“Very astute, Ms. Fitzwilliams,” Rawlins said. “You are correct. Everyone, welcome Ms. Ellsbeth Storer, whom I know will be an asset to our scholarly pursuits.” Ellsbeth gave an awkward half wave.
“I haveno doubt,” Gracie continued, her voice a purr, “that she will be an asset. In fact, she and I were talking earlier, about the article you assigned? And Ellsbeth had some really brilliant thoughts on Etruscan numerology—you disagreed with the author’s last paragraph, isn’t that right?”
She knows. Gracie knows that I wasn’t able to finish the article.A flush crawled up Ellsbeth’s neck, and her mouth became sand. Rawlins’s face was masklike and inscrutable.
“Uh, yes,” Ellsbeth said. She muttered something nonsensical then, a string of words strung together in such a way as to say nothing at all. It was babbling; it was bullshit. Rawlins’s face remained completely blank. When Ellsbeth finished speaking (“so, well, yeah”), he cleared his throat.
“Well,” he said, “thank you for that insight, Ms. Storer, and Ms. Fitzwilliams, for your generous introduction.” He turned toward the blackboard and drew a perfect hexagon with six confident strokes of the chalk. “Let’s get started on the lesson, then, shall we?”
From:Rawlins DAA
To:{Graduate Cohort List}
Subject:Your Theses
Scholars,
I need revised thesis proposals from everyone by next Friday, including a preliminary bibliography and a precis on your research methods. The year is well under way, and some of your topics remain hazy. You will all need to submit for department approval, and you underestimate bureaucratic slowness at your own peril.
As testament to the value of doing good work ahead of schedule: Congratulations to Curt, who has just been named a MacGregor Fellow, with two years of funding for his research on energetic amplification rituals. There are still funding opportunities available to those who are able to get their proverbial shit together in a timely fashion.
Rawlins
From:Rawlins DAA
To:Storer.Ellsbeth
Subject: Re:Your Theses
Ms. Storer,
Sending you an addendum, since you are dreadfully behind the rest of the class, and I am already anticipating the blind alleys you will go down if left to your own devices; for my own sanity, if nothing else, I’d like to start by setting you on a more fruitful path.
Your topic, obviously, is outside the academic mainstream, and you will find little in the way of relevant recent publication. You may be tempted by the resurgence of literature on mentalism from the 1970s, but most of that work is pseudointellectual drivel masquerading as rigorous research. Steer clear.
Instead, consider early-20th-century pioneers who brought writ magic into the modern era: Bertram Gorky (start with his 1927 treatise “On the Magick of Mental Manipulation,” progress to the 1931 doorstopperThe Mind’s Eye) and Rudolf Wentz (Magickal Influence upon Cognition and Behavioris the cornerstone). Citing these authors has become virtually verboten, but you will have to swallow your discomfort if you’re to get anywhere.
As you’re reading Wentz, try to track the source of his innovations; he is woefully lax in his citations, so I will point you toward the main texts he is referencing:Arcanus Mentis(1647),The Diviner’s Touch(1598), and of course the seminal but inscrutable ur-text of this subfield:Writ Magic(1511). Those Renaissance-era accounts include little practical advice on the rituals you will eventually need to design, but they constitute the theoretical framework you will be working from.
Texts on this topic may of course be difficult to find; none of them are in common circulation, but the Bowles Annex has some on hand (I imagine you will be spending considerable time there). Let me know if you’re coming up empty, as I have several of thetexts in my personal collection, and may be willing to lend with the proper assurances.
Obviously, you will need to expand the scope of your research beyond this initial list, but hopefully this lands you on firm ground from which to explore. I am taking a more prescriptive approach here than usual, but I’m told some people rather enjoy being told what todo.
Rawlins
Rawlins
Rawlins always did his best thinking on his morning walks to campus. It was a thirty-minute trip that he did not have time for every day, but whenever possible, it was well worthwhile. Navigating the familiar route—down Beacon Hill Drive, past a business district full of quaint shops, through the housing block favored by undergrads—opened his mind, still buzzing from his morning coffee, to chew through topics.
That particular Thursday, he thought he might be able to solve the problem of his overdue manuscript and either home in on a workable thesis that might move him forward, or at least come up with a better excuse for the book’s years-long delay. But instead, his thoughts turned—not to Ellsbeth Storer, thank god, not directly at least, but to the complication she had introduced into his professional life.
A thesis on writ magic.
He had agreed to let her undertake the topic, knowing full well the challenges it entailed.
Rawlins was confident that he could justify her research as strictly academic and navigate the bureaucratic hurdles. The part that made it both interesting and dangerous was the fact that Ellsbeth intended to actually carry outtests—and that he had tacitly consented to help her. If they were caught, they would be imprisoned; engaging in such rituals privately and willingly might diminish their sentencing, but especially after what had happened with Max, the DA would aggressivelyprosecute any such case. Rawlins was not about to spend his next decade in jail and see his academic reputation permanently ruined.
That meant their undertaking would need to remain clandestine. Personally, Rawlins had no qualms keeping a secret. They were his specialty; ever since childhood, he had been enlisted to keep them on his parents’ behalf. The very fact of his alcoholically chaotic home life was a secret he had learned to keep from the outside world. A prying question from a teacher, or worse, a visit from a concerned social-services bureaucrat, was a crisis.
