Dear Life

“You’re not ready.”

The words were barked.

The words were a denial.

Those words hit hard and they hurt deep.

“I would never be ready. Not by your reckoning anyway,” said the young lad.

Turner walked away. There was nothing more to say, not as far as he was concerned.

And so it went.

The lad returned every evening. He was not short on determination. Turner thought him stubborn. That could be a good thing, but it was likely bad. Stubborn people found it difficult to listen. And if they did listen, then they seemed incapable of keeping it up. They opened up just long enough to get what they came for, then they went off half-cocked, like a mad bull with dysentery leaving a stinking mess behind them.

A year went by. Turner only knew this because the lad told him he’d been coming for a year. The lad supplying him with this information ensured Turner’s intransigence remained in place. He was not about to relent because the lad was celebrating a year’s anniversary of his ritual visits to disturb and annoy Turner with his unreasonable request.

A month later, Turner at last altered his response, “what is it that you think you want?” he asked the lad.

“For you to teach me,” the lad said.

Turner stood stock still and stared at the lad. Eventually the lad wilted. Then he remembered himself.

“Sir,” he said.

Turner half shook his head. The movement was short and curt, but the meaning was obvious; not sir.

The lad looked puzzled, then he tried again.

“Lord,” he said.

Turner was pleased to note that the lad had not said it as a question. He raised an eyebrow. He was not, and never intended to be a lord.

“Master,” said the lad.

Turner nodded, “you would have me be your master? Do you understand what that would mean for you?”

The lad nodded.

Turner snorted, his lips blowing a partial raspberry. This was as much entertainment as he’d had in many a year. The impetuous brashness of youthful fools was a joke. He suddenly became serious, his consideration of the consequences of that particular joke sobering him instantly.

“I was told that I must be trained,” volunteered the lad.

“Must?” questioned Turner.

“They say I have a gift and that it is dangerous if I do not train,” said the lad.

“Do they now?” asked Turner.

“They do,” confirmed the lad.

“And what would they know about the subject?” Turner asked.

“They know you,” replied the lad.

Turner was interested now, “who exactly is they?”

The lad smiled, then remembered himself and actually wiped the smile away with the back of his hand, “King Tommor, master.”

“He sent you?” asked Turner.

“Yes, master,” the lad nodded.

“Why did you not say that from the off?” there was an edge of angered frustration in Turner’s voice.

“He said I was not to mention it unless you asked,” the lad replied.

“So you’ve been here every day for a year and didn’t think to mention that King Tommor sent you?” asked Turner.

“A year and two months,” said the lad.

“Pardon?”

“A year and two months, master,” repeated the lad, “and he was very clear. He said I was not, under any circumstances to mention his name and that he had sent me, until you asked.”

“Did he now?” said Turner.

“He did,” nodded the lad, “he said that you would refuse me and make me wait and that this was as much a part of my training as any of the rest of it.”

Turner’s eyes went wide, “he did what?! Why that…”

Turner turned his back on the lad and afforded himself a grin and a shake of his head. Unbelievable. The temerity of Tommor to play him like this. And the lad. The lad had patiently doorstepped him for over a year and followed the instructions of a king who understood Turner better than he should.

He turned back to the lad, “tell me, boy, is your king wise?”

Creditably, the lad paused to think this over, “it would be unwise of me to say otherwise, but yes, he has knowledge and he uses that knowledge. He listens and he deliberates. I think he cares too. Wisdom is more than knowledge and it is caring that makes it so.”

Turner nodded. The lad had obviously not been wasting the past year, “where do you sleep at night, and what have you been up to for the past year?” he asked.

“The woods, master,” the lad said, “and I have been reading and exercising.”

Turner passed over the matter of the lad’s lodgings without giving his reaction away at all. The woods were dangerous and the dangers they possessed were manyfold. Winter in these parts was cruel, if the cold did not kill a person then there were plenty of hungry predators that would oblige.

“Reading what?” he asked the lad.

The lad reached into his haversack and retrieved a leather bound book. Turner saw it for what it was. The Book of Mirg. 

“Where did you get that, boy?” he asked gruffly.

“My grandmother gave it to me,” the lad told him.

However well Turner could control himself and mask his reactions, in this case he could not. His body shuddered as a shire horse of past remembrance thundered over him, he nodded as tears welled up in his eyes, “your grandmother was Tara of the Elsh?”

The lad shrugged in something like self-deprecation. The old woman had been his grandmother and he had loved her. That was all there was to it and there need be no more, “I only ever knew her as grandmother. I learnt her true name after her death.”

