Aldric Fenn's Arc

Chapter 2 of 3

The knock came before dawn. Aldric dragged himself to the door and opened it. A girl stood there, thin and mud-splashed, a satchel of books hugged to her chest. The sprite perched on her shoulder, grinning. "Brought you your pupil, bark man," it said. "Found her sleeping in that old timber schoolhouse in the woods, copying letters by candle stub. Hungry for lore, this one." The girl said nothing. She only stared at his antlers and his cracking neck. "Come in," Aldric said. His voice rasped. He needed to know one thing fast. Not whether she was clever. Whether her mind could hold his kind of knowledge without breaking. Many bright people learned facts. Few could carry the deep grammar of his craft. He had no gentle way to test it. So he chose the hard way. He pulled a weathered stone tablet from beneath a heap of cloth. Riddle-marks scored its face, cut deep by hands long dead. "Read this aloud," he said. "Then tell me what it wants." The girl set down her satchel. She traced the grooves with one finger. Her lips moved. The sprite went quiet for once. The tablet did not speak plainly. Its riddles bit back at weak minds. Aldric had watched a grown scholar weep at it years ago, unable to hold the shape of the words. He waited. His own thoughts felt slippery this morning. A word for the stone slid away from him, and he did not chase it. The girl frowned. She read the first lines, then stopped. "These aren't separate riddles," she said. "Each answer is the next riddle's first word. It's a chain." She spoke faster now. "The last line asks for the first answer again. It loops." She looked up. "Whoever cut this wanted a reader who could hold the whole thing in her head at once." Aldric's chest tightened. That was it exactly. Not the answers. The holding. Most people read line by line and lost the thread. She had seen the shape. He steadied himself against the table. "Yes," he said. "You can hold it." His relief was so sharp it frightened him. The sprite hopped onto the tablet. "So she passes? Good. Then you teach her, and I'll want my story." It rubbed its small hands together. Aldric barely heard it. He was already reaching for a glass bottle on the shelf, the one holding faerie tears that slowed the bark. There was little left. His mind was worthy of pouring now, and he had found the vessel. But a new fear pressed in. He had months of teaching to give her. He glanced at his cracking knuckles, then at the bottle. He did not have months. He had days, and one small bottle of borrowed time. "Sit," he told the girl. "We start now. There is no slow way left."