Narrators
26
“Well, now,” Emily said many hours later, ensconced in her family’s most comfortable chair. “I’d call this a pretty solid day’s work.”
Bernie snorted. “I’d call that the understatement of all time. Hang on, let’s see if Willi can join us.”
He pulled out his cell phone and dialed. “Willi! Have you closed for the night? ... Good—pop over to Em’s.”
Willi must have asked why because Bernie laughed and said, “Trust me.”
After materializing just inside the front door, Willi took one look at the yellowing paper piled all over the adjoining living room carpet and stepped forward in obvious excitement. “Vintner’s?”
She nodded, grinning .
Willi’s eyes went even wider. “So he really was a magic-user? He really did make the room?”
“And wrote in detail about how he did it!” She allowed herself a single bounce of enthusiasm. “Guess.”
He blinked. “Ah ...”
Never mind, she couldn’t wait for guesses. “With a wand . Go on,” she said to Bernie, “show him.”
Bernie held up the cedar specimen left in the trunk.
“A wand makes magic last, makes more things possible—it focuses the power in a way hands can’t,” she said. “Vintner knew all that because he’d fallen in with a group of older wizards in Pennsylvania, where he went to college. So we’ve got more people we can investigate, and—oh, Willi, we’re going to learn so much! Vintner’s notes alone are bursting with practical advice for doing magic ...”
She trailed off, struck by a memory. Hartgrave, lips twisted with amusement: Give me one example of a practical reference to magic and I’ll eat my hat. For an instant—a second—she was gleeful at the thought of making him eat his words, at least.
Then she remembered.
And sighed.
“Anyway,” she said, unable to totally recapture her excitement, “it’s an amazing amount of information. I can’t believe it was sitting in a trunk ten feet above my bed for three months.”
Willi frowned. “I cannot understand why he did not give this to someone. ”
“He couldn’t give it to his family because he never told them he could spellcast,” she said. “He even kept it from his wife.”
“And he didn’t have anyone he thought he could take on as an apprentice,” Bernie said. “Everywhere he looked, he saw folks caught up in the rush to be modern, throwing off old-fashioned things. His son and grandson in particular. No one in Iowa believed in magic—well, very few. Every time he warily brought the subject up, people rolled their eyes.”
“Except a handful of séance-crazy types, and he thought they were quarter-wits,” she put in.
“‘Halfwit’ was too kind, in his opinion.”
Willi laughed.
“The upshot,” Bernie said, “is that Olsson—the man who designed the humanities building—was the only person he got up the courage to tell all to since his days in Pennsylvania, and only then because he needed some non-magical expertise to install the underground training room he so badly wanted at the college.”
“Training ... ?”
“That’s why it’s magic-tight one way,” she said. “It’s the perfect place to learn.”
Bernie casually levitated his sky-blue bowler hat. “As I discovered.”
“But Vintner never lived to see anyone use it besides himself and Olsson,” she said. “Every time he thought he’d found a possible kindred spirit on campus, they’d say something that dissuaded him from revealing the secret. I think his position made him excessively cautious. ”
“Or what happened with Olsson.” Bernie raised his eyebrows at her.
“What?” Willi looked up from the beautiful wand, curiosity caught. “What happened?”
“The architect did his first bit of magic in the new room, had an immediate change of heart and refused to talk to Vintner ever again,” Bernie said.
That room must quickly have become a lonely place for Vintner—empty and purposeless. She swallowed over a lump in her throat.
“Ja? And then what?” Willi looked as rapt as a child waiting for the end of a fairy tale. “This Olsson, did he tell anyone? Was Vintner found out?”
“No,” she said. “Eventually Vintner put two decades of notes in this trunk, topped it with a ‘to the magician it may concern’ letter—he preferred ‘magician’ to ‘wizard’—and sealed the lock with a spell.”
Bernie shook his head. “A bit sword-in-the-stone, though why he left it in his attic ...”
“I think he intended to put it in the Inferno but didn’t do it in time,” she said. “Thus died one of the last well-trained spellcasters, and evil wizards had nothing to do with it.”
She realized too late what this would bring to Willi’s mind, but he merely nodded. He spent a moment looking at the closest stack of papers before turning to her with a serious expression on his rosy face.
