by Posey, Jay
It still stung a little if he opened his hand out wide, but the cut hadn’t been deep. Just through the loose fold of skin between thumb and forefinger. Wren wasn’t protecting it on purpose. He’d just forgotten what he was supposed to be doing with it. Haiku had shown him a basic defensive drill utilizing both hands, a point he had repeatedly emphasized. It wasn’t complicated. It wasn’t even completely unfamiliar. Three had taught Wren ways to protect himself, and already he recognized some common elements between what he’d learned from Three and what Haiku was teaching him now. But proper execution required a level of physical awareness that Wren didn’t yet possess. Footwork, hand positions, body angle. Each was simple on its own. When combined, though, he regularly missed one component; focusing on correcting one aspect usually led him to make a mistake with another.
Haiku stepped forward at half speed, executing a telegraphed slashing attack from a different angle. Wren saw it coming, tried to remember the steps. He ended up confusing two movements and collided with the rounded blade instead of avoiding it.
“Relax,” Haiku said. “You’re overthinking it.”
Wren wanted to believe it would all be going more smoothly if he wasn’t so exhausted. The best he could tell, he’d gotten just under four hours of sleep after his first day of training. A day that had started early and had been relentless until well into the night. And now here he was again, already well into his second day. The sun wasn’t up, and wouldn’t be for another hour yet.
“I’m just so tired, Haiku.”
Haiku nodded. “One more. An easy one.”
He stepped back, and then launched another attack, this one a straight thrust, even slower. He talked Wren through each step as he executed.
“Turn, sweep, step, check,” he said. “Good. Perfect.” Haiku stepped back and assumed a position that Wren mirrored. Wren bowed in the traditional manner that Haiku had taught him, and Haiku returned it. Even that simple action felt foreign to Wren’s body. He waited as Haiku left the training area and set the knife on a small table by the wall. There were a number of other training weapons arrayed on it, and a few devices that Wren couldn’t identify. He suspected he’d be familiar with them all at some point.
“It’s always good to finish on a success,” Haiku said. “It’s what your body will remember best for next time. Are you hungry?”
Wren wasn’t, but he nodded anyway because the question sounded like an invitation to take a break. Haiku motioned for him to follow. They exited to the stairwell. Thankfully, that particular training room was only a floor below the main parlor where they took all their meals. Wren clumped up the steps behind Haiku. His entire body was sore. Even his scalp felt wrong, like it’d been sunburned or frostbitten.
“You’re doing well,” Haiku said over his shoulder. “These first few days are always the hardest.” And then as they reached the landing, “How’s the hand?”
At first, Wren wasn’t sure what Haiku meant. Was something wrong with them? He looked down, saw the bandage around his left hand. Oh.
“It’s fine,” he answered. And for the most part, it was. It stung when he stretched his thumb away from his other fingers, but otherwise it mostly just felt like he had something stuck in the web of his hand; an itchy, foreign pressure.
They entered the parlor, and Wren was surprised to find a large covered dish waiting on the center of the table, two bowls stacked next to it. Haiku had Wren take a seat while he ladled out the contents of the dish. A few moments later, he pushed the bowl over in front Wren, followed by a spoon.
Wren stared into the bowl of soup that sat steaming before him. It was the same that he’d eaten before, and he knew he liked it. He knew he should be hungry. He knew his body needed the food. But the only thing Wren actually wanted at that moment was to go back to bed. And the bed they’d given him wasn’t even that comfortable.
“Eat, Wren,” Haiku said. “It will help.”
Haiku took a seat next to him and started in on his own portion. Foe was nowhere to be seen, but Wren figured the old man was already off somewhere in the immense building, preparing some new torment for him. Wren picked up his spoon, and even that simple act was a test of will against the aching stiffness that infected his every cell. He dipped a spoonful of broth out, brought it with effort to his lips. But he was nauseous with weariness, and he let the spoon hover there.
“Your body needs the nutrients,” Haiku said. “The sooner you get them in, the sooner you’ll start feeling better. Stronger.”
