by Posey, Jay
Above Wren, the opening of the pipe started swiveling in lazy circles, first one way, then the other, and changing angle unpredictably. A few seconds later, a burst of white flakes coughed out and scattered, drifting to the floor in a chaotic current like a snowfall. It took a moment for Wren to recognize what they were; small leaves or possibly flower petals. He reached out for one, but stopped himself. Only the red ones, Foe had said. After the initial eruption, the petals continued to disperse all around him in a gentle trickle of three or five a second, falling slightly heavier wherever the funnel of the pipe was pointed.
“Missed one,” Foe said casually.
Wren turned and looked behind him, just in time to see a red petal come to rest outside the circle. Out of the corner of his eye, he caught a flash of color to his left. He turned and reached out for it, but too quickly; the motion of his hand interrupted the flow of the petals, chased the red out of his grasp. He stepped forward and managed to capture it just before it escaped, crushing it into his palm in his clenched fist.
“Do not leave the circle,” Foe said sharply.
Wren looked down and saw the toes of his left foot had crossed the border between the pad and the floor.
“If you cannot tell the difference between the floor and the pad, your senses are worse than I feared,” Foe said.
Wren pulled his foot back.
“Missed one,” Foe said again. And Wren looked up to see another petal reach the floor.
There weren’t too many petals in the air at any one time, but Wren felt himself stretched by all the things he had to keep in mind at once. Watching the petals, he’d forgotten about the circle. Thinking of the circle had distracted him from the petals. But Wren had already learned that Foe had a way of giving instruction without overtly telling him what he should be doing. The comments he made were sometimes hints, though it had taken Wren until the end of the previous day to recognize it.
“And another,” Foe said. “You do understand you are supposed to catch the red ones, yes?”
Wren ignored the remark. Foe’s comments were also sometimes meant merely to distract, and Wren had enough of that going on already. Like the Waiting Room, nothing in this room was an accident; each piece had its purpose. The feel of the circular pad was distinct under Wren’s feet, now that it had been called to his attention. He re-centered himself in the circle, rolled his feet around on the mat to get a better feel for it; heels, toes, balls of his feet. His feet would tell him when he was out of position, if he could remember to listen to them. And now, his eyes could focus on the petals alone. Scattered on the floor, the red petals were vibrant and easy to spot amongst the white, so it was surprising just how well they could hide in the fluttering chaos of the drift.
He took to turning a slow, continuous circle, scanning from side to side.
“Missed one,” Foe said.
Wren spotted a red petal drifting down from his right, turned and scooped his hand out underneath it, allowing the petal to fall into his hand rather than trying to snatch it from the air. He drew his hand back before any of the trailing white petals could join it.
He turned to Foe, showed him the red petal in his palm.
“What do I do with it now?”
“Missed one,” Foe said.
Wren tucked his lone petal into his left hand, kept it gripped there, and went back to work. One more thing to keep track of. He tried to tune out all else, focused on the drifting petals. Eventually, even Foe’s admonitions of his misses fell into the background. He found that by crouching slightly and keeping his hands raised just below his shoulders, he was able to react more quickly. Soon full minutes were passing without a miss.
For fifteen, twenty, thirty minutes, Wren continued his watch over the gentle flow, carefully capturing the red petals he could spot, letting others pass when they floated too far. At some point, he fell into a state of consciousness that he’d not experienced before; an effortless awareness, where his mind seemed to disconnect from his body. Though he wasn’t consciously trying to keep track of whether he was completely on the pad or not, any time a toe or heel made contact with the hard floor, he immediately corrected his stance before Foe could reprimand him. The petals didn’t necessarily seem to fall less quickly or more predictably, and yet Wren felt himself anticipating and adjusting without trying to do so. For a few minutes, it felt like he could continue this bizarre exercise forever, and successfully.
