“What do we learn of this chapter?”

It was the third time he asked me this same question today. The first one was straightforward to answer. The chapter versed a new learner on the shallow properties of Ink. Namely, its ability to permanently store things on skin, and its qualities to bring back the object. Those were things I already knew, so I found it easy to answer.

The second time, we had just read about Inkers and their craft. They use a sharpened tool to impregnate the skin with Ink. There’s no magic in it, just our skin reacting to Ink’s active principles and absorbing the pigments. Novice Inkers learn to accurately represent the reality in drawings, limiting themselves to portraying objects to perfection. Advanced practitioners introduce their imagination and conviction to introduce changes to the tattoos.

My answer to that second chapter seemed to please him. That it is dangerous to alter the reality you are trying to capture. That newcomers to the craft should limit themselves to easy tasks. That whatever magical properties Ink had, they were inherent of that Ink, not of the Inker.

However, now I was faced with a much harder dilemma. The chapter introduced the concept of self-Inking. Again, the topic by itself was something I already knew, but it raised some issues and implications that I had never considered. You can fix an image of an object on your mind, and then project it to your skin, reducing the amount of time an Inker would spend carefully drawing to merely seconds. However, your mental image had to be perfect, any deficiency, any unaccounted detail, any superfluous addition, and both the object and the tattoo would be destroyed.

I spent a whole minute thinking and meditating an appropriate answer. “That unless one is an Inker, one should refrain from self-Inking.” My reply was short but full of meaning. I patiently waited as Spare evaluated it.

“Is that so?” It was neither a yes nor a no, but his smile revealed satisfaction. “If ordering the Ink to stick to your skin is enough, what prevents others from using your Ink?”

That was something the book didn’t cover, but if he asked it, then that meant I should be able to deduce it. “Extrapolating from Inkers…” I adventured, “direct contact with Ink?”

“If I touched your ankle, would I be able to use it?”

I hesitated. “Ink in its original form?” I finally amended my previous phrase, meaning that only Ink in liquid state could be ordered around. If it was already part of a drawing, then commanding it would fail. He nodded.

“Do you need physical contact with the object you want to draw?”

“Yes, but that is not enough.” I looked back at what I just learned. “The object must be unbound, and no one else can be touching it during the process.”

He scrambled through all the papers over the table, looking for something. His hands finally landed on a blank sheet, which he slid to me. Out of nowhere, although I knew it was from under his skin, he made a flask and a fountain pen appear.

“What did I just do?” He asked while neatly arranging all the tools in front of me.

“You invoked the Ink.” I answered without thinking. A split second after saying it, I realized the book never used this expression; it usually resorted to materializing.

“Invoke… the Ink?” he squinted both eyes while he slowly pronounced those words. “Where did you learn that expression?”

“My mother used to say it; she found it poetic. And…” I didn’t know if it was appropriate to say it, but I still went ahead, “I find it a way to honour her.” I had been fooling myself, telling me I just liked it better than the others, but that was a lie. I missed her, and it helped me cope with the pain.

His face wrinkled for a moment, but he didn’t pursue the matter any further. "Could you invoke my Ink as I just did?"

"No, those objects are bound to you. The Ink is already tattooed. Only the rightful owner of them, that is, the person whose skill has the drawing, can command it."

"Good". Without any pause, he pointed to the paper. “Pick an object, any, and draw it on the paper with that Ink.”

If my past self knew I would be using Ink to draw on a paper, he would have slapped me. Do you know how many doors those drops of Ink would open? But it was not my Ink, nor was it my place to discuss how we used it.

I had to pick an object, not too big nor too complex. If I had any personal belongings, a ring, necklace, or wristband, I could have used that. But it wasn’t the case. I scanned through the room, looking for anything suitable, but found nothing.

“Here, take this.” He took one ring out of his right hand and offered it to me.

“Is it bound?” I asked while taking it in my hand. I spun it a few times, turned it upside down, examined its carved surface, appreciated its polished and smooth interior, and felt the cold of the metal against my skin.

