First Snow and Donuts
After I declared myself his disciple.
I began, in earnest, to learn everything except magic.
Benjamin's explanation ran as follows.
Magic is divided into two kinds. Type 1 Magic gathers up the formation and manipulation of matter, together with the classical arts of telekinesis, levitation, rotation, and the rest. Type 2 Magic deals in fundamental forces—attraction, repulsion, and their like. And whether it was Type 1 or Type 2, he said, it was still too soon for me to learn either.
The storeroom had by now been remade into my room. The door opened, and Benjamin came in with an armful of every sort of book.
"These are what you'll be learning from here on."
Thud—a thick volume settled onto the desk.
A geometry text.
"The wellspring of Type 1 Magic lies in geometry. You wouldn't be far wrong to say classical magic scholarship has advanced hand in hand with geometry itself."
Thud—
An algebra text.
"You've got to know how to add and subtract."
Thud—
And a children's wordbook—Imperial and Frauvian both.
"If you mean to read books, you've got to learn the language first. Am I wrong?"
Plays, novels, and other literature followed, and volumes of natural philosophy besides, set down one after another with the same heavy thump. Quite literally, the only books missing were those on magic.
I looked at the tower of books stacked on the desk.
"And a grimoire...?"
"A grimoire?"
Benjamin, absorbed in unloading the pile, poked his head out from behind it—and snorted.
"Someday, when the time comes for you to present your research, you'll have to write an entire paper in Frauvian. Packed to the brim with academic terminology, at that."
Rummaging through the folds of his coat, he came up with a fountain pen. He pressed paper and pen into my hands.
"Write your name on this. In Frauvian."
"......"
"You can't, can you?"
He broke into a great, booming laugh.
"When you write a paper, you ought to at least be able to put down your own name. Learn your letters like a good lad. There's no royal road to learning."
They say the Empire's scholarship fell behind the Federation's a long time ago. While the Empire drowsed on its old glory, the Federation must have made remarkable leaps in every field of study. What one could learn from an Imperial text and what one could learn from a Frauvian one would differ in quality from the very start. Walk the path of a scholar, and mastering the language of the academic mainstream was not optional.
Benjamin was saying as much, in a roundabout way.
"Once you've got the language down, I'll teach you mathematics and magic myself."
An argument I could not refute. And yet a person's heart starts to boil with defiance when all it meets is dismissal.
A thought came to me then. Benjamin Oslo. Just once, I wanted to leave that playful old man utterly astonished.
"Benjamin. I'll make you a promise."
"Hmm?"
"One month."
I raised my index finger.
"In one month, I'll recite every book written in Frauvian, line by line."
Benjamin's eyes went round.
It was a challenge worth taking. Self-study was my specialty—second only to business.
I opened my eyes in bed.
"......"
Warm.
All that had changed was that a floor of gravel and dirt, covered over with rags, had become a bed, and a worn blanket had become a quilt. All that had changed was that what lay over my head had gone from the shadow of a half-collapsed bridge to a roof. A small change. And yet an immense one. I no longer had to fear freezing to death in my sleep.
Old storeroom or not, indoors was indoors—a world apart from sleeping rough. This little bedding held, brimful, a warmth I had not known in nearly five years, and that gentle heat made me want to lie there forever. I longed for it, and longed for it again.
"Ah. This isn't the time."
I sat bolt upright.
The start of a new year—and, with it, the morning of a day when I had been living off the Oslo household for nearly two weeks. The hour my eyes had opened of their own accord was, by the feel of it, early dawn. If I meant to master Frauvian inside a month, I had to spend my time with a system. Even the scraps of the early morning, even the leftover minutes before sleep, could not be wasted.
I hurriedly straightened the bedding and sat at the desk without so much as a thought for the bird's nest in my hair. Spread in disarray across it were a Frauvian edition of a classical play, a Frauvian–Imperial dictionary, and books of that sort. Off to one side, a candle half-melted on its holder still sat in plain view, quite unashamed. Traces of the day before. Pride came with them, and right on its heels the thought that I must not grow complacent.
Some two weeks had already slipped past—nearly half the month, spent. Because I had carved my hours up and carved them again, the progress was smooth. Focus hard for what remained, and I ought to be able to startle Benjamin well enough.
I drew a long breath in and let it out, just about to plunge back into the letters.
The small window to the left of the desk. White flakes were drifting there.
"......Was it always this beautiful?"
A lonesome snow. Streets gone white. Snowfall itself was rare enough, and looking out on it from a second-floor room was a first besides. I hadn't known, back when it came pouring onto my face; seen through a window, it was a rather beautiful thing.
A small smile on my lips, I began to turn the pages.