Unfortunately, the feeling was short-lived. The room was warm, and the droning of the machine threatened to lull him into a daze. The lack of sleep from the night before hung heavy on his eyes; his vision was easily confused by the constant fall. Soon it became a battle of will to maintain his focus for however long it was that Foe kept him at it.
“Good,” Foe said, at some point long after Wren had lost his sense of time. The machine shut off. A last trickle of petals floated out as Wren stood straighter and let his arms hang at his sides. His shoulders were knotted and stiff, the muscles on fire from keeping his hands aloft for so long. And now that he’d stopped his slow circling, he realized he was slightly dizzy. Foe stood there watching him for a moment, then the old man’s eyes flicked to Wren’s left. Instinctively Wren followed the gaze and saw one last red petal floating to the floor. He made a grab for it, but too late. Foe smiled but, thankfully, didn’t comment. Wren opened his left hand, where his collection of petals clung to each other in a sweaty clump. He estimated he’d managed to capture a good fifty or so. He had no idea how many of them he’d missed.
All around him the pad was ringed softly with white petals, dotted here and there with the occasional red. Foe approached and held out his hand. Wren gave him the squished wad of red petals he’d collected.
“You seem to have finally grasped the basics,” Foe said as he dropped the petals into the pocket of his shirt. “We can begin training now.”
Wren tried his best not to show the crushing disappointment he felt. He’d hoped that maybe they were done with this ridiculous exercise, though based on his experiences yesterday he knew that he should always expect to continue a thing at least three times as long as seemed necessary.
“Catch only the red ones,” Foe said. “And do not leave the circle.”
Wren took a deep, settling breath. The machine clanked and whirred. The petals drifted down. Wren resumed his position. There were more petals falling than before. A lot more.
“See wide,” Foe said.
“I don’t know what that means,” Wren said.
“Missed one,” Foe replied. He was walking a slow circle around Wren, watching. “Expand your vision. Do not hunt. Observe. Notice.”
Wren still had no idea what the old man was talking about. He was too busy searching the fluttering cloud descending all around him to ponder riddles. There were glimpses of red amongst the flurry, and he did his best to collect the proper petals just as he had before. But Foe’s warnings came faster this time around, far more frequent, and Wren knew he was failing yet again. There were just too many of them in the air at once. There was no way he could see them all, let alone catch them.
“Missed another,” Foe said. “And another.”
“There are too many!” Wren said.
“There are not too many, boy. You are too slow.”
Wren clenched his teeth, swallowed the response he wanted to give. Talking back to Foe hadn’t yet proved helpful. He redoubled his efforts, swept his eyes back and forth through the cascade more quickly. That actually seemed to make things worse. There were too many petals.
“This is impossible!” Wren said, more to himself than to Foe. And in the next instant, the machine shut off.
Foe stood there with a finger raised, staring right at Wren with a stern expression on his face. The remaining petals drifted to the ground, and even though a red one fell between the two of them, Foe didn’t say anything about it.
“What was the first promise I made to you?” Foe said.
Wren had to think back for
the answer, for the exact words from the conversation he’d had days earlier. No. No, it had just been yesterday. That, too, seemed impossible.
“That you would never ask me to do anything impossible?”
Foe continued to stare at him a moment longer and Wren thought the old man was waiting for him to continue or to provide a different answer. But then the machine started up again and Foe resumed his slow circling walk. Apparently he’d made his point.
Wren tried to reset himself. The pause had cleared the air, and now there were only a few petals falling. If he could just keep up, not get so behind this time, maybe he could manage it. But before the first minute was up, he could tell he was losing ground. The curtain of petals descended to the ground, the false snowfall unrelenting. He was soon again overwhelmed, but there was nothing else for him to do but keep at it, keep trying, until Foe ended the exercise. Talking about it certainly didn’t help. He shifted his eyes, started again from the top, giving up any red petals he’d already missed as lost.
There, to his right, a dash of color caught his eye.
