Archive for the ‘Authors’ Category
Math for Witches
Tuesday, February 3rd, 2009
1. Agnes and Hilda live on opposite sides of a village. Both must bicycle for 15 minutes to reach the village. They decide to meet for coffee in the village square at 20 minutes after moonrise. Neither has batteries for their bicycle lamps. Agnes decides to use her broom, while Hilda applies flying ointment. The moon is in Aquarius and neither of them has to pass over a standing stone or stone ring. At what time will each of them have to leave in order to arrive on time?
2. When Hilda does not arrive, Agnes decides to fly to Hilda’s cottage. Three minutes outside the village a gust of wind blows her off course over a stone ring. How long will she take to arrive? Assume a standard nine-stone late Neolithic ring.
3. Hilda has applied the wrong ointment: a Thrice-Speed Love Oil, which has brought a minotaur out of the ethers. She does not want to have relations with a minotaur, but he presses her and she must defend herself. She seizes a sheet of paper and sets him the following problem:
i is my interest in sleeping with a minotaur. Solve for i.
FV=PV(1+i)^n
FV=556+6626
PV=7,182
n=3
4. While the minotaur is working on this problem, Agnes arrives. Hilda greets her, apologizes, and explains the situation. Agnes replies that since Hilda is never late, she knew that something must be wrong, and apologizes in turn for getting lost in the otherworld. They sit and drink tea while the minotaur continues to struggle. Agnes decides the minotaur is cute (if dumb), and, since you, dear student, have already solved the problem for him, she takes him home to her house. If the minotaur weighs as much as 399 apples picked in the sign of Gemini, and Agnes can carry a gross of these on her broom, can she give the minotaur a ride, or must he walk?
Extra credit: if she used a disassembly spell how many flights would she have to make to carry all of him to her house?
Answers:
1. This is a trick question. If the moon is in Aquarius, the flying ointment will hardly lift Hilda off the ground. She should use her broomstick.
2. 37 minutes, if she eats or drinks nothing offered her.
3. i=0, as Hilda’s attitude suggests.
4. No, he must walk.
Extra credit: three trips.
Bottled and Un-bottled
Monday, February 2nd, 2009
Five bottles on a shelf, they sang songs to me on a cold winter’s night: songs of lips against snow, of roots, of tusks and of gold and of all that piled in the room, spoils of my father’s travels. They always found a way into his pockets, those oddments.
And I, their un-bottled sister, was their ear.
And I, their ten-fingered sister, stood on tiptoes in the kitchen to take dried peach slices from the wooden boxes, to take cardamom and cloves from the dispenser. I stood in front of the shelves and dropped my fruits and spices into the bottles.
They murmured thanks, every one.
Eyes and mouths and four finned limbs grew from them in haphazard ways, puzzle ways, and I watched them as if they would move just-so in their bottles and make a neat pattern.
“Have you seen fish in the water?” one whispered — or was it two? I couldn’t follow all their mouths.
I tilted my head to the right, looking at the dried blowfish behind one of the bottles.
They swam around it in the toilet bowl, pressing their lips to it — like fingers, I thought, to learn how it felt — and they swam down when I flushed, down through the pipes that curled like my hair, down to the underground rivers.
I’d stolen my father’s oddments before. If he noticed, it was only to see an empty space on his shelf for another travel-token, another spade-shaped coin or intricately carved statue of a mermaid.
A week after I emptied the five bottles, he filled them with shells and sand from a black beach in the Aegean.
And I, growing older, saw the five un-bottled boys on warm nights when I walked alone by the river.