The First Lesson

Mortis was very busy indeed. He'd been part way through counting all the windows in the house when someone managed to throw a rock at him from the ground floor. They were odd little things, tittering to each other before shouting outrageous fantasies for all the world to hear. He didn’t care how large their friends were, he didn’t need strangers trampling the already muddy garden. If they really wanted to talk to him, they could have rang the door like decent folks instead of wasting his time.

The kind lady who brought him here months ago said he had an important job to do: sort things. He could see why. Old Father, he didn’t know what else to call the man who lived here, didn’t do much of anything at all. He was too weak to do much other than stare at the fire with the rest of the house at his back.

Mortis had sorted all the linens. Every pot and pan, the entire pantry, anything in the garden he could move. There wasn’t much else to sort, so he figured his only other job was to make sure things stayed sorted and the house was in order. Unfortunately, his concentration broken by unwelcome visitors, he’d forgotten how many windows he had checked already. There was no other choice but to start again.

With a sigh, he marched down the moth-eaten steps to the front door. New carpets would arrive any day now. Old Father had asked what he wanted after arriving, and the only thing he could think of was to fix the massive holes in the flooring. Try as he might, he always ended up stepping in them in the middle of the night, old carpet glue following him to the bathroom on the soles of his feet. It was an ugly color too, moss green and lumpy, with bits of sponge poking out around the frayed edges. The only thing that could have caused it was an animal but, as far as he knew, he was the only living thing in the house. Old Father only partially counted.

In order to keep things fun, he took a sharp left at the stairs instead of a right. He started where he usually ended, by tugging the knobs of each door to see if locked doors were still locked and vice versa. He twisted the handle of the cellar door like many times before, only for the knob to fall off into his hands.

Broken.

Another thing to add to the list of presents Old Father promised to buy him. The geezer was wealthy and intent on making Mortis’s life as comfortable as possible. For Mortis, doors that did proper door things were more comfortable than toys or games. Besides, there was no one here to play them with, and a hearty library when he ran out of things to check on.

He tried putting the doorknob back where he found it. On the other side there was a metal clunk that grew softer and further away. The knob teetered, unsteady in the wood before falling at his feet.

A wide black hole stared back at him. The feeling of being pricked by the sun crawled up his arms, uncomfortable in his own body to a degree that made him want to claw at his skin. The smell of wet iron and ocean spray trickled out along with the unmistakable feeling he was being watched from the other side of the door. He leaned in closer; it sounded like something was moving below the steps.

“What did you do?” Old Father swiftly picked the knob up off the floor and shoved it back in the socket of the door. A clang grew louder, rushing up the steps until something clicked back into place. As soon as the grizzled hand let go of the handle, the doorknob stayed, good as new. Too new, like it had been the day it was put in.

“I wanted to see if it was still locked.” Mortis could never gauge the old man’s moods. Unable to see more than a dark hood and the shadow of a mouth, it always seemed like he was one wrong word away from getting scolded. However, Old Father smiled, hunching over to begin his slow retreat back to the study.

“It’s a good thing you did,” Old Father said. “That is a door that should always be locked. Keep people out of the cellar, and the world will stay as it always was.”

For a moment, Mortis stood a little taller. It wasn’t everyday Old Father talked in a way that sounded like pride in the job Mortis had been doing. However, as the events played back in his head, he came to the conclusion it should have been impossible for anything in the castle to fall into disrepair.

“If you can fix things whenever you want, why don’t you?” Mortis chased after him, then slowed to the agonizing pace his mentor had adopted. He knew garden snails that had more motivation than the old man.

Old Father puffed and wheezed like a steam engine as he neared his favorite chair. Each joint and bone cracked as he settled back into a shape that was half consumed by rotted stuffing. The fire in front of him roared.

“You see those sparks?” Old Father grabbed a poker and shoved it into the flames. Tiny spits of light, like fireflies, crawled up the soot-covered chimney. “Every time we do things that change the flame, there’s a risk one of those sparks could make it out of the fireplace and burn something that shouldn’t be burned. The more fuel we add, the harder it is to control. It is best for anything with immeasurable power to stay within boundaries outside of reality.” There was safety, predictability in leaving things as they were. Spending his days watching the fire continue to roar as it had for decades was the best way to keep everyone safe.

