Teacher and Student

The next night, I sat next to the Hunter, soaking in my own guilt. It was evening and I had come back from a call of nature to find that there was an invisible knife in my boot. The Fool must have somehow recovered it. The least I could do was stay near and protect the Hunter if Father Ori attacked out of nowhere. Meanwhile, the Wizard was making preparations for the impending downpour. The rain was beginning to pound harder, and there was nowhere to hide this time. It was shaping up to be a very unpleasant night. He waved his arms about, presumably constructing air currents to whisk the rain away before it reached us. But I saw no rhyme or reason in his motions, nor did I feel an appreciable difference in the amount of rain that reached me. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the Fool watching intently, his eyes following every motion.

“Teach me,” said Lilly, suddenly.

The Wizard stopped in the midst of a movement. “Damn! Now I will have to begin that set over again.” He glared at her. “Teach you?”

“Isn’t that what you do?” she said. “Aren’t you a professor?”

“Yes, at the Great Academy,” he said, as if that ought to humble her into silence.

“So?”

“So, I teach the best of the best, those with a tremendous predisposition to the magical arts—children who have generation upon generation of magical blood. I doubt your parents could cast their way out of a hole in the ground.”

Lilly wiped rain off her tanning shoulders. “My father was somewhat proficient. He never taught me though.”

“If he was serious about the arcane arts, he would have put his daughter into training as soon as possible—as I did with my daughter. Besides, the ability to manipulate the weather is a rare gift. The chances of being born with the ability are less than one percent of one percent of one percent.”

“Only one way to find out. Just teach me something simple,” said Lilly.

“Fine. Hold your hands like this,” he said, placing his hands into a neutral ready position. Lilly copied him. “No, no, no. Not like that. Palms up. We’re not raising the dead.” He adjusted her hands. “What did you say your father specialized in?”

“He didn’t say.”

“Odd,” said the Wizard. “Now move your hands like so. Up. A little to the left. Now continue the motion… follow through. Yes. Good. Excellent.”

I felt a wind whip through the camp, chilling my wet clothes.

“Do you feel that?” said the Wizard. “That was you. Perhaps you do have the gift.” For just a moment, he smiled through the raindrops in his beard; and Lilly looked down, embarrassed. But then the moment ended. “Your technique was crap, however. Gifts are nothing without training. Try again.” Lilly executed the motion again, eliciting an even stronger burst of wind. “Still crap,” said the Wizard. “Again.” Her hands trembled as she performed the maneuver. “Again,” said the Wizard. She did it again. And again. And again. The Wizard never smiled, not once, even after a gust of wind made him take a step to stay balanced. Lilly’s face was flushed and sweating with the effort. She could barely keep her arms up.

“Stop,” said the Wizard, finally. “Take a rest.”

She practically collapsed on the sand, holding her arms as they trembled.

“You’re stronger than you look,” said the Wizard. It was the best compliment the Wizard seemed capable of making.

“Do you want a cigar?” she said. “I have one left.” She glared at me as she produced a battered, sandy, damp cigar.

“This,” said the Wizard, lighting it with magic, “is worth the lesson.”

As he smoked in silence, I wondered if either of them realized what had begun. I could see the threads of their stories intertwining—meshing in ways that neither the fatherless Noble nor the daughterless Wizard could understand, each of them only knowing only their own story. I took out my paper and began to write about a vast tapestry of stories and how they intersected, forming a single tale.

Dear Human, I have taken the liberty of redacting several pages of Nial’s epistemological crisis. To save you time, I will sum it up with a few rhetorical questions: Who am I? Do I matter? Do we all have separate stories? Or is there just one big one? What does it all add up to? How can I make Lilly notice me more?

As I wondered whom I was destined to connect with. The Singer slid next to me and held my arm for warmth. Du Vreil sat contentedly on the Singer’s other side. I looked into the Singer’s eyes. “Well?” she said. “It’s cold. And Du Vreil doesn’t produce heat.”

From the corner of my eye, I saw the Fool finish the Wizard’s spell in a matter of seconds, creating an invisible umbrella of air currents above us. While the rain drowned the dunes around the camp, the pilgrims stayed dry.

“Interesting,” said the Wizard. “I must have performed the spell better than I thought.”

The Fool only grinned and went to sleep.

I drifted off also. The sound of the rain washed away my conscious mind, leaving me floating through dreams of Lilly and puzzle pieces that didn’t fit together. The sound that woke me was of a different kind. Screaming.