Sae.
You've left the portion of the Dreamscape that I control for the realm
of the subconscious; I wonder what you're dreaming now?
Be confident in yourself, whatever it is. I know you have the potential:
it is that which first drew me to you, that and your sorrow.
It was not such a great thing in the long view that you grieved over,
but to a child such a tragedy is near the end of the world.
Why is it that if I can see that, those whose childhood is far less
distant than mine in space and time cannot?
Ah, well, no matter.
Your happy smile -- your innocent joy -- those are the things worth
preserving. In a world which has changed as much as I remember it doing,
the little things are all one can hope to protect; and the little things
make up the totality of that which abides.
And as others cannot always be there to protect you, you must learn to
protect yourself.
The world has changed since I was young, and perhaps not for the better.
The arts of magic, once so prevalent, have fallen into disuse; I believe
that it may only be you five now, and you are not even from the homelands
of magic -- magic as I know it: the Orient has its own brand of
supernatural dealings, allied to but not of 'magic,' and neither I nor
you are skilled in such ways. Perhaps now that you have defeated the
tsurinage, those ancient guardians of the Summerlands set wandering when
the
pathways were sundered, there will be no more magicians, and the things
of elektron-power and nucleic-power will be dominant.
But, Sae, if you are to be the last of my special students, know that
you are also one of the greatest. If all those whom I had taught were to
gather in one hall, and a high table set aside for those who had truly
used their power well and left the world better than they'd found it,
your seat would not be least at that board.
I was once, long ago when I was young and the modern calendar had not
been thought of, myself human.
You would laugh to think this: my eidolon does not look very human, does
it? When I was a child, my mother's brother crafted such a thing for me,
to laugh at and keep away the night terrors. I have remembered it fondly
ever since, though the night terrors have grown so much greater and more
terrifying.
At least, I believe I was then human; she who bore me was human;
although who or what sired me I do not know and do not care to guess.
My mother-not did not want me, hated the very sight of me, for I was an
eternal reminder of her shame when she had been found not to be a maiden
pure (as she had claimed to be) before her mother's brother's entire
court. It was her brother who cared for me, who raised me, who sought to
find ways around the Dooms my mother-not laid on me.
The world has indeed changed: in the days of my youth, the relationship
of 'father' was thought of little account, and that of mother's brother
stood in its place as the parental role. It may be that it was in your
Eight Islands, Sae, as it was in our Island of the Mighty: your Stormlord
is given the position of mother's brother to all your emperors since the
line began.
And my uncle was all the parent I needed, when I was small. He showed me
the ways of magic and that of warriorhood, and I chose the path of the
warrior then. Does that surprise you? I was very young, and my elder
cousins all yearned to be warriors.
My elder cousins were raised by the Queen, who was wife to my mother's
mother's brother. My uncle was seldom permitted to visit them, although I
often was: the Queen had no liking for him, and the boys had been given
into her care regardless of his blood ties.
I disliked the Queen when I was young because she did not care for my
uncle, the most wonderful person in the world. I told my uncle that,
once.
He told me, with an expression on his face that I could not yet
recognize, that he deserved her scorn: for he and his brother had done
her one of the greatest wrongs it is possible for one person to do to
another, and taken by force that which has no value unless it be freely
given.
That will *never* happen to you, Sae. I swear that on my blood and my
wings.
And yet I was not fully happy when I was small. As I have said, my
mother-not had laid a Doom on me: that I should never be named unless she
were to do it.
When I was the age your sister was when first you met me, my uncle
tricked a name out of her. You would not find it easy to pronounce:
'Jeff' is a corruption of a part of my full name, which means the Bright
One of the Skillful Hand.
I have grown fond of 'Jeff-kun,' though, in the years since. You do me
no insult, Sae.
In her anger, she laid another Doom on me: that I should never bear arms
and armor unless she should array me in them herself.
And, as one might have expected, when I was the age you are now, my
mother's brother again tricked them out of her.
Sae, do you know what I envy most of all you have?
Your sister. I would have killed to have a sister; both for herself, and
for the children she might bear. I should have loved to be mother's
brother to a whole flock of children, and striven to do as well as my
mother's brother did for me.
For when my mother-not found that the one she had armed against
phantasmic invaders was none other than the child she had caused to come
into existence, she laid her third and worst Doom upon me: that no woman
born should ever wed me.
And my mother's brother responded by making for me a woman of flowers.
Her name in your tongue would be Hanagao; and she was lovely beyond
compare.
Lovely and selfish: for despite all that my uncle could do, he could not
give her a human heart.
Your Miyama-sempai reminds me of her; perhaps that is a reason why I do
not overmuch like the woman.
