He was a good Master, though. For one thing, he didn’t command in the
way I’d heard the Tolnedrans command their servants, but rather made
suggestions.
“Thinkest thou not that the floor hath become dirty again, boy?” Or
“Might it not be prudent to lay in some store of firewood?”
My chores were in no way beyond my strength or abilities, and the
weather outside was sufficiently unpleasant to persuade me that what
little was expected of me was a small price to pay in exchange for food
and shelter. I did resolve, however, that when spring came and he
began to look farther afield for things for me to do, I might want to
reconsider our arrangement. There isn’t really very much to do when
winter keeps one housebound, but warmer weather brings with it the
opportunity for heavier and more tedious tasks. If things turned too
unpleasant, I could always pick up and leave.
There was something peculiar about that notion, though. The compulsion
that had come over me at Gara seemed gone now. I don’t know that I
really thought about it in any specific way. I just seemed to notice
that it was gone and shrugged it off. Maybe I just thought I’d
outgrown it.
It seems to me that I shrugged off a great deal that first winter.
I paid very little attention, for example, to the fact that my Master
seemed to have no visible means of support. He didn’t keep cattle or
sheep or even chickens, and there were no sheds or outbuildings in the
vicinity of his tower. I couldn’t even find his storeroom. I knew
there had to be one somewhere, because the meals he prepared were
always on the table when I grew hungry. Oddly, the fact that I never
once saw him cooking didn’t seem particularly strange to me. Not even
the fact that I never once saw him eat anything seemed strange. It was
almost as if my natural curiosity–and believe me, I can be very
curious–had been somehow put to sleep.
I had absolutely no idea of what he did during that long winter. It
seemed to me that he spent a great deal of time just looking at a plain
round rock. He didn’t speak very often, but I talked enough for both
of us. I’ve always been fond of the sound of my own voice–or had you
noticed that?
My continual chatter must have driven him to distraction, because one
evening he rather pointedly asked me why I didn’t go read something.
I knew about reading, of course. Nobody in Gara had known how, but I’d
seen Tolnedrans doing it–or pretending to. It seemed a little silly
to me at the time. Why take the trouble to write a letter to somebody
who lives two houses over? If it’s important, just step over and tell
him about it.
“I don’t know how to read, Master,” I confessed.
He actually seemed startled by that.
“Is this truly the case, boy?” he asked me.
“I had thought that the skill was instinctive amongst thy kind.”
I wished that he’d quit talking about “my kind” as if I were a member
of some obscure species of rodent or insect.
“Fetch down that book, boy,” he instructed, pointing at a high shelf.
I looked up in some amazement. There seemed to be several dozen bound
volumes on that shelf. I’d cleaned and dusted and polished the room
from floor to ceiling a dozen times or more, and I’d have taken an oath
that the shelf hadn’t been there the last time I looked. I covered my
confusion by asking
“Which one, Master?” Notice that I’d even begun to pick up some
semblance of good manners?
“Whichever one falls most easily to hand,” he replied indifferently.
I selected a book at random and took it to him.
“Seat thyself, boy,” he told me.
“I shall give thee instruction.”
I knew nothing whatsoever about reading, so it didn’t seem particularly
odd to me that under his gentle tutelage I was a competent reader
within the space of an hour. Either I was an extremely gifted
student-which seems highly unlikely–or he was the greatest teacher who
ever lived.
From that hour on I became a voracious reader. I devoured his
bookshelf from one end to another. Then, somewhat regretfully, I went
back to the first book again, only to discover that I’d never seen it
before.
I read and read and read, and every page was new to me. I read my way
through that bookshelf a dozen times over, and it was always fresh and
new. That reading opened the world of the mind to me, and I found it
much to my liking.
My newfound obsession gave my Master some peace, at least, and he
seemed to look approvingly at me as I sat late into those long, snowy,
winter nights reading texts in languages I could not have spoken, but
that I nonetheless clearly understood when they seemed to leap out at
me from off the page. I also noticed dimly–for, as I think I’ve
already mentioned, my curiosity seemed somehow to have been
blunted–that when I was reading, my Master tended to have no chores
for me, at least not at first. The conflict between reading and chores
came later. And so we passed the winter in that world of the mind, and
with few exceptions, I’ve probably never been so happy.
I’m sure it was the books that kept me there the following spring and
summer. As I’d suspected they might, the onset of warm days and nights
stirred my Master’s creativity. He found all manner of things for me
to do outside–mostly unpleasant and involving a great deal of effort
and sweat. I do not enjoy cutting down trees, for
example–particularly not with an axe. I broke that axe handle eight
times that summer–quite deliberately, I’ll admit–and it miraculously
healed itself overnight. I hated that cursed, indestructible axe!
But strangely enough, it wasn’t the sweating and grunting I resented
but the time I wasted whacking at unyielding trees that I could more
profitably have spent trying to read my way through that inexhaustible
bookshelf. Every page opened new wonders for me, and I groaned audibly
each time my Master suggested that it was time for me and my axe to go
out and entertain each other again.
And almost before I had turned around twice, winter came again. I had
better luck with my broom than I had with my axe. After all, you can
pile only so much dust in a corner before you start becoming obvious
about it, and my Master was never obvious. I continued to read my way
again and again along the bookshelf and was probably made better by it,
although my Master, guided by some obscure, sadistic instinct, always
seemed to know exactly when an interruption would be most unwelcome.
He inevitably selected that precise moment to suggest sweeping or
washing dishes or fetching firewood.
Sometimes he would stop what he was doing to watch my labors, a bemused
expression on his face. Then he would sigh and return to the things he
did that I didn’t understand.
The seasons turned, marching in their stately, ordered progression as I
labored with my books and with the endless and increasingly difficult
tasks my Master set me. I grew bad-tempered and sullen, but never once
did I even think about running away.
Then perhaps three–or more likely it was five–years after I’d come to
the tower to begin my servitude, I was struggling one early winter day
to move a large rock that my Master had stepped around since my first
summer with him, but that he now found it inconvenient for some
reason.
The rock, as I say, was quite large, and it was white, and it was very,
very heavy. It would not move, though I heaved and pushed and strained
until I thought my limbs would crack. Finally, in a fury, I
concentrated my strength and all my will upon the boulder and grunted
one single word.
“Move!” I said.
And it moved! Not grudgingly with its huge inert weight sullenly
resisting my strength, but quite easily, as if the touch of one finger
would have been sufficient to send it bounding across the vale.
“Well, boy,” my Master said, startling me by his nearness,
“I had wondered how long it might be ere this day arrived.”
“Master,” I said, very confused, “what happened? How did the great
rock move so easily?”
“It moved at thy command, boy. Thou art a man, and it is only a rock.”
Where had I heard that before?
“May other things be done so. Master?” I asked, thinking of all the
hours I’d wasted on meaningless tasks.
“All things may be done so, boy. Put but thy will to that which thou
wouldst accomplish and speak the word. It shall come to pass even as