“We ought to be taking his notes to Alexander,” he said. “He has the best chance of making something of them. ”
“I know.” She glanced away, unable to look at the concern on his face. “Just let Bernie make copies first so we can keep the originals together.”
Bernie cleared his throat. “You don’t mind?”
“Should I?”
“He seemed to think you wouldn’t trust him.”
“Of course I do,” she said without thinking, then considered that perhaps she should have doubts about an admitted killer. About giving an admitted killer the key to unlocking more power than he’d ever had.
It was true, though. On a purely instinctive level, she did trust him.
What a mess.
She rubbed her arms, suddenly cold. “Do either of you have misgivings?”
They both shook their heads.
“Well, then.” She took a calming breath. “Let’s get everything back in the trunk, and Bernie can take it from there.”
When the last piece of paper was plucked off the floor and the men left, she went to bed, physically and mentally worn out. Was she making a mistake, a huge mistake, by letting Hartgrave have Vintner’s research?
She couldn’t rely on a feeling. That was no better than the jumping-to-conclusions he’d taken her to task for. She needed something solidly factual to reassure herself he wouldn’t slide back into old habits—she had to do what she’d vowed she wouldn’t and sift through all her memories of him .
So she did. And realized, finally, how revealing some of his words were, considering that he had usually aimed for the reverse.
Seemingly offhand comments transformed, as she remembered them, into expressions of remorse. “You eventually get over dreadful things, assuming they weren’t your own fault.” And his angry “don’t ever promise that” when she’d said she would do anything if only he would fix her so she could cast spells. And his toast in Mexican Foo: “To Daggett—may she forgive my many sins.”
She didn’t believe he would repeat those sins, not when he was continually dwelling on what he’d done. He could have Vintner’s trunk.
It wasn’t a long mental leap from there to wondering if that meant she could have him .
She pressed her cheek against her pillow, embarrassed by this treacherous line of thought. Mass murder was beyond the pale. Even accepting that he was very, very sorry, she couldn’t in good conscience skip back to him with open arms. What he had done would haunt her.
Or it wouldn’t. And that would be worse.
. . . . .
She was deep into microfiche of old newspapers when a cleared throat pulled her from her research trance.
Fletcher, the history department chair, stood over her. “Feeling better, I hope?”
“Yes,” Emily said automatically, realizing it was mostly true. The cast was off her arm, the boot off her foot, and she could walk clear across campus without a cane if necessary.
Fletcher sat, glancing at the microfiche. “I suppose you’re working on a paper.”
“Well,” Emily said, then opted to subtly shift the subject. “I know a paper isn’t going to get me a job offer here. Not with one unremarkable semester of teaching to my name.”
“The act of teaching five courses in one semester would strike many of our faculty as remarkable.” Fletcher leaned in. “It’s true I can’t convince the college to hire you permanently on the strength of a single semester, even with published research, but I’ve got an alternative for you.”
“An—an alternative?”
“The tourism board is launching a ‘Paranormal Iowa’ campaign—don’t ask me why—and they’re short on places with a supernatural pedigree,” Fletcher said. “Tourists will visit only so many ghost towns, especially when they notice the towns have no actual ghosts.”
Impossible to hold back a snort at this. Fletcher offered a conspiratorial grin.
“The board has already locked itself into this campaign, and it’s desperate for a few more destinations,” she said. “It’s offering grants to institutions that—by the end of the week, mind you—suggest sites with some demonstrable connection to the odd and unexplained. And voilà : Your specialty in the history of magic suddenly pays off. ”
Emily stared at her, heart racing, unable to manage a reply. The Inferno room. The Inferno room would fit the bill perfectly.
“So, as I said, I can’t wrangle a decent job for you,” Fletcher continued blithely as if a career wasn’t hanging in the balance, “but should you come up with any locations at Ashburn the tourism geniuses would like, I’m confident I could persuade the powers-that-be to let you come back as a lecturer for one more year to prove yourself. So—got anything?”
Emily was about to shout “yes,” library rules be damned, when a horrible thought struck. Encouraging tourists to visit Vintner’s room—after informing them it was intended for practicing magic—was the best way to get more people to start spontaneously doing magic. Just stepping into the room with no knowledge of its purpose was enough for Bernie.
It didn’t matter if she presented her research as an example of an administrator’s foolish flight of fancy. The room did its job well, and she couldn’t shine a light on it without a real risk the secret of magic would unravel.
