I wandered in my travels, and came across a fey creature with two human students. The creature was mostly a spider whose body alone was the size of mine. The back four of his legs were hairy giant spider legs. The front four were double jointed arms that terminated in very long and agile hands. He had on a black robe that reminded me of something stereotypically boarding school British, and a proper powdered wig with a proper magisterial hat to match. A human head turned on a thick neck. His eight eyes were arranged upon his forehead in a very pleasing arrangement. Two were very much human. The other three pair were obviously specialized to focus on some tight range of heat detection and/or sight, but exactly what eluded me.
When I realized he was in the middle of instruction, I stopped approaching, bowed slightly, and started to walk away so not to interrupt the lesson. He called out after me. “Lass! Yes, you with the bloody manners!” His greeting made me chuckle and he smiled in turn showing some very not human fangs. “Pray tell, humor the old man that I am and grace me with your presence a while.”
“Pray tell, or prey tell? You are more than a mere man, and what is age to the ageless? I love your tongue, but as long as you keep your manners, I shall do the same. You are with students, sir. I wish not to pause the lesson.”
“O-ho! A cheeky one, then! You’ve been taught your own, I see. Nay, girl, I call you not to pause the lesson, but to accentuate it.”
Being called “girl” really rankles the fuck out of me. But when you’re talking to something that was already old when the English language found the word “fuck”, then there is no escaping the age difference. If I had appeared male, he would have called me “boy” with just the same indifference.
“Aye then, sir. I’ll play this game with you. I might learn something new, myself!” I sat on the patch of ground he had just cleared for me. He laughed and winked as he handed me a book opened to a certain page.
“Now, if I were to tell you to read these words, would you?”
“It depends, sir. What is the function of the words and are you trying to ensorcel me?”
He laughed to scare his students, though his reaction only raised an eyebrow on my face. “You have been places. I promise you, girl. I have no wish for harm, tricks, scullery dealings, underhanded affairs, heavy handed domination, or any of those things that you not so subtly have accused me of plotting. You shall leave as you are, on your own terms, in your own time. I just wish some assistance with my lesson.”
Before I could answer he turned to his two students. “Did you hear? Did you mark what she asked me with words and without words? Did you see how she tested the place I offered her to sit before committing? To you two, I am just an old man teaching two boys. But do you know her? Do you know where she has been? Did you see how I tested her as rigorously as she tested me? Or did you think the play on words and the posturing was just a game? It is all a game. And it is very serious.” He turned back to me. “So, would you?”
“As the teacher instructs.”
“Then read the words on that page, out loud, if you please. With all the solemnity, and or with frivolity as you wish to use.”
The marks on the page settled down from their constant squirming, making English words that I could see clearly.
“Bombastic!
Butterflies and fish paste.
Deeper. And deeper. Too deep.
Tell them they are forgiven, only because I forgot.
Mercy. Mercy. Milk. Me.
AND THEN!
No. Why. No. Why. No. Maybe. Okay. Start.
Laugh and be on your way.
The wiggles renewed their squirming and destroyed the legibility of the page. I closed the book and handed it back to the teacher. “Well done, Lass! You’ve been this way before! When did I teach you?”
I don’t know why the words leapt into my mouth, only that I was telling a truth even as it was obscured to me. “When we were chewing on the leaves, before the fall.” His smile froze, and his eyebrow hovered to match my own. It was an expression that he held for half of a blink. His sudden laughter tried to banish the moment from my memory, but I only smiled and laughed daintily to keep the students at ease.
“So, my boys, what did you learn from her reading?”
Both human students appeared as sixteen-year-old boys that have barely learned how to stop defacing the textbooks. Dressed identically in a school uniform mockery of sailor outfits (complete with too short shorts), the blond haired and the sandy haired white boys studied me silently.
“That anything can be read dramatically and still make no damn sense!” ‘Blondie’ slapped his chapbook in frustration. “She read the same words you want us to memorize only with more severity and seriousness than the words are due. What do they mean? Why do we have to learn this babble?” He threw his chapbook to the ground in a huff.
