“Harold,” she said as she pulled out a wooden box from under the couch. “Go outside and fill this up with sand for me. Make sure you get it up to the edges.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Harold said, confused as he took it from her.
Harold walked outside and Scape padded up to him, tail wagging and eyes bright against the night. As Scape rubbed against Harold’s leg half-purring, half-growling, Harold filled the rectangular box with sand. Once it was full, he came back inside, and Aunt Nean was sitting at the dinner table with a dirty sheet laid out across it. There were also two unlit candles there, and Harold assumed that they were for when the electricity was shut off. He also noticed two of her older wooden spoons lying there.
She gestured for him to put down the box of sand on the sheet and then they both sat down. She pulled her chair closer to Harold and turned the box length wise to them. She handed him a spoon and she picked up hers.
“Aunt Nean,” Harold smiled as he looked at the spoon and sand. “I know we’re poor, but I don’t think we have to eat sand for dessert yet?”
She laughed and gave him a light-hearted tap on the head with her spoon. Then she turned the spoon in his hand, and he was holding it backwards. She did the same with hers. Then she began scratching in the sand with the tip of her spoon. Harold watched as she wrote his name in the sand. Then, she gently wiped it away.
“Back in the days after the High-Born defeated the last remnants of the Forgotten Nations’ soldiers, they took every type of computer and book from us,” she said. “They even took paper, so that we could no longer write. Then they destroyed the schools that had survived the war and rounded up all of the survivors and put us in places like Foxx Hole. Then, we had no way to learn anymore, and they have tried to strip all knowledge from us since then. Sadly, they have nearly succeeded.”
“They did that to control us?” Harold asked.
“Yes,” she answered. “I don’t know exactly how, but I do know that what people used to learn in school gave us the ability to defend ourselves from people like the High-Born.”
“There have always been people like the High-Born?” Harold asked.
“Maybe not exactly like them, but, yes. There have always been people who seek to rule others. The family of teachers that we come from used to say that such people would keep the knowledge for themselves, and use that knowledge to rule over others.”
“I want to change that,” Harold said.
“I will teach you as much as I know,” she said. “You remember the basic arithmetic I taught you when you were younger?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Harold answered. “Addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division?”
“That’s right,” she answered. “Let me show you what comes next.”
Then she drew in the sand 2X + 4 = 10.
“I thought numbers and letters don’t go together?” Harold said.
“Well,” she laughed. “In a way, they don’t. But let me show you how it works. The X actually stands for what is called a variable. So, if you were to multiply something by two and then add four to it and it equaled ten, what would the X be?”
“That’s easy,” Harold said. “It’d be three.”
Aunt Nean’s eyebrows raised, “That’s right.”
Then, she wrote another problem underneath the first one. Harold also correctly answered it. Aunt Nean looked strangely at Harold. He just smiled, happy that he was right. She wrote a third problem that was a little more difficult. Harold turned his head as he thought about the solution. After a few seconds, he gave her the correct answer. Aunt Nean wiped the sand out again and wrote 5X + 4Y + 7 = 37.
Harold looked at the table for a few seconds as he thought about it.
“Well, I reckon there could be a lot of answers, but if we were going to keep fractions out of it, I reckon that X would have to be two and Y would have to be five,” Harold said.
Aunt Nean looked at him wide eyed, “No one has taught you about this, have they?”
“Other than what you showed me when I was little, no ma’am,” he said, smiling that she was impressed. “It just kinda’ makes sense.”
Aunt Nean looked like she was about to say something, but she stopped herself, and wrote another problem.
Harold answered it very quickly as well.
They studied many more problems that night, and when the lights were shut off, she lit the candles and got out the grammar book. As the night wore on, Aunt Nean continued to give Harold strange glances as he answered various grammar questions. Harold could not understand why, but Aunt Nean began getting emotional, and seemed like she was ready to cry.
It puzzled Harold as to why she seemed upset because not only did he answer her questions quickly, but he also never got any of them wrong.
Chapter 11
Harold woke up the next morning, and went outside. He looked around for Scape, but he was nowhere to be found. Harold figured that he was off hunting in the woods. It did not take Harold long before he was pouring Colonel Foxx’s High-Born fertilizer all over the field. As much as he disliked the High-Born, Harold had to admit that their fertilizer could make anything grow. It was an impressive thing. Thanks to his newfound strength, he was finished well before lunch.
As he walked back to the barn, he looked at the sun. He didn’t have enough time to get any real practice finished before Aunt Nean would be done with lunch. So, he sat down in the barn and looked at the mule glaring at him. He shook his head and smiled as he picked up a stick and regarded the dirt at his feet.
He sat down and began scratching numbers into the dirt. The algebra problems that Aunt Nean had given him the night before intrigued him for some reason. He made an example problem for himself. He solved it, but noticed that it didn’t divide evenly. He made himself several more problems, and solved them without any difficulty. He could see that there was something more to the math than he realized. In fact, he could almost see it in his mind, but it just was not quite there yet.
