Waking the Moon

all with a dismissive gaze. Then from somewhere (but where? it seemed too bulky to have fit in his pocket) he swept forth an object consisting of a straight upright metal rod with crossbars and several dangling narrow strips of metal. Although cleaned and burnished to a warm bronze color, it still looked stained and worn and undeniably ancient.

“What is this?” he asked. When no one answered he pointed to the heavyset Asian boy in the front row. “Mister”—craning his neck to read a computerized class list—”Jose Malabar?”

Mr. Jose Malabar removed his sunglasses and squinted, stretched a hand to touch one of the dangling bits.

“Uh uh uh,” scolded Professor Warnick. “No touching. Quick!—”

“A cattle prod?”

Laughter. The girl beside Jose Malabar suggested a hair curler. Professor Warnick stalked with quick small steps around the room, holding the rod aloft like a torch. Finally he stopped, turning all the way around once, like a dancer. I was terrified he would call on me. But no, his mouth was opening to say something, obviously he was about to reveal the true purpose of his toy, when…

“It’s a sistrum,” said Oliver. He didn’t raise his head. His glasses balanced precariously on the very tip of his nose as he scribbled away. Angelica drew her breath in sharply and glanced at me. I slid lower in my seat and watched Professor Warnick.

At Oliver’s words our teacher had frozen. Now he pivoted neatly, turning until he faced Oliver.

“That’s right,” Professor Warnick said in a soft voice. “And what is a sistrum, Mister Crawford—?”

“An Egyptian instrument used in the worship of Isis.” Oliver narrowed his eyes pensively. “Fourth Dynasty, I believe.”

“Ha!” exclaimed Professor Warnick. “Third!”

He raised the instrument and shook it. It made a harsh jangling, the sound of nails slowly being dropped onto glass. My scalp prickled. The sound died away, but for an instant I thought I heard something else. Another sound, like the distant sawing of cicadas in long grass, hot and tremulous and anxious.

Then it was gone. I lifted my head, chagrined to find myself yawning, and Professor Warnick staring at me with an odd smile.

“I will see you all on Wednesday,” he said, and minced back to the front of the room. “Please have read The Golden Ass by then—don’t complain, you’ll find it goes very quickly! The Adlington translation, I believe the bookstore should have it in by now. Oh—”

He looked up from piling papers and sistrum and the end of his tie into a cracked leather briefcase. “I am supposed to mention that there is a reception tonight for Molyneux scholars, at Garvey House. At—”

He peered at a stack of papers rustling between his fingers. “Oh, I don’t know. Seven, I think. Are there any Molyneux scholars here?”

Students paused in their flight to the door. I stood uncertainly between Oliver stumbling to his feet and Angelica carefully inscribing Golden Ass, Adlington Trans. into her notebook.

“None?” Professor Warnick said. His gaze flicked across the room. “Mister Crawford? Your friends?”

Angelica looked up, then slowly raised her hand. In the front of the room Jose Malabar did the same.

And so did Oliver.

“Ah,” said Professor Warnick, and returned to gathering his things.

In the hallway I tried to get a better look at Jose Malabar, but he hurried off, fingers twitching around a cigarette.

“What’s a Molyneux scholar?” I wondered aloud, but Oliver had already swept past. Angelica halted in the middle of the corridor, poring over a burgundy leather datebook.

“Damn,” she muttered. “Can you tell me what that says? Is it 102 or 202 Reardon?”

I read the fine italicized print as 102. Angelica nodded absently, digging in her bag until she came up with a pair of eyeglasses. “It’s my contacts,” she explained, holding the glasses to her face and staring at her miniscule handwriting. “I’ve got those new tinted lenses and I really can’t see out of them. Okay 102. You were right.”

Tinted lenses! Well, that would account for the eyes, at least. Angelica flashed me a smile and closed her bag. “Thanks, Sweeney. He’s a little strange, isn’t he?”

I thought she was talking about Professor Warnick, but then I saw her gaze dart to where Oliver leaned against the wall. “Java?” he called, snapping his fingers.

Angelica shook her head. “I have a class at Reardon.”

“We’ll walk you over.” Oliver waited for us to catch up with him. “Sweeney looks half-asleep, anyway.”

“I can’t—I’ve got Medieval History—”

Oliver gave me a smug grin. “Me too: kid stuff. Lecture. Origins of civilization, conversion of Constantine. Pseudo-Ambrose and the Avicennian heresy. Got the notes from a guy on my floor who took it last year. We can catch up on the reading tomorrow.”

I laughed, then saw he was serious. “We-ell—”

Behind us footsteps echoed. I caught a faint whiff of sweetly scented pipe tobacco. “So! You’re this year’s crop of scholars.”

It was Professor Warnick. He walked beside us with small neat steps, his blue eyes glittering. “You, of course, Angelica.”

Angelica gave me a queer, almost apologetic look, then nodded.

Professor Warnick smiled. “And you?” He raised his eyebrows at Oliver, who clicked his heels and bowed. “What a silly question! Yet another scion of the Crawford clan. And you?” He looked up at me roguishly.

“N—no—”

“No?” There was a world of disappointment in the word. I flushed, started to stammer some excuse but stopped.

Because from somewhere down the hall came that sound again, the droning noise that had seemed an echo of the sistrum’s graceless note. For a moment the hallway seemed to vibrate, as though we all stood inside some huge drum that had been struck. Then silence. I was staring into Professor Warnick’s bright feral eyes, and he was staring back at me with pity and what might have been relief.

“I see,” he said softly. “Well, I think you will all enjoy The Golden Ass, and I will enjoy meeting with you again on Wednesday.” A mocking smile as he tilted his head in farewell. “And some of you I may see tonight at the reception.”

We watched him march off, his silhouette growing smaller and more gnomelike as he approached the end of the hallway. Abruptly he disappeared, leaving us alone and at a loss for words.

“Well,” Angelica said at last, “I don’t want to be late.”

We clattered down the steps without talking. I felt overwhelmed and a little shaken. At first I was afraid to say anything, but then the heat began to work at me like a drug. Relief flooded me, and exhilaration, and fear: as though I had just escaped some terrible accident.

“God,” I said as we finally burst out into daylight. “Is it just me, or was that, like, the weirdest class you’ve ever seen?”

Angelica and Oliver looked at me curiously. “Guess not,” I said, and shut up.

The campus had come alive since last night. There were students everywhere, and enough anachronistically dressed clerical types to cast The Greatest Story Ever Told. As we headed toward the Strand, Oliver pointed out things of interest—

“Dutch elm trees, planted in 1689 by Goodman Prater and Arthur Simons. They’ve died of blight everywhere else in the United States, except on the seventh fairway of the back nine at Winged Foot.”

Or, “That’s Brother Taylor Messingthwaite. He was ethical consultant on the Manhattan Project, teaches postgrad Confucian Ethics and Modern Christian Problems. Last year he got a Pemslip Grant for five hundred thousand dollars.”

Or, “That’s the Ma es-Sama mosque. This sheik donated a million dollars to build it, so Islamic students here would have a place to worship. No one else’s allowed inside. It’s got a sixty-foot lap pool underneath.”

Or, “Wild Bill! He’s on my floor, grows psilocybin mushrooms in a terrarium, plus he has this hash oil factory with Martin Sedgewick—yo, Bill!”