Wren took a deep breath, steeled himself, sipped the soup. To his surprise, he managed to keep it down. He took another tentative taste, and found that one was a little easier than the first had been. As he forced himself to eat there was a strange disconnect between his mind and his body, an apparent delay between his intent and its execution. As if he could feel the thoughts forming, or the impulse traveling from brain to muscle. He kept the spoon moving, down, submerge, up, sip. Mechanical. A series of repeated motions. For a time it didn’t register that he was actually eating.
His first day of training had been a seemingly random collection of pointless exercises, meaningless torment, and mindnumbing drudgery. Breaks for food had been short. No more than fifteen minutes at a time. After two and a half hours in the Waiting Room, Wren had been subjected to a good hour of vigorous physical exercises that seemed to have been designed specifically to make him throw up. The only highlight of the day had been some light training in hand-to-hand combat for a couple of hours in the evening, when Haiku had first taught him the defensive moves they’d just been reviewing. And even that hadn’t been particularly fun or interesting. A few simple defensive moves, endlessly repeated. Over and over and over and over.
If that had been the highlight, undoubtedly the lowest point had been the single hour Foe had spent training him in the digital. And that was the most bewildering detail. It was through the digital that Wren would confront Asher. The only way he could face his brother. The only thing that really mattered. And it was there that Foe had revealed his true disdain for Wren. The entire hour had been spent on the most rudimentary elements, things Wren had already been doing for as long as he could remember, and yet, of course, he couldn’t do them to Foe’s satisfaction. The simplest interaction, initiating a mutual connection request, took half an hour of constant correction; the rest of the hour was spent practicing the same mundane task in precisely the manner that Foe demanded.
“Don’t worry,” Haiku said. “Whatever you’re feeling is normal.”
The man’s voice brought Wren back to himself. Wren noticed the soup was almost gone. He still felt terrible.
“Normal, like, this is how I’m going to feel from now on?” he asked.
Haiku smiled. “Normal as in, your body is responding as expected to the hardship. You aren’t sick, even though you almost certainly feel like it.”
Wren lowered his spoon again, but didn’t feel like he could bear to lift it another time. He let it rest in the bowl.
“I don’t think I can do this, Haiku.”
“That is also normal.”
“I mean it.”
“I know. But that is part of what Father will teach you. You are capable of more than you believe. Far more.”
Wren stared down at the spoon sitting in his bowl. When something like picking up a spoon seemed too much to bear, he couldn’t imagine how he’d react when Foe took him to his next training exercise.
“I’ll share a secret with you,” Haiku said. “When I began my training, I struggled more than others. More than most. It took me longer to understand my lessons, more practice to perfect the required techniques. Often I had to stay up after the others had been released to sleep for the night. Sometimes I would even have to work until morning.”
Wren was sure Haiku was telling him all of this with the intent of helping him feel better. It wasn’t working.
“I was certain I would fail. Certain that Father would eventually realize I wasn’t capab
le of the things he asked of me. Certain that he would give up on me.” Haiku paused for a moment. Leaned closer. “And there were many, many times that I hoped he would.” He sat back again and then continued. “But he never did.”
“One night, I was maybe eight years old at the time, after all the others had gone to sleep, Father was working with me in the Waiting Room. We had been there for perhaps an hour, and I was failing. I knew it, absolutely. And worse, I felt like I had forgotten everything I had learned up to that point. Father turned the lights on, and I could tell he was upset. Worse, he was disappointed. He walked over and just stood there in front of me, looking down, and I remember thinking ‘This is it. He’s going to get rid of me.’ And then he did something most unexpected. Something I had never seen him do before.”
Wren’s mind filled with vague but terrible visions of punishment. But Haiku smiled to himself. “He picked me up.