Turner had known she was dead, of course he had. He’d felt her slip from this existence in the instance that it had happened, but this was the first time he’d heard the words and had confirmation. He nodded some more and bit his lip to damp down the well of feelings he’d tried to ignore unsuccessfully throughout his adult life. Training was one thing. Living it was a whole other game.

“How does the Red Gift manifest in you, boy?” asked Turner. He asked even though asking hurt him. It hurt deeply. He would not wish the Red Gift on anyone, but then he knew that it was no gift, it was a curse. A curse that set a person apart and in their loneliness, placed upon them responsibilities and obligations that no one should ever have to shoulder.

The lad did not speak, instead he raised his arms wide, and brought them together in something resembling a slow and silent clap. As his palms came together, a red aura encompassed his entire body. Faint and gentle at first, it grew in intensity until the lad was a living flame.

It was all Turner could do not to kneel at the boy’s feet.

Phoenix Class?

This was the stuff of legends.

Stories of dragons had sprung into being a thousand years ago thanks to a brother and sister with powers of this incredible magnitude. Tia and Franz possessed powers beyond imagining and quickly learnt that there was nothing and no one to stop them doing anything they wished. Without boundaries, they became animalistic. They fulfilled their urges on a whim and did so with impunity. They never once reflected upon the lives they had chosen, nor showed remorse. But then, how could they when they had not developed a conscience between them? They laid waste to the villages surrounding their birth place and created a barren kingdom where none would dare to tread. Their reign of chaos and terror ended with them. There were offspring from their unnatural union, but none of those children made it to adulthood. Tia ended each and every one of them, deeming them unworthy disappointments. Turner suspected that either those children did not have the Red Gift, or if they did, Tia and Franz saw them as too much of a threat and crushed them before they became too powerful to control.

“You can stop now, boy,” Turner said, doing his best to remain calm, “I have seen enough.” And he had. He’d seen more than enough, and he knew more than he wanted to. 

“Well?” said the lad, now he was back in a state that was a world away from the fire he had so recently manifested.

Well indeed, thought Turner. There was no way he could send the lad away now. No way in hell, and hell was what Turner feared. Hell on Earth. There was no escaping this now. To turn away from the lad would be to consign him to a fate worse than death and to see the world burn.

For over a year, this lad had visited Turner each and every day and asked him to be his mentor. The truth in those times was that Turner did not want to enable anymore warriors. Not a single one. He’d seen enough of where that led. Too much had he seen. The raw material that presented itself at the outset was never suitable for the world. The Red Gift was wasted on youth, but the wisdom of age was seemingly a life away. 

Turner had come to realise that to teach and train a magical warrior was to facilitate death. He was encouraging starry eyed youths to become killers and soon enough, any warmth, any humanity, suffocated under the weight of the bodies of the dead.

The Red Gift was a curse that consumed its host, leading them to kill again and again. Turner suspected that King Tommor knew where he was with this and that was why he’d sent the lad here. It was a test for both the lad and for Turner. At the very least, it would buy the King time, but most likely was that the King had handed the problem of the lad’s great gift to Turner to deal with. For better or worse, the lad was Turner’s problem now and there was nothing else to be done than to get on with it, however much Turner didn’t want to teach the lad.

Turner drew in a deep breath, it sounded like the saddest of sighs as he let it out. It was the sound of finality. Of capitulation. A last breath before the world turned and everything changed.

“Do you understand what it means to devote yourself to the mentorship of a Master of the Red Gift?” Turner asked the lad.

“I do, master,” said the lad.

“I doubt it,” Turner told him, a deep sadness in his eyes as he gazed at the lad, “your indenturement is permanent. It is far more severe than an apprentice’s. You give yourself over in your entirety. Do you understand why?”

“Yes master,” said the lad.

“Tell me,” Turner ordered.

“I sacrifice my freedom and myself in service to the Red Gift…”

Turner was shaking his head vehemently, “no, no, no! You do not and you will not serve the Red Gift! That is an eventuality that would damn you. The consequences of such a thing are beyond imagining!”

“But I…” began the lad.

“Read the words in that book, but did not understand them sufficiently,” Turner told him, “the words you read were filtered into your mind in such a way that they suited you and how you feel about The Gift. You glory in your power and you dream of what you will do with it. That power and the urges that will feed it are a great seduction.”

The lad looked quizzical to a point of confusion.

