The Time Traveler's Almanac

In 1954, on the evening of the last day of summer, Julia had supper in Old Cottage kitchen with the Eders. Mrs. Eder made the same comforting chicken pie she remembered. The nursery up at Joyous Garde was vast. On its walls were murals of the cat playing the fiddle and the cow jumping the moon. It contained a puppet theater and a play house big enough to walk around in if you were small enough. But some of Julia’s strongest memories of Mt. Airey centered on Old Cottage. The most vivid of all, began one high summer day in the early 1920’s. Her grandmother, as she sometimes did, had taken Julia out of the care of her English nurse and her French governess.

When it was just the two of them, Helen Stoneham Garde raised her right hand and asked, “Do you swear on the head of Ruggles the One Eared Rabbit, not to tell anybody what we will see today?”

Time with her grandmother was always a great adventure. Julia held up the stuffed animal worn featureless with love and promised. Then they went for a walk. Julia was in a pinafore and sandals and held Ruggles by his remaining ear. The woman of incalculable wealth wore sensible shoes and a plain skirt and carried a picnic basket. Their walk was a long one for somebody with short legs. But finches sang, fledglings chirped on oak branches. Invisible through the leaves, a woodpecker drilled a maple trunk. Red squirrels and jays spread news of their passage.

Up the side of Mt. Airey, Helen led her grandchild, to the silent white pine grove that overlooked deep, still waters. The Cabin itself was all odd angles, gray shingles and stone under a red roof. It was Julia’s first visit to the place.

Years later, when she was able to calculate such things, she realized that the dimensions of Stoneham Cabin did not quite pan out. But only a very persistent visitor would note that something was missing, that one room always remained unexplored.

That first time, on a sunny porch, visible from no angle outside the Cabin, Helen Garde set down the basket, unpacked wine and sandwiches along with milk and a pudding for Julia. Then she stood behind her granddaughter and put her hands on the child’s shoulders.

“Julia, I should like you to meet Alcier, whom we call the Rex.”

The man in the doorway was big and square-built with dark skin and curly, black hair. His voice was low, and, like Mademoiselle Martine, he spoke French, though his was different. He wore sandals and a white shirt and trousers. The priest bowed and said, “I am happy to meet the tiny lady.”

He was not frightening at all. On the contrary, morning doves fed out of his hand and he admired Ruggles very much. When they had finished lunch, the Rex asked her grandmother if he could show Julia what lay inside.

The two of them passed through a curtain which the child could feel but couldn’t see. She found herself in a round room with doors open in all directions. It was more than a small child could encompass. That first time, she was aware only of a cave opening onto a snowy winter morning and an avenue of trees with the moon above them.

Then Alcier faced her across a fire which flickered in the center of the room even on this warm day. He put on a silver mask that covered his face, with openings for his eyes, nostrils and mouth, and said, “Just as your grandmother welcomed me to her house, so, as servant of the gods, I welcome you to the Shrine of the Twelve Portals.”

But even as gods spoke through him, Julia could see that Alcier smiled and that his eyes were kind. So she wasn’t a bit afraid. When it was time to say good-by, the Rex stood on the porch and bowed slightly. A red tailed hawk came down and sat on his wrist. Because of Alcier’s manners, Julia was never frightened of the Rex. Even later when she had seen him wiping his machete clean.

As a small child, Julia didn’t know why her grandmother made her promise not to tell anyone about the hawk and the invisible curtain and the nice black man who lived up in the cabin. But she didn’t.

Children who tell adults everything are trying to make them as wise as they. Just as children who ask questions, already know why the sky is blue and where the lost kitten has gone.

What they need is the confirmation that the odd and frightening magic which has turned adults into giants has not completely addled their brains. That Julia didn’t need such reassurance she attributed to her grandmother and to Alcier. On her next visit, she learned to call the place with the flame, the Still Room. She found out that it was a shrine, a place of the gods, and that Alcier was a priest, though much different than the ones in the Episcopal church. On the second visit she noticed Alcier’s slight limp.