"Impossible? What's impossible?"

He knew he had made a mistake. The boy had latched on to his slip of the tongue and was looking at him intently. Even with his centuries of experience, with his mind thrown off balance by what he had just felt, no excuse came to mind.

Would he have to kill the boy? It wouldn't be hard given his strength, even with the low energy. He could dispose of the body easily enough. The last few decades of modern police investigation had made him adept at disappearing those his role required vanish without drawing attention, and it would be even easier now with the chaos of the Tolling producing so many holes in records. However, the things the boy seemed to be discovering just might be too valuable to give up. If the people to whom he answered were to detect the loss of potential here, it might become a problem he couldn't make go away so simply. His decision made, he cast about for any reason for his utterance.

"Nothing," he said "I just had a strange thought." It was a very weak ploy, but the unspoken rules of etiquette said that Mitch would accept, even if grudgingly, this answer. They were not friends. Taking his excuses at face value was the polite thing to do.

Unfortunately, the dictates of courtesy did not seem to bind Mitch very much as, not knowing the elderly man in front of him had just barely decided not to snuff out his existence, he stared intently. "You said that right as you put that damned poker in my gut, so I think it has something to do with me; in which case, I have a right to know." The boy's gaze was unyielding. It seemed he would not be willing to let this matter drop.

Telling the truth was out of the question. Excuses would not be enough. If he lied and something gave it away later, the boy would stop trusting him, and he would lose direct access. A portion of the truth then. The smallest possible portion.

"Very well. Your energy has calmed dramatically. The change is more significant for such a short period of time than I have seen before. I was surprised, and I do not understand it, so I spoke without thinking." All true, if not all of the truth. He had not said just how calm Mitch's energy had become, and how that should not be possible without millennia of training. He had not implied anything about his true self and his role here in this seed realm. Had he not been addled earlier this is probably the approach he would have gone with from the start.

"Calmed? So before when you were saying that my energy was chaotic, that's changed?"

"Yes. The flow is much calmer now."

"And that's better right?"

"Yes, calm energy is better."

"What's the difference?"

He felt he needed to answer the boy's question, at least in part. The trick was going to be answering in such a way that he did not affect the boy's path. If he gave him more information than strictly required he could stunt the boy's innovation, which, if what he was thinking ended up being correct, was potentially a loss to everyone in all the planes.

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"Calm energy has many benefits. Among them, it is more easily controlled, and its effects on the body are stronger."

"So, the energy can be controlled... like consciously?"

"With much, much practice: yes."

"How do you do that?"

He looked at the boy cautiously. He couldn't say too much. He hated walking on eggshells like this. Maybe he should kill the boy after all; it was an idle thought but one that was nice to contemplate at the moment.

"Do you know the difference between knowing and understanding?" he asked the boy. He had decided to avoid the issue entirely.

"They're the same thing."

"Wrong. Knowing, knowledge, can be taught: understanding can only be learned."

"That makes no sense."

"They taught you Pythagoras' Theorem in school, yes?" The question was rhetorical, and he did not wait for an answer. "I bet even today you could probably solve that equation and get the right answer: but, do you know why it works, how it describes what it does?"

Mitch looked at him blankly.

He sighed. "Pythagoras understood the formula and what it's describing, so he was able to prove it. You only know the formula, you can use it but not explain it."

Mitch opened his mouth to say something else-

"More than this you will have to figure out on your own. Think. Telling you more would mean that you know, but you will have almost no chance ever to understand."

Mitch looked frustrated like he was about to protest, so he gave the boy a firm look. This was all he would be getting.

Mitch glared back for a moment before sighing and nodding grudgingly.

"So, the energy can be controlled. And calmer energy is better for this."

"Yes."

"And that is all that you will tell me?"

"That is already enough. When you understand these things, perhaps I will tell you more." He paused for a moment and when Mitch did not say anything he said, "You may get dressed. There is no need for me to treat you now. Come back in one week. We must make sure that your energy remains stable."

***

Mitch left Kanshou's shop with a handful of answers and a bag full of new questions. Why do these guru's and people always teach in riddles? Even the bible didn't come out and say things outright, just going with a bunch of parables. Why couldn't there just be a list: do these things and get a golden ticket to the pearly gates?

Knowing something and understanding it is the same thing. That old bonesack was just playing word games. Maybe he didn't actually have any information and rather than just admit it to Mitch he was just spouting platitudes to seem mysterious.

He had gotten a couple bits of valuable information though. Maybe he could make something happen with those. None of it explained the nine-day gap, but when he had gotten to the point of asking about that he almost hadn't wanted the answer. What if it was a portent of doom? It's the age-old question: if you could know the exact date and time of your death... would you want to? The best part of a guillotine is that you can't see the blade fall.

He didn't have the option of stopping and waiting for someone else to figure it out. Patience was death in this case: he would just have to take the risks.

Both frustrated and motivated, he decided to pour the former into the latter and see what he could make happen.

***

He was going to have to give the boy some serious thought. He was going to come back with more questions. If he shut him off, it would be the same as lying. If he told him too much, he would lock the boy's thinking into what he thought to be true instead of Mitch having free reign to figure things out for himself in a new way, and the way the boy was figuring things out was the entire reason he was bothering with him in the first place.

This was going to be a knife's edge walk.