Of course, since actually performing the ritual would be illegal, perhaps it’s better to discuss whether or not it might be tested…not in writing, personal email accounts or not. I’d give you my cellphone number but seeing as I’ve already (a) explicitly flirted and (b) asked about your marital status, I feel like giving you my number here would be going past “charmingly forward” and landing squarely somewhere around “pathetic.” I think the best course of action is probably to see how far I get with the ritual on Friday and then talk in person.
As for my social life, there is a medical student who shares the same running route as me (well, he runs. I listen to a podcast and trot arrhythmically while sweating through my T-shirt). He seems nice enough, with very little to indicate that he’s planning onstealing my organs, and so I said yes to seeing a movie with him Saturday, but I can say with some authority that I do not think he will be a distraction to my scholarship.
I guess that leads into my answer to your next question, my apparently far-reaching curiosity. I’m almost embarrassed to tell you how devoted I’ve been to arcane mechanicals my entire life. I’ve loved the arcane since I was a kid. It was the subject of the children’s books I asked for and then the not-so-childish books I read throughout high school, usually under my desk during home economics classes. I think I might have mentioned this in an earlier email to you, but I got a copy ofThe Arcane and the Ordinaryfor my 16th birthday. I wasthattype of kid. And I went to study at St. Andrews because I knew they had the best undergraduate program in runes and ancient mathematics (and yes, also because they filmed some of the exteriors of theGolden Seekerseries at the castles there). I walked into my Arcanus completely confident that I was taking the next step in my life’s clear path; I left the exam completely undone.
Transparently, it was an incredibly rough few months. I was mourning the death of my little sister, who had been my best friend since she was born, and I was also mourning the career trajectory I had planned on for almost as long. I believed my career in arcane mechanicals to be completely over. I am an impatient person, as we’ve established, someone who relies on forward motion and accomplishment as a way to stave off feelings of boredom, inadequacy, doubt, fear. At the same time I lost Bertie, I also lost what would have been my most effective way of dealing with the grief—namely, an ability to throw myself into my work. And so I spent months lost and miserable—my mind spinning and gnawing at itself like a confused animal—unsure which of my impulses were productive and which were self-sabotage.
I apologize that this email became something of a diary entry as I struggled to answer your question appropriately. I’ll ask you one in return (feel free to answer in person when I see you Friday): Was it ever enough? When you were the wunderkind of the arcane world, the guest of honor at banquets; when your book went into its fifth, sixth, seventh printing—did you everfeel as though youmadeit? From the outside, you’re the most successful and popular arcanist since Hewlitt Hudson; it certainlyseemsas though you’ve made it, as though you’ve reached a point of critical and commercial success such that no more satisfaction could possibly be asked for. I’m actually realizing now as I write that my real question is a much simpler one: Are you happy? Maybe the truth of my impatience is that I’m convinced when I amass a certain level of accomplishments, my answer will be yes, and I would rather reach that point as quickly as possible.
Thank you again for your generosity in allowing me access to your Wentz volumes and your home. I promise to treat both with respect and minimal BBQ / chocolate pudding / coffee / mustard stains.
See you tomorrow night,
Ellsbeth
From:Rawlins.T.M.
To:Storer.Ellsbeth
Subject:Good Morning
Ellsbeth,
Your impatience must be rubbing off on me, because it has been only 36 hours since you left my house on Friday night, yet I woke this morning hoping to find a writ magic ritual—and accompanying email from you—in my inbox. I guess a bright young womanmighthave better things to do with a crisp autumn Saturday than spend sixteen hours in a research library typing out arcane ritual instructions. (How was your movie, by the way, and your runner?)
Don’t worry, I did not email you just to check on your progress on your thesis. I wanted to let you know that it was nice having you over, and I look forward to the next time we can continue your education in the art of fine wine; if you are to make your way in this world, to secure funding and court the support of wealthy benefactors, you will need to demonstrate an ability to select a decent bottle, or at least fake convincing appreciation. (Just remember “notes of cherry,” works every time.)