She didn’t want to find out if Kincaid was right about what would happen next. She couldn’t be responsible for setting that in motion.
Fletcher cleared her throat. “Nothing coming to mind?”
“Well ...”
She was as desperate as the tourism board to think of something, anything. Now that she’d flushed magic and adventure out of her system, she wanted nothing more than to be a professor—to find, analyze and dispense knowledge. She’d studied for years and saddled herself with debt to do just that.
Perhaps she could suggest the known portion of the Inferno as an oddity—a planned catacombs in a bizarre place. Why not? The odds that tourists would stumble upon the hidden door were—if not zero, at least low. She needed this opportunity. Judging by the few full-time openings and the complete lack of response to her applications for them, Fletcher’s offer was probably her last chance. She had to take it.
Her stomach twisted. How familiar this was—how much like the way she’d justified her increasing demands on Hartgrave. Just because she really wanted something didn’t mean she had the right to get it.
“No,” she told Fletcher, the word pressing down on her like a physical weight. “I wish I could suggest something, but—I can’t.”
“You’ve got one more day. Perhaps you’ll find something in the records here.”
Emily sighed. “I’m afraid I’ve already been through this library for any shred of information related to magic. But thank you very much for thinking of me.”
“Well, it was worth a try.” Fletcher’s fleeting smile made a reappearance—compassionate this time, not sly. She rose from the seat. “I’ll be happy to act as a reference for you as you look for your next position.”
Emily stared at nothing in particular as the department chair’s footsteps faded. That was that: Her career was officially dead. High school history awaited. She tried to imagine her future, this fork off the path she’d intended to travel, and couldn’t figure out how to make it better than merely okay.
Then—determined not to slide back into wallowing—she sat up straight, wiped her eyes and continued plowing through the microfiche.
Bernie appeared as she returned them to the collection. “Lunch,” he announced.
“I think I might skip out today—sorry. Not really hungry.”
“Em .” He shook a finger at her. “Willi’s expecting you, and just think how much food I’ll have to eat if you don’t show up to claim your share.”
The laugh burst from her throat before she realized it was there. Somehow the thought of Willi waiting for them with a small mountain of tacos made her decision more bearable. She couldn’t say why, but there it was.
She took Bernie’s arm—a bit of support still helped—and walked from the building into the biting wind, the last gasp of winter a full two weeks into spring.
“So,” he said, “why no appetite?”
He eyed her, probably for signs of emotional re-lapse. But she was doing all right. The anger had burned itself out. The bad dreams were fading. The grief over what she’d lost … well, she was still working on that. (What did it mean that her career wasn’t the loss she felt most deeply?)
“Don’t worry,” she said. “I’ll be ready to eat when we get there.”
He harrumphed. “All right, then. ”
She hoped he was as watchful of Hartgrave’s well-being. Which, of course, made her wonder for the thousandth time how Hartgrave was.
Never mind her resolution to never bring him up. One question wouldn’t hurt.
“Bernie—how is he? Hartgrave, I mean.”
His eyebrows rose. “You really want to know?”
“Yes. I do.”
He pursed his lips, then frowned, then sighed. This so clearly communicated what was coming that it blunted the surprise when he said, “Pretty bad. But we’re working on it.”
Perhaps a tiny, ungenerous part of her relished the idea of him wracked by regret, but the rest of her had hoped to hear he was fine. Not worse than she was.
But wasn’t that exactly what she should have expected, given how much experience he had with guilt? Given how terrible their last conversation was?
She could fix that. The thought was immediate and insistent. She could tell him she wasn’t angry anymore and perhaps by that act make up for some of the selfishness that, ironically, made it possible for him to develop feelings for her in the first place. It would hurt to see him, and perhaps it would set her own recovery back, but it was the right thing to do.
Or maybe it would make things worse. But now the idea of one last conversation had lodged in her head and she couldn’t force it out.
“Could you take me to him?” she asked. “Right now?”
Astonished delight spread over Bernie’s face. “Sure! ”
He bustled her into the humanities building and down the Inferno stairwell at a pace she could hardly manage. As they went, he kept up a continuous patter.
He said, “We’ll need to jump,” and, “He’s overseas,” and, “He’ll be so happy to see you,” and then the corker: “Em, I can’t tell you how glad I am. He’s just not himself without you.”
