The Accidental Keyhand (27 page)

“Areopagitica; A speech of Mr. John Milton for the Liberty of Unlicenc'd Printing, to the Parlament of England”:
Document. Mr. Milton has yet to give this as a speech, though as you might have figured out, he does love to talk. He just published it out in the wheren of England 1644, after Parliament passed a law requiring writers to have their books and pamphlets approved by the government before they can be published. Did I mention that a civil religious war is raging out there? So far, no one in Milton's wheren seems to be listening to him, but out in other wherens, his arguments are influencing John Stuart Mill, John Locke, and the framers of the United States Constitution.

Cyrano de Bergerac
: Dramatic Play. Not Savi's favorite, but the crowds went
wild
for this play when it premiered in France out in 1897. Edmond Rostand wrote the entire play in rhyming couplets. Here's an English translation of one of the fictional Cyrano's lines: “My nose is Gargantuan! You little Pig-snout, you tiny Monkey-Nostrils, you virtually invisible Pekinese-Puss, don't you realize that a nose like mine is both scepter and orb, a monument to my superiority?” A valiant group of actors is probably performing the play right now somewhere out in your time.

Kidnapped
:
Book. Stolen inheritances! Kidnappings! Desert Islands! Robert Louis Stevenson wrote this adventure tale out in the 1880s, but based it on real events like the “Appin Murder” and the political upheavals going on in Scotland in the mid-1700s. I do love those kinds of books...

Socrates and Athenian Society in His Day
:
Book. A. D. Godley wrote it and got it published in London out in 1896. But most people out in your time (and by most I mean hardly any) know A. D. Godley for his funny poems. (My favorite is “Megalopsychiad.”)

Martine's Handbook of Etiquette and Guide to True Politeness
:
Book. It seems bad manners drive Mr. Arthur Martine up the proverbial wall and halfway across the ceiling. Out in 1866, he just published this handbook. It's packed with helpful if rather stern commands such as: “You will sip your soup as quietly as possible from the side of the spoon, and you, of course, will not commit the vulgarity of blowing on it, or trying to cool it, after it is in your mouth, by drawing in an unusual quantity of air, for by so doing you would be sure to annoy, if you did not turn the stomach of the lady or gentleman next to you.”

“Plaisir d'Amour” or “The Song Sung Terribly in Chapter Four”:
Please don't tell the Archivist I referred to it in that way. Written out in 1784 France by Jean-Paul-Egide Martini, the song takes as its subject the pleasure and stabbing pains of love. Though Martini wrote the music for the song, the words came from a poem written by another French guy named Jean-Pierre Claris de Florian. Chew up a cracker and then try to pronounce that. I dare you.

The Princess Bride: S. Morgenstern's Classic Tale of True Love and High Adventure
:
Book. Abridged by William Goldman into the “good parts version.” Dorrie pressed the tale into my hands, saying “it's the best book ever.” I suspect hyperbole, but it's now on my nightstand.

Sears and Roebuck & Company catalog:
Sent out in mass mailings in 1895 United States, these catalogs are big—532 pages big! People living far away from stores can flip through its pages and order wood-burning stoves, coffee grinders, and teapots. A family eking out a living on an Appalachian mountain probably doesn't have much cash available to place an order, but when hung on a nail in the outhouse, the catalog makes a terrific toilet-paper supply.

Star Wars
:
A motion picture. I understand that in your wheren you can “download” them to a device that you can fit in your pocket.

The Three Musketeers
: Book. By Alexandre Dumas. “All for one, and one for all.” Dumas lives out in nineteenth-century France. He based his novel on a memoir (a fancy name for an autobiography or biography) that he took out of the Marseille public library and apparently never returned. He spends a lot of his free time fencing for the fun of it.

“True and False Magic”:
Document. Out in your time, history books say that the manuscript of Cornelius Loos' “True and False Magic” disappeared in 1593 and wasn't seen again for three hundred years until discovered out in 1886 by one George Lincoln Burr in the Jesuit Library of Trier. This is troubling to the Lybrariad. After all, Udo succeeded in getting the manuscript to Savi, didn't he?

EXPLETIVES, INVENTIONS, AND OTHER UNCATEGORIZED MARVELS

Gayetty's Medicated Papers:
Just recently put on the market in the U.S. in 1857 by one Joseph C. “enough with the corncobs” Gayetty, these flat aloe-saturated squares make wiping a revolutionary breeze for Americans. Toilet paper. It's what the Chinese Emperors have been using since the 1300s (only available to them in two-by-three-foot rectangles).

“God's Dentures”:
Well, this is a real swear phrase for Mr. Kornberger. In his own special way, he is trying to swear like a person living out in sixteenth-century England with Queen Elizabeth and Shakespeare. But out there you'd be more likely to hear a woman yell “God's Teeth!” after doing something like accidentally slamming her hand in a door.