‘Sandy’ had turned his attention to his notes and was making furious marks on his copy of the words. I was close enough to see he was marking where I stressed certain words and where I distressed others. Trying his best to annotate the meter of my recital. He looked up with a start when the silence became too uncomfortable. “That the words mean nothing now, because you haven’t taught us what they meant. But when spoken by someone that knows, they take on a completely different hue. They’re babble, alright, but they are the kind of babble that hides mysteries. And if we don’t respect the babble as babble, how are we going to respect the mysteries they represent when, and if, they are shown to us? Because we will always have these words as our initial thought when speaking of them. So shouldn’t all the symbols of the mysteries be respected, if we are going to make it our intent to learn what they are?”
The teacher turned back to me. “Shall you confuse them, girl?”
“I shall, sir.” We bowed to each other and he moved away from us to allow me to take the focus. “You’re both right. It’s nonsense. By itself, it means nothing. By itself, anyone can assign meanings to the phrases and the syllables. One person can say ‘bom-BAS-tic’, and another can say ‘bom-bas-TIC’, and while both are saying the same word, they have two different meanings assigned in their head. Who, other than the speaker, knows what is being meant? You annotated my speech patterns because they are different than anything you have ever heard. But what if I am intentionally saying it wrong to confuse you? What if I’m not trying to say anything in it, and I’m just being silly? What if I am saying it in a certain way to make you think about how the phrases interact with each other and what thousands of words could be condensed into such a word as ‘Bombastic’ so that at the speaking of it, you recall the greater understandings to mind? You don’t know what I’m up to. You can only make guesses based on what I am allowing you to hear and to see, and even that is based on your teacher’s unspoken prompts. What does what I read mean? Everything. And nothing.”
Blondie picked up his chapbook and hurled it at the teacher as hard as he could. The massive spider moved out of the way gracefully. “That’s it! I didn’t come all the way here to learn how to be frustrated! I can do that at home and without these ridiculous clothes!” He stood and stripped off as much of the school uniform as his modesty allowed before storming off away from the area.
Sandy sat stunned for a moment. “Miss. My… fellow… and I came here to learn…” I placed my finger on his lips.
“Don’t tell me. Don’t seal yourself into a narrow view. I have a pretty good guess what you initially came here to learn, and I have a pretty good guess what you will actually learn. You are at the outside of an onion, and you have only removed one layer of dead and brittle skin. You have the distant scent, but you are still insulated from the tears to come. You think you know this onion because you have looked up the variety in the books and you know what climate it grew in. You know nothing. Not even bombastic.”
He looked down in his hands, and indeed, his chapbook had become a very large onion. He tugged at the outside layer of skin but it didn’t move. He intoned the word “Bombastic” the way I had said it, and the skin split a few inches. He looked up at me in triumph, but I shook my head.
“Am I your teacher? What did he teach you?”
He intoned the word again, in a different accent and with different stressing. I assumed it was the way the spider had been pronouncing it. The outside layer of skin split and fell away in his hand. Sandy smiled, then frowned. “I still don’t get it.”
“This won’t be understood in a day. Be truthful to your lessons, and you’ll get it. Just remember anyone can mimic a sound. Understanding lies deeper.”
His face twitched as a thought streaked naked across his mind. “How deep?”, he said before catching himself.
I answered, “For some, too deep.”. I heard a muffled chuckle and remembered the spider teacher as he approached.
“Forgive me, teacher. I have changed the book into an onion.”
“Forgiven. All education hurts eventually.” We both laughed at the analogy.
“Have you any further lessons I can muck up?”
“Nay, nay. You have culled my herd to a palatable number. The number of the sincere. For this, you have my gratitude. Is it time for you to leave?”
Smooth bastard. Rather than confront me about what I may or may not have given away, he gives me this sociable and graceful exit. “Aye, sir, it is. May I be excused?”
He helps me to my feet and fusses over the little specs of dust that cling to me. “There. As I promised. No ensorclement upon you, girl. Perhaps we can sit as friends another time. There is much we have to talk about, I think.”
There was that feeling again, that I should know him from times before ages. “Should we meet again, let us do just that. I may learn something new, yet.”
He laughs a barking sound. Pinching Sandy to stand and speak formal farewells, he waves his own at me. I bow to them both, turn, and continue wandering.