“Wait,” she said, catching her breath. “You know I’m not trying to restart the relationship, right?”
His deflated expression not only said this was exactly what he’d thought, but it also told her how anxious he was about Hartgrave’s state of mind. “Why do you want to see him, then?”
“To have a better farewell—without rancor this time.”
He shook his head. “But to show up and raise his hopes, even if only for a moment ... Maybe I should go on ahead and give him a heads up that you’ll be stopping by to, what, forgive him?”
“That’s not exactly ... It’s more that he thinks I hate him, and I want him to know that’s not true.”
Bernie eyed her, biting his lip. “What happened? Besides you nearly getting killed—or was that it?”
She’d forgotten he didn’t know. That night in the hospital was on her mind so much, it felt as if the entire world must surely know about it.
“No,” she said. “Almost dying was my fault as much as anyone’s. The thing is, he hid his involvement with the Organization from me.”
Bernie groaned. “I’m sorry, Em, I thought you knew— ”
“Of course you did.” She tried for a grin but couldn’t quite manage one. “I mean, I never once asked you how we had so much insider information.”
“When did you find out?”
“Well, it started to dawn on me at Organization headquarters. But I didn’t know the extent of it until he came clean at the hospital. He said our relationship was a mistake.” She stared at the interplay of darkness and light on the stone floor. “After he admitted he’d killed people, I had to agree.”
The Inferno went dead silent. She looked up at Bernie just as he grasped her arm.
“Let’s go,” he said, a steely tone to his voice that she’d never heard there before.
A terrible suspicion formed. “Bernie—”
“Ten, nine, eight ...”
She quickly thought of calming things.
When the world resettled around her, Bernie’s grim expression first, she said: “Please tell me you already knew about Hartgrave. Please ...”
She trailed off as she noticed the place they’d landed looked uncannily like Kincaid’s first-floor hallway. Because it was, in fact, Kincaid’s first-floor hallway. Her heart revved up. Her throat felt too small. She had to get out.
Into this panic attack came Hartgrave.
He walked through the front door, caught sight of her and came to a stop so sudden he almost overbalanced.
“What’s—what’s wrong?” he rasped, staring at her like he thought she might disappear if he blinked .
“Hartgrave!” Bernie thrust a finger at him. “Who have you killed?”
She moaned and held on to the stairwell for support. Of course Hartgrave hadn’t told him. Had he kept the truth from Willi, too? Had she just destroyed his only friendships?
Hartgrave looked at Bernie, then at her, then back at Bernie.
“Come on—I want names ,” Bernie demanded.
Hartgrave leaned against a wall, pressing his hands to his eyes. “Most recently, Crawford, Shaw and Kincaid—at least, they wouldn’t have been killed without me. Before that ...”
Oh God, she was going to be sick.
“Before that,” he repeated, looking as ill as she felt, “every single person the Organization tracked down with my invention.”
She gasped, not trusting her ears. “The—the Organization tracked down?”
“Yes, be more specific,” Bernie snapped, sounding not the least bit surprised. “How many of these people did you personally kill? As in, at the scene?”
Hartgrave’s answer came out as a croak: “None.”
None.
“Well, I was dazed at the time,” Bernie said, “but I’ve heard from a reliable eyewitness that Kincaid killed Crawford and Shaw, and Willi killed Kincaid. You know”—he tapped his chin in a mock-thoughtful way—“I don’t think you’ve killed anyone.”
“A matter of semantics— ”
“I don’t believe that. Even Willi doesn’t. What about you, Em?”
Her eyes were locked on Hartgrave’s. “You ... you raging idiot . You complete and utter ninny! First you leave things out to make yourself look better, and then you leave things out to make yourself look worse!”
“Daggett—”
“And you let me jump to conclusions again, damn it!”
“I just—”
“I don’t want to hear it! Tell me one thing, Alexander effing Hartgrave: Do you actually love me? If this was an elaborate scheme to get me to go away, then I promise not to inflict myself on you ever again!”
The moment of silence that followed was probably shy of three seconds, for all that it felt a hundred times longer.
“I love you so much, I was trying to be unselfish for once in my life.” His quiet, urgent words sent a magic-like thrill through her body. “But I don’t think I can continue in the face of such temptation.”
She crossed her arms. “Oh no, it’s not that easy. You’ve put us both through completely unnecessary heartbreak, and I’m only taking you back on one condition.”
