The Unexpected Enlightenment of Rachel Griffin (Books of Unexpected Enlightenment Book 1) by L. Jagi Lamplighter Page A

shyly. “Please, sir, before we go on. That word you used in your overview…monotheism? What does it mean? I’ve never heard that word.”
    Very seldom did Rachel come upon a new word. She, too, had never heard this one. She checked her memory. It was not in any of the three dictionaries she had memorized—two dictionaries of the Wise, and a mundane one.
    Was monotheism another mystery word, like friar and steeple ?
    Mr. Gideon examined a roster of names. “Ah, Miss…Hollywell, right?”
    Astrid ducked her head, embarrassed, and nodded.
    “You grew up in the mundane world, did you not?” he continued, “The world of computers and cars. Had you heard of magic? Of the Wise?”
    “N-no, sir. I had no idea that sorcerers or dragons or anything of that kind was real. I guess you would call me…Unwary.” Astrid frowned and asked shyly, “What exactly is the definition of Unwary?”
    “Someone who does not know about the World of the Wise. About magic and sorcery,” replied Mr. Gideon. “Usually, the Unwary are mundane. In other words, they cannot use magic. A few, such as yourself, were merely unaware of the existence of magic.”
    “A normal person, then.” Astrid nodded. “I was Unwary.”
    Mr. Gideon’s eyes danced with amusement. “That implies that we of the Wise are not normal, but I will let that slide. But, back to the topic at hand, you had heard of the gods?”
    “Well, of course, I’ve heard of them,” Astrid said slowly. “And my family gave offerings at temples occasionally, the way everyone does. On big national holidays, such as Walpurgisnacht, Mid-Summer’s Eve, and Yule, of course. But I thought the gods were symbolic—that Apollo was a personification of creativity and reason. That Isis represented fertility. That sort of thing. I didn’t know they were real.”
    Rachel listened to this with great interest. She had often wondered how the Unwary saw the gods. She knew that they had temples and religious orders. Their hospitals were run by nuns and monks of Asclepius, just like those of the Wise, for instance. But they did not perform animal sacrifices or expect the gods to actually show up. Of course, the gods had been very quiet for the last several centuries. It had been a couple hundred years since the last verified visitation by one of the gods.
    “How did you come to learn about us?” Mr. Gideon asked. “About magic?”
    “I am interested in s-science,” Astrid stuttered. Rachel felt so sorry for the shy girl who was being put on the spot. “I applied for a summer internship at Ouroboros Industries. They gave me an aptitude test. Apparently, I tested well for learning sorcery.”
    “I see. As to your question, monotheism means belief in only one single god,” Mr. Gideon replied. Laughter tittered though the classroom.
    “That’s absurd!” cried red-haired Ian MacDannan, grinning madly. “Nobody living on this planet—either of the Wise or mundane—believes in something like that.”
    “No one in the Unwary world, either,” said Rhiannon Cosgrove, a student from De Vere Hall with a head of long brown curls. “I’m from Hoboken, New Jersey. I only heard about magic for the first time two months ago. Turns out my grandmother had been of the Wise and never told my mom. But no one I know in what you guys call ‘the mundane world’ worships only one god. We go to the temples—Zeus, Apollo, Amaterasu, or whoever—on high feast days and the chapel of Asclepius when someone’s sick. Everybody does.”
    “Me, too,” said Sigfried. “I mean, I grew up in the world of the Unscary, not knowing about magic, and I never heard of anyone worshipping only one god—unless you mean like the nuns of Hestia, who were scary, being loyal only to Hestia. Of course, since they ran a horrid orphanage, we never went to temple or chapel or anything.”
    “But…” Rachel squinted at the tutor, wondering if he were mocking them, “wouldn’t worshipping only one god offend the other