“That’s what the stones are for,” Mortis said.

“We are the stones,” Old Father said. “At least, one day you will be. Stone cannot be unpredictable. It must contain anything that threatens to rage out of control. That is why you should make the most of your freedom and live, not spend your days dusting windowsills.”

“I like dusting,” Mortis said glumly. “I just wish it would stay dusted. It would if you fixed the windows.” That reminded him, his window had a hole in it now. Part of him wondered if the reason everything was falling apart in the manor was because Old Father couldn’t see for himself how yucky everything had gotten. Or perhaps the disrepair had driven him into the only part of the house that seemed relatively intact. “What about the lady? Is she allowed to fix things?”

“I’m sure she wishes she could,” Old Father laughed. “Unfortunately, I don’t think death fixes much of anything, try as it might.” All things ended. Safe and predictable, death was. He envied her power but not her station. One too many times she’d called upon him to enforce her rulings. Denial was a powerful tool. “The only thing she can do is collect dead things and wait for living things to become dead things. If she did anything other than that, sparks would fly, so to speak.”

“She took the others,” he said. On the ship, they only had each other, even if everyone didn’t get along. They’d praised him for being quiet and scolded him when he didn’t look at whoever was talking. The children of the North Star were the only people he knew now, but it seemed they’d passed when he wasn’t looking.

“That’s odd,” Old Father said. “Did she say where she took them?”

“No. Why?”

“They’re still alive.”

***

A strange thing took place within the first week of school. Klava couldn’t quite put her finger on it. It was as if time slowed to a crawl in the periods when the instructors were present. Their lectures would be constantly interrupted to ask the class a question. Sometimes, it was in reference to something said moments prior. Other times, it was to gauge interest in what was to come.

No one raised their hand.

Klava felt the seconds tick by, each one longer than the last. The teacher would ask again, and again there would be silence. So Klava would raise her hand, and like clockwork the lecture would unpause. For a few drowsy minutes, class would continue with people passing notes or doodling in their books. Then another question would come up and time would grind to a halt.

All they had to do was participate, but they refused. By the third day, Klava gave up on anyone humoring their teachers enough to get them out on time. All those precious seconds ate away from potentially getting let out early, or heaven forbid, time at the end of class to do what they wanted. Instead, Klava felt like an ox roped to a cart pulling dead weight just to keep the wheels of time turning.

Then, on Friday, when she raised her hand, disaster struck.

“Does anyone else know the answer?”

Klava turned toward her class. It was easy. They didn’t even have to give the right answer, someone just had to say something. Instead they glared at her. As if getting ignored was by her choice. She’d keep her hand in her lap the whole time if everyone shared the burden of it. A whole five minutes wasted on a lecture about how everyone needed to be paying attention. Had she any authority, she would have shaken the older witch down.

They don’t care. Let them not care. Just keep teaching.

Instead, she was rolled over by the cart, left to drag helplessly behind. Flailing and bored out of her mind. Well, if they were going to force her to sit there in silence, she might as well get her homework for the class prior out of the way. At least then she could make up for lost time by not having to think about school at the end of the day.

“Klava, are you paying attention?”

“Yes, ma'am.” Klava paused her writing to look up.

“Then what did I just say?”

“You said that magic is the manifestation of our love of nature, and that love is susceptible to corruption. Which is why we shouldn’t drink things like alcohol.” What utter ridiculousness, punished for answering too much in class and now too little. There was just no winning.

“That is correct,” she said, as if Klava had fed her a lemon.

The least she could do was look pleased about getting the right answer. If she was hoping to use Klava as an example of someone slacking off, well, she shouldn’t have given Klava the textbook the first day of class. At the rate they were going, they’d only make it to the third chapter by the end of the semester.

“Does anyone have any questions?”

Only one: Why did it seem like no matter what she said, her classmates despised her? She was only doing what was asked of her. Doubting her teacher would have a real answer, she kept her hand in her lap.