I run straight to Beas’s house and ring the doorbell. Mrs. Fogg scowls when she sees me but calls, “Beatrice, that Aila Quinn from school is here.”
Beas brings me to her room, which is cluttered with postcards, record sleeves, hair clips, glass cases, and a poster on the wall of a woman in a corset playing a violin. Her bookshelf is full of poetry, and her violin case stands in the corner next to a collection of bows. We sit on her bed, and I throw my frozen toes under the covers.
“Philomel,” I tell Beas, throwing Mother’s book open on my lap. “In a poem Shakespeare wrote about songs restrained and music held back. Don’t you see? Philomel! It’s Latin for nightingale!”
There’s a sudden beating rush in my ears. My theory was always just a hunch, but there is an undercurrent of something more now. A flash of pure revived faith.
She squeaks and pushes her hands together. “I knew it. I knew you were onto something!”
She pulls out two bottles of Coca-Cola she has hidden under her bed. They fizz when we open and clink them.
In her throaty voice she says, “So now you just have to find the rest of them. Ooh!” she claps. “Let me help!”
I raise my soda to meet hers. “Cheers, Beas. Let’s divide and conquer.”
On Thursday she passes me a note in class when Digby’s back is turned.
Veil Variants:
To dry the rain
on my storm-beaten face
On Friday I pass her back:
hypnosis
DOCTOR: You see, her eyes are open.
GENTLEWOMAN: Ay, but their sense is shut.
?—Macbeth
Her eyes widen, and she gives me a thumbs-up.
“Tomorrow—?bring everything you’ve been able to find,” I say.
“What are you two whispering about over there?” George asks, peering up from his microscope.
“Boys,” I say.
“Margeaux Templeton,” Beas says at the exact same time, and sticks her tongue out at him.
On Saturday morning I beat Genevieve to the door when Beas rings the bell.
“First things first,” I say, leading her up to my room. “You have to have one of these.”
We settle onto the floor, surrounded by books, paper, and pens, and I hand her one of Genevieve’s creations rolled in cinnamon and sugar. “A dirt bomb.”
She exchanges it for her notepad. “Here’s everything I found in the sonnets.”
I take her list and begin to compare it with mine.
“You?” she asks, biting into the doughnut with a shower of cinnamon and sugar.
Warmth and hope are seeping through me with every row of her finds that I add to my list. “I was looking for the two things that threw me before,” I tell her.
“Right. Freud’s teeth. Did you know there’s something about a snake’s tooth in a paragraph about dreams in Macbeth?” she says. She closes her eyes as she takes another bite. “And did you know that I’m kidnapping Genevieve for these?”
“I found something better for dreams and teeth in Romeo and Juliet,” I say.
And in this state she gallops night by night
Through lovers’ brains, and then they dream of love; On courtiers’ knees, that dream on curtsies straight; O’er lawyers’ fingers, who straight dream on fees; O’er ladies’ lips, who straight on kisses dream.
“It’s describing a fairy midwife who rides in a chariot made from a hazelnut,” I say.
“The tooth fairy?” Beas grins.
“And remember when Dr. Cliffton said my ‘overcast the night’ was a stretch for the Disappearance of stars?”
“Because we could still see the moon.”
I nod and show her my list, where I’ve struck it out. And in its place I write triumphantly:
Stars, hide your fires —?Macbeth
Then I toss my pen onto the covers, and Beas’s eyes grow huge as she looks through the pages and pages of my notes. My pulse begins to hum.
“It’s here,” she says. “It’s all here.”
DISAPPEARANCES:
scents
Thou losest thy old smell. —?As You Like It
Eyes without feeling,
feeling without sight,
Ears without hands or eyes,
smelling sans all.
—?Hamlet
reflection
And since you know you
cannot see yourself
so well as by reflection. —?Julius Caesar
Two glasses, where herself
herself beheld
A thousand times,
and now no more reflect —?Venus + Adonis
dreams
My love and her desert;
that canst not dream. —?All’s Well That Ends Well
colors
Your mistresses dare
never come in rain,
For fear their colours
should be washed away. —?Love’s Labour’s Lost
stars
Overcast the night —?A Midsummer Night’s Dream
Stars, hide your fires —?Macbeth
music
Bid the music leave. —?Henry VIII
VARIANTS:
dream
O, then, I see Queen Mab hath been with you.
She is the fairies’ midwife, and she comes In shape no bigger than an agate-stone
(tooth fairy?)
Her chariot is an empty hazelnut
Made by the joiner squirrel or old grub,
Time out o’ mind the fairies’ coachmakers.
And in this state she gallops night by night Through lovers’ brains, and then they dream of love; O’er courtiers’ knees, that dream on court’sies straight, O’er lawyers’ fingers, who straight dream on fees, O’er ladies’ lips, who straight on kisses dream . . .
—?Romeo + Juliet
ember
And see thy blood warm when thou feel’st
it cold. —?Sonnet 2
fragrance
I cannot smell.
Get you some of this distilled
carduus benedictus ? (holy thisle)
and lay it to your heart.
It is the only thing for a qualm.
—?Much Ado About Nothing
glimmers
All that glisters is not gold —?The Merchant of Venice
hypnosis
DOCTOR: You see her eyes are open.
GENTLEWOMAN: Ay, but their sense is shut. —?Macbeth
looking glass
And if my word be sterling yet in England
Let it command a mirror hither straight
That it may show me what a face I have
—?The Life + Death of Richard II
When Phoebe doth behold Her silver visage in
the watery glass
Decking with liquid pearl the
bladed glass —?A Midsummer Night’s Dream
mind’s eye
There’s rosemary, that’s for remembrance.
—?Hamlet
Crush this herb into Lysander’s eye.
—?A Midsummer Night’s Dream
night vision
When most I wink, then do mine eyes best
see, For all the day they view things
unrespected;
But when I sleep, in dreams they look on
thee, And darkly bright, Are bright in dark
directed. —?Sonnet 43
nightingale
There is no music in the nightingale
—?Two Gentlemen of Verona
It was the nightingale, and not the lark, That pierced the fearful hollow of thine ear. —?Romeo + Juliet
Philomel in Sonnet 102
tempest
Then should I spur, though mounted on the
wind; In winged speed no motion shall I
know —?Sonnet 51
Swift as a shadow, short as any dream,
brief as the lightning in the collied night
—?A Midsummer Night’s Dream
veil
To dry the rain on my storm-beaten face
?—?Sonnet 34