I don’t usually share much in the way of personal information with students, but you were open with me, and your candor deserved to be met. Keep in mind, I have worked hard to cultivate an air of opaque mystery, and it would be scuttled quickly if you started sharing details of my past, or my present grudges and resentments. So hopefully I don’t need to email you merely to encourage you to keep my secrets, as I will keep yours.
I’ve been thinking more about the happiness question. I was honest with you on Friday, but on reflection, that was not the whole story. The truth is, I don’t believe that happiness was ever available to me. There is something in my nature that does not allow for it, not unlike your inability to stand still. As a younger man, I aspired to happiness, thinking it might accompany great achievement, but every accolade and triumph provided little in the way of lasting contentment, only revealing new challenges tobe tackled next.San neomeo san,goes the Korean proverb: mountains after mountains. With each peak that you summit, another reveals itself. The task of climbing may seem Sisyphean, but it is all we have.
In other words: No, I’m not happy, but I no longer aim to be, so much as I want to be engaged in meaningful work. The end is not my goal, only to be on the road toward it. I cringe at the grandiosity of the comparison, but I have felt like the Ulysses of Tennyson’s poem, an “idle king” of this department, perhaps this entire field of study; “Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will / To strive, to seek, to find and not to yield.”
It is not lost on me that this rediscovery of a sense of purpose has coincided with your arrival in my life. Your curiosity and ambition have been refreshing and invigorating, and I thought you might be heartened to know that you have, even accidentally, stirred something in me. But that is not the reason for my email to you, either.
Why, then, am I using the free hours of my Sunday morning to send this message? Simple: to let you know that you left your jacket here. And as we established last night, it clashes with my decor, so for the sake of my study’s appearance if nothing else, I should get it back to you soon.
But I do find myself wondering how you managed, on a cold evening, to depart without your outer layer? Were you so thoroughly flummoxed by the moment we shared before you left that you did not even think of it? Or perhaps, recalling the way your face flushed, I wonder if you were warmed by the rush of blood to your cheeks so much that you made it halfway home before the chill set in? Or (more interesting) did you leave it on purpose? Hoping that I would see it and recall the moment you shrugged it off when you came and sat beside me on the sofa? Imagining that I might remember the way its removal revealed the delicacy of your neck? Or perhaps you thought you might stop by to pick it up this afternoon, and the restraint I exhibited at the moment of your departure would evaporate at the sight of you on my doorstep?
Alas, I will be out for the rest of the day. I’ll drop the coat offtomorrow morning in the graduate TA office, discreetly so that other members of the cohort don’t gossip. And as much as my home will be aesthetically improved by its departure, I might miss having a piece of you in my possession.
Sincerely,
Rawlins
From:Storer.Ellsbeth
To:Rawlins.T.M.
Subject:The Ritual
Happy Monday.
I hope this makes all of your waiting worth it: a functional writ magic ritual (attached below). At least, I think there’s a pretty good chance itmightbe a functional magic ritual.
I think I was too flustered when I saw you Friday night and then slightly too buzzed on the very good wine to have actually let you know that the ostensible reason I came to your house—studying Wentz—proved incredibly useful. I did not go on my Saturday date with the runner (his name, for the record, is Oscar) because I had hit that perfect, enviable state when work feels easy and even words from dusty, centuries-old texts make perfect sense and I wasn’t able to pull myself away. We postponed; next weekend.
And so, here it is. I will say now that I am more than a little sleep-deprived, and so the ritual might be much less coherent than I think it is, but the way it makes sense to me, this is a ritualthat could (hypothetically) be performed with only two individuals—the binder and the subject—and with relatively inexpensive materials: a chalk circle, fully charred ash from cedarwood to draw the actual writ (diagram 1c in the PDF), and a piece of thread to tie the knot (diagram 2a).
