The man standing at the edge of the garden had a round, soft face and thick, pudgy fingers. He wore the same rough home-spun as everyone else in the village, but in his case the fabric strained over a potbelly. In my former life, I would have pegged him as some sort of low-ranking noble, high enough up the ladder to not have to do manual labor, but not so high that he had the time and inclination to maintain a state of physical fitness. He would be someone for whom appearances weren’t important.
Here, where almost everyone worked the fields, and did so without much magic to help, finding someone with an appreciable amount of fat on them was something of a rarity. Everyone else I’d met so far straddled the line between lean and malnourished. So then, this Cherok fellow must be important to the village’s society, someone in a privileged position. He represented yet another complication I didn’t need.
He advanced through the rows of stunted tomato plants and squatted down in front of me. “Hello, Gravin. It’s nice to meet you.”
I had no idea how Gravin would have reacted, but as my sister had pointed out, I’d developed a reputation for not saying much among my family. There was no reason to change that strategy now.
“Hello,” I said. Then I waited.
Cherok smiled patiently, but after a few seconds of me not saying anything else, he looked back to my mother, who just shrugged in response. “Do you know what mana is?” he asked.
It was a struggle not to roll my eyes, made easier by the fact that I had a very real fear that this man was going to be hindering my progress greatly. Depending on his capabilities, there were really only two ways to play this. Either I could pretend to be a prodigy and get through the unnecessary lessons as quickly as possible, thus wasting the minimum amount of my precious mana appeasing him, or I could pretend to be hopelessly thick, wasting no mana and deliberating failing all his lessons.
The problem there was that I didn’t know if I just needed to prove I could manipulate my mana or if the classes lasted the same length of time regardless. More than that, I didn’t know how much he’d be able to detect. There were too many unknown variables to make this decision with any degree of confidence, and of course nobody had bothered to talk to the toddler about what he wanted to do. Why would they?
The only thing Gravin would know about mana was that the draw stones took it. That was a nice, safe topic. “It’s what we give to the big rock every day,” I said.
Cherok chuckled at that. Perhaps I’d just spent too many months as a small child, but I’d noticed that a lot of adults were very patronizing towards children. It was to be expected to an extent, but there were degrees of difference. My mother, for example, wanted to celebrate every little thing. That was a perfectly valid tactic for encouraging children to grow and explore, but it did get a bit wearing to me personally.
This particular adult was not like that. He clearly looked down on me, probably on all children, and considered me lesser. I disliked him immediately. If I’d been on the fence before, that laugh of his sealed the deal.
“That’s true, but that’s not what mana is. That’s just something you do with it,” he said condescendingly. I glanced over his shoulder at my mother, but she just stood there smiling at me. Obviously, I wasn’t getting any help there.
Cherok was waiting for me to say something again, no doubt intending to lead me through the conversation by the nose while he displayed his intellectual superiority to a literal toddler. I stared back at him and remained silent.
The moment stretched between us, him waiting for me to ask the question he was baiting me into voicing, me more than willing to sit there all day ignoring him. I didn’t need to ask him what mana was. I’d known that for over two thousand years, and my original teacher had been an actual mage, not a dull like this guy. All he was doing was interrupting my meditation, which was just a way for me to pass the time and generate just slightly more mana than I would otherwise.
“Mana,” Cherok said, giving up on waiting me out, “is the magic inside us. It makes us strong, and we collectively use it as a community to empower the great barrier that keeps Alkerist safe from monsters.”
Almost nobody ever said the name of the village. I’d been here for months before I’d heard it the first time. For a group of people utterly isolated from the outside world, the real surprise had been that they’d named their village at all. I suspected someone who’d died a long, long time ago had come up with the name, and whatever meaning it had once had was long forgotten.
Then there was this guy.
“Okay,” I said.
Cherok frowned and glanced back at my mother again. She didn’t say anything, and I felt a surge of malicious little glee at the whole situation. He looked back to me and said, “My job is to teach children how to sense their mana and, more importantly, how to manipulate their spirit to make more of it. Some of my students are so advanced that they can even use their mana to make themselves stronger or faster. Doesn’t that sound exciting?”
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It really, really didn’t. Also he didn’t seem to know what he was talking about. Presumably, he meant he taught people how to manipulate their mana cores, but I couldn’t be completely sure.
“Okay,” I said again.
Cherok rose back to his full height and walked back over to my mother to talk to her in a hushed voice. I went back to “playing” in the dirt, as my mother had termed my meditation sessions. A bit of mana sharpened my senses so I could pick up their conversation easily. It might have been wasteful, but it seemed prudent to keep on top of whatever they were planning for me.
“Maybe he’s just a bit too young,” Cherok said, “but he doesn’t understand what I’m saying, and he’s not interested in learning.”