Method Acting:
Out in the 1930, in NYC, actors working with the Group Theatre are exploring the ideas of Constantin Stanislavsky, who himself is out in 1910 Russia pursuing the holy grail of “theatrical truth.” Soon actors and teachers will start developing the “Method” techniques for delivering realistic performances on stage and in films. Some Method actors try to think and feel and dress and talk like their characters even when not performing. Out in your time,
Cracked
magazine has called method acting: “The art of torturing yourself to prove you're an artist.”

Mongolian Gerbils:
Animals. Recently, Ebba informed me that out in 1954 Mongolia, Dr. Victor Schwentker is busy capturing forty-four pairs of the creatures. Apparently, in another fifteen years, great hordes of American children are going to be begging for them as pets, and building tubal paradises for them to dwell within out of a newly invented material called “plastic.” Too fetchingly cute for even me to eat.

Punch and Judy:
Particularly disturbing puppet characters. Versions of them haunt many wherens.

Ragtime:
Ragtime is the name of a style of music being played out in the late 1800s and early 1900s, especially in the U.S. The “ragged time” of the music makes it very bouncy and dance-able. It may surprise you to know that Mistress Lovelace is a serious fan. It is rumored she has a photograph of Scott Joplin, a huge writer and performer of ragtime music, hung on her bedchamber wall.

Rollerskates with five-inch-high bicycle-style wheels:
Out in early 1900s England, businessmen like to skate between their homes and offices on them. They have no braking mechanism. There have been accidents.

Spotted Deadnettle:
As Egeria would be the first to emphasize, this plant, unlike many other nettle family plants, does not sting. The plant is hardy and edible, and rampant in many wherens. No wonder Egeria spends so much time on it in her Foraging class.

Water Clocks:
At least as old as writing itself, water clocks are used out in many of the early centuries connected to Petrarch's Library. People in China, India, Babylon, Egypt, Greece, southern Europe, Byzantium, and Syria are all making use of various types of water clocks. No electricity or complicated gearworks needed!

You don't understand why acknowledgment pages run so long until you write a book and quickly realize that the single name on the book's cover is a version of Mother Ginger's skirt, voluminous and hiding the talents and generosity of a legion of friends, family, and other collaborators, plus a set of stilts.

The first reason I got to begin writing this book at all is because I have a gallant and courageous adventurer for a life partner. His name is Matt Rohdie, and he regularly says things like, “Sure I'll quit my full-time job and invent and run an organic donut-making company that will keep us in toilet paper and bread and electricity, but also give me the flexibility I'll need in order to take care of the kids twenty hours a week, so you can have time to write because I know you can do this.”

The reason I got to finish this book is because of the largesse and beautifully critical eyes of old and new friends who each in his or her own particular way, at different stages, patiently taught me how to write this book. They made it better than I could ever have possibly done on my own. Thank you Heather Warren, Jim Naurekas, Johanna Lindholm, Matt Rohdie, Stephen M. Downey, Rebecca Downey, Christina Downey, Anna Ford, Bethany Myers, Rebecca Barnhouse, Mary Esselman, Erika Raskin, John Gibson, Jenny and Audrey Ragsdale, my editor, Aubrey Poole, who offered me a place at the Sourcebooks Jabberwocky table with gracious enthusiasm, and my agent Susan Hawk, who took a flyer on me and my fixer-upper of a manuscript, and has been a source of support, knowledge, good humor and professional vim and vigor ever since. True creative friends!

The reason this book looks as lovely as it does is entirely due to the patient and painstaking work of Jillian Bergsma, Susan Barnett, Diane Dannenfeldt, and the hardworking Sourcebooks design and production team.

The reason I didn't lose my mind while finishing the book is because of the loving cheerleading and often gut-splitting diversion provided by my friends and writing cottage–mates Kate Bennis, Denise Stewart, Patty Culbertson, Lisa Wood, and Whitney Morrill, and my virtual partner in snack-shacking and writing crime—Bethany Myers.

The reason my beloved children Finn, Lil, and Georgia survived the endeavor (wait—let me count them. Okay, all there) is because they are 1. Very patient and resourceful; 2. Good at dressing their own wounds; 3. Lucky nieces and nephew of John Potter, Brynne Potter, Nell Downey, Christina Downey, and Jim Downey, who all stepped in and offered entertainment and food when writing deadlines loomed.

The reason I wanted to write this book in the first place is because there are heroes in the world. People like Oscar Romero, Giordano Bruno, Sophie Scholl, and Bayard Rustin. Thanks to all those who gather their courage and speak. And thanks to all the librarians of the world who help us hear their voices.

Jen Swann Downey lives (with her family) in a cluttered house in Charlottesville, Virginia. This is her first work of fiction since age nine when she penned a play about a nearsighted St. Nick who kept leaving very strange but interesting presents for children, including a live alligator and a set of false teeth.

Her professional aspirations and adventures have included circus dog trainer, lawyer, actor, electrician, populist economist, investigative journalist, midwife, lampshade maker, and donut mogul, but believes she has finally figured out what she wants to do with the rest of her grownup life. Write more books for children! Over the last five years, she has achieved a state of near-fantastic nearsightedness.