“Did that first room have something to do with birth?”
Huan smiled and again shared a look with the woman to his right. “Of course, young William, in the beginning it is always dark. Birth is the beginning of us all and being what we are we all must suffer the loss and awakening of birth a second time. Birth is a cruel and painful thing, yes, but necessary.”
William thought back to his transformations in his valley. It was always painful but the joys of his changing, running with his pack, the hunt, the smell of a fresh kill were joys that he would gladly go through a thousand rebirths to experience.
“So, this whole place is just to put me through a psychological trial of being born?”
“Not at all, William.”
He looked over at the old woman sitting to the far right of the six seated in front of him. She had a kindly motherly face, and she was smiling at him.
“William, my name is Eustace Browning. Each room was a separate test. The world is full of distractions that we must overcome, some more deadly than others. Only when we cut through the noise can we hear the message.”
William remembered that room. The noise had made him deaf. He hadn’t thought about it but now he was shocked to realize that he was in fact hearing just fine. He lifted his hand to the side of his face. He felt from his neck all the way up to his ear. There was no blood. Whatever had happened to him must have been in his mind.
“You must never think that, William.” Eustace’s clear green eyes had hardened, and she seemed to be looking straight into his heart. “The trial you experienced, your journey that led you to this chamber was real. Every part of it was real and your life was in danger. With every new room came a new challenge, had you failed you would have died.”
“So, you would have people like me who come here for help, you would have us die for nothing more than a series of tests? What that hell kind of place is this?” He felt the werewolf standing behind him move.
Huan lifted his right hand to show his palm. The presence of the werewolf subsided as William guessed that it had stepped back against the wall.
“This is the mountain. We are no less cruel than nature herself. We have to be strong. The whole can only be strong if all of its parts are strong. The weak link will break the chain,” Huan said.
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“We are talking about people’s lives, not Confucius teachings.”
“That’s why you left your parents and lived on your own in the forest, isn’t it?”
William shifted his attention to the beautiful woman who had spoken. Her dark eyes were looking through him. He felt like such a child in front of these people.
“If other people meant so much to you, why did you abandon them?”
Williams stared hard at her and the once familiar anger rose in his gut. “I didn’t abandon anyone.”
“And yet you stand there and demand to know our motivations for things that you don’t know and can’t understand yet, but you will. Did those shadows you encountered on the Whyte Plain show you or Aceso any mercy? Do you think they cared about your life?”
“You mean those things in that weird dream?”
“You still have so much to learn. The temptations to lose ourselves are always with us. We must always guard against the lure of oblivion and remember who we are. You lapsed in this and it almost cost you your life. If Aceso hadn’t risked hers to save your sorry ass you wouldn’t be here at all.” The brown woman’s eyes were hard and uncompromising as she gazed at him.
He lowered his eyes from her and nodded his head. He had almost been killed. The thing that still made him so disappointed in himself was that he had been happy to let it happen. He had even fought Aceso to stay there. The shame and guilt of his actions that night came crushing down on him. Who was he to question the rules and tests that these people had chosen to put in front of him? By all rights he should be dead already.
“But you’re not dead, not yet.”
William raised his eyes to meet hers once more. Her eyes had softened and she spoke to him in a much gentler tone. “My name is Ansuya Das. You passed your test and you haven’t succumbed to that temptation again. That test, for us, was probably the most telling about your character. I trust you will not forget what you have learned anytime soon.”
“The fourth and final test was the most difficult and for very good reason.”
William turned to the old man on the far-left side of the group. He spoke with an English accent. William shook his head. “Wait a minute, From the surrounding five story buildings around this place I calculated that this place must be about six floors high. The top floor had light burning in the window. I could see it from the street.”
The old Englishman smiled at William’s confusion. “Yes, I have no doubt that you did. This building does look like it should have six floors from the outside. However, the tower changes and alters itself for each person or wolf that enters into it. The trials teach the same lessons, but how those individuals are tested can be very different.”
William thought about his climb up this strange tower. Of all the rooms he had passed through the one that would probably haunt him the most was the one that was right under his feet. “I thought I was going to die.”
“I know you probably thought that at one point, but did you? No. William, even with your limited knowledge of the world around you, and the world you have found yourself to be a part of, how far are you willing to go? How far are you willing to stretch yourself for nothing more substantial than faith?”