“He didn’t say anything to me, didn’t scold me, or tell me everything was going to be OK. He just picked me up and carried me outside. It was quiet, cold, in the deep night. He took me up on the roof, out under the stars and set me down next to him. And only after we had sat there for a time did he finally speak. I’ll never forget his words. ‘We must remember, my son, that one man is much the same as another. He is best who is trained in the severest of schools.’” Haiku paused and gazed into his empty bowl on the table for a span, reflecting on the moment. Then his eyes cleared and he looked back to Wren with a mild smile.
“That’s it?” Wren asked. And then he realized how that sounded, and clarified what he meant. “I mean, that’s all he said?”
“Yes,” Haiku said. “After that he sent me to bed. Training carried on as usual. I didn’t find out until much later that it was actually a quote from an ancient man of war.”
“And what he said... that made it easier?”
“Oh no,” Haiku said, laughing. “Never easier. But it corrected something I had misunderstood about Father. During those many nights, I had come to believe that he was a cruel perfectionist whose standards were impossible to meet. That night I learned Father’s heart. You see, he does not demand perfection for his own sake, not for some arbitrary whim or for brutal amusement. He does so because he knows he must send his children out into the world, and he knows that once he does, the only protection he can offer them, springs from the way he has shown them to live. Any failing of one of his children he believes is not their fault, but his alone.”
Wren didn’t quite know how to take what Haiku was telling him. Certainly he’d only just met Foe and didn’t know him well at all, but he hadn’t seen any side of the old man that he could consider soft or caring. And yet Haiku’s words were full of obvious affection for him, even while acknowledging the severity of his training. One man is much the same as another. There was something oddly comforting about that sentiment. Foe had said it more bluntly: Wren wasn’t special. At the time, Wren had taken it as an insult. But hearing Haiku’s story gave him a different perspective. Perhaps the old man was necessarily tearing down a lie that Wren had believed about himself; not that he was special, but that he had to be special to do anything significant. In some strange way, that thought gave Wren a glimmer of hope. His ability to overcome Asher had less to do with whether or not he was talented enough, and everything to do with whether or not he would allow himself to learn the lessons in this “severest of schools”.
And Haiku’s story had another effect. Even though Wren had known that Haiku had been Foe’s student, somehow it hadn’t occurred to Wren that they had any shared experiences. But apparently they had.
“You trained in the Waiting Room?” Wren asked.
“Yes,” Haiku said. “Not the same one that you know here, of course. This was in our old home. But yours is a good approximation of the original, with all the important features,” he said, adding a knowing smile to his aside. “Dark. Cold. Painful.”
“How did you do it, Haiku? How did you get through it?”
“A minute at a time,” Haiku answered. And then added, “And I had a little help from another instructor. I could do the same for you, if you’d like.”
“I need all the help I can get,” Wren said. “Anything.”
Haiku nodded. “It’s a small thing, but often it is the small things that mean the most.” Haiku reached into a pocket, and then placed his closed fist on the table in front of Wren. “A game.”
Haiku smiled, and turned his hand over, opened it. There on his palm lay a small metallic sphere, colored a cheery yellow. And painted on it in black, in an uneven hand, were two dots and a wavering line curving slightly upwards. A smiley face. The paint was dull and cracked, even chipped away in some places. It was obviously an old trinket. Wren wondered how long Haiku had had it.
“What kind of game?”
“It’s very simple,” Haiku said. “Each day, I’ll hide this little fellow somewhere. And at the end of the day, you tell me where he was.”
“That’s it?”
“That’s it.”
Wren wasn’t sure how that was supposed to count as a game. It didn’t sound particularly fun. But he didn’t want to seem rude.
“OK,” he said. “I guess.”
“I know it doesn’t sound like much,” Haiku said. “But he’s very crafty. You never know where he might show up, or when.” Haiku rolled the ball around on the palm of his hand, and then out on to his fingers. It danced lightly across his extended fingers as if it were trying to escape, but each time Wren thought it would drop, Haiku would make some deft move and recapture it without ever letting it come to rest. He had a magician’s hands; the fluidity of his movements was mesmerizing. The ball ran across the backs of his fingers, around the edge of his hand only to be scooped back into the cupped palm again. “The only thing is,” and here Haiku leaned even closer, “you mustn’t mention it to Father. When you see it, try not to draw attention to it.”
