A Quill Ladder by Jennifer Ellis

jeans pockets.
    Abbey waited until he was gone and then pulled the envelope out of her pocket.
     
    *****
     
    Mark concentrated on putting one foot in front of the other. He held the map of the campus in front of him like a life preserver. He already had it memorized, but it offered a level of security and allowed him to avoid making eye contact with all of the strange people who might feel they needed to offer him quizzical smiles and pensive looks.
    Like many campuses, Coventry College was based on a ring or web layout with all of the buildings forming circles around the main library at the center of campus. Mark considered that perhaps he would have liked to have attended college, at least a couple of geography classes, or perhaps just cartography. His mother had informed him pointedly that he already knew more about maps than most geography professors and would likely be disruptive in class as a result. She was probably right. She was right about most things.
    Still, as he moved through the paved laneways, he found that he didn ’ t have to nose breathe as much as he ’ d had to while in downtown Coventry. Most people ignored him and despite some large groups of students, there seemed to be a studied anonymity to their movements, like others came here to escape into books and maps as well.
    At the Horton Building, the sickish feeling Mark had experienced when he first considered executing Simon ’ s detailed list of instructions on how to get to campus returned. He patted the leather portfolio bag that he ’ d received for his twenty-third birthday to make sure the hand sanitizer was still there. Then he counted by threes as he pushed through the heavy front door and mounted the stairs.
    Dr. Ford ’ s door was closed and locked, and nobody answered his knock. The shadows at the base of the door indicated that the lights were off. A cushioned leather seat in an alarming mustard color occupied the window alcove across from the door. Mark gave it a surreptitious wipe with the hand sanitizer and a Kleenex and then settled onto the chair. It was only 1:00 p.m. Waiting was better than working up the courage to take public transit again.
     
    *****
     
    The envelope contained a single heavy, yellowish card with uneven edges. On the card, words were written in slanting old calligraphic script:
     
    The Center is an essential part of witchcraft. Find your center and the center, and then reread this card. When you can see what lies beneath, you will be ready for lesson two.
     
    Abbey stared at the card until she could feel the corner of her eye twitching. So, witchcraft was going to be a bunch of new-age meditation stuff involving finding some center that she was quite certain she didn ’ t have. She ’ d rather learn spells and potions, and even hexes for that matter — things she could look up in a reference book and memorize. Things she could calculate, analyze, understand. She had no interest in searching for some spiritual inner peace.
    She pressed her fingers against the card, searching for the indentations of something else written there, some secret code written in invisible ink or maybe a second card beneath the first one. She held it to the light to see if she could see through it, and then examined it from every angle. Nothing.
    She closed her eyes and tried to erase her constantly racing thoughts from her mind, to still her brain and imagine only velvety black night. But the stars and constellations kept blinking into her darkness, and every time she managed to replace them with a black canvas, ideas, equations, symbols, and maps moved in from the edges, as if the canvas were a piece of paper on fire, until she could no longer see the black at all. She snapped her eyes back open and stared at the card. It looked exactly the same as it had before, with the original message in slanting black script.
    She nearly tossed the card away in frustration, but instead stuffed it into her pocket and headed back to the