“What—” He cleared his throat. He really did sound awful. “What do you want?”
“Restitution.”
One side of his mouth twitched. “Money?”
“No.” She glared at him. “Information. About you.”
His eyes widened, the momentary flash of amusement gone .
“That’s right,” she said, gesturing. “Your punishment is to tell me everything. About your childhood, your years with the Organization, your escape to Ashburn— everything . Don’t look at me like that! There are big gaping holes in what I know about you, and I don’t see how you thought that was the foundation for a lasting relationship!”
“I didn’t,” Hartgrave muttered. “I thought I’d eventually tell you, and you’d leave me. Assuming we weren’t killed first.”
“Honestly! You’re such a—”
“Yes .”
That brought her up short. “Yes?”
“Yes, I am whatever you were about to call me. And yes, I’ll tell you everything.”
“Well,” she said, taken aback by this quick surrender. “Well—all right, then.”
He just stood there, looking at her with a dazed air. So she rushed forward and kissed him.
And oh—it was so good to breathe in his forest scent, to feel his wiry arms wrap around her and his magic nip at her skin. Incredibly, wonderfully good. She’d thought she would never get to do this again.
Everything bad receded. The unsettling location. Her joblessness. The lingering ache in her left elbow. Nothing mattered but his warm mouth, cool hands and the sound he made as he pulled her closer.
He ended the kiss first and simply held her, the embrace somehow more intimate than his lips on hers. He pressed her so tightly to him that she could feel his heart racing against her cheek .
Then he pulled back, and she saw in his eyes that he thought he would lose her yet.
“Daggett,” he said, slowly, reluctantly, “the fact remains that I am at fault. I should have considered what that program could be used to do—I should have listened to my misgivings about Kincaid. I was willfully blind. I didn’t want to know.”
She took his hand. “He’s very good at spinning a persuasive lie. He almost had me believing he was just finding autodidacts to teach them.”
“No, listen,” Hartgrave said, a pleading edge to the words, and she had enough sense to be quiet. To stop embroidering his past with her few spare facts. “I’d known him for years before I finally managed a working tracking system. Years. Enough time to tell he wasn’t right. I knew he was asking me to do dodgy things and I did them, I did them anyway because”—he looked away—“who cared what might happen to other people when I had everything I wanted.”
That sounded familiar.
“I might not have personally killed anyone,” he said, twisting the word like a knife, “but he sent me out to the microchip companies as his manager-slash-enforcer, and I lived up to his every expectation.”
Perhaps you’ve assumed I’ve done nothing under his tutelage that would sicken you . This, possibly, was what he’d actually meant that night in the hospital. This was the decision that couldn’t be explained away by Kincaid failing to tell him the truth.
She tried to keep her voice level as she asked, “Did you hurt people? ”
“Scared them badly enough to leave emotional scars. So—yes.”
She bit her lip, trying to reconcile her Hartgrave with Kincaid’s Hartgrave. She thought of how he had knocked her out with one swift kick. Then another memory surfaced, the one immediately afterward, as he kneeled over her, voice trembling.
She would ask him, of course, but it seemed pretty clear in hindsight that he’d meant to unbalance her, not injure her.
“Shaw enjoyed what she did,” she said. “Crawford, I think, saw it as a necessary evil. How did it make you feel?”
“Irredeemable,” he said, so quietly she almost missed it.
She nodded. “I think that’s why Kincaid never told you the truth. Crawford and Shaw knew, but he must have sensed there were some lines you wouldn’t cross. Maybe at first he saw the same something in you that he found in them,” she added as he tried to interrupt, “but you grew up.”
“Don’t paint me as his innocent victim, Daggett,” he warned. “This is not one of your childhood books.”
She could feel the blush spreading across her cheeks. “I did finally figure that out. Look: There’s no question you’re to blame for everything you did. You are. However, you’re being deliberately obtuse if you don’t also take into account everything you did once you realized you were wrong. And just for the record,” she said, slipping her other hand around his, “I love you. You .”
He said nothing. His face, though, said everything .
“Psst —reciprocate,” Bernie hissed from somewhere behind her, giving her a start. She’d forgotten he was there.
Judging by his sharp intake of breath, Hartgrave had too. He glared at the man. “Have you no concept of privacy?”