It was the year's first snow.
Morning comes early to an old two-story house. They say the elderly don't sleep. Benjamin's early rising had simply fallen in step with Federal Army officer Dorothy's departure for the garrison, and even now, with one stray added to the household, the pattern went on essentially unchanged.
Click—
When I opened the door and stepped out, the house was already alive with the bustle of breakfast. Sure enough, coming down the stairs to the first floor, I found Benjamin in comfortable clothes.
"Eugene. Sit."
He had already claimed a place at the table. Setting down the coffee he'd been drinking, he patted the seat beside him. I still wasn't used to the notion of a person eating three meals a day. I lowered myself awkwardly into the chair next to him.
Around then I caught sight of Dorothy's back in the kitchen. She seemed to be in charge of the cooking today. The fragrant smell of baking bread drifted past the kitchen and all the way to the table. Perhaps it was the indoor warmth. Midwinter rye bread gives off no smell at all; simply baking bread, by contrast, sent up an aroma that stirred the stomach as keenly as the grilled fish I had eaten before.
Soon Dorothy turned from the kitchen. Three plates of toast and marmalade. A warm breakfast, no less.
"Please, eat."
She set the plates down one after another, then took a seat herself—the one farthest from Benjamin. Which is to say, directly across from me.
"Thank you for the meal..."
From that moment, breathing grew difficult. Unlike me, still sporting a bird's nest, Dorothy had finished dressing in her officer's formal uniform and done up her hair, and looking at her was hard on that account alone. Nor was that all. I still wasn't used to sharing a table with a grown woman, and eating beside a Federal Army officer was harder still. In a word, it was awkward.
While I sat there in a daze, the two of them began to eat. Toast in hand, a spoonful of orange marmalade spread across the bread. The warmth made the sweet citrus scent stronger still, and then—crunch—they took a bite, light and easy. Natural motions. Proof they had kept up meals like this for a long time.
"......"
I had not. Hard rye bread, and grilled fish now and then—for someone raised on that, this was a deeply foreign meal. So my taking up the toast was an act performed according to table manners I had studied over two weeks. In its way, it was a problem as important as learning Frauvian.
Now then. Toast in the left hand—not clutched, and not seized by the side, but resting there, as if set upon the palm. Spoon in the right, and the marmalade carefully scooped—it refused to scoop cleanly—then shaken onto the bread, tap, tap. The spoon came into play again: its back used to spread the sweet, sticky orange evenly across. Do that, and a toast fragrant with orange was complete.
"Whew."
I let out a sigh of relief. Ironic, that I felt less like a boy finishing breakfast and more like a clown who had brought off a juggling act without a slip—but even so. I opened my mouth, anticipating the harmony of crisp bread and sweet marmalade.
"......?"
And froze exactly where I was.
A gaze. Beyond the toast, the eyes of a woman who resembled a birch in winter were boring straight through me. Dorothy.
Thump—
"Hey. Eugene. That's not your mouth. That's your nose."
Tap—
"And that's your chin."
Only after Benjamin's corrections did I barely manage to get the toast into my mouth and chew. Crunch—the crispness I'd expected arrived, but I tasted nothing. Around then Dorothy looked away from me, wearing an expression that, for some reason, seemed satisfied.
"......??"
The breakfast of pure chaos came to an end with Dorothy's departure for duty.
The Frauvia Federal Army. To Imperial refugees, that name was a perfect synonym for terror. People who legally wielded police powers, judicial powers, and every other power with the word authority attached to it, enjoying a force that nothing could check. Quiet enough in ordinary times—but under the name of keeping the peace, permitted to do whatever they pleased. I knew it well. I had been hunted by the army myself.
And yet I had never imagined I would end up living with the foremost of those terrors.
Right after breakfast, I had to work to quiet a heart that was hammering.
What was that, just now?
Those deep, ink-dark eyes still lingered like an afterimage. Just when two weeks without incident had been numbing me, something this suspicious had to happen.
Was there any reason for her to stare at me like that?
Was she meaning, even now, to collect those two hundred pounds? Or was her promotion to lieutenant close at hand, and she desperate for a record to show?
I was lingering near the stairs with thoughts like those when, from the mouth of Benjamin—who had finished his coffee—came a phrase that was difficult to ignore.
"Eugene. Finish your studies early today and come downstairs. Dorothy's gone out, but she'll be back around evening."
Gone out.
"Wasn't she going to work?"
Hadn't she left dressed in her officer's uniform? When I asked again, Benjamin answered with a warm, easy chuckle.
"Who goes in to work on New Year's Day?"
"......"
The anxiety I had pressed down came surging back. Doubled.