Forsyth has always been tall.
It is an inherited trait. His father is tall and exceptionally slight. The other servants said that his mother had been even taller: a willow tree turned human. Forsyth could only take their word for it. He has no memory of his mother. All he knows of her is that she had been felled by an axe nearly a year after his birth.
Perhaps that was why his father balked at the sight of any blade. Why he forbade his son to ever hold one. It frustrated Forsyth to watch children younger than himself handle kitchen knives while he could not even touch a letter-opener.
Fortunately, Python's father did not seem to care if Forsyth ever picked up a knife in his presence.
Python's house became Forsyth's second home. He preferred it to his first. Although it was only a fifth of the size of the manor, it housed just Python and his immediate family. No space was set aside for any servants and their many children. There was hardly enough room for Python's family as it was. But Forsyth liked the fact that the only books they kept in their home were battered ledgers.
Likewise, Forsyth preferred Python's father to his own. He liked to watch as the carpenter would place a length of raw wood on his workbench. Watch as he sawed it into halves and halves into quarters. Sawed another piece into thirds and fifths. Liked to watch as he took these fractions and recombined them into chairs and cabinets. Inspiration would pass through Forsyth as a shiver. Would wake every nerve in his body. He felt present. Felt like he could do the same: cut himself into pieces and build from them something that could bear the weight of the world.
Forsyth picked up a sword for the first time in the slanting shadow of Python's house. Python's father had been commissioned by their lord to carve a practice sword for the noble's second son. As they were similar in age, Python's father gave the sword to the two boys to test its balance and weight. It was cut from solid wood. So it only made sense that the sword would feel like an extension of Forsyth's own arm. Only, it did not feel long enough.
The next day, Forsyth found for himself a tree branch split from its trunk by the latest summer storm. It took some begging and blackmailing on Forsyth's part to get Python to carve it into something resembling a spear.
As his father's aid, Forsyth was almost always busy. It wore at him to sit inside the lord's library day in and day out. The high ceilings of the manor were too low for him. He longed to have the sky for a roof. Longed to be outdoors in the forest skirting the estate. Out there, Forsyth struck down imaginary foes and rescued fictitious civilians. He practised his footwork until his feet and every muscle in his legs ached. At Forsyth's behest, Python would sometimes act as an adversary. There was only so much to learn by fighting bushes.
Many months later, someone told Forsyth's father about the spear his son kept hidden in the woods. His father promptly had it chopped into pieces and tossed into the kitchen fire. Forsyth stood completely straight as he watched it burn. His hands were tight fists and his vision waterlogged. Yet he made no sound. The wood spoke for him as it cracked apart under the flames.
The next day saw the volume of his workload increased: he was assigned more shelves to dust. Twice as many books to catalogue. Assigned another saga to reproduce by hand. Forsyth attended to these tasks in the flesh. But his mind was almost always elsewhere. Only a third of his duties ever received his full consideration. It was enough to satisfy the inattentive nobles: they did not care how much attention he paid so long as their library was tidy. But his father was another matter entirely.
Now it has been two weeks since his spear was turned to ash. At present, only Forsyth and his father are inside the manor's library. Forsyth sits at a table with a book in his hands. His father stands on the other side of the table. The light has grown dim as the day passes into dusk. A servant will be along soon to light the lanterns here.
"You need to focus," his father says. Forsyth hardly hears him as he reads the musings of a priest on the spiritual degeneration of the Rigelian people: Duma's worshippers confuse their suffering for a gift from the divine. How can a people overcome suffering when that is all they receive? They cannot. They wither in soil desecrated by their god. To worship Duma, then, is to pray for torment.
This priest must have spent far too much time inside his monastery. The worship of Duma is inconsequential: suffering is everywhere. There are too many people who think it is the norm. If only his father would let him, Forsyth would raise a weapon against it all.
"Forsyth!" The shout takes him by surprise. Forsyth can count on his hands the number of times that his father has ever raised his voice. The rarity makes it all the more forceful. He always thought his father's yelling could frighten trees into uprooting themselves.
