One Year of Eclipses

Saturday. One year ago today the Blood Eclipse rose over The Corso for the first time, and it has risen every hour we have been open since. It is a very punctual eclipse. I have grown fond of it.

A report card for the year, in brief. Apprentices: many, of every age and size, from seven-year-olds with their parents to grandparents with their grandchildren. Final tests: sixty minutes each, about an hour and a half at the academy all told, with time to settle in first and to chatter in the foyer after. Difficulty: six out of ten, gentle enough for a first attempt and stubborn enough to make old hands concentrate.

Corridor: still stone. Serpents on the wall: still watching. Founders’ Spell: restored more times than I can count, and undone again by the next eclipse, which is the way of these things.

Hollis baked a cake shaped like the academy. We ate the tower first.