Etherwalker Read Free Page A

when his master spoke of the time before. Before Rewn’s Fork and sheep and the endless woods. The quiet boy kept even more still in these occasions, afraid to startle the rare bird that was his master’s lucidity.
    *  *  *  *
    The dull metal of the hoe bit into the soil, slicing a root in half and ringing as it encountered another rock beneath. There were always rocks in the soil—at least, it seemed there were wherever he hoed.
    Mishael Keddrik had called their valley Old Snake’s Pisspot once during a visit to the town. He had laughed about how the lovely spring-fed pools, which watered the land along the foothills, were just a cruel trick to farmers: bounteous clear water wasted on such thin, stony soil. His laughter, however, had withered the second he caught Master Gershom’s scowl. Enoch’s master did not like blasphemous talk. Or talk, in general.
    The memory made Enoch grind his teeth. Lifting the hoe, he swung it down into the soil with a grunt, sweat dripping from the long strands of hair at his forehead. Angry thoughts flashed through his mind.
    I’ll never have friends; I’ll never have anybody to talk with. Not as long as I’m trapped here.
    Enoch knew that he wasn’t trapped. He really had no idea what he would do elsewhere, and people confused him. He had a routine here, a comfortable order to daily life. Master Gershom said that routine was important to people who were like Enoch, and that he wouldn’t do well with the unpredictable.
    Then why does the unpredictable seem so interesting?
    He set to hoeing with the single-mindedness that Master Gershom had taught him to use when performing the pensa spada exercises, clearing all other thoughts and feelings from his consciousness and programming his mind with simple, powerful commands.
    Strike. Pull. Step.
    Body moving in smooth obedience, his motions soon became a fluid pattern. The hoe arching through the air, the weeds yanked from the soil, and another step along the row.
    Strike. Pull. Step .
    His breathing soon matched the rhythm, and his heart slowed a pace to synchronize itself with the motion of the swinging hoe. Face blank, eyes transfixed on nothing more than the ground in front of him, Enoch moved swiftly through the sunbaked rows. A dull, familiar pain began to throb at his forehead, something which his sub-conscious mind duly noted to inform him of when he came out of the pensa spada trance. For now there was only focus.
    Strike. Pull. Step .
    Soon he approached the end of the last row, and the trance subsided. The afilia nubla of the sleeping mind canceled subconscious commands and aroused the waking afilia lumin as it, in turn, shut down. Blinking his eyes like he had just woken up, Enoch turned to look at the garden. Piles of knotted weeds lay strewn across neat rows of tilled earth, pale and naked in the bright sun. He rubbed the heel of his hand on his forehead, where icy pain still needled. That had been happening recently when he went into pensa spada— ever since he’d learned to pause, actually. He intended to mention the strange aches to his master sooner or later, but it wasn’t urgent.
    Just a little pain.
    If there was one thing that childhood on the edge of the wild had taught Enoch, it was that pain could be ignored. That had been one of the first lessons his master had taught him. Not that Enoch had ever been beaten—Levi Gershom wouldn’t raise his hand in anger. He believed in a different sort of discipline.
    Enoch sighed. His master was the kind of man who could say enough in a few words to make you wish for the kick in the pants you deserved. Enoch remembered a few years ago when he had been caught hunting rockfinches with a sling. Master Gershom had looked down at the still cluster of gray-plumed bodies at Enoch’s feet and sighed.
    “They are so small, boy. Does it please you to bring pain to these tiny things?”
    Then he had put his heavy hand on Enoch’s shoulder, softly repeating the phrase he intoned