“Unassuming, isn’t it?” Dr. Cliffton asks, as if he were reading my mind. He clears his throat. “I stumbled upon the Variants quite by accident. I was in high school at the time. Matilda and Juliet and I were in the library one day, studying, and during our short breaks I often found myself looking through the plant encyclopedias—”
Will gives a short laugh and unfurls his legs. He comes to stand next to me. “In case you were wondering, Aila,” he says, “that means he was reading an encyclopedia for fun.”
“I suppose we can thank polio for ruining any chances I had at athletic interests,” Dr. Cliffton says, but his voice is entirely void of bitterness. “Otherwise I might not have found the encyclopedia to be my idea of a good time. And perhaps,” he says, “I might never have found the Variants at all.” He touches his neck in the exact way Will does.
“Now, Aila, I was getting closer, but I was still on the wrong path,” he continues. “I was intrigued by a plant I’d found called kesidang. Its common name is bread flower because of the aroma it gives off in bloom. I was researching how I might acquire its seedlings.
“But my sister Marjorie found me in the library that day. She was growing concerned about our mother, who had taken ill weeks earlier and never regained her appetite. Marjorie wondered if I had any ideas for getting her to eat. Because I had the encyclopedia open, I happened to stumble upon this.”
He taps the page. “Holy thistle. Also called blessed thistle, or God’s cure-all, because it treated all sorts of maladies even back to the Middle Ages. It was used in poultices and as an astringent, prescribed to aid digestion, lactation, even fight the plague. And naturally, it can be used as an appetite stimulant.
“I suggested it to my sister. ‘But where will we find thistle this time of year?’ she asked.
“Juliet said she could get us some. The next day, there she was, bearing a pouch spilling over with thistle birdseed.”
He laughs. “Of course I couldn’t very well serve my poor ailing mother a cup of birdseed. So I took it to my mortar and pestle.”
He gestures to a stone bowl perched at the corner of his desk. I’d always been so busy looking for the Sterling book that I thought it was a paperweight. But now I realize it’s a mortar and pestle, hewn from rough, speckled granite and engraved with five words: “To seek . . . always to seek.”
“I ground the thistle into dust so fine I could sprinkle it over my mother’s food. At that point she was eating nothing but bread and water.” Dr. Cliffton’s eyes are shining and far away, as if he is about to make the discovery all over again. “Well, how do you describe what it is like to smell something—?anything—?for the very first time? The water, of course, didn’t smell like anything. But the bread . . .” He trails off. “It smelled like it had just been baked in the oven, warm and soft, and it reached my mother’s room before I did. She was sitting up in bed by the time I came in, and she kept smiling and lifting the bread to her face until I finally made her eat it. She swore up and down that the Variant version was even better than what was in her memory.”
I touch the coarse, round neck of the pestle. “So that was it? You ground thistle, and it somehow unlocked all the scents?”
“Unlocked the scents,” he repeats. “I like that.” His blue eyes twinkle behind his glasses at my expression. “This story isn’t what you expected? You were hoping for something magical?”
“Well, maybe?. . .” I admit. “Something a bit more like magic.”
“So, perhaps it is,” he says. “After all, what is magic? Just a term we use for the unexpected, resulting from the right elements in combination. Perhaps you’ve only thought of it as the correct words in a spell, or mixture of ingredients in a pot.”
I think of my mother’s Shakespeare book. “‘Double, double, toil and trouble,’” I say, and smile.
“But really, aren’t there bits of magic everywhere we look?” Dr. Cliffton continues. “We’ve just stopped seeing it that way.”
I hesitate. “I’m not sure I know what you mean.”
“I mean—?cake,” he says wryly. “Why does the perfect combination of ingredients put together at just the right temperature become a fluffy, airy cake? Why do water molecules sometimes turn into flakes of snow and sometimes rocks of hail? Why is it that two people coming together in love can create life”—?I blush and avoid looking at Will—?“and yet the volatile combination of another two can end it?”
He closes the book. “So, yes. When just the right things come together, there is always a bit of magic. And when just the wrong combination of things do . . .”
“There is tragedy,” I finish softly.
“But you didn’t even tell her the best part of the story,” Will cuts in, leaning the weight of his arms on the desk. He turns to me. “After my father discovered the first Variant, he went to find my mother—?because even back then he carried a bit of a torch for her.” He smiles. “And she was with Juliet. So the three of them crushed the rest of the thistle together and took the Variants to the bakery. Then they passed out loaves of bread to practically the entire town.”
“That was very much like your mother, you know,” Dr. Cliffton says. “She was always trying to help people.”
My face warms, picturing Mother. Young and beautiful. Handing out the golden loaves to giddy, outstretched hands. It makes me proud that the very first Variants were created from the thistle she supplied.
Dr. Cliffton’s head bends again as he flips to a page entitled “Lamiaceae Herbs,” and I notice for the first time that his brown hair is pricked with gray. He points to an illustration of evergreen needles, with tiny blue flower sprigs nestled between.
“Shall I stop? Have I hit the limit of your interest? As Will is well aware, sometimes I forget that others aren’t quite as fascinated by the Variants as I am—”
“No, please,” I say quickly. “I like it.”
The Variants. They are like Sterling’s North Star: one bright spot to orient them against an ever-advancing darkness.
“These, the Mind’s Eye Variants, were another stroke of luck,” he says, and I can tell that he is pleased to continue. “I was actually in search of a Variant for our missing dreams. However, that one has proven to be very elusive, even to this day.” He wets his fingertip to skim through the pages.
“I’d already experimented unsuccessfully with a number of things—?Saint John’s wort, peppermint, white periwinkle—?when I stumbled across a passage on the legends of the Middle Ages. It said that people would place sprigs of rosemary under their pillows to ward against nightmares. But of course, rosemary is also associated with memory.” He smiles. “I could have just looked at Hamlet. You’d be amazed at how many hints I’ve found within Shakespeare’s pages.”
My head shoots up, and Will looks at me. I can tell he remembers my asking about it, and he gets a funny look. “Huh,” he says.
“Shakespeare?” I prod Dr. Cliffton.