Lexicon

lying there. The light never went off. She couldn’t tell how much time was passing. Her thoughts went around and around. Sometimes she caught herself singing.
    • • •
    Eliot swung the car into the school driveway and crawled up to the house. It was late, most of the windows dark, but not Brontë’s. He sat in the car for a few moments. Then he climbed out and went inside.
    The corridors were empty. It had been a while since he was last here and the place felt unfamiliar, although nothing was different. He entered the East Wing and passed a boy with a white ribbon tied around his wrist and dark bruises beneath his eyes, reciting something in Latin. The boy saw Eliot and broke off, then looked pained. Eliot did not stop.
    He knocked on Brontë’s door. She called for him to enter in the imperious voice she adopted for students and he stepped inside. She was behind her desk, surrounded by papers, her hair pinned up but threatening escape. She set down a pen and leaned back in her chair. “What fortuitous timing. I was about to start grading papers.” She gestured. “Will you sit?”
    “I’m going to Syria.”
    “Oh,” she said. “When?”
    “Now. Tonight.”
    She nodded. “You should try to visit the museum in Damascus. They have a tablet with the world’s oldest recorded linear alphabet. It’s quite humbling.”
    “I want you to come with me.”
    She became very still. “I’m not sure what you mean.”
    He looked around the room. “Do you remember the watch I had? The digital one, to wake me so that I could get back to my room before dawn. I was terrified of it failing. Or sleeping through it.”
    “Eliot. Please.”
    “Atwood knew,” he said. “She told me as much, many years later.”
    “Please,” said Brontë.
    “We thought we were being clever. Carrying on under their noses. And when . . . when we had to stop, we thought we did that in secret, too. We did it because we were terrified of being discovered. But they knew.”
    Her eyes glimmered. “Why are you saying these things? Are you here to compromise me?”
    “No,” he said. “God, no.”
    “Then stop talking.”
    “They persuaded us. Without saying a word.”
    “There was no alternative, Eliot.”
    “I don’t believe that anymore. I can’t. I’m sorry.”
    “It’s the truth.”
    “I have this idea that it would have been a girl,” he said. “I don’t know why. But I’ve thought that for a while. I find it hard to shake.”
    Brontë put her face in her hands. “Stop talking.”
    “She’d be grown now. A young woman.”
    “
Stop!
”
    “I’m sorry.” He caught himself. “I’m sorry.”
    “I want you to leave.”
    He nodded. He hesitated, almost apologized again, then moved to the door. Before he closed it, he glanced back, in case she’d looked up from her hands. But she hadn’t.
    • • •
    He landed in Damascus. Heat enveloped him the instant he stepped over the threshold of the airplane, a taste of Australia with a different scent. He made his way across the tarmac to the airport proper and submitted himself to the impatient eyes of various mustachioed officials. His papers were impeccable and so he was soon released into the main hall, which was large, framed with high, latticed keyhole-shaped windows, and even vaguely air-conditioned. A short man in a tight suit stood gripping a sign that read:

    “I’m Eliot,” he said. “You are Hossein?”
    The man nodded, extending his hand in the Western manner.
    “,” said Eliot. The man’s hand dropped. His face relaxed. “My plane is delayed,” Eliot said. “It is due in ten hours. You will wait here for it and that is what you will believe.” He could see the exit. There was no shortage of drivers on the pavement outside. “And when Yeats asks you what happened,” he said, “tell him I retired.”
    • • •
    Someone entered the room. She squeezed shut her eyes as soon as she realized, so was left with only the briefest impression: a square man in a dark suit, silver hair.
    “Hello, Emily,” Yeats said.
    She sat up. Her brain felt soft. Lee had been right: It was harder to marshal mental defenses while under physiological stress. She needed to think clearly but all she wanted was a sandwich.
    “Lee is dead. You assumed, perhaps. But in case you were wondering about the possibility of last-minute medical heroics . . . no. He died. Another for your collection.”
    “I’ll stop at one more.”
    “No,” Yeats said. “You won’t. I