Page 33 (1/2)

"Wool and silk" I hesitated, then decided to risk everything--my library card, my reputation, perhaps even my job "Can I ask a favor, Lucy?"

She looked at me warily "That depends"

"I want to rest e It will be only for a e whether she was planning to call in the security guards for reinforcees, Diana You know that If I let you, I would be fired"

I nodded "I know I’h spot"

"Why do you need to touch it?" Lucy asked after a moment of silence, her curiosity aroused

"I have a sixth sense when it comes to old books Sometimes I can detect information about them that’s not visible to the nad eye" That sounded weirder than I’d anticipated

"Are you some kind of book witch?" Lucy’s eyes narrowed

"That’s exactly what I ah

"I’d like to help you, Diana, but we’re on ca that happens in this roo the monitor whenever the room is occupied" She shook her head "It’s too risky"

"What if nobody could see what I was doing?"

"If you cut off the caum on the lens--and yes, someone did try that--security will be here in five seconds," Lucy replied

"I wasn’t going to use chewing gu spell around ic I worked all but invisible Then I turned er to reen and yellow threads that filled the rooether the two colors blended into the unnatural yellow-green that was good for disorientation and deception spells I planned on tying them up in the fifth knot--since the security cae The fifth knot’s iht wrist in anticipation

"Nice tats," Lucy coray ink?"

Gray? When ic was in the air,spell " It was the first thing to cross " She still looked puzzled

I returned to my spell It needed soed the fine black threads that surrounded h a loop er The result looked like an unorthodox a

"With knot of five, the spell will thrive," Iwith reen and black tied itself into an unbreakable knot with five crossings

"Did you just bewitch the Voynich?" Lucy whispered with alarm

"Of course not" After my experiences with bewitched htly "I bewitched the air around it"

To show Lucy what Iabout two inches above the surface The spell ers stopped at the botto to do didn’t work You’re just touching the edge of the page like you’re supposed to," Lucy said

"Actually ers so that they peeked out over the top edge of the book It was a bit like the old ician’s trick where a woman was put in a box and the box was sawed in half "Try it Don’t touch the page yet--just move your hand so that it covers the text"

I slid ive Lucy room She followed my directions and slid her hand between the Voynich and the deception spell Her hand appeared to stop when it reached the edge of the book, but if you looked carefully, you could see that her forearh she’d touched a hot pan She turned to me and stared

"You are a witch" Lucy sed, then s so unsavory--or even illegal" Like Chris, she didn’t seem remotely surprised to discover that there really itches

"Will you let lanced down at the Voynich

"Only if you tell me what you learn This daet ten requests a day to see it and turn down almost every one" Lucy returned to her seat and adopted a watchful position "But be careful If soes And I don’t think you would survive if you were banned from the Beinecke"

I took a deep breath and stared down at the open book The key to activatingdisplay of faces, I would need to for hand to parchment I was more certain than ever that the Voynich held ioing to get one chance to find out what they were

"What did Edward Kelley place inside the Voynich, and what happened to it?" I whispered before looking down and gently resting my hand on the first folio of the es from appeared before my eyes: the illu, huh that I could see through it toon the Voynich’s first folio

A second shadowy page appeared atop the first: two dragons shedding their blood so that it fell into a vessel below

A third insubstantial page layered over the previous two: the illu

For a ical palimpsest atop the Voynich’s stained parch dissolved, followed by the picture of the two dragons But the page with the tree ree had becoathered up the knot at the heart of the spell and ja it te Beinecke MS 408 My heart sank There was no e from there

"Not what you expected to see?" Lucy looked at es froone" I pinched the bridge of my nose

"Maybe the sale records mention them We have boxes of paperwork on the Voynich’s acquisition

Do you want to see them?" she asked

The dates of book sales and the naht and sold the books could be assey that described a book’s history and descent right down to the present In this case it ht once have owned the pictures of the tree and the dragons that Kelley removed from the Book of Life