Chapter 6: Aldous Voss, 1962–1971 (The Lucid Years)

The first volume of Aldous Voss's journals smelled like a library that had decided to stop pretending it was anything other than a tomb.

Edmund set it on the table in the empty dining pavilion — Chiron had permitted them the use of the Demeter cabin's long worktable, which was separated from the main cluster and offered the specific privacy of a space where nobody wanted to be before breakfast — and took a moment to simply look at it. The oilcloth wrapping had done its job. The leather beneath was dark with old handling, darkened further along the spine where Aldous had apparently read and re-read his own entries often enough to leave a record of the habit. Edmund had always found that detail either moving or unsettling, depending on the hour and his coffee situation, and the current hour was six forty-seven and the coffee was a tin mug of something the camp kitchen had provided that smelled adequate and tasted like hot intention.

Annabeth Chase sat across from him with her seven pages of notes from the night before aligned in a vertical column to her left, a fresh composition notebook open to its first page on her right, and her mechanical pencil positioned at a precise forty-five degree angle to the notebook's spine. She had been awake for approximately twenty-six hours by Edmund's estimate. She showed it only in the particular quality of her attention, which had moved past the stage of ordinary focus into something sharper and quieter, the way fire burned cleaner the longer it had fuel.