Twenty-five

Rian approached the door to the hut with apprehension. He stood some feet away and felt like a fool when he clapped his hands together. It was how one called on a neighbor, but it was ridiculous to wait outdoors for a welcome while someone moaned inside. He steeled himself and walked in, forthright as if the hut were his own home. He called out to the dark corner and the woman called Ava demanded, “Step out of the doorway. Let me see who you are.”

“I’m Rian.” And he stepped forward and smelled blood and sweat and worse. What little the hut held was broken or tumbled.

“You’re late to join in the fun, young one.”

Rian felt the bitterness and rage the woman contained.

“Are you badly hurt?”

“And what is it to you? You’re here to help? Or is that disappointment on your face?”

“I ... would like to help, if I can.”

“You can, if you will.” And the woman’s rage softened ever so slightly. “Come look at me, child. Come look what he’s done to me.”

“I don’t know if I shall withstand it.”

“God,” she moaned. “If I can stand it, then so can you.” She demanded again, “Come close.”

Rian pushed aside some broken glass with his shoe and came to the side of the bed where Ava lay in a bloody cloth. She was beaten, he saw. Her eye was blackened and swollen. Rian could hardly breathe. He whispered, “He burned you, too.”

“How would you know?” She became enraged again, nearly spitting, “Did he send you? Did that fucker send you to stare at what he’s done? Goddamn right, he burned me! He...”

“Please!” and Rian knelt beside her and he took her hand. “Please, calm yourself.”

“Who are you that you leer at me? Goddamn you, too!” And she turned her body away from him. Rian felt the wincing pain.

“What do they call you?”

“They call me whore. What else would bring you here?”

“I came with a copper, that’s true. It shames me now.”

Twenty-four

Three years before Rian was named, just as he felt the first stirring of manhood, the older boys in the village goaded him to visit a woman who might teach him how things would be with him and his wife. “Sometimes a man needs lessons away from books,” they told him. They even gave him the copper that the woman would demand.

“Up this stream,” they pointed. “She’s easy enough to look at, but don’t expect a princess and fairy tales.”

“How far does she live?” Rian asked.

“It’s a hike. The village woman folk won’t have her too near.”

“But some men like a good walk,” one of the boys chimed and they laughed and guffawed and slapped Rian and each other on the back.

So Rian hiked upstream.

One boy asked, after Rian had disappeared into the brush and up into the wood, “Will he even kiss her, you suppose?”

“I never did,” one admitted.

Another looked up the ridge and declared, “He never will.”

“He’ll not have her, you mean? And what of our copper then?”

“Charity, that’s where our copper will go,” another said, and shook his head.

“Give him some months, he’ll find his own copper. The itch devils a man ... or is he to be professed?

“I could never give it up.”

“Nor I.”

“I gave it up for two days,” the oldest said and then he laughed and told them, “God but I had to leave off. I had rubbed mine raw!”

Along side the creek bed, Rian whistled as he hiked. He loved the woods and assessed the trees he passed. Some would make nice timber, others were hollowed by time and misfortune, but these last were the trees that made homes for owls and squirrels.

The dappled light of the woods cheered the boy, almost enough to settle the upset he felt in his stomach and the ragged excitement he felt even deeper.

“What will Pater think?” he asked himself, but he pushed the nagging thought away.

It was the tail end of summer and the creek had nearly run dry. There might be a pitiful spring at its head. Is that how the woman drank? How can she live alone this way?

Rian had hiked long enough so that his neck was sweaty and his shirt clung to his back. And he stood still, not to rest, but because he heard a moaning. Not heard, he realized, but he felt it somehow. And a scalding feeling along side his hip that felt like it would spread to fever.

“What now?” he asked the sun, the trees above him seemingly spinning. He reached for a trunk and eased himself against it. He looked down into the leaf litter and breathed.

“She’s hurt.” He looked up just another forty yards or so and saw that the trees thinned there, above a clearing where a ramshackle hut stood and, inside, a woman in tears, with a tangle of blond hair going gray. Her sobbing was broken only by nearly inaudible cries for help.

Twenty-three

The bishop was sitting up when Selden visited that evening. Propped up, really, but he was awake and peaceful, though anxious to hear what the master saw in Rian.

“Good evening, Primus.”

“Come sit down,” the bishop told him. “Come sit close. I don’t think my voice will stay strong for very long.”

“We need not speak aloud. Why strain yourself, Excellency?”

“But I like talking.”

“Yes.”

“And call me Gereon, if you will, Pater.”

“You honor me, Gereon. My name is Selden.”

“I remember. You teach numbers. And now you are Rian’s defender.”

“Defender?”