But not today.
"I am focusing," Forsyth says. "I was focusing."
"That," his father says, "is not focusing." He leans over the table. Places his hands down deliberately between the books, loose sheets of parchments, and an inkwell. A part of Forsyth admires how his father can do that: be mindful even when enraged. The rest of him is too malnourished to care.
Forsyth has heard it said that an acorn does not fall far from its tree. But wherever Forsyth is now is treeless. His father never grew. His mother had been cut down. There are no branches overhead to keep the sun out of his eyes. Now that light is all Forsyth can see.
He wants more than anything to grow and meet the sun.
"I was." Forsyth shuts his book. "Just not on what you wanted me to."
Their eyes meet. Forsyth does not know what he looks for in those eyes. Perhaps he hopes to catch his own reflection in them. To find something of himself in his father.
Abruptly, his father looks away.
Forsyth thinks this should feel like a victory. Only it does not. A red sunbeam lances in through the nearby window. Catches on his father's hair. Each strand goes white-hot. Stomach lurching, Forsyth watches as his father's mouth moves aphoristically. There are no words to be read on his lips. His father's shoulders speak for him as they slump under the dying sunlight.
The Deliverance retakes Zofia Castle.
Many of the soldiers believe that tonight they all should celebrate. But Forsyth has read enough historical accounts to know that capturing a castle is only the first step in a long series. A kingdom is more than its monarch: such a figure is simply a tree trunk. Yet branches without a trunk to grow out from cannot be called a tree. They are just kindling waiting to burn.
Under orders, Forsyth sees to it that trustworthy soldiers are posted to guard whatever remains of the royal treasury. Sees to it that those few Desaix had kept prisoner in the castle's dungeons have their crimes re-evaluated and their sentences either ended or adjusted accordingly. That those who surrendered to the Deliverance are incarcerated in the newly-emptied cells. He sees to it that letters are written by the scribes and sent out to every corner of Zofia. Everyone must know about the Deliverance's victory.
In the wee hours of the morning, Forsyth finds himself bleary-eyed and penning a letter to his own father. He sits at a desk in an empty bedchamber. This room might have once accommodated nobles who came to visit the royal family. Or it might have belonged to one of the late king's many wives. For now, it belongs to no one.
This is the first letter in nearly a year that he addresses to his father. Forsyth does not write to him often. The Deliverance had not even been founded when he sent his last letter. In all his letters to his father, Forsyth would ask after his health. Ask after the manor's servants and Python's family. He would inform his father of his own health. Inform his father of any new books he came across in the marketplace of whatever town he had been stationed near. Sometimes he would include local gossip about the noble families in his letters. But Forsyth never once wrote to him about his battles.
Now his excitement sees his pen moves faster than his mind. Forsyth writes to his father about the Deliverance and their latest victory. Writes to him about his own part in all of it. Only his mind finally catches up and stops him mid-sentence.
We have come so far, and while there is no end yet to this road
Forsyth considers what his father might think of that: a road without ending. A road with no place where one can rest. It reminds him of a passage he read a very long time ago. Of people who confuse their suffering for a gift.
There is not a book inside that manor his father has not read. He must have read that same passage before too.
We have come so far, and while there is no end yet to this road, I am determined to see it through. Forsyth pauses. Thinks back to the wardrobes and bookshelves Python's father would put together. As a child, he had never noticed the wood discarded by the carpenter: pieces too flawed or too small to be of use. But he remembers them all now.
Forsyth wonders how much of himself has been carved away by this road. Wonders how much of him will remain the further he travels down it.
Once, the sunlight turned his father's hair white. The memory is cold. There is a metallic quality to his hair. It is something like sunshine catching on the edge of a blade. It makes him wonder if that was what his father saw behind the sun.
Even in this dim room, Forsyth can feel light burn in his eye sockets. He still sees that same light. Still yearns to meet it.
His branches might not grow long enough to reach it, but Forsyth would try.
Fear not, father, for I am focused.