I flip through more pages, my eyes skimming through the words as fast as I can take them in. Beas returns to her homework. “I like the Bard, but sometimes the Elizabethan English feels like trying to run through mud.”
“It gets easier,” I say, distracted, moving on to Much Ado About Nothing.
My eyes flit over the words until I reach what Mother has circled next.
A funny sort of tremor runs through me.
She’s marked:
Beat.: I am stuffed, cousin, I cannot smell.
Marg.: A maid, and stuffed! there’s goodly catching of cold.
Beat.: O, God help me! God help me! how long have you professed apprehension?
Marg.: Ever since you left it. Doth not my wit become me rarely!
Beat.: It is not seen enough, you should wear it in your cap. By my troth, I am sick.
Mar.: Get you some of this distilled Carduus Benedictus, and lay it to your heart: it is the only thing for a qualm.
Carduus benedictus.
Benedictus I recognize. “Blessed,” in Latin, the dead language Mother had once insisted on trying to teach me. Why did that sound vaguely familiar? It takes me a moment to place it.
My heart takes off, as if I’m nearing the edges of something I’ve been missing.
Then I abruptly close Mother’s book and snatch my list. “Beas,” I say, “I have an idea.”
I knock on the library door, my excitement dazzling the higher it climbs. “Come in,” Dr. Cliffton calls.
Beas and I step into the library, which is aglow with lamplight and the searing of the sun as it sets. George and Dr. Cliffton are leaning over a pile of books, the covers all open and layered on top of one another. They look up at me with polite expectation.
“I’ve been reading something of my mother’s,” I begin. “A Shakespeare volume. And I have a theory about the Disappearances.”
Dr. Cliffton straightens. “Go on.”
“I just came across this passage.” I show them my circled words: “Bid the music leave.” I flip to another page. “And here—?when Beatrice says she can’t smell, Margaret recommends trying Carduus benedictus. It reminded me of when you solved the first Variant.”
I pluck out the plant encyclopedia he had shown me earlier. Navigate to the little spiky magenta plant.
The caption underneath says “Carduus Benedictus. Blessed Thistle.”
“You said yourself that you can find so many of the clues in Shakespeare’s pages,” I remind him. I unfold my lists and smooth them out across his desk. “I’ve been working on this. What if—?what if all the Disappearances are found there?”
Dr. Cliffton furrows his brow as he looks over my work.
“This is an impressive compilation, Aila. Truly.” He taps on his chin in thought. “I suppose what you say is a possibility. Let’s think this through, though.”
He runs his fingers down my hastily scrawled columns.
“There are a fair number of things still missing—?both from a Disappearance standpoint and a Variant one. Off the top of my head, I don’t see the Embers or anything about the missing stars.”
“Yes,” I say, pointing to my list. “See, here—?I thought the stars could be ‘overcast the night,’ from Midsummer Night’s Dream.”
He pauses, thinking. “But we can still see the moon at night, so it seems a bit of a stretch.”
George peers over his shoulder. “And what about Miles’s Dream Variant, with the teeth? That’s definitely more along the lines of Freud. Hundreds of years after Shakespeare.”
