spending more and more time hauling sacks of wheat from the
twins’ tower to the Tree.
When I reached the Tree, they were all clamoring to be fed, and
that irritated me all the more. As far as I know, not one single bird
has ever learned how to say ‘thank you’.
There were whole flocks of them by now, and they cleaned up
my daily offering in short order. Then they started screeching for
more.
I was seated on my favorite perch, and the shrill importunings
of the birds made me even more irritable. If there were only some
way I could have an inexhaustible supply of seed on hand to keep
them quiet.
The jays were being particularly offensive. There’s something
about a jay’s squawking that cuts directly into me. Finally, driven
beyond my endurance, I burst out. ‘More seeds!’ I half-shouted.
And suddenly, there they were – heaps and heaps of them’ I was
stunned. Even the birds seemed startled. I, on the other hand, felt
absolutely exhausted.
Father has always used the phrase ‘the Will and the Word’ to
describe what we do, but I think that’s a little limited. My experience
seems to indicate that ‘the Wish and the Word’ works just as
well.
Someday he and I’ll have to talk about that.
As is usually the case, my first experiment in this field made a
lot of noise. I hadn’t even finished my self-congratulation when a
blue-banded hawk and two doves came swooping in. Now, hawks
and doves don’t normally flock together except when the hawk
is hungry – so I immediately had some suspicions. The three of
them settled on my limb, and then they blurred, changing form
before my very eyes.
‘Seeds, Polgara?’ Beltira said mildly. ‘Seeds?’
‘The birds were hungry,’ I said. What a silly excuse for a miracle
that was!
‘Precocious, isn’t she?’ Belkira murmured to uncle Beldin.
‘We should probably have expected it,’ Beldin grunted. ‘Pol never
does anything in the normal way.’
‘Will I be able to do that some day?’ I asked the twins.
‘Do what, Pol?’ Belkira asked gently.
‘What you just did – change myself into a bird and back?’
‘Probably, yes.’
‘Well now,’ I said as a whole new world of possibilities opened
before my eyes. ‘Will beldaran be able to do it too?’
Their expressions seemed to grow a bit evasive at that question.
‘No more of this, Pol,’ uncle Beldin said sternly, ‘not until we’ve
explained a few things to you. This is very dangerous.’
‘Dangerous?’ That startled me.
‘You can do almost anything you put your mind to, Pol,’ Beltira
explained, ‘but you can’t uncreate things. Don’t ever say, “Be not”.
“If you do, the force you’ve unleashed will recoil back on you, and
you’ll be the one who’s destroyed.’
‘Why would I want to destroy anything?’
‘It’ll happen,’ Beldin assured me in that growling voice of his.
‘You’re almost as bad-tempered as I am, and sooner or later
something will irritate you to the point that you’ll want to make it go
away – to destroy it – and that’ll kill you.’
‘Kill?’
‘And more than kill. The purpose of the universe is to create things.
She won’t let you come along behind her and undo her work.’
‘Wouldn’t that also apply to making things?’
‘Whatever gave you that idea?’
‘If unmaking things is forbidden, it seems logical that making
them would be too.’
‘Making things is all right,’ Beldin assured me. ‘You just made
about a half-ton of bird-seed and you’re still here, but don’t ever
try to erase what you’ve done. If it’s not right, that’s just too bad.
Once it’s been made, you’re stuck with it.’
‘That hardly seems fair,’ I protested.
‘Did you really expect life to be fair to you, Pol?’ He replied.
‘But if I make it, it’s mine, isn’t it? I should be able to do anything
I want with it. shouldn’t I?’
‘That’s not the way it works, Pol,’ Beltira told me. ‘Don’t
experiment with it. We love you too much to lose you.’
‘What else is it that I’m not supposed to do?’
‘Don’t attempt the impossible,’ Belkira said. ‘Once you’ve
committed your will to something, you have to go through with it. You
can’t turn the will off once you’ve unleashed it. It’ll keep drawing
more and more out of you to try to get the job done, and it’ll
eventually take so much out of you that your heart will stop, and
then you’ll die.’