“It is not.” He confirmed. “Do you think having a clear image of the object is all you need?” He went back to his usual questioning self.

“Mmh,” I muttered. “That’s something I wanted to ask. How am I supposed to draw the coldness of the metal?” I played with the ring and loosely placed it on my middle finger.

“Indeed, how are you supposed to do it?” He smirked, refusing to answer me.

I might have studied under my mother, learned about life, passed through more hardships than any of the nobles might ever encounter, but I was still a boy. I was susceptible and exhausted, still emotionally broken from the last days, and I grew tired of the relentless interrogation. “How am I supposed to know!” I burst out, incapable of holding back my irritation.

Contrary to my expectations, he didn’t shout back at me. His eyebrows moved in a gesture that could either be a slight frown or the result of my unexpected answer. Without losing his smile, he added, “why do you think I’m asking you all these questions?”

To be honest, I didn’t know. My mother’s approach was much more intimate, filled with love and patience. She would memorize with me, help me reason the complex answers, encourage me to look for my own explanations, provide clues whenever I needed them. Spare, however, just pushed my intellect. Scratched for answers buried deep inside my brain.

This time, however, he didn’t wait for my response. “To force you out of your comfort zone. I’m not looking for correct answers, I’m not even looking for coherent answers.” He stared profusely at me. “I’ll ask again, how can you draw the coldness of metal?”

I took a deep breath, and then another. I counted to ten, rearranging my thoughts and calming myself. “I can’t.” I assertively answered.

“Exactly! You can’t. But, if I took that ring away, could you still remember how it felt?” I nodded; that was easy. “Keep that sensation strongly prevalent in your mind. Like a word on the tip of your tongue. Feel it as you draw the ring.”

I took his advice to heart and dipped the fountain pen on the Ink. It was my first time using one, but I still waited for all the surplus of Ink to fall. Not because I knew it would leave spots on the paper, but because it annoyed me that some would be wasted. My heartbeat was rising to the point that I could feel my pulse on the tip of my finger.

It’s a sensation I can’t quite explain. When the Ink touched the paper, my hand started moving on its own. I inhaled through my nose, making my chest bloat. My eyes opened like oranges. I knew where the Ink wanted to go. My hand was moving to its tune.

A few transparent drops of water tarnished the paper just below my head. Am I crying? I refrained from rubbing my cheekbones, afraid it would break my concentration. The Ink wanted to leave its mark on the paper, but it sometimes chose to do so in overly artistic ways. It tried to flourish the carvings, adding dramatic turns and spirals here and there.

My job is to guide the quill, like a mother relentlessly admonishing her child who gets constantly distracted by butterflies and flies. Feel the coldness. I reminded myself. Transmit your feelings to the Ink. I felt as a potent force pulled my soul and poured its contents on the paper.

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“It’s…” I breathed with difficulty, “finished.” I contemplated the product of my efforts, the ring on my finger was quite accurately displayed on the paper. It is... too perfect; I could clearly see it. Its shape was a bit off, too round to be real, it failed to capture the imperfections in the original. I could also feel it was wrong at a more profound level. It’s heavier than the one on my finger, shinier even.

“You feel it, right?” He didn’t congratulate me for my work nor point out any of those errors. Instead, being true to his method, he let me draw my own conclusions. I nodded; the painting was screaming at me, shouting to me everything that was amiss with it.

“How?” I managed to articulate. Seeing his puzzled face, I desperately looked for more words. “I mean, the Ink, ah, my hand…”

His head bounced froth and back one time, his eyelids were closed in understanding. “Fascinating, isn’t it?” It seemed he wouldn’t say anything else, that he’d leave me with the question unanswered, but he kept talking. “That, I’m afraid, is beyond the scope of The way of the Ink. It will have to wait.” I felt a bit disgruntled; after all, I thought I would get an answer. However, I understood that there were things I couldn’t comprehend just yet.

“Why is it that you are still holding the ring if you draw it?” He broke the silence by asking me yet another question.

“I haven’t drawn it on my skin, any skin for that matter, so I suppose that invalidates its magical properties to bind the object.”

