#31 - Am I Already Broken?

Damn and Scorch and Burn that woman! I’m so tired I can hardly pen this, my hand would be shaking with rage except I’m so… oh.  

Ahrimaz set the pen down and looked down at his hands, turned them over, stared at the backs of them.  They were still.  Not shaking with fear or rage, or anything else, though he could have sworn he was enraged enough to be quivering.

Rutaçyen had asked him, merely, to keep up with her. She’d even hummed to herself as she took him through the dry boulder field, up the wall, down the wall, at speed,  another circuit of the salle though this time she climbed the ladder wall and walked along the top of the framework that held the pells.  Walked? Scorch, she’d dance along the beam as wide as her foot.  His feet were wider and hung over the beam on either side and he found himself tensing as he stepped out to follow her.  “Breathe,” she’d said.  “Relax.  If you fall the floor is padded and you know how to fall without hurting yourself.”

The rage had come on him then, red falling down over his eyes and when he came to himself found that in their running around, somehow, the cold winter river had been let into the room and she was on the other side of it.  He’d apparently plunged in after her because the icy shock of water had brought him to himself and he was soaked through.  How had she gotten across completely dry?

He picked up his pen once more.

There’s some of that. Again. ‘Sword of Ink’ stuff.  Too tired to wield a pen badly.  I stopped and stood there like a fool, dripping and she’d risen and – jumped? Floated? Bounced? Walked on Scorching water? – and crossed to stand next to me.

“Drive the water out of your clothes,” she’d said and I’d tried to steam myself dry by calling fire but she cut me off.  “No.  You’ve been trained that way.  It hurts you.  Be calm, sit,” she folded down in front of me as if she had not a care in the world that I should attack her.  By all evidence she DIDN’T care if I attacked her… so I sat down too.

“Like the fountain you accepted from Pelahir,” she said.

“He TOLD you that?” I snapped at her, feeling sick in my guts that more people knew I was by nature a witch.

“Of course he did.  I’m his teacher too.”

“And Yolend.”

“Of course.  I wouldn’t let three of the best dozen warriors  in Inné go slack now, would I?”

“I don’t know.  I don’t know you except as my horrid ghost mother.”

“Indeed.  Yes, Pel and Yolend and your other self were three of the best.  There’s another eight or nine in my classes that might one day reach their potential.  Things have changed quite a bit since Ahrimaz insisted that we all learn Imaryan techniques.”

I just snarled at her, set my cupped hands in my lap and… stared.  I didn’t know how to do this.  “How do I ask HER to move the water?”

She smiled at me, the bitch.  “The answer lies in your question.  You don’t command or demand.  You ask.”

The idea made me ill.  I sat, for too long in wet clothes fighting with myself.  I’m used to demanding, to commanding.  But it makes sense, I suppose, that one really shouldn’t try and command a God.  Scorching hells, one doesn’t even try and command a demon.  One petitions.  Hmmm.  “I’d have to approach Her like a child approaches and parent and I’m not comfortable with that.”

“Yes.  How about this?  Imagine you have a butterfly upon your hand and wish for more to come to you, do you flail your hands around, jump and yell?”

I snorted.  “Of course not.”

“So… call butterflies into your hands and ask that they take the form of the water in your clothes.”

“That’s just stupid.”

“You can stay wet. Your choice.”

I snorted at her and closed my eyes and pretended I was a little boy in the valley.  Butterflies had once come to me, before the taste of blood on my hands drove all away except the carnivorous ones.  I held my breath then breathed out over my hands and called the drops of water to me.  A sheen of water glistened for a moment, as I cracked my eyelids to see, I was marginally drier.  I clenched my hands and cursed myself.

Rutaçyen caught my clenched hands and shook them, and me.  “Stop that.  You are stopping yourself.  Give yourself praise for having succeeded as much as you did.”

“But I didn’t do it all, or well!  I should be beaten for such a bad attempt!”

“No.  You should not.  It’s why you failed.”

I just don’t understand these people.

She drew her hand along my face, just as mama used to do when I was too young to be trained for war, patted my cheek and said.  “Open up your heart, Ahri.  It’s all right.  You’re safe here in my salle.”

I must have stared at her like a lunatic.  Her face was open her eyes clear and calm, not twisted in terrifying rage.  I’ve never had a teacher who didn’t hate me.  “Breathe.”

She cupped her hands under mine and they… went soft somehow.  Gentle. And the water in my clothes and hair ran to her and my hands like they were scurrying to safety.  “There,” she said.  “Like that.”  She didn’t drop my hands.  When she let go it was as though she still held me, held me firm against the shrieking rage beating in the back of my head.

“I’d… like to be your student,” I stammered, flinched back and waited for her to drop her support of me, waited for the laughter, the betrayal.  I was such a dupe, to actually ask…

“I’d be happy to be your teacher.  I will talk with Limyé about how I can help, as well.”

She rose, as graceful and as silent, bowed to me and left me alone in the salle, the room where I had spent so much of my childhood, being broken and remade into a warrior.  This salle… might not break me. Or I am already broken.  I don’t know.