactly as had the others, and that was the problem.With our ABCs. As ever, Sister Paula stood before the class and led us in the most maddening singsong sham of question and answer—this was the Socratic method she was playing with. How marvellous that we had somehow divined in under a month that A should stand for … Avocado! And were we sure? Oh yes, very.
    So stubby were her legs, and arms to match, that she was forever treading on her rosary and then dipping her head to check herself, as though the beads were slung not at her waist but round her neck. And how she
exclaimed
over our sham right answers. My mind was invaded by the sketch of a pullet—pacing and bobbing and rearing back to crow, and stuntedly flapping and clapping over our great successes.
    For weeks now, to quell the need to scream I would chant along under my breath. The chant ran on and on like this. Hard and quickly:
    A
is for Aleph in Hebrew; it comes from Chaldaean.
B
is for Beta in Greek, a borrowing from Phoenician.
C
is for—can we name the capital of Chaldaea …?
    This question of the sorcerer’s passing through Sister Paula’s classroom that day, the precise wording of the hex I threw, has been taken up by those whose qualifications are beyond reproach. And I do not dispute that by the Wednesday of week four my ABCs had spiralled and ramified within me until I had perfected a whole new gamut. As an alternative to Sister Paula’s version, my solo began at
M
, for
‘mi,’
of course, and for ‘Mem’ in Hebrew …
    Well M e m
is
interesting. Does it not look to you like the horns of an owl? Which is after all the al m ost universal sy m bol of
m uerte y m ortalidad
. † Now, the Reverend Athanasius Kircher believes the alphabet is m odelled after for m s in nature, and yes, just like the hieroglyphs of