“Why would I make you do it on a paper, then?”

“For practice?” I half-asked, half-asserted. “If I did on real flesh, I might destroy the object, or worse, permanently damage the tissue.”

“Then you understand that until you have my permission, you won’t draw on your skin.” It wasn’t a question; he wasn’t asking for my opinion. He was simply stating a truth, a universal law, one I had to obey at all costs. I nodded.

“Good. You will spend the following weeks reading with me in the morning and then practising your drawing skills by yourself in the afternoon.” He fixed his eyes on me, checking for any signs of defiance. Of course, I didn’t even entertain the idea of replying, so he found nothing. “Until that ring is perfectly represented, you shall not draw anything else.”

I am not easily demoralized, my life up until that moment a living proof of it. Yet, hearing that you will be doing the exact same thing for weeks to come, was challenging even to me. I went into it assuming that it would rapidly get repetitive, and even that I would get bored rather quickly. Somehow, however, that never came to be. The book hid plenty of remarks, of knowledge and answers to questions I didn't even know I had. Even drawing the same ring was a different experience every time. And, as much as I kept on drawing, at no point did I tame the feeling of Ink guiding me, of that unknown force telling me what it wanted to do.

Not everything was good, though. While the day passed fast, occupied with the book and the drawings, the nights were far from peaceful. I still cried before going to bed. I dreamed of her, of her lessons, of our time together. I had nightmares where I saw her die, from exhaustion, in the hands of our pursuers, killed by masked and unnamed enemies. As painful as it was, Spare was right, every passing night it was better, my memory of her settling on the happy moments.

With Spare, I learned about the different tools Inkers use. I studied the subtle art of shades. I understood the consequences a poor drawing could have on the object. For instance, if my first ring had been drawn on anybody’s skin and then invoked, it wouldn’t be much more helpful than a lump of metal. Any property it originally had would be lost. Not only that, but it would be a burden to the wearer. It could irritate their skin; even in a worst-case scenario, it could end up corrupting their skin. There have been documented cases of people who’ve lost an extremity from Ink-induced complications.

The questions bulked on my mind. What can an Inker do to improve an object? Can alive beings also be tattooed? If I restore an object Inked by a professional, would I be able to keep its quality? Should I always restore a drawing with Ink of the same rarity? Can things be compressed into smaller paintings? I couldn’t ask all of them, as some might have been considered too dangerous for my own good. Others I did ask, but all I got were more questions. Some I would discover in the coming years, he said. Others are still a mystery to mankind.

Every afternoon and until well entered the night, or what I thought was the night, I put into practice everything I learned that day. My rings started to get uglier; they no longer captured a surreal perfection and instead reflected the cruelty of time, the minor defects its creator unknowingly introduced. First, I got its touch right, smooth inside yet textured and rough outside. I managed to make its carvings unsavoury, devoid of fake beauty. Then, I got its weight right. For quite some time, I had trouble with the light; sometimes, it shined at impossible angles, and other times it seemed it was made out of plastic instead of metal. It took me a whole month to produce the ring I had in front of me.

“This is it!” I triumphantly announced. There was no one to hear it, though, as Spare was out. Lately, he had been going in and out of our little cache. Some days he returned with food, others with provisions for my practices, and others… he just returned with a dark, straight and solemn face.

I itched to ask, but I knew it was not my place. I was his pupil, not his colleague or friend. As much as there were questions I could not know the answer to, there were also mysteries that had to be kept secret.

That said, on that day, after having achieved what I consider was a major success, I couldn’t just patiently wait for his return; I was full of excitement, bursting with desire to show my artwork and proceed to the next one. I knew it was perfect; the Ink told me so. So was my excitement, that I had to make a conscious effort to stay inside our hiding place, stopping halfway to the hidden mechanism that would have freed me.

