The next day, Richard was at Groats, shuffling between stacks, sucking in mold and dust mites, his pupils expanding to the size of Frisbees as they adjusted to the bottled gloom. He perused and grazed and scribbled notes into a palm-sized notebook, supplementing the scribbles with Post-its (“Google this”; “See Boethius"; “What is this? Helpful?”). He wedged himself into a corner to speed-read what he had uncovered, ignoring the time.

(Hwær…)

He flipped to a blank sheet in the notebook and vomited a bullet-list of random thoughts:

• Translucent spheroid temporal-spatial portals (magic? imagined? ACTUAL?)

• Destinations (fire cave, Beowulf’s vessel—why?)

• Parchment with fragments of Bertha’s Introduction (not sure about this…link between another world and my own past? How? Why?).

• Sword, shield, runes that back-translate snippets from an OE poem (pieces of junk; brought through portal; how do they even exist? the runes = a message? to me? from whom? and why The Wanderer?)

 • Fantasy worlds (absurdly) real, yet also symbolic; Plato’s cave allegory; ancestral shadows flit and vanish, flicker and mock.

• WTF was all this doing to my well-being? AM I CRACKED?

• What am I being driven into/to do/to become?

Suddenly a voice like a breath spoke to him from behind one of the stacks. “Don’t you see? You’ve fallen too deeply. You’re blind, Rich my boy. Blind.”

Richard whispered to his father’s phantom. “See what? What am I missing? Will another sphere come? Am I expected to ignore that possibility? And do what? What do you know, Dad? Tell me. Please.”

The answer paddled to him across a river of dust. “I know this: It is close.”

Next Chapter: Part Three: Diversions, Digressions, Discoveries, Chapter XVIII