“His gift is a danger... To himself, to others. He will need friends. And you have come.”

“I was sent.”

“And you arrived to greet the boy. And did you not invite him to know you?”

Selden nodded. “He and I are bound. But bound against my will.”

The bishop sighed. “Against your will.” It was almost a question.

“And bound with what, I can’t tell you. Truly. I almost struck him.”

“He’s a boy, Selden.”

“A boy such as this comes but once in a generation. Once in a lifetime.” Selden paused, but then spoke his mind, changing to Latin and speaking even more quietly at the side of this dying man. “If he is a boy.”

Gereon spoke slowly, weary with the strain, “He’s no demon... He has a pure heart... Test him... for he’ll test you... I assure you... Angelic, perhaps... but with no wings.” The bishop smiled. “He is just a boy.”

“You’re tiring.”

“Perhaps.”

“What can I do for you, Gereon?”

“Have you decided to bury me?”

“I have.” Selden took the bishop’s hand. “There is no rush. I can stay until I’m no longer needed.”

“But Rian will have need of you.”

“Then tell me more about the boy. Tell me without speech or you’ll exhaust yourself.”

“Our powers fail, Selden, though I’ve only lived up to my name in this last year.”

“God grant that we all grow as wise.”

“Not wise. Just old, though its weight is a good lesson. Gereon is a name for an old man, a name I will have forever.”

Selden was never slow, “So it shall be.” And he whispered, “I am Kinderring. Tell me about the boy.”

Twenty-two.

Selden tried to make sense of his meeting with the boy. He spent the afternoon fitfully, first having difficulty sitting through the veritable feast Rian’s mother had prepared. Geoffrey relished the meal as only the young might a forbidden pleasure. It was just as well, Selden thought. He’ll be hurt when I tell him he’ll have to return to the school without me. Or could someone else be trusted to bring the archmage a message?

It was instructive, at least, to see Rian with his family. His mother basked in the opportunity to be hostess. She had a giving nature, the kind of woman who would invite beggars and tinkers through her front door. Rian’s father was a more practical sort, with a more careful measure of loss and gain. He was ambitious for his son, Selden sensed. Certainly more than the boy himself. As for Rian, Selden was a bit fearful of what he had discovered. Well, he had discovered nothing; it was the two bishops who found this boy.

So, why was I sent?, Selden wondered. He watched as Rian ate. The boy used his fingers when the fork wasn’t quite up to the job of shoveling. He licked his fingers, too, oblivious to manners, but wasn’t that how Selden had been raised? Didn’t he scratch himself where he itched when he was young?

Selden contributed as he could to the discussion at table, distracted as he was. Before sitting down, he instructed Geoffrey not to let the conversation fail. “Tell them about our school. It’s what they will want to hear. The boy, too, should have an idea.”

“So he’ll join us?”

“If he can be persuaded.”

“Persuaded? Has he a choice?”

“You had a choice.” He paused. “You still do.”

Geoffrey laughed. “My father wants a bishop.”

Which struck Selden as funny also. “Well, perhaps he’ll have another son...”

“He has bastards enough for an army, but my mother’s only sired him daughters since me, first born and only son.”

“You’re a good son.”

“Who’d like nothing better than use his sword.” The boy’s grin made it quite obvious he was pleased with the double entendre.

“Best you keep your sword sheathed, don’t you think, Geoffrey?” Selden asked, but he needn’t wait for an answer. He had advised the boy time and time again.

“So keep up the conversation, will you? I’m troubled as to what to do in regards to the village priest.” It was true. Selden could hardly leave the bishop to a burial without rites. Back at the school, others could take his classes, he knew, and Geoffrey could be tutored here while they waited for the bishop’s death, but this boy, Rian, he hardly knew what to think of him.

After the meal, and their good day, Selden sat alone in the church and recalled: When he pronounced my truename, I thought he was a demon. My heart leapt–it beat furiously–and I nearly harmed the boy with a spell, ready with my bare hands if it came to that. But I saw him then, shining as brightly and as wildly as a bonfire on St. John’s Eve.

Hiatus.

Next post will be on October 1.

Thank you to all who are following this story. I hope you'll look forward to Chapter Two!

Twenty-one. (The close of Chapter One.)

Rian ran the short distance back to his home. The master and the student who accompanied him had already arrived, which was an embarrassment for Rian's father but, for his mother, a chance to entertain and search for gossip from the cities to the south. Even his father asked after the King’s interests. Rian’s older brother was away to the coast, somewhere too far away for much news. He served as a scout of sorts, a horse always waiting to help him spread word if the barbarians invaded his stretch of shore.

The boy charged through the door and came to a quick halt in front of Selden.

