Tag: Character: Eric

Dawn hurried back down the stairs and waited for Eric to finish checking books out to a student, then approached him. “Hey, do you have the keys to the microfilm cabinets?”

“Yeah, of course. You need them?” He leaned forward and, though Dawn couldn’t see what he was doing, she knew he was pulling the ring of keys off their hook on the desk.

“Yes, please. Thank you.” She smiled when he put them in her hand, then went off to the cabinets.

She’d never actually opened the cabinet holding old West Ashburn Gazettes before, but she knew which it was, and when she found the right key, she started opening drawers to find the right year. Of course, the most recent were at the top, and she had to go down several drawers before finding 1910.

Once she got down there, she realized that the newspaper must have been published more frequently than monthly that long ago. There were a lot more rolls per year than she expected. She grimaced, wondering whether to start at the early end or the late end.

If the money had run out for the scholarships at some point, then earlier was more likely. And Alice had mentioned the dorm and the scholarship, but not the person, so she had likely not been at the school while Mary Thomas was alive, so 1873 was the likely earliest year.

Dawn took a deep breath and searched for 1873. There were four rolls of microfilm for that year. She took them all out of the drawer, locked the cabinet, and headed for the microfilm machine.

Her stomach was rumbling, but she tried to ignore it. She was in the middle of something, and she could eat when she was done.

She loaded the first roll and turned the wheel slowly but steadily, skimming headlines. Surely if a student had died on campus, there would be a dramatic headline.

Then again, she thought uneasily, had there been any headlines when students had died at the end of last semester? No one’s parents seemed to have heard about it, which argued that it had not made the news. Had the college deliberately suppressed it? If so, chances were good it wasn’t the first time.

Still, she’d gotten this far. She wasn’t going to give up now.

She skimmed through all of 1873, then returned the rolls and got the ones for 1874. And 1875. She was starting to feel a little sick with hunger, so she promised herself she would go get lunch after she went through 1876.

Her patience was rewarded, sort of. Her heart jumped into her throat when she saw a headline that read “Mary Thomas scholarship recipient.” She had almost turned past the whole article; she carefully reversed until she was back at the headline.

The full thing read. “Emma Ardern, first Mary Thomas scholarship recipient, graduates with honors.” Dawn was disappointed that it wasn’t about Alice, but read the article anyway.

Emma Ardern had been a West Ashburn local, which was apparently part of the reason she was given the first scholarship. She was the granddaughter of immigrants, and her family had always worked in factories, until now. The Mary Thomas scholarship had allowed her to go to college and learn “all the womanly arts that our obscure local school can provide.” Dawn smiled, imagining how Emma Ardern’s life must have been changed—as well as that of her whole family—once she had her education.

Alice must have had the same experience.

The end of the article briefly mentioned that the next Mary Thomas scholarship had been awarded to a girl from the next state to the south, but it didn’t include her name. Obviously, if she wasn’t from West Ashburn, the Gazette wasn’t nearly as interested in her.

Still, that helped Dawn narrow things down. If there had only been one Mary Thomas scholarship recipient attending the school at a time, not one per year, there could only have been a few of them—no more than ten, if the scholarship had ended before 1910, and she was sure it hadn’t been mentioned in the yearbooks.

Feeling more cheerful, if no less hungry, Dawn returned the microfilm and gave Eric back the keys. Later she would come back and look at 1877. Maybe then she would find Alice Atkins.

Dawn walked slowly to the library, trying to plan her approach. She didn’t know where exactly to look for information on the Mary Thomas scholarship—the library just seemed like the obvious first place to start. But she’d never been able to find a book on the history of Chatoyant College itself, as useful as that would have been. If anyone had written down the college’s history in any more detail than what was in the orientation materials, the faeries had probably suppressed it.

So what about the Mary Thomas scholarship? She could check the history section. If there was anything about Mary Thomas herself, it was probably there. At the very least, finding out when Mary Thomas had lived would give them the earliest years that Alice Atkins could have lived.

If she didn’t find anything useful there, she would check the library computers. They might be able to show her articles that had information on Mary Thomas or the scholarship. All else failing, she could try searching the internet. It would be harder to filter out references to the dorm—Mary Thomas would have died long before the internet was a thing, and the dorm was still around—but it was worth a look.

Having decided, she entered the library, waved at Eric, who was at the front desk, and headed upstairs to the history section. It was a big one, but after more than a year spent shelving books all over the library, Dawn knew the sections well enough to narrow down her search. There were books about the specific area. If Mary Thomas had lived on campus, or nearby, maybe she would be mentioned in a local history.

Dawn skimmed through three books before coming across a reference to Mary Thomas. In great excitement, she flipped to the page that the index referenced. It said that she was a great philanthropist who had donated her house to her beloved college to be turned into living space for students.

Dawn frowned. That explained why the dorm looked like a house that had been chopped up into dorm rooms—but it didn’t tell her when Mary Thomas had lived, or even what her relationship was to the school. If she had been a student, then why would her house have been on campus? They couldn’t have moved it from somewhere else, could they?

She read the previous few paragraphs, but they were not illuminating. She turned back to the beginning of the chapter and read there, but couldn’t even figure out what the chapter had to do with Mary Thomas.

Finally, she flipped to the beginning of the book and found the copyright page. It had been printed in 1910. That didn’t tell them any more than they already knew—Alice must have lived earlier than that.

Disappointed, she returned the book to the shelf and looked through the next few. Finally, the last one seemed to have several pages about Mary Thomas. Dawn bit her lip, trying to control her excitement as she found the pages.

The first page had a large, though blurry, image of what was apparently Mary Thomas. The picture was in black and white, but the woman was wearing a light-colored dress, staring straight at the camera, with her hair pulled back in a bun.

Dawn read the following pages. They briefly described the life of Mary Thomas, who had been first a student, then a professor, then the president of Chatoyant College. It had been during her years as president, 1857-1872, that she had built a house on campus. This book didn’t mention her giving the house to the college, but it did say that she had left money to the college in her will to fund a scholarship.

They had the early end, then, at last. Alice Atkins must have attended the college sometime between 1872 and 1910. That was still almost forty years, though, and Dawn didn’t know how to find anything else about her.

The book didn’t mention how long the Mary Thomas scholarship had continued, nor anything about its recipients. Dawn flipped to the beginning, wondering what kind of book this was. Apparently, it was a history of prominent people in the state. She turned to the Mary Thomas pages again and read that she had been the daughter of a well-known judge and had spent her inheritance mostly attempting to fight for women’s rights. The previous pages were about her parents.

Dawn had to guess that the author of this book hadn’t been interested in the recipients of scholarships, only those who had given them. She checked the index again and skimmed through the book, but there were no other references to Chatoyant College. Most prominent people who were associated with the school—if there were any others—probably tried to hide their association, since the school wasn’t well known.

She put away the book, thinking. Where could she find out what had happened in those years? The library was organized by subject, not year.

The answer came to her quickly. Newspapers were organized by year. The college had a modest collection of local newspapers on microfilm. The West Ashburn Gazette only came out monthly, but if a student had died on campus, that would have to be newsworthy.