Should I exercise? I needed some outlet for all the excitement, and it had already been a whole month of healthy eating. I was young and full of energy, and I had once, before we had to escape, been in a decent shape. Getting rid of all my clothes, I jogged in place, raising my knees and forming 45 degrees angles. It was not even 5 minutes after I started that my hands already felt numb. My forehead was all sweaty, and my long and untamed hair stuck to my dripping back. All my enthusiasm was gone in a matter of seconds. I should have guessed as much... I was still running, or trying to, but my eyes wandered off to the table and the pile of books.

In case it’s not evident, I stopped my futile efforts and surrendered to my curiosity. I couldn’t shower myself, as I didn’t have access to such amounts of water, so I limited myself to washing my hands and making sure they were clean and dry. I wasn’t supposed to read those books, so I had to be clever about it.

I took the one on top of the pile, ‘Ink Formations’. Of those two words, I only understood one, and of course, the whole meaning and subject of the tome were wholly lost on me. Still, I took the book, not frightened by the unknown, and skimmed through its pages. I was standing next to the table, bewildered by the strange illustrations that filled every single page, ready to place it exactly as it was at the minimum signal that Spare was coming back.

Those illustrations composed of circles, oddly symmetrical shapes, primitive drawings, and labyrinths of lines were like nothing I had ever seen. Each of them came annotated with a string of strange words I could not read, sticks with rounded endings that formed incomprehensible glyphs. No matter how many of them I found nor how long I stared at them, I was blind to their meaning.

And, even though I was utterly clueless, something in them resonated inside me. My hand, almost as if possessed by some external force, involuntarily approached the glyphs. I was semi-conscious of what was happening. I knew my finger extended. I could tell it wanted to touch those strange letters. And it did. My fingertip caressed the Ink, and the Ink hugged me back. It kissed my hand, and a tickling sensation marched through my arm right to my head.

It happened so fast. An external being, some kind of energy out of my comprehension, forced itself inside my mind, violating my very own identity and self. My body was shaking as an overflowing river of words was flooding my brain. I could understand none of it, yet somehow it all managed to leave a sordid presence in a recondite corner of my being. It tried to pull something out of me. It was similar to drawing, where the Ink wanted me to do things, yet exponentially more brutal. Unlike drawing, I could not guide it, I barely managed to stay conscious, trying to drive it away from me.

If I was there for five seconds or a whole hour, I wouldn't know. Time passed slowly while immersed in a nightmare with seemingly no end. Tarar, Tarar, Tarar, I kept on mentally repeating my name in an effort not to lose myself. And perhaps it worked, because the same way it came, it suddenly stopped. The itching sensation, the presence on my mind, undid its path and went back inside the book.

For a brief moment, probably not even a second, I was standing stunned, immobile. The book slowly escaped my grasp, and I think my natural instinct of preservation, my fear of Spare’s reprisals, awakened me. I firmly tightened my grip, and in a quick movement, returned the book to its place. My eyes were trembling with fear; I couldn’t even have the book in my sight. My stomach revolted as I had to look one more time to make sure it was exactly where I found it. I retched as the memories of the recent mental rape came back but managed to keep all the food inside me. Any trace of my happiness and proudness was gone after this event.

Once Spare returned, I had to use all my strength to pretend nothing happened in the previous hours. He might have suspected something, I’ve never known for sure, but he didn’t say anything.

“You are ready for the next step.” He nodded to himself while carefully examining my drawing. “Bind this ring to your skin.”

I looked at him with expectation, glad I could finally do the real thing. And I was about to accept it, I was ecstatic to try it, I... remembered the sensation of Ink invading my mind. I hesitated, my face decomposing into an ugly expression, or so I guessed from his next question.

“Are you feeling unwell?”

I doubted, should I be honest with him? Maybe it would have been the wisest decision, but I opted for a white lie. “Today has been full of emotions; I’m afraid it will negatively affect my performance.”

He raised an eyebrow and opened both eyes. “That’s a wise choice. An Inker has to recognize his emotional state. However,” his voice turned serious, “a more experienced Inker must learn to control his feelings and separate them from his work.”

“Yes.” I closed my eyelids and dropped my head. I was tired, and those glyphs still revolved around my head, mocking me with strange sounds.

“Go rest. Tomorrow morning I’ll supervise your first real Inking.”