So Sirin, too, had his finger on the pulse of a mystery (or simply a note mimicking or correcting some book he planned to publish). I sometimes thought that should Sirin and Duncan ever sit down for a serious talk, all mysteries would be solved, revealed, undone. (No—not true. An altogether uglier scenario comes to mind.)

Sirin laid his tiny burden down on the desk in front of me, then sat back in his chair, arms crossed, and stared at me, an odd smile flitting across his face. Perhaps he was already contemplating his escape, or perhaps it was one last smile of pain for his sapphire cappan. An exotic jewel, the butterfly looked ever more beautiful in the light streaming from Sirin’s window.

“I heard a rumor,” Sirin said, “that Duncan has left Blythe Academy under peculiar circumstances. Is this true?”

“He has left, it’s true,” I said. “There is nothing peculiar about it, however. A difference of opinion, really. Nothing that would get in the way of his being hired by someone else.”

“Janice. Is Duncan determined to destroy every career he makes some progress toward?” (Typical of the bastard.)

I gritted my teeth. “It was an amicable parting of the ways.”

“I hear otherwise,” Sirin said, but dismissed my nascent protest with a wave of the hand. “Not that it matters much.”

I’m confused now. I can’t remember if we had this discussion in his office or somewhere else, if I’m thinking of another conversation. As I try to imagine his office during our meeting, I see books that belong to other eras, other encounters. I’m fairly sure that The Exchange & Other Stories by Nicholas Sporlender had not yet been published, for example, and that that book of essays about Martin Lake wasn’t published until several years later, either. Why, now that I really look, I can see a cane in the corner of Sirin’s office, although he didn’t use one. And over there—glimmering darkly, like some expanse of black lamplit water—a starfish Duncan never showed him. No, actually, it’s a pair of the same glasses I brought with me to Lake’s party. I can see that now.

Does that mean Sirin knew what Duncan knew? About the glasses? (You worry me, sister. The one thing you had going for you was a kind of grim, lurching linear progression. You seem to be losing that now.)

It’s darker in here than before, but I can see better, if that makes any sense. The spores are thick. I shall ask the bartender to bring me a fan, or to open the window. I can’t afford to leave again now. It’s getting too late to rewrite. All I want to do is move forward. All I want is to look ahead. Typos will proliferate. Sentences will wind up nowhere. I don’t care.

But we were in Sirin’s office, attempting to throw off the weight of accumulated memory.