“Rian,” his father announced, with some amount of censure.

“I’m sorry, Father. And I apologize to you, Pater.”

He made no excuses for himself. It was clear where he had been, and why. The heavy emotion ringed him still.

“You’ve tracked mud in the room, Rian,” Selden told him. Geoffrey turned to the priest, surprised that he corrected the boy when it was really the parents’ place. Reading the master was always difficult, impossible now while he addressed the boy.

“Yes, Pater.” Rian was humble enough. “May I step out and clean them?”

“We’ll both step out,” and he stood. “Will you show me where you harvest the asparagus?”

Rian smiled, getting an understanding of the man.

Selden added, “Your mother’s promised a feast for us after we’ve talked.”

God, but he’s testing me, Rian thought. It was rude to ask where people collected food. At least it wasn’t mushrooms he hunted; asking after mushrooms would be the height of ill-mannered requests. It was bad enough asking after asparagus.

“Will the Pater share its truename? That should lead us to stalks and stalks. There’ll be no fasting when we’re flush with them.”

Well played, Selden thought. The boy’s lively.

Rian’s father was standing now and told his son, “Along with the pater, son. Show him the ways you take.”

Out of doors, the boy told Selden, “I am sorry for being late. Our village priest is ill.”

“He’s dying." Selden announced. "But you know that, don’t you?”

Rian sighed. The words were gentle really. Well, that’s not true, Rian thought. The words were plain-faced, but Rian felt the respect the priest held for the bishop.

The boy steeled himself. “He feels he’s failed me. He has been my only teacher, when it comes to words and arguments.”

“He’s a wise man, not unlettered, as you know.” He looked at the boy, as they headed across the fields. “Shall we see if you’ve failed him?”

“Pater, you seem harsh with me.” Rian thought it best to get it in the open.

Selden wouldn’t apologize. At least not now. He was testing the boy, pushing him to feel uncomfortable and tense. But he remembered what the Archmage had asked: Just concentrate on the surface, will you?

In a kind of answer, Selden said, “I’m told that I am sometimes blunt. I only meant to ask if you learned what you’ve been taught.”

“Yes.”

“Yes?”

“Yes, I see, Pater. And yes, I’ve learned a small portion of it.”

Was this false modesty? Selden asked himself. No, the boy is sincere in everything he says. Could there be even a grain of deceit in the boy?

“Perhaps you should refer to me as hlaford.”

“Are you to be my master? You’ve decided so quickly?”

“So you do know the old speech?”

“I learned it more from my mother than anyone else. My bishop taught me Latin. And he recited Greek, though it’s just a gabble of noise to me.”

"Gabbelen.”

“Like a duck!” Rian laughed.

“It’s good to hear you laugh, Rian.”

“I laughed even when my brother went to scout for the King. I told him I would follow in his footsteps. It was ridiculous, you see, I’m accident prone and I couldn’t kill a bug.” Rian’s eyes shined, remembering. “My mother and father nearly cried with their sadness. My brother did. He bawled and bawled. And then came my tears.”

“Tears ought not be thwarted,” Selden said, though he hadn’t cried in years. Instead, he felt the welling of them and ... then? Then came the emptiness that sometimes overcame him. He was past tears, he realized, swallowed up in the hopelessness that tried to crush him.

“I cried all this morning,” Rian admitted.

There wasn’t any shame found in the boy either. Nature’s son, Selden thought.

“Your eyes are red with it.”

Rian nodded. He was beginning to feel comfortable with this man.

So Selden began his quizzing, the fencing with the boy put aside.

“How few points define a plane?”

“Three.”

“Verdigris?”

“Vert-de-Gris.”

“Choleric?”

“One of the four humours.”

“Yes?”

“It was Galen who wrote about the humours, wasn’t it?”

“Yes.”

“And the gift?”

“Yes, though it’s something...”

“Beyond words, isn’t it?” Rian was enthused, though he moderated his excitement, “From what I can understand, I mean.”

“What can you tell me about the gift?”

“Very little,” the boy told him, truthfully enough. For Rian, it was something beyond words.

“Do you think it might be like poetry?”

“Naming must be like poetry,” the boy answered.

“What can I know about naming?” Selden said. “But poetry, let’s try.”

“The heart in the breast of Hlorrithi laughed
When the hard-souled one his hammer beheld;
First Thrym, the king of the giants, he killed,
Then all the folk of the giants he felled.

“The giant's sister old he slew,
She who had begged the bridal fee;
A stroke she got in the shilling's stead,
And for many rings the might of the hammer.”

And Rian finished the verse, “And so his hammer got Odin's son.”

“Not Othin?”

“If you will, Pater.”