“No, and you’re welcome,” Bernie said. “You need supervision or you’ll muck it all up again.”
She successfully fought back a grin. “I can manage from here. Go and make a bet with Willi that we’ll miraculously patch things up.”
Bernie guffawed. “Don’t think I won’t.”
“Wait.” Hartgrave clasped Bernie’s arm. “Thank you.”
“We even for you saving my life?”
Bernie was joking. Bernie was always joking. But Hartgrave, in all apparent seriousness, said, “Yes.”
She teetered on the edge of both tears and laughter.
Bernie cleared his throat, his own eyes going a bit misty. “Well, my work here is done. Be good, you two.”
After they were left to themselves, Hartgrave caught her up for another hug. Less desperate this time. More buoyant. He actually spun her around.
But then he heaved a sigh and said, “He’s right, you know. I probably will muck it all up again. My only relationship experience was with an assassin.”
It wasn’t funny, it really wasn’t, least of all because the assassin was dead, but all she could do at this admission was crack up. And then he was laughing, too .
“I can promise you this, Emily Helena Daggett,” he said, once he could get a word out. “I will do my very best.”
“I know.” She tucked her head against his shoulder. “Me too.”
They stood like that for a while before he spoke again. “Did Ballantine tell you how we’re reorganizing the Organization?”
“No,” she said, interested. “How?”
“We offered to transfer all the technicians to the microchip firms, but to a company, they prefer to continue outsourcing—assuming a less exorbitant charge. So that’s what we’re doing. Seems to solve the problem of financing murder-free magical oversight.”
“That’s fortunate,” she said.
“As a result, we have an opening for a researcher.”
Her brain stuttered at that. She gaped at him, trying to tell if he was teasing.
“Forget university work.” He brushed a strand of hair behind her ear, setting off a reaction that was nothing like the last time he’d followed through on the simple gesture. “Make more breakthroughs with magic.”
Oh, that was enticing. A dream job. But one large objection loomed, and there was no arguing it away.
“I shouldn’t be working for you,” she said, unable to make the declaration anything but mournful. “That’s bound to blow up on us.”
His endearing almost-smile made an appearance. “You wouldn’t be working for me. I’m not in charge here. ”
She stared at him, shocked. After all the times he’d insisted on his way ... “Who is in charge?”
“Willi’s CEO, Ballantine’s the chairman. They have to agree on any major decision.” He cocked his head. “You think it’s a bad idea?”
“No, I think it’s a great idea,” she said, seeing in it zero chance of history repeating itself. “I just can’t figure out how they got you to agree to that.”
“I suggested it.”
She shot him a tell-me-another-one look.
“I’m serious!” He appeared to be, too. Very serious, in fact. “If I’m temporarily the most powerful convincer—wizard—on earth ...”
Comprehension dawned. She laced her fingers with his. “You don’t want to become Kincaid.”
“Never .”
He sounded so vehement, so earnest, she had to kiss him.
“Daggett,” he murmured as he pulled back, lips still very close to hers, “you’d better get the restitution out of me now, before I lose the courage to tell you every wretched detail of my life.”
“It’s the right thing to do. You’ll see.”
“Yes, it’s just that I have this odd aversion to relating tales of my own massive stupidity and negligence.” He looked away. “I can’t even figure out where to begin.”
She cleared her throat. “‘Once upon a time’?”
Perhaps it was her sheepish manner, or perhaps the absurdity of the suggestion. Either way, she made him laugh again .
“It’s a perfectly good way to start a story,” she said, elbowing him.
“Yes.” He smiled at her—an entire smile, nothing half about it, which made it impossible to do anything but respond in kind. “It is.”
“Could we go somewhere else, though?” She glanced over her shoulder at the hallway. “It’s just ... well ...”
“I know,” he said. “I feel the same way. But I think you’ll like it better outside.”
He took her hand and led her out the front door, and oh—he was right. A warm breeze ruffled her hair. The air smelled alive. The forest beckoned.
She shrugged off her heavy coat and scarf. They reversed their route from the ill-fated day they were last here together—over the fence, up the embankment, into the clearing with its insinuating ivy—and continued into the beguiling woods beyond.
A fairy-tale backdrop for a true story.
“Right,” he said, holding her hand a bit tighter. “Once upon a time ...”
. . . . .
Thank you for reading!