“You’re wondering how a person can seduce themselves,” Turner told him.

The lad shrugged.

“We are all conflicted. This is necessary. The inherent contrast and conflict in all things forces dialogue. We must choose and in order to choose we must think,” Turner smiled bitterly, “we don’t always think things through, instead we fall short and we feel. Feelings are not a basis for choice. And so we lie to ourselves. The biggest lies we ever tell are the ones we tell ourselves.”

The lad still looked confused.

“The Red Gift ups the ante and then some, boy. The Red Gift distorts the balance, not only of the possessor of The Gift, but in the world. Your vow to me. Your submission and deference. These things are necessary to begin to create balance and order. The Red Gift thrives when there is order and everything makes sense. But in its raw state, it is chaos and it consumes all before it,” Turner was watching the lad closely as he spoke, “so you understand what it is that you are on the cusp of doing?”

The lad nodded.

“Tell me!” bellowed Turner.

“I am to become your slave, master,” said the lad sadly.

Turner noted the sadness and thought it potentially good, “you hand yourself and your gift over to me so that between us we can build a place for it to exist harmoniously in this world.”

“I thought you were going to train me to fight,” said the lad, “master,” he added almost insolently.

Turner glowered, but stayed his hand. This was why he had vowed never to train a young magical warrior again. They were all about the fight and a romanticised notion of glory. There was no glory on the battlefield, and often, there wasn’t even a battlefield. Glory was a notion for those back home. Glory was a story told to justify the killing. Glory was the lie that secured a constant supply of children who would go blindly into a world of horror and by the time they woke up to the reality of their existence, it was too late for them.

It was certainly too late for Turner, he had had his fill of the gore and suffering of war and he was haunted by the ghosts of all those he had slain and worse still, his fallen comrades. He was constantly tortured by those ghosts. They were a manifestation of his guilt and shame and he knew he would never escape them in this life, or the next.

“I am,” said Turner, and he meant it, for the first and most significant fight the lad would have was with himself, “but first you must hold life dear. You must understand the sanctity of life, both yours and all life in this world of ours.”

“Those sound like the words of a coward,” said the lad, “master,” he again added after the fact.

“Do not try my patience, boy,” Turner’s eyes burned with a potent fury, “you walk a narrow path as it is.”

The lad nodded, “I apologise, master. I am eager to learn.”

“You seem eager to speak instead of listen, and that will not stand,” Turner told him.

“I will hold my tongue,” said the lad.

Turner accepted this, “good, now kneel and say the words if you would have me for your master.”

The lad obeyed, kneeling and dropping his eyes to the ground.

Turner threw him over with a strength that seemed impossible for such a small and slight man, “no! Never look down. Down is where the dark is. Down leads to hell. You kneel and you look at me. Your head may be bowed, but you never lose sight of what counts. Are we clear?”

“Yes,” spat the lad as he got to his knees again.

Turner struck him, sending him sprawling sideways.

The lad regained his knees as Turner stared at him balefully, “yes, master.”

Turner nodded, “now we will say the words,” and they did. The vow was long, and rightly so, it was a spell of binding that locked the lad to Turner and gave some of the control of the Red Gift to the master himself. That control was to a large extent illusory, the binding was a contract between the two men. The lad had to believe it and then he had to live it.

Twice, as part of the vow, Turner struck the lad. Once on the right cheek so that he would remember to always walk the path of truth and finally across his left cheek so that he would remember humility and that it was his place in this world to serve, to serve with love and in truth. To serve the people and protect and nurture the fragile world around him.

At the end of the vow, the lad lay prostrate before Turner, and for a moment, there was a flash of that red aura, such was the power that the lad contained.

“Arise, Galdon of the Red Gift.” 

Turner whispered the words, but the lad heard well enough. He raised his head to look up at his Master, “you know my name?”

Turner nodded, proffering his hand to help the lad up, he did not reveal how he knew his name. There was much he knew and he was in no hurry to expose his secrets. Secrets that included his true intent; to train the lad in peace and to bring him peace such that his power would never be wielded in anger. 

His would be a long path and there would be conflict and frustration as the young man pulled on his leash, eager to use his powers. This could not be allowed to happen, for if he were ever to forget himself and use The Gift on a whim, driven by urge instead of deep thought, then he would be lost and so much more would be lost with him.

Turner would teach the boy alright, but he would not teach the boy what he wanted to learn, instead he would teach him what he needed to learn.

The biggest fight of the lad’s life had begun, as had the most significant battle in Turner’s…