It was Orinda's favorite corner of the library. Associated inextricably in her memory with the night she had first truly come to know Master Dworkin for what he was, the windowed niche with the small table and chairs was also close to one of the passages up to Dworkin's attic study.
Dworkin's lessons were difficult, but Orinda enjoyed them. There was the art, not all of it representational. Then there was the reading. By the time he was finished with her, Orinda was certain she would have read most of the books in the entire library. Of course, she tried harder for Dworkin that she ever had for Mother Superior, but she'd never had to try very hard to outstrip the other students. Here, the only student she tried to outstrip was herself. Sometimes she marvelled at what satisfied him, and why. But today, she thought she had come up with something interesting, and perhaps something he had not seen before.
"Begin," Dworkin said, and she dipped her pen in the inkwell before scratching the five words on the parchment and handing them to him.
ROTA TARO ORAT TORA ATOR
She handed it to him, speaking the words aloud.
"What does it mean?" he asked.
"Rota: the wheel or the act of turning. Taro: the tarot, or the deck of Fortunes. Orat: treats or argues, often associated with divinity. Tora: the Divine Law. Ator: the mother of us all, depicted in the art of the ancestors of the Tarot's makers as a horned woman, with one horn emerging from her forehead."
Orinda paused, then pronounced the verdict: "The turning of the Fortunes speaks the laws of the Unicorn."
"Very good," said Dworkin. "How is it untrue?"
"Rota is the wheel, hence the wheel of fortune. Orat is more correctly translated as 'he prays'. Torah is specifically the divine law of the Jews. Ator, or Hathor: as a horned woman, Hathor is more correctly depicted as a cow. The single horn is a consequence of the stylistic tradition of Egyptian art. And the Gypsies come from somewhere in Eastern Europe."
"Does it discredit the meaning?"
"No," Orinda answered immediately, without thinking.
"Why not?" Dworkin asked, pouncing on her answer like a cat with a mouse.
Orinda stood there, thinking, for some moments. Dworkin said nothing either, merely waiting for her response.
As the long seconds stretched towards a minute, Orinda felt a certain dampness in her palms. Nerves. She ignored them in favor of attempting to develop a coherent reply to Dworkin's question.
Dworkin himself was beginning to look askance at her. One eyebrow was crawling up his forehead, as if it were a drunken caterpillar whose middle section was incapable of keeping in pace with either end.
Finally, she snapped, "I don't know! It just doesn't!"
"That's not a logical answer," Dworkin observed mildly.
"It feels right," Orinda retorted.
Dworkin smiled, then, broadly, and Orinda felt his pleasure: an easier method of conveying a student's success than any other she'd known. "I'd say you've mastered today's lesson, Orinda. Let's go upstairs and work on your painting for a while."
"Yes, Master Dworkin," she said. And then: "When shall I bring you another?"
"Tomorrow."
Jane Seymour is Orinda