The quizzing seemed to last forever, though the boy never faltered. Selden was impressed. The boy was remarkably prepared for the school, even if he was a child of the near pagan reaches. The other boys will make fun of his accent. But he’s likely to win them over, Selden thought.

Selden was quiet.

“So is it asparagus now, Pater?”

“Your mother means to feed us.”

“Is it not an ember day?”

“It’s love’s bread she’ll serve.”

“Love’s bread,” Rian laughed. “Your student will be pleased. Didn’t his stomach rumble?!”

Selden joined in the laughing and, then, when the laughter came to chuckling, then silence, he couldn’t help himself. The boy’s charm was too much, his own curiosity too great.

So he opened his mind to him, in a guarded fashion.

He felt immediately foolish. What does a sixteen-year-old boy know? How could he understand how I feel after all that I’ve seen, after all I’ve done, things that have no real meaning, even to me.

The boy stared into Selden’s eyes ... and came to know him. For the master, it was uncanny. So many of his private thoughts were laid out like one’s morning clothes. Taken by surprise, Selden closed his mind with a ferociousness that must have alarmed the boy, but he remained seemingly undisturbed, now watching the master instead of reading him. Selden was taken aback. So complete was the boy’s knowing, it was frightening. Even the Archmage stumbled a bit when making sense of others. Primus had admitted as much. This boy seemed to absorb thoughts and feelings like a sponge. And with a curiosity that was unnerving.

“I’m sorry,” Rian told him. “I was...”

“No, no,” the master told him.

“I was indiscreet.”

“Quite all right.” And Selden changed the subject. He told the boy, “Come, let’s have our meal. You’re a good candidate for us. You’re bright. A little undisciplined, I would venture, but you’ll learn, if you join us.”

“My parents would like that.”

“And not you? You would waste my time?”

“I have doubts, too.”

So the boy had seen. Selden turned red with embarrassment, though the boy hadn’t judged him, had he? Instead, the master could feel that Rian was gentle, understanding, patient. He was a remarkably large-hearted boy.

“We always pray for a stronger faith,” Selden said. He might as well admit it out loud. He would make no excuses for himself.

He lifted himself from the boulder where they were seated, as did Rian. The master headed a short way up the path that had brought them to the river's edge.

And then he turned, “Just how completely do you see?” Selden could have just as well asked, “Who are you?”

The boy smiled, pleased with himself for his knowing, confused by his knowing so much, and ashamed for being so different than others.

A silence filled the air between the two.

“Your truename is Kinderring,” Rian told the master.

And Selden could not have been more shocked.

Twenty.

Rian stayed the night with his catechist. The widow who cared for the bishop, her name was Nuala, made a shake-down for the boy on the porch off the cottage. The boy lay under a bison skin, his eyes staring heavenward, the stars distant and moving so slowly across the sky. His emotions were unlike the heavens’ predictable course. He cursed the end to his bishop’s life and lamented him, mourned him, though he lay not far away, dreaming, Rian knew, and piecing together memories from a lifetime.

Where there is life, there is hope. So we're told.

There is life, and will, and acceptance. The bishop had already decided, had surrendered almost joyfully to what the Lord had planned for him. And me? Rian wondered. Can I do the same?

When I was named, I saw the same star-filled sky and then the daystar and the climbing dawn, Rose-fingered, the Poet wrote, and I was spun. Past mountains and dales, ice flows and a green horizon of turf, the waving symphony of prairie, the parched expanse of a red-rock desert that sang with hope. And came the rains. And flowers. They cascaded out from bough and hollow, seemingly blossomed from air. And I took it in, so solitary my breathing was another life pressing against me and my shouts came crowding back in echoes.

But where were the ones I loved?

Was I here alone? Here in the center of a garden–I could smell the roses. I heard fountains. And then the light failed. Crushed rosemary, geraniums, mint...

And I was named.

“Rian,” the bishop called. His mind had cleared, had returned to the proper day and hour. “You’ll be late. Take leave of me now. I feel fine.”

“I know the truth,” Rian answered. “You would not have sent me.”

“I’m a fool, Rian. You have to go. See the wide world, while you can and while your life shines before you.”

“And the rooks?”

“I don’t know. Wives' tales.” The bishop stirred, his eyes now opened and he looked at the boy who now hovered above, his head crowned by the midday sun. “One remains. He’s met the master from your new school.”

“A bird?”

“A mystery.”

The bishop reached for Rian’s hand and told him, “You should know my truename,” and the tears welled up in Rian’s eyes and poured like rain.

“No one remains who knows me so well, failings and all.”

Still Rian cried.

“Search me, Rian; I have no fear of dying. Face your doubts and you’ll erase them.”