‘How am I supposed to know what’s possible and what isn’t?’
‘Come to one of us before you start,’ Beltira said. ‘Talk it over
with us and we’ll let you know if it’s all right.’
‘Nobody tells me what to do!’ I flared.
‘Do you want to die?’ Beldin demanded bluntly.
‘Of course not.’
‘Then do as you’re told,’ he growled. ‘No experimenting on your
own. Don’t do anything this way without consulting with one of us
first. Don’t try to pick up a mountain range or stop the sun. We’re
trying to protect you, Pol. Don’t be difficult.’
‘Is there anything else?’ I was a little sullen at that point.
‘You’re very noisy,’ Belkira said bluntly.
‘What do you mean, “noisy”?’
‘When you do something this way, it makes a sound we can hear.
When you made all that birdseed, it sounded like a thunderclap.
Always remember that we’re not the only ones in the world with
this particular gift. There’ll be times when you won’t want to
announce the fact that you’re around. Here, I’ll show you.’
There was a large rock not far from the Tree, and uncle Belkira
looked at it and frowned slightly. Then the rock seemed to vanish,
and it instantly reappeared about a hundred yards away.
It wasn’t exactly a noise. I felt it more than I heard it, but it still
seemed to rattle my teeth.
‘Now do you see what I mean?’ Belkira asked me.
‘Yes. That’s quite a sound, isn’t it?’
‘I’m glad you enjoyed it.’
They went on piling restrictions on me for quite some time. ‘Is
that all?’ I asked finally. They were beginning to make me tired.
‘There’ll be more, Pol,’ Beltira said. ‘Those are just the things you
need to know right now. Like it or not, your education’s just begun.
You’ve got to learn to control this gift. Study very hard, Pol. Your
life probably depends on it.’
‘Just smile and agree with them, Polgara,’ mother’s voice advised me.
‘I’ll take care of your education myself Smile and nod and keep the peace
when they try to instruct you, Pol. Don’t upset them by doing anything
unusual while they’re around.’
‘Whatever you say, mother,’ I agreed.
And that’s how I really got my education. My uncles were
frequently startled by just how fast I picked things up. They no sooner
mentioned a particular feat than I did it – flawlessly. I’m sure they
all thought they had a budding but very dirty – genius on their
hands. The truth of the matter was that mother had already taught
me those rudimentary tricks. My mind and mother’s mind had been
linked since before I was born, and so she was in a much better
position to gauge the extent of my understanding. This made her a
far better teacher than my uncles. It was about then that uncle Beldin
left on some mysterious errand, and so my education fell on the
twins’ shoulders – at least they thought it did. In actuality, mother
taught me most of what I know.
I naturally told my sister about what had happened. beldaran
and I didn’t really have any secrets from each other.
Her face became rather wistful. ‘What was it like?’ she asked me.
‘I’ll show you how,’ I told her. ‘Then you can find out for yourself.’
She sighed. ‘No, Pol,’ she replied. ‘Mother told me not to.’
‘Told? You mean she’s finally talking to you?’
‘Not when I’m awake,’ Beldaran explained. ‘Her voice comes to
me when I’m dreaming.’
‘That’s a terribly cumbersome way to do it.’
‘I know, but there’s a reason for it. She told me that you’re
supposed to do things. I’m just supposed to be.’
‘To be what?’
‘She hasn’t told me yet. She’ll probably get around to it one of
these days.’
And that sent me away muttering to myself.
Mother told me about several of the things I might be capable of
doing, and I tried them all. Translocation was a lot of fun, actually,
and it taught me how to muffle the noise. I spent whole days
bouncing rocks here and there about the Vale.
There were many tricks mother explained to me that I wasn’t able
to practice, since they required the presence of other people, and
aside from the twins and Beldaran, nobody else was around. Mother
rather sternly told me not to experiment with Beldaran.
What my uncles chose to call my ‘education’ took me away from