Sae, I would far rather you never knew of what happened next. Not that
my wife betrayed me with another man, and plotted with my lover to kill
me: that only wounds me in my pride, and I have grown beyond more than
momentary pain at such petty wounds. Not that they succeeded, and that my
uncle searched for me until he found my soul in the shape of an eagle and
my body below it, and worked great magic to bring me back: that is
important to understand me, and though I will not -- cannot -- speak of
what it was like to be dead, I can and will praise my mother's brother
for his care, and say that though he caused me to rise again from death,
as few before or since have done, since that moment I have never more
been
mortal as men are mortal.
No, what I do not want you to know of is the madness that gripped me
then. I wanted nothing more than their deaths, and would have stopped at
*nothing* to gain them. I killed the man, and my uncle transformed my
so-lovely wife into the shape of an owl rather than let me kill her.
And when it was over, I was sick and tired, and slept for a long time.
All the fire had burnt out, and left in its place -- nothing.
I abandoned the arts of the warrior, after waking from that long sleep.
All the uses I could then see for such led only to more of that emptiness
after rage. Instead I pursued magic, throwing all my energy into it to
keep the Nothing away; and when I had learned all that my mother's
brother could then teach me, I left for other lands, to learn their ways
of magic.
It was when I was in Egypt -- you would be awed at Egypt, Sae; its
culture may even be older than China's, though the Middle Flower Kingdom
has outlasted it -- learning from the last of the heirs of the traditions
of Imhotep, who had none other to whom to pass the accumulated learning
of one thousand years, that my mother's brother reached me in a dream.
They were leaving, all of the greatest and oldest of our race; they were
leaving and taking ship for the Summer Country, for the gates were opened
and the way was clear, and our old homeland was changing beyond
recognition. And they could not wait, even for me.
Three hopes only had they for me, that I might one day join them. It
might be that they could reach me in my dying, and I would avoid the
place you call the Yuukai and come instead to the Summer Country.
It might be that, later, the gates would be opened for others, and I
might come to the Summer Country in their train.
And it might be that later I would do deeds of such might that the Gates
of Summer would be opened for me and me alone; thrice only since the
stars were kindled and the rain began have they been opened for any less
than a host, and two of those have been since I parted from my kin.
I was lonely then as I pray you will never be able to understand
loneliness. And seeking to assuage it to some extent, I traveled the
length and breadth of the known world, seeking teachers, and taking
students.
I will never stand by my sister as she struggles to bear a child, and
take the babe as it emerges from her loins, holding it up that she may
see the fruit of her labor. I will never be with her as she strives to
raise that child, helping to guide, protecting and teaching.
And yet, in a way I am freed by that, to name myself mother's brother to
all of my best students.
The bard in the new Island of the Mighty, to whom I told all the tales
of the deeds of my race that he might weave them into one great song; as
long as men sing that song and read its story in books, all of those
great heroes and their kinfolk will never die.
The healer in Campania; he is long forgotten by history, and yet his
deeds in their time were well worth an epic to stand with those of Homer
and Vergil and Taliesin.
Merlion Emrys, in an island so changed by time and circumstance that it
was barely recognizable as mine. He failed of some of his deeds at the
end; and yet by his work a light was helped to stay lit for a little
while, and the king he served came with his court and his Companions to
the Summer Country at last.
Malgis, in a land that was once Gaul. You would have liked her, Sae; she
was the first woman I ever took as a student, and stubborn enough to
learn the spell of shape-changing if she could not be accepted as a
female magician.
Kinta, once a slave in the empire on the River Niger south of the
African Desert.
And many more -- so many that to name them all would take long and long,
and yet all dear to me.
It is true, that if one lives long enough, almost everyone will come to
remind you of someone you knew before. Your friend Nanaka; though the
name is different, and the face also, in her I see the Queen who raised
my cousins, and Malgis' cousin Theotrade.
Your Aburatsubo-sempai is younger and more... innocent is the only word
that I can find, and yet his every move and speech recalls my Egyptian
teacher Min-nakht, who despite his age and despair at the changing world
still had cool fruit juice brought to him every morning by servants
chosen for their personal beauty. While Aikawa Akane might almost be
Nimue, Emrys' impulsive, reckless student who outpaced her lessons in her
desire to learn more and faster and ended in accidentally imprisoning
him; she was very beautiful.
And your Takakura-sempai; I have seen many like him in my long life.
Apparently weak and driven by desires and yearnings, yet there is a core
of strength and kindness there; if you truly want him, I shall assist you
however I may. Simply reserve to an old man the right to think that you
might have commanded better.
But you, Sawanoguchi Sae: whenever I look at you, I see only you. Not
always the wisest, not always the strongest; but your heart is one of the
deepest and purest I have ever encountered, and your will to go on trying
one of the greatest. Believe in yourself and your power, and know that
you are truly my sister-daughter, no matter the mere biological
relationships involved.
Sleep well, Sae.