May 29, 1811 Matthias Vogel, horologist, Annapolis, Maryland
ENTRY – A Strange Clock
Ezra insisted we take our noon meal outside today. I agreed. He carried the bread and cheese out back, along with a jar of pickled onions Penny had sent over, and set it on a plank I had laid across two upturned kegs. Pascal followed close behind, tail high, as if he too were eager for a change of air.
The moment we sat down, the noise descended upon us. Cicadas. By the thousands, it seemed, sang from every tree and hedge. The very air vibrated with their droning chorus, a hum pulsing through our wooden bench.
Pascal’s ears twitched. He crept toward a low branch where half a dozen of the creatures clung, wings quivering, shells gleaming like old bronze in the sunlight. He swatted once, missed, and leaped back as if the noise alone had stung him.
Ezra laughed at first, then asked, “What are these things? Are they always so many, all at once? They sound like a hundred fiddlers all playing the same note. And they’re loud!”
I just then realized something he had been teaching me all along. He speaks plainly and directly about things he doesn’t understand and questions why.
I tore off a piece of bread, watching Pascal crouch again with futile curiosity. “Ah, Ezra,” I said, “those are cicadas. They live beneath our feet, silent and unseen, for many years. Then, at some hidden signal, they rise together, all at once, to fill the air with their song. It is their season.”
He blinked. “Years? You mean they wait underground?”
“Indeed. Thirteen years. Seventeen years, some of them. Time passes in darkness. Then, when their long sleep is complete, they emerge, climb into the trees, sing, mate, and die. Their brief days in the sun are the crown of nearly two decades spent in waiting.”
Ezra’s brow furrowed. “That is a strange clock, to wait so long only for a few weeks.”
“It is a strange clock to us,” I agreed, “but to them it is perfect. The Divine has wound their springs in such a way that they never miss their hour. They rise when they must. Not a year sooner, not a year later.”
Pascal swiped again at a cicada that had blundered too close, then looked back at us with a face that seemed to ask whether we too found this business absurd. Ezra chuckled, then sang while he scratched Pascal’s ears.
Down in the dark for a score o’ years,
Silent they sleep with no song in their ears,
Till the earth-clock strikes and the ground gives way,
And the singers rise with the heat o’ day!
I was the student today.
MV
