It was Wednesday, three days after my twelfth birthday. Three days after I’d gotten the magic glasses from my fairy godmother—er, fairy great-aunt. By marriage.

Only on that day had I put them on in the daytime. I hadn’t dared to do so the previous day, and not just because they made me look like an old lady and I didn’t want the other girls to laugh at me.

It was because of what the king of the sun had said: that these glasses and their power were not for my human like. That only a dispensation from on high allowed me to wear them at all—that otherwise I must never put them on again, and hand them over to an appropriate authority to destroy them.

But I knew, somehow just knew, that I was to put on the glasses every night that week.

I was afraid, not of what I would see, but of what would see me.

What was already seeing me.

After lights out, I put on the magic glasses and looked out my window.

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At first I thought I was seeing a meteor shower—but the meteors were going WAY too fast!

And—were they some kind of liquid? They kept running into each other and then splitting up!

And yet they moved with purpose. They were alive.

And they saw me.

Where were they coming from?

I looked past them, and if I hadn’t been wearing the glasses, I never would have seen.

The planet Mercury was below the horizon, too close to the sun to be seen at night. And yet, somehow, I saw it.

Who was at Mercury? Was it a man? Or a boy? I couldn’t get a handle on his age because it just wouldn’t hold still!

Or was there two of him? Or three?

No good. I was getting dizzy just trying to see. I stopped trying.

But somehow there was a method to all this motion. It was a sprightly dance, like a fairy dance (I know; I’ve seen my great-aunt dance).

And somehow the sun and the moon and all the stars and planets seemed to join the dance! Not just those you can see from earth, ALL OF THEM!!!

The dance lent ideas to my mind: ideas of ambition, of cunning trickery, of speed, of heat; of horse breaking and boxing—but most especially, of words.

I heard Mercury speak to me, but not with my ears.

He said that he was not the King of whom the lord of the sun spoke. There was One higher. It was He who was the choreographer of this dance.

I had never felt so slow, so sluggish, before. I was retarding the dance. It was as if someone had sewn heavy weights into my skin.

I opened my mouth, but no words came out—just barking, like a dog.

Did a tall tower just fall to the earth and crumble? I didn’t hear it—did it make a sound?

I never was one for logic puzzles.

********

Three days left in the week. Would I make it?