Then, he made himself an example sentence in the dirt, and quickly labeled the words according to what part of speech they constituted. He wrote himself ten more sentences and continued practicing. After about fifteen minutes, he wiped away the evidence of his education and walked to the house.
The kids were waiting at the table, and Aunt Nean soon served them. Just as they finished eating, a knock echoed on the front door. Harold went to the door and opened it. Phil was standing there, Maggie by his side.
“Hey, Hawold,” Maggie said, spinning in her scarlet dress. “Do eww ‘ike my dwess? I fink it ith bootiful,”
Harold smiled, “It sure is. I think you’re the prettiest girl I’ve seen all day.”
Maggie just giggled as she continued spinning. Harold looked at Phil, and saw that he had a lot of burlap slung over his shoulder.
“That was quick,” Harold said.
“I had some in storage and several people that owed me favors,” Phil replied.
“How are you doing, Phil?” Aunt Nean asked as she walked up.
“I’m fine,” Phil answered as he handed the burlap to Harold. “Just had to settle up with Harold.”
“He didn’t tell me anything about it,” Aunt Nean said, looking wonderingly at Harold.
“He helped me out a while back,” Phil said.
“Oh, Maggie,” Aunt Nean said. “That new dress looks so good on you.”
“Fank, eww,” she replied as she stopped twirling. “It was my birfday pwesent.”
“Would y’all like to come in?” Aunt Nean asked as she smiled at Maggie.
“I think that me and her need to get on back,” Phil pointed at Maggie. “I’ve got to help Tom with his roof.”
“Ok then. Thanks for stopping by,” she looked at Maggie. “I love your dress.”
Maggie just smiled and bobbed her head. Then Phil and Maggie walked back toward the town circle.
“I’m going to put these in the barn,” Harold said. “Then I think I’m going to walk in
the woods for a little while.”
“Can I go?” Cooper asked.
“No you can’t,” Aunt Nean answered. “You and your sister both have got a lot to read this afternoon.”
“I don’t like to read,” Cooper answered and crossed his arms. “It’s boring, and I want to go play with Scape.”
“Reading is more important that you know, Coop,” Harold said. “And Scape isn’t even around right now. So, I want you to read it for me, okay?”
Cooper shuffled and looked at Harold, “Okay.”
Harold walked outside and into the barn. He looked at the mule, and she turned her head and stuck it against the wall. Harold shook his head and smiled.
Then he laid out the first burlap bag and began gently tearing it. After several well-placed rips, he tied the makeshift legs together. He took off his overalls and tried on his new pair of shorts. It was not bad for a first attempt. Harold shifted uncomfortably as he scratched.
“They’re a little itchy,” he said to the mule.
She just puffed at him, and brayed as if she were laughing.
Harold then spent the next hour carefully tearing the burlap bags, and then tying them with spare twine, and other pieces of burlap. He made himself eight pair, and had three bags left with part of a fourth one. Then he changed back into his overalls, and put the pairs of shorts in one of the leftover bags and headed out across the field.
Just as he was getting to the woods, Scape came walking up. Harold smiled at the feathers still in his mouth. Harold gestured with his head to the woods, and Scape jumped up, wagging his tail furiously. He began running circles around Harold, half-barking, half-yowling. His bright green eyes blinked as he panted in excitement.
Harold and Scape entered the woods. He searched for a good spot to practice, and after another half hour, he found an open area in middle of a dense clump of trees. He looked at Scape and pointed to a tree. Scape blinked his eyes and cocked his head. He looked at the tree and walked to it and calmly lowered himself to his haunches. Harold figured that whatever it was that Colonel Foxx had done to make Scape into what he was had also made him much smarter than most animals because he almost always seemed to understand what Harold wanted him to do.
Satisfied that Scape was not going to interfere, Harold walked to the center of the small clearing and closed his eyes, listening intently. He could hear only the wind, and the chirping of birds. There was a chattering squirrel some distance to his right, but the important thing was that he did not hear any evidence of people. He opened his eyes and looked around. When he was sure that he was alone, he changed back into the first pair of burlap shorts. Then he put the burlap bag full of shorts behind a tree, and placed his overalls beside them.
He took a deep breath, and found the source of the fire. He called to it, and flames rushed over his body. His shorts fell in ashes around him, and started a small fire at his feet. He shook his head as he pulled the flames on the ground to him and doused the flames on his body. He walked to the bag, and put on another pair.
Scape was still sitting there, unmoving, but his ears were now high on his head and his front legs were tensed as if he was preparing to run.
“Maybe I need to practice on something else first,” he said to himself.
He looked around. Soon, he saw a large stick that reminded him of when he used to sword fight with Cooper. He walked to it and picked it up. He swung it around a few times and smiled. He twirled and feinted with it, hopping back and forth as he parried imaginary attacks from unseen foes. Scape jumped up and began barking and yapping, biting the air as he did so. He allowed himself to laugh and relax as he thought about how funny he would have looked to someone watching him.
He motioned to Scape for him to sit down, and he seemed ready to run, but he uneasily obeyed Harold.