“If it’s somewhere I can see it, he’ll notice it for sure,” Wren said.
“He’ll probably notice it,” Haiku said. “But as long as it’s not distracting to you, he won’t mind. And if it is distracting you, he’ll teach you not to let it.”
“I don’t want to get you in trouble.”
“You won’t. What do you think? Sounds fun?”
“Sure,” Wren lied.
“No it doesn’t,” Haiku said, smiling. “It sounds stupid. But if you’re willing to give it a chance, I think you’ll find that it helps you through the day.”
“OK, Haiku. I’ll do it.”
“Excellent,” Haiku said, and he closed his fist, made three quick circles with his hand, and thrust it forward towards Wren and opened it. Wren flinched, expecting the little yellow ball to come flying out at him. But no, there was nothing in Haiku’s hand now. A simple “magic” trick. Haiku mimed surprise at his own hand. “Look at that. Gone already. There’s no telling where he’s gotten to.”
“It’s in your lap,” Wren said. “Or your other hand. Whichever place you dropped it when you were doing the circles.”
Haiku smiled and then held up his left hand from under the table, and showed the yellow ball. “Kind of a stupid trick, huh? But that one doesn’t count. I’ll hide him somewhere better for today.”
“OK.”
“Don’t worry, Wren,” he said. “It was no mistake, you coming here.”
Light footsteps sounded in the hallway; Foe was coming up from the lower levels, or maybe down from the higher ones. Either way, Wren knew his training was about to begin. Haiku tucked the ball away as Foe entered the room.
“Did you get enough to eat, boy?” Foe said.
Wren looked down at his soup. There was still about a quarter of a bowl left, but he just couldn’t bring himself to eat anymore.
“Yes, sir.”
“Then come with me.”
Foe didn’t wait for him, just turned and exited the room again, the way he’d come in. Wren dutifully got up from the table, winced at t
he pain in his legs when he stood, and had to take a few quick steps to catch up. By the time he got out of the room, Foe was already on his way upstairs. Wren hurried up behind the old man, having learned his lesson the day before about responding promptly to Foe’s instruction. Foe had made several remarks about Wren’s “leisurely” response times; apparently the “rest” that Wren gained from his “dawdling” meant he could continue training even longer.
Foe led him up two flights of stairs to a small, mostly empty room; bare walls, bare floor, industrial blue-white lights. Off to one side stood some odd contraption that looked as if it’d been constructed without any sort of plan or purpose in mind. It was about six feet tall and had what appeared to be a small sack on top, plump, and made from some vaguely shiny textile that Wren couldn’t identify. A large spout or pipe jutted out from one side, over a dark circle on the floor, that appeared to be of the same material as the sack. Wren decided it almost looked like some of the showers he’d seen in wayhouses, except put together all wrong. In one corner of the room, a staff leaned against a wall. Wren did a double take. Not a staff. A broom. Beside it was a deflated sack like the one on top of the machine.
“Stand there,” Foe said, pointing to the circle on the floor. Wren walked over and stood in the center of it. The material was slightly squishy under his feet. Some kind of padding. He glanced up and noted the wide, bell-shaped mouth of the pipe opening above him. It was affixed to a bulb of pipe that looked like some kind of swivel joint, allowing the pipe to rotate to different angles without interrupting whatever was going to be flowing into or out of it. Wren still couldn’t tell what it was for, though the fact that he was standing under it made him imagine something unpleasant would be pouring over him soon.
“Catch only the red ones,” Foe said. Wren started to ask what Foe meant by the red ones but he suppressed the question. Another lesson he’d learned yesterday. Foe didn’t typically respond to questions when the answer was obvious, or would be soon. A moment later the contraption came to life with a clank and a whir. “Do not leave the circle,” Foe added.