And as he reached out for it, Foe took everything a step further. Just as Wren was about to catch the coveted red petal, Foe suddenly shoved his shoulder from behind. Not violently, but enough to cause Wren to lose his balance. He had to step forward and to the side to catch himself; he felt the hard surface of the floor beneath his foot. The petal floated away.
“Do not leave the circle,” Foe said, as if he hadn’t just pushed Wren out of it. Wren stepped back onto the mat, and almost immediately Foe pushed him again. “Missed one.”
Wren steadied himself with a big, deep breath. This was the game. He’d learned it yesterday in the Waiting Room. Foe would do everything he could to test Wren’s limits; to distract him, to throw him off, to anger him. It was all part of the test. And, Wren realized now, this was a test of focus.
In all ways, at all times, I master myself.
Wren resumed his partial crouch.
Discipline, my shield.
“See wide,” Foe repeated. “Expand your vision.”
“I still don’t know what you mean,” Wren said. He lunged for a nearby red petal, captured it, tucked it quickly into his left fist. A moment later, Foe shot his hand out from Wren’s left side, the fingers darting in towards his temple. Wren reflexively ducked his head away from the attack, and then looked at Foe, startled.
Foe didn’t say anything; he just looked back with his eyebrows slightly raised, as if he’d asked Wren a question and was waiting for a response. And then a moment later, “Missed one.”
It was Foe’s way never to explain anything directly, rather preferring to demonstrate his point in some roundabout way and then to leave Wren to figure out what he was supposed to be doing.
“I don’t mind if you just tell me what to do,” Wren said, as he resumed his search, “instead of making me try to guess all the time.”
“Telling is not teaching,” Foe said. And he extended his hand to push Wren off balance again. Wren didn’t have time to think about it, he just reacted; turn, sweep, step, check. His body executed the technique while his mind was busy elsewhere. Wren stopped, momentarily surprised by himself. Foe smiled.
“Missed one.”
Wren recovered himself. See wide, Foe had said. Do not hunt. The jab at his temple had drawn Wren’s attention to his peripheral vision.
Of course.
Now that he made the connection, he couldn’t believe he hadn’t figured it out sooner. He was trying too hard to focus on each petal as an individual, treating them all as equals when there were in fact only a few he cared about. His vision was too narrow, his effort spent trying to isolate each petal in turn amongst the drift. It wasn’t that he needed to focus more; he was focusing too much. He needed to take advantage of his peripheral vision, to see wide, as Foe had said. And as the lesson clicked into place in his mind, Wren felt a little burst of satisfaction at the achievement. One of Foe’s riddles solved.
Understanding it intellectually was different than knowing how to do it, though. But he gave it his best attempt. Wren let his eyes relax, lowered them slightly to a more distant point, seeing through the cloud that enveloped him rather than looking at it directly. To his amazement, the effect was immediate. Low left by his knee, high and further left above his shoulder. Two blotches of color that naturally drew his eye. He made a grab for the lowest one and managed to snag it, though when he looked back up for the one by his shoulder, he’d again disturbed the current and lost track of it. But that was a minor loss. He understood now.
The next few minutes became an exercise of learning how to transition his vision from a wide, relaxed observation to a targeted focus and back again, as the situation required. Foe continued to disrupt Wren occasionally, sometimes nudging him, sometimes merely reaching out as if to do so without actually making contact. Whenever Foe launched one of his mild attacks, Wren parried it aside the way Haiku had taught him, or at least attempted to do so. It wasn’t always effective but it seemed to be what Foe had in mind.
Once again Wren fell back into that effortless awareness that he’d briefly experienced before. This time, however, he realized that his mind had not disconnected from his body at all. The two had become so integrated that the separation between them was impossible to distinguish. His soreness and fatigue remained, but seemed somehow less important. Additional inputs.
