Child-Rearing (2)
Feeling his father’s large hand settle on his shoulder and over his own, the boy quietly drew the bowstring.
“Humanity’s greatest weapon is the ability to strike from farther away than any other living thing.”
His father spoke softly, stroking the tense boy’s body to soothe him.
“I told you before, didn’t I? The ability to throw things is mankind’s greatest weapon.”
“Yes.”
“Humans took the act of throwing and refined it into shooting. From hurling stones and spears, they moved on to bows, crossbows, and slingshots… They flung massive boulders with catapults to smash castle walls, and eventually developed gunpowder so they could fire cannons.”
His father’s long story rode a low, steady voice into the boy’s ears, easing the tension and trembling of a child who had never held a bow before in his life.
“Distance is power, my son. Numbers and distance. Those two things are humanity’s strongest force. It’s all right. You’re not alone. You have me, so it’s fine if you make a mistake.”
Next, the boy’s father pointed to a creature standing leisurely far off in the distance.
“Well? What do you think?”
“……It’s far.”
“That’s right. It’s far. So far that it can’t touch you. But you, on the other hand, can shoot arrows at it as much as you like.”
The boy looked down at the bow in his hands. The arrow, drawn as far as it would go, quivered at its tip, catching and reflecting the sunlight.
“There’s an invisible thread between you and the target. That thread sways unsteadily with the wind, but the arrow will always travel along it to the end. So all you have to do, my son, is set the end of that thread precisely on the target.”
Sometimes the boy’s father said things no one else could understand. He took sensations others could never grasp and translated them into words for his son.
Of course, they were only the sensations the father himself felt, so not everything reached the boy.
“Feel the wind. Listen to the rustle of the leaves and you’ll know the wind. Do you understand? Don’t overthink it, my son. Everything you need, the forest will teach you.”
The boy released his fingers, and the arrow that had been held in his hand flew far, far away.
Teaching someone else what you know is difficult. It becomes even harder when that knowledge has been established through pure sensation rather than through technical, systematic understanding.
That was why Chester could quickly teach Monia how to make stone tools or start a campfire, yet it took so long to teach her throwing techniques, archery, or how to run along the branches of trees.
It was unavoidable. When Chester’s father taught his son, he passed on knowledge as knowledge and sensation as sensation.
On top of that, Chester had not been able to absorb everything his father taught by feel right away; he had had to re-establish it in his own way, which made teaching it even more difficult.
So when Chester tried to teach a technique, the best he could manage was something like this:
“You snap it like a dry twig breaking, then scrape it the way you do when you’re sliding down a slope. That makes the stone fly like this. Ah, and at that moment you have to adjust on your own to match the surface of the stone.”
That was the decisive reason Monia gave up learning to throw from Chester. Ordinary throwing might have been one thing, but the kind of throwing Chester used—where he freely altered the path of a flying stone—was so complex that his explanations became impenetrable.
How was she supposed to know the exact feel of a dry twig snapping when every twig snapped differently? How was she supposed to scrape with the feel of sliding down a slope when every slope felt different?
And by the time he told her to look at the shape of the stone and “just adjust accordingly,” she even began to suspect he was simply too lazy to explain properly and was brushing her off.
Of course Monia never truly believed Chester was saying those things because he didn’t want to teach her. Their ways of seeing the world were simply that different.
Chester himself often failed to understand a single word when Monia tried to describe various sensations to him. Especially when it came to taste—he was so dull that no one would ever guess he possessed such astonishingly sharp senses in every other regard.
That did not mean Chester was completely incapable of teaching sensory skills. It only meant that Monia could not learn the sensations that were hard for her to grasp; anything she could understand, she could learn.
Just as Monia had failed at throwing yet succeeded with the bow, somewhere in this world there was surely a person who, if taught by Chester, would fail at the bow yet master throwing.
Yes. Exactly like the way Rex was learning to throw from Chester right now, as Monia watched.
“That’s it. Just like that.”
Chester smiled and threw a stone. Rex, who for some time now had been throwing absolutely everything he got his hands on, laughed and threw a stone of his own.
The stone Rex threw flew farther than the one Chester had tossed lightly. Seeing it, Rex clapped his hands in pure delight.
“Oh, that went far, didn’t it?”
When Chester marveled, Rex laughed even more happily, scampering all over Chester’s body and even dancing.
A full month had passed since Rex had come into Chester and Monia’s arms.
Right after birth he had been small enough to fit snugly in both of Chester’s hands, but now he was heavy enough that Monia had to put real effort into lifting him. He did not look that heavy, yet he weighed so much that they had worried for a while. Because Rex was so healthy, though, the worry faded quickly.
As for Rex’s growth, it could be seen in the way he now played at throwing with Chester—he had become far more active than before.
He had always been active. He would cling to Chester and go wherever Chester went, or crawl around bouncing like a little spring, exploring every direction.
But now, a month after birth, Rex could walk properly on two legs, and his range of activity had become terrifyingly wide.
How wide? One ordinary morning they woke up to find him nowhere near the house. After searching the forest for more than two hours they finally discovered him asleep, clinging to the underside of a boulder in the old bear territory.
After watching Rex move with such boundless energy, Chester began teaching him to throw. Not only throwing. He climbed with Rex from tree to tree, made little wooden sticks for him to swing as toys, and took him all through the forest the same way he trained Ant—playing with him the whole way.
Only after being played with that thoroughly would the exhausted Rex settle down and sleep quietly. At the same time, pouring so much time into playing with him meant less time for hunting and other work.
So Chester did what his own father had once done.
Just as his father had taught his son while still completing the hunting he needed to do, Chester turned most of the day’s work into play with Rex and still got everything done.
They played in the water while collecting fish from the traps. They raced to find which animal traps had caught something, running and tumbling through the woods…
Playing with him was work in itself. Chester could endure it, but Monia had pushed herself so hard trying to keep up with Rex’s games that she even came down with a fever. The blessed water cured it quickly.
“Good, Rex. Now let’s try hitting that.”
Chester tossed a stone to Rex, who was clinging to his back with feet that worked like hands. Rex caught it and hurled it toward the spot Chester indicated.
The stone smashed the target Chester had pointed to with perfect accuracy.
“Oh.”
Mildly impressed, Chester smiled again, tossed Rex another stone, and pointed somewhere else. The instant he pointed, Rex snapped the stone in that direction.
“Ah! So close!”
The stone Rex had thrown so quickly skimmed past the target by a hair’s breadth—close enough that Monia felt genuine regret.
“Want to try a bit more?”
“Yeah! Yeah!”
Rex had learned to speak recently. He absolutely refused to say the words “Mama” or “Papa,” yet he answered readily enough when it was something he wanted to do. If you told him to do something he didn’t want to do, he would rather die than reply.
Monia watched in admiration as Chester spun this way and that, rapidly pointing out targets, and as Rex caught every stone Chester threw with near-acrobatic skill and somehow managed to fling it at the target no matter how far his body was tilted.
“They’re playing so well together, aren’t they, Ant?”
Ant nodded as if answering Monia’s question. She stroked his head and gave him a scrap of meat.
While Monia looked after Ant and handled various small chores, Chester had Rex throw stones in every direction until he felt he had a good sense of the boy’s ability. He nodded.
“Rex.”
“?”
“Want to go hunting with Papa from now on?”
At Chester’s words, Rex beamed and nodded so hard it looked as though his head might come off.