The Hammer Unfalls

Glim’s fingers ached. His limbs felt shaky. And his gut weak. Swinging swords around all day was one thing. Ryn had him using muscles he didn’t know existed.

By the time he’d climbed up and down the tower repeatedly, his hands felt like frozen claws. He’d fallen, more than once, onto a cushion of powder at the last moment. It surprised him how quickly the instinct had become second nature. But if Glim was sure of one thing, it was this: he did not want to hit the ground and break his back. Self preservation is the best teacher.

Ryn had given him no time at all for self reflection. From bedroll to now, sitting on the stone floor eating a third helping of cold spinach soup from a spigot, she’d had him leaping off hills and climbing up walls. The stone had barely enough cracks for him to find holds. A couple times, he’d had to jump.

Thinking on it now terrified him.

But he hadn’t been terrified at the time. Ryn had simply breezed him right past that part. With the end of the second day in sight, Glim realized she’d hardly allowed him space to catch a breath. Not only did his muscles ache, but his mind did, too. He felt stretched beyond all reason.

And Glim could not shake the feeling that it had all been… intentional. Like Ryn purposely did everything she could to keep him from thinking. She just kept goading him. Leading him into the next absurd terror like they were walking through a garden looking at flowers. Like none of it was a big deal.

But it was. Glim felt he should be angry at her. But she’d been effective, he had to admit. He felt more in control than he ever had before, even though she pushed him around like an errant toddler. Always anticipating his next breaking point so she could scoot him right past it.

Like right now, for instance.

In the dim warm glow of the lights, so even that they hardly cast shadows, Glim felt Ryn’s eyes on him. He’d been distracted by his own ruminations.

Nothing seemed to distract Ryn. She had a way of casually scrutinizing him and making it seem like the most normal thing in the world.

He’d had enough of it. Time to take control of the situation.

Glim stretched and knit his aching fingers together.

“No more climbing. I’d like to go back.”

Ryn smirked, as if amused by his tone. “We’ll start the trip back first thing tomorrow.”

“What do you mean, start?”

“It takes a few hours to get down here. It takes several days to get back up. Falling is much easier than climbing. As you well know after today.”

“Several days? In that closet?”

“Yes. That’s why we went to the end first. We’ll make stops on the way back. I actually do need to check some things.”

“How long?”

“We’ll be home in, say, ten days.”

“Ten days!” Glim felt a sudden panic. “I can’t be gone that long! What about my lessons? What will father think?”

She looked at him with her head tilted. “Why do you care about the lessons all of a sudden? Weren’t you running away?”

He had been. Glim had expected to be halfway down Apricity Peak by now. The reasons seemed vague now.

“Yes,” he said. “You’re right. Just habit, I guess.”

“That’s not it at all.”

“What do you mean?” he asked, nettled by the certainty of her tone. As if she knew his mind better than he did.

“You’re finally getting it. Plying. It’s coming together.”

In the maddening fashion he’d come to expect from her, Ryn’s words rang true.

“I still don’t know which polarities to focus on,” he admitted.

“And that is fine. But you have a direction now.”

“I do?”

“It seems like sense to learn the theory from books and lectures. To choose a path by some pure, academic logic. But that’s not how minds work.”

“How do they work?”

“They need a puzzle. Without a problem to solve, without a direction, you’re just reciting lore. It doesn’t give you anything to chew on. But you have a direction now. Figuring out how to get down a mountain. Or up it. How to fall. How to protect yourself. Your mind is already working on new ways to move through the world. Unless I misjudged things?”

Glim thought about the sickle. “No. You’re right.”

“You finally feel empowered. You’re starting to face your fear.”

“What fear?”

“Part of you is still in that cave. You’ve been fighting to get it back ever since. Now you’re starting to find a way.”

He looked at Ryn and noticed a light simmering in her eyes. It made his heart race for some reason he could not explain. He nodded to her as a token of gratitude. “Because of your help.”

“I’m glad to be of service.”

She said it in such a dismissive way that Glim doubted her sincerity. Or, more accurately, that recent events were no surprise to her at all. Glim’s suspicion blossomed.

“Why are you helping me?”

“Because you needed help.”

A true statement to be sure. Yet missing the point entirely. Something about this bothered him. Some observation he’d made earlier, like a poorly remembered dream. What had he missed?

“How do you know so much about plying?” he asked, hoping to dislodge the observation from the shadowy clutches of his mind.

“I didn’t always live in Wohn-Grab. I picked things up along the way.”

“That’s vague. What kind of things?”

“Mostly, that plyers lack common sense.”

“What aren’t you telling me?”

“There isn’t time to tell my life’s story.”

“Time enough for a sketch of it.”

“Let me put it to you this way. You’ve decided to ply obscured.”

“How did you know—”

“It’s the only polarity you didn’t mention earlier.”

“Huh?”

“You said the decisions were too much. But you didn’t mention obscured versus transparent. Most obscurers don’t.”

Glim felt his face flush.

“No need for shame. It’s just good defense. I’m a huge fan of secrecy.”

“I noticed.” Ryn laughed. “You can be honest with me, Ryn.”

Her face darkened. “There’s a difference between secrecy and lies. I can’t ply. That doesn’t mean I want to be an open book. I’m a private person, and if you want my help you’ll leave it at that.”

The moment passed like a cloud flitting across the sun. She straightened, smiled, and changed the subject. “Now for the others, don’t think of it as a decision that needs to be made. Think of it more like directing a canoe down the river. Choosing where the flow takes you. If you’re always struggling against the current, you’ll be frustrated. If you just let the river take you, you’ll be unsatisfied. But if you guide things with purpose, you’ll feel more fulfilled.”

“What is a canoe?”

“A small boat.”

“I’ve never seen a boat before. I don’t really know what you’re talking about.”

Ryn sighed. “Of course. Let me put it another way. Refusing to choose is not healthy. But that doesn’t mean you have to choose.”

“Huh?” Glim did not feel his most astute self.

“Try things, Glim. Be curious. Work the problem. Your path will emerge. Just be an active participant in your own life. Set goals.”

“I have a goal. To be in the guard.”

“That’s a noble pursuit to be sure, and likely to be realized soon. I mean more generally. Set a goal and work towards it. The pursuit is as worthy as the result sometimes.”

Glim tried to form a response, but nothing worthwhile came to mind. The efforts of the day had finally caught up to him.

“Let’s get some rest,” Ryn said.

She fussed over her bedroll. She fished around in her pack for something. A comb, perhaps. He watched in a stupor born of exhaustion. He nodded off, and caught himself. He must have dozed, for he now was looking at the lump of her blanket across the room, rising and falling with her breath. Reassured, he closed his eyes.

Glim dreamed of opening a door. Behind it stood a boy with his back turned. At the sound of the door opening, he turned to Glim with a finger pressed to his lips.

“Shh,” the boy said, looking at Glim with mismatched eyes behind long black hair. Glim realized he’d walked in on himself. “We have to stay quiet. Don’t break his concentration.”

Glim stepped aside, so that Glim could look into the chamber. Dim, shadowy, with the vagueness of space that his dreams usually had. He saw a table, with a boy seated at it, engrossed in some contraption on the table. A brass triangle balanced on a spire.

Glim stepped around Glim so he could see the boy at the table better. Light glinted from the boy’s mismatched eyes. It was Glim.

Glim looked back at Glim, who watched the Glim at the table intently. Eyes focused on the trine. Holding his breath, expectant. Glim watched himself watching himself, waiting to see what would happen.

When morning came and he awoke from the dream, he couldn’t tell what it meant. Except for one thing: Ryn had set something in motion that none of Master Willow’s lessons ever had.