“Good,” Foe said. It was the highest praise Wren had received from the old man; a mere good had come to mean that he’d managed to demonstrate something worthwhile. “You’re wasting far too much energy.” He raised a hand and Wren reacted, bringing his hands up in defense, even though Foe didn’t actually attempt to shove him. Foe looked at him, raised his eyebrows slightly. The subtle look he gave when he’d just provided a lesson, if only Wren would notice it. And Wren was beginning to notice. Wasting too much energy...
“Ten minutes,” Foe said, as he walked to the corner of the room where the broom was. “Then the Waiting Room.”
A ten minute break. It wasn’t much, but Wren had already learned to be grateful for any moment of rest he could find. He went and sat on the floor by the door, leaned back against the wall and closed his eyes. Sleep rushed up from where he’d been fighting to keep it at bay; even though he could hear Foe walking across the room, already dreams were beginning to form.
“You may rest,” Foe said, “after.”
Wren wrestled his eyes open to find the old man standing over him, holding out the broom, the empty sack at his feet. For a moment Wren just looked at the old man and wondered what the punishment would be if he refused.
“Your every strength, submitted to those who call upon it,” Foe said, recalling the words of the oath Wren had sworn. Service, my strength. At the time, Wren had imagined that line to mean something more glorious; facing down evil, fighting battles on behalf of the oppressed. Not menial labor. “I’m disappointed I had to ask,” Foe added. And there again was a subtle note; a hint at some deeper meaning than Wren understood. He was too tired to care.
Getting up off the floor was a harder task than any the old man had set him to yet. Wren had let himself relax just for a moment, had allowed himself to believe that it was safe to rest, and now he had to force himself into action again. But Wren won the battle over himself. Clambered to his feet. Took the broom.
“Ten minutes,” Foe said. “Then the Waiting Room.”
And with that, the old man left. Wren looked at the broom in his hand. The severest of schools. And not for the first time, he feared the gulf between his shining oath and the dim reality might be too vast for him to cross.
TWENTY-FOUR
“You ready to uh...” Mouse said to Cass, and he nodded at Swoop, “give this a shot?”
Cass didn’t feel ready, but she knew it was time regardless of how she felt. She’d insisted on keeping watch the entire night while the others slept. Her penance for having let the strange Weir escape.
“Sure,” s
he answered.
Mouse and Able had already gone out to scout around. The sun was up and from their report, they hadn’t seen any sign that their hiding place had been discovered in the night. Everyone was awake now, except Sky, who was still under the influence of whatever Mouse had dosed him with to help him sleep. Even Wick, pale and weak as he was, seemed much improved after a night hooked up to the meds Mouse had recovered at so dear a price.
“I don’t want to do it in here,” Mouse said. “Might be fine if it goes well, but if not...” He paused, shook his head. “Well. I reckon it’d be better to move him outside.”
“Yeah,” Cass said.
Able nodded and he and Mouse went to work unstrapping Swoop from the litter. Once Swoop was free, Finn and Able went up the ladder, and Mouse rolled Swoop over and up into a fireman’s carry. It took a couple of minutes, but between the three of them, they got Swoop up top.
Mouse secured Swoop back on the litter in case things went bad, and then rose and joined the others in a half-circle around their fallen friend. All eyes went to Cass.
“I think it might be a little easier if I don’t have an audience,” Cass said.
“We’re as small as we’re gonna get,” Mouse said. Cass didn’t care for the added anxiety of trying this under scrutiny. Mouse responded to her expression. “Finn’s gotta help you,” he said. “Able’s here for security. And if we have to put Swoop down... well, that falls on me.”
Cass still didn’t like it, but she couldn’t argue with it.
“OK,” she said. “I guess we should get started then.” She looked over at Finn, who nodded.
“So, the way this is going to work,” Finn said. “I don’t know exactly what you’re looking for, but once you connect, if you can feed me the signal, I’ll see what I can do about boosting it. Once we get that going, maybe I’ll be able to keep you connected, so you can just worry about doing uh... you know. Whatever you’re going to do.”