Get It in Writing
Flash fiction, 900 words. For Iron Age Media Sept. 20 prompt, "The Protégé."
The old man pointed with a wishbone. It was grisly, gristly, thin as a spider’s thread. The skin of his hand similarly resembled that creature’s web, translucent and shivering. Lim watched, fascinated as a bug.
“Sorn. Mari. Lim” – the old man looked upon the boy and smiled with graveyard teeth. “And this one is ...”
“Ek,” said Lim promptly. It didn’t do to disappoint the old man. Such was bad enough when he was in a foul mood. It was a betrayal when the old man was feeling generous.
Lim stared down at the hundred little squares, each bearing a symbol. When first he’d started his lessons, he’d thought them paper. Now he knew better.
“You know Ek. That’s the beginning of wisdom.”
Lim was never sure whether the old man was being earnest or sarcastic. Maybe it didn’t matter.
The old man had decided to teach Lim because of his name. He’d reckoned that Lim’s mother – whoever, wherever, she was – had been an adept. Lim didn’t have the heart to tell him that Lim-Am was a brand of rouge. A large advertisement for it stood the test of time and grime in clear view of the flophouse where Lim’s mother had abandoned him. Lim didn’t need arcane powers to guess how he’d come by his name.
Lim’s finger brushed a square. The old man slapped it away, his good humor fraying.
“Don’t touch them. Bone and rot alone may touch them, and bone and rot you’d be.”
The old man had a point. Lim could see the chicken bone degrading quickly under the strain of the magic. The old barrel table was turning into flotsam.
“I’d have to find a new apprentice,” the old man grumped.
That might suit Lim. Magic seemed like a lot of trouble. And judging from the old man’s appearance, profitless. But he was afraid of the old man. And he was curious.
The old man pointed and repeated. Two weeks of this had become two months. Lim knew so few of the symbols, after so much time. But the old man seemed satisfied with his progress.
Lim didn’t know when next the old man would be of a sun-speckled mind, so he dared to interrupt with the question that burned in his brain the same way the symbols burned behind his eyes when he closed them.
“Master, what is this good for?”
The old man looked up, his smoke-smudged brow crinkling. “I’ve told you already, plenty of times.”
“To learn magic,” the boy said. “To become an adept.”
The old man gave a curt nod.
“But when I’ve learned magic,” continued Lim bravely, “what will it be good for? What’s an adept for?”
Lim fretted his question would draw wrath, but the old man seemed pleased. He gave his apprentice an uncanny smile. In that moment, the symbols shivered.
“Will I know secrets? Will I fly? Will I turn lead to gold? Will I …” Lim had exhausted all stories.
“Is that what you would use it for, Lim?” asked the old man gently.
Lim looked around him. They were in a dive. It was November but the fire was not lit. The old man hadn’t asked for ale and his pockets were silent of jingle. The people around them were frayed, weary, ragged, skittish. Lim didn’t know how else people might look. He’d never crossed the district gate’s threshold. He’d heard the sky was blue, but he knew it only as a yellow-grey, and damp ever-present. Hunger gnawed like a rat, but he was used to vermin.
Any of those things, Lim wanted to scream. A feast, if only for one night! If these squares could just give me a leg of mutton all mine, I’d count these two months well spent.
“I think I’d like to see something beautiful,” Lim whispered, avoiding the old man’s overbright gaze.
“Not the most obvious answer, but a good one,” the old man murmured. “See? You’ve learned Ek.”
“When will I be an adept?”
“When you learn all of them, each one, and let them flow into you.”
“If Ek teaches me to be wise, did it teach you the same?”
“Naturally,” said the old man, peevishly. They’d soon reach the end of the accustomed three hours. Lim needed to find work, to earn a scrap to nibble in his lice-infested nest when night fell.
“Then why are you …” began Lim bitterly, but the old man guessed the rest.
“Because I have learned Ek and Els and all the others. Because I count them more highly than nice robes and good food and a hat that keeps off the rain. Because they are robes and feast. They protect me from the rain.” The old man’s eyes danced as he fiddled with his street-pummeled hat. “Have you ever seen me soaked, eh, Lim?”
Lim admitted he hadn’t.
“You cannot believe me until you understand, and you cannot understand until you believe me,” sighed the old man heavily. “If that day comes, you will be an adept. If not, by that time you’ll be big enough to earn a man’s wages and there will be nothing else for us to say to each other.”
He stopped speaking and began to chant again, each symbol touched by the wishbone. It dribbled away until at the third hour, it vanished. The old man walked into the evening.
Lim sat at the degrading barrel, wondering where the old man always got those chickens.
I really enjoyed this story, thanks a lot.