He held the stick up and looked at it while finding the fire in him. He did not call the fire to his body, just the stick. The stick burned much quicker than he expected, and fell in ashes through his hand.
“I can burn extremely hot if I can burn it that fast,” he said aloud and Scape half-barked, half-yowled at him.
He soon found another stick and was ready to try again. This time he focused the fire all around the stick, not on the stick itself. Sputtering fire blinked on and off around the stick. He could feel it slipping from his control, and then it just stopped altogether. He took a breath and relaxed. Then he refocused his thoughts, and the sputtering fire returned, but it was stronger than it had been. He moved the fire closer to the surface of the stick, and the fire became stronger, but occasionally sputtered. Suddenly, the stick itself caught on fire. He frowned as he watched it burn to a crisp, and then fall in ashes. However, he did notice that it took longer for it to burn.
“Well, I can protect the stick to a point,” he said to himself. “So, I should be able to practice enough, and eventually get it.”
Scape was still nervously sitting and his ears were still high on his head, but now his tail was rustling the leaves as it wagged back and forth.
Harold smiled at him and he barked again as he found another stick. He managed to make it last longer than the first, but it also soon burned.
As the afternoon passed, he went through more than two dozen sticks, but each time he managed to hold the fire longer than the previous stick. After three hours, he was able to hold the fire around the stick for almost fifteen minutes before it began burning. Scape had gone from sitting to lying down, and his ears covered his eyes while he took a nap. The last stick he held lasted a while, but it soon burned, and he was tired of practicing that ability. So, he decided to test another.
He looked about fifty yards away, and found a good site. He pulled on the air, and then burned it. A small clap of thunder sounded and he appeared very close to where he had been aiming.
Scape winced at the noise and ran up a tree to the first branch, frantically looking around with his strange ears and wild eyes searching for the source of the sudden noise.
“At least this is easier for me to understand,” Harold said, raising his voice so that Scape would know that he was still there. Scape crawled around the backside of the tree. Harold could not help but to laugh as his ears slowly appeared from the other side, and then his eyes. He froze in that position, only revealing his eyes and ears to Harold.
Harold laughed and shook his head.
“I think I’ll call this air-burning,” Harold said to Scape who still regarded him suspiciously from the other side of the tree. “What do you think about that, huh, Scape?”
Air-burning came naturally when compared to controlling his fire. He air-burned a few more times, and then decided to try something different. He picked two spots, and concentrated. He appeared in the first location perfectly, and then flashed again. Though it wasn’t exactly where he wanted to be on his second burn, he wasn’t very far from where he had aimed. He tried two locations again, and focused even more.
He landed exactly where he had intended both times. Something rattled in the trees behind him and he turned to see Scape leaping from tree to tree, staying close to him. Scape stopped a on a large branch and peered down at him.
Harold smiled as he picked out three spots. His brow furrowed in concentration. He rapidly flashed to the different locations. The first burn was perfect, but the next two were slightly off, but not by much. After three more attempts, he could land within inches of each intended spot.
Scape ran around the trees wildly, half-barking, half-yowling as his tail wagged.
“All right, Scape,” Harold said. “Let’s try four spots.”
As he concentrated, Harold could almost feel it already slipping from him. He forced it, and he heard thunder and saw fire. He flashed in and out of existence, and he felt his fire roll over him. The first burn was good, and the second burn was off by only a couple of steps, but the third and fourth were far from perfect. He heard a loud pop and saw a cloud of dust and ash around him when he exited from his fourth burn point. H
e could hear something crashing around him, and he had heard the sound before.
He had appeared in a tree, and had broken it in half. He reflexively air-burned in an attempt to get away from the danger and thundered into sight a few steps away. Then he watched the tree fall in front of him. It was rather large and made a lot of noise. Harold grimaced and looked down.
He was also covered in fire, and his pair of shorts was drifting in ashes around him. He doused his flames, and looked around at the fires he had started. He pulled them to himself and then walked to the tree where his clothes were. He put on his third pair of burlap shorts and looked around. The entire area was riddled with scorch marks, and ashes wafted in the air. He could hear something creaking and then he heard a loud groan that he recognized. Scape jumped down out of a tree far away and began running towards Foxx Hole, and Harold grimaced as he watched the leaves and dirt kick up behind him while he frenziedly ran away. He was running so fast that he was barely more than a few inches off the ground.
Harold squinted in amused disappointment as he watched another tree crash toward the ground. As it fell, some of the vines in it pulled on another tree close to it and caused it to hit another that was festering with pine beetles. The rotten wood practically exploded when the falling tree hit it. Finally, the second falling tree hit the ground with a loud boom as the intertwined vines brought a shower of leaves from other trees down with it. Harold stood there for a moment watching the tops of the trees shake and the leaves drift to the ground.
After a moment of thought, he took off his shorts and put on his overalls and picked up the bag full of his extra shorts.
“Maybe I should just go check my trap line and fish hooks,” he said as he nodded.
Chapter 12
Blaze (The High-Born Epic) Page 9