“It sounds like you’re saying my son is stupid,” my mother said, a warning tone in her voice.
“No, no, of course not. Everyone develops at their own pace, and just because his sister started early doesn’t mean he will too. There’s nothing wrong with that. It’s just how it is.”
“So you don’t want Gravin to attend your next class?”
“He can, if you really want him there. But I won’t be able to give him special instruction time to help him catch up. It might be best for everyone if we try again in a few months.”
Yes, good. That sounded reasonable. It would give me enough time to ignite my mana core. Then whatever demands Cherok made of me would be easily compensated for. As long as the lessons weren’t too intensive, I could probably spend most of the time strengthening my core so I could push past stage one quickly.
Considering the utter lack of ambient mana in the village, increasing my own mana generation was really the only way to progress. Once I was strong enough to leave, I’d get out of this desert and I could return to my original plans. I didn’t like being vulnerable like this, though there were still a few failsafes left in my soul if the worst should come to pass.
“Senica wasn’t that interested to begin with either,” my mother said. “But you’ll recall she ended up doing very well.”
“She did,” Cherok admitted. “But as I said, every child is different. Your daughter was interested in playing and was extremely active. She thought the classes would be boring and a distraction from her games. Once she got a taste of what I had to teach her, her whole attitude changed. Gravin, on the other hand, well…”
“Well what?”
“He’s just kind of… sitting there. And from what I understand, that isn’t unusual behavior for him. He doesn’t do much of anything, isn’t curious, doesn’t play, doesn’t talk. I’ve been teaching the children of Alkerist for twenty years now, and I’ve never seen one as disinterested in the world around him as your son. Xilaya, he’s not ready, and he might never be ready. There’s something wrong with him.”
“There is nothing wrong with my boy,” my mother hissed.
Cherok held his hands up and took a step back. “As you say. You’d know him best. Regardless, from my conversation with him, I’d recommend waiting a few more months to see if he develops some interest. I can show you a few things to work on with him here at home that might spark something if you’d like.”
I hadn’t realized I stood out so much. Here I thought I’d just been well-behaved and easy to care for, and instead I’d gotten a reputation as an idiot. I’d be offended if there was even a single person in this whole village whose opinion mattered to me. As it was, I’d take being looked down on if it meant I was left alone for the next few months.
“Our next Testing is in a month,” my mother said, her voice quiet and almost desperate. “Gravin needs to be able to show that he’s contributing to the barrier.”
“Well I’m sorry, but even if the boy was a genius, it’d be all but impossible to teach him mana techniques in just a few weeks,” Cherok said. “Not even I can take a child to that height so quickly, no matter how talented they might be. And your son, I’m sorry to say, isn’t.”
If only he knew how wrong he was. But no, it wasn’t worth it to draw the attention to myself, not when I was still this weak. I had nothing to prove to a bunch of farmers living in the back corner of nowhere and clinging to superstitions about a fictional magical barrier that was keeping them safe from a vague, unspecified threat that never seemed to emerge to prove them wrong.
“What are we supposed to do then?” my mother demanded. “Sellis is already working himself to death. We can’t afford for him to be taxed twice a day.”
“There is nothing you can do,” Cherok said stiffly. “My suggestion would be to keep your legs closed in the immediate future so you don’t end up with a third child you can’t afford.”
It was a good thing I was studiously avoiding looking in their direction, otherwise one of them might have seen my smirk when I felt the mana in my mother’s core surge in an unstructured invocation that bolstered her physical prowess. A second later, there came the smack of palm against cheek and Cherok let out a surprised, pain-filled squeal.
It seemed I wasn’t the only one who didn’t like the village teacher.
“Well then,” his mother said, her voice cold, “thank you for the deep insight into my family. Truly, your wisdom is without peer.”
I risked a look over and saw Cherok still staggered back a step, one hand clutching at his face. He straightened up, shot me a nasty glare, and said, “My recommendation is that you wait for your son to get older before he begins his schooling. He is nowhere near ready at this time. Good day, Xilaya.”
And with that, he turned on his heel and stormed off down the street. My mother watched him go, her fists clenched at her side and her nose flaring with each breath. Only after he’d turned the corner did she force herself to relax.
“And good riddance,” she muttered. When she turned to face me, she’d resumed her normal, smiling expression. “Well then, wasn’t that exciting?”
“Mean man,” I said.
“People are complicated,” she told me. “Do you understand?”
“Mean. Pretends not to be.”
My mother paused, gave me a speculative look, and nodded. “Yes, I suppose that’s a good way to put it. There’s nothing to be done about it, though. Why don’t we see about getting this row weeded, and then we can start working on dinner?”
It looked like I’d managed to dodge school for now. With any luck, by the time that particular issue reared its ugly head again, it would be too late to matter.