Dawnbreaker

by Posey, Jay

  Foe just looked at him standing on top of the posts, and based on the stern expression on his face, Wren braced himself for a correction.

  “What are you doing up there, boy?”

  Wren crouched down and then hopped off the posts back into the water.

  “It seemed like a good idea at the time,” Wren answered.

  “Because?”

  “Because then I didn’t have to worry about splashing when I walked,” Wren said.

  “Did Haiku tell you to do that?” Foe asked.

  Wren shook his head. “No, sir.”

  Foe smiled. “Then perhaps you are ready to move on,” he said.

  Wren blinked at the statement. Move on? Had he just figured out what he was supposed to from the Waiting Room?

  “We’re done with the Waiting Room?”

  “For today,” Foe said. “Do not be anxious, boy. This room still has much to teach you. But you have done well. You have demonstrated a skill that is one of the most difficult to teach.”

  “Walking on poles in the dark?” Wren asked.

  Foe rumbled with something between a cough and a chuckle. “No, boy. Thinking sideways. Come along.”

  Wren had never heard the term before, and wasn’t quite sure what Foe meant by it. They got out of the Waiting Room, dried off, and headed back upstairs. Foe allowed Wren to change into a dry shirt, and then took him into the room they used for their training in the digital. Wren couldn’t help but feel disappointed. After his apparent success in the Waiting Room, he’d hoped that maybe he’d get to move on to some new level of training. Instead, it was back to the basics.

  Wren took a seat on the floor, as he always did. A splotch of yellow in his periphery caught his attention. He glanced over. A set of shelves was attached to the wall and held all manner of equipment that Wren didn’t recognize. On the bottom shelf, Haiku’s ball was mostly hidden amongst some chunky devices.

  Foe eased himself to the ground and sat crosslegged directly in front of Wren. He dipped his head forward in an easy nod. Signaling for Wren to begin.

  Wren started as usual, by initiating a request for mutual connection, precisely the way Foe had shown him. They continued through the same basic processes of establishing the connection or refusing it, of redirecting it, shutting it down. Thankfully Wren got through all the steps without making any errors. He still hadn’t been able to figure out why Foe was so insistent on doing things his particular way. The old man had shown him a different technique but the end result was always the same, regardless of whether Wren did it the way Foe taught him, or the way he’d always done it before.

  “Good,” Foe said. “Now. Tell me about your experience in the Waiting Room. What led you to use the posts in that manner?”

  Wren shrugged. “It just kind of happened.”

  “No,” Foe said. “It did not. Explain your thought process.”

  Wren thought back to the situation, tried to step outside the moment and work his way through it objectively.

  “You had splashed the water in my face,” he said, “and then when you turned the lights back on, you were farther away than I’d expected. It made me wonder how you could move so fast without splashing. I crouched down and had my hand on top of the post. I guess when I felt it, I realized it was big enough for me to stand on.”

  “And why did you not see this before?”

  Wren wanted to give the quick answer, to say he didn’t know, but he knew Foe preferred him to sit and consider, to spend time pondering, even if the answer was still going to be that he didn’t know. He sat for a moment and asked himself the question again. Why hadn’t he seen it before? What had it been about touching the top of the post in that particular moment that had changed his perspective on it? How had he thought of them before then?

  He thought back to his first experience in the room, how he’d caught his foot on one and tripped. From then on, he’d looked at the poles as things to be avoided. Obstacles.

  “I’d been looking at them wrong,” Wren said.

  “How?”

  “When we first started, I thought I was supposed to be moving around them. And I didn’t think about them again until just today.”

  “Could you walk through them?” Foe asked.

  A bizarre question; Wren wasn’t sure if Foe was actually expecting him to answer, but the old man waited, so Wren said, “No?”

  “Then why did you say you were wrong about them?”

  It took a moment for Wren to understand what Foe was saying.

  “I guess I wasn’t wrong,” he answered. “I just hadn’t recognized both ways to look at them.”

  Foe held up his finger, marking the distinction.

  “The flexible mind,” Foe said, “perceives what is possible, not what is expected. Even when what is expected comes from one’s own preconceptions. A skill that can be developed, but one that I have found most difficult to teach.”

  “Thinking sideways?”

  Foe nodded. “You have been frustrated with your training thus far. This portion in particular. Tell me why.”

  “I g...” Wren started, and then stopped himself. No I think or I guess; he was still trying to learn to stop qualifying his answers. If he didn’t, Foe would remind him. “It’s because I had different ways to do the same things, and it was hard to remember all your rules.”

  “Rules?” Foe said. “Were you able to achieve the same results through different means?”

  “Yes,” Wren said. Hadn’t he just said that?

  “If they were rules, how could you succeed without following them?”

  Wren blinked back at the old man. Whenever Foe started peppering him with questions this way, Wren had learned it was more than just philosophical babble. It was his way of drawing understanding out. Another lesson within the lesson.

  “They are not rules, boy,” Foe continued. “If all I have taught you is rules, then I have failed you indeed. It is natural for people to desire them because it saves them from the hard work of properly judging their own actions. And they desire rulers because it saves them the hard work of ruling themselves. Mere rules are beneath us. Consider your oath. Are they rules?”

  “No.”

  “Laws?”

  “No.”

  “Then how can they govern your behavior?”

  “Because...” Wren said. “Because they’re... ideas of what’s right?”

  “Principles,” Foe said. “We operate on principles, firm enough to provide guidance and structure, yet flexible enough to survive contact with reality. They can be applied to many situations, even those which we lack the capacity to imagine until they occur. Rules are rigid. And the real world is always a special case.

  “Given that information and your success in the Waiting Room, perhaps now you have sufficient experience to understand why I have been so insistent on a particular methodology?”

  Wren tried not to get too excited about Foe’s use of the word success, even though it was the first time he’d heard the old man say it. Mentally he quickly rehearsed the steps that Foe had ingrained in him, looking for what it was he’d missed all along about them. But even with all the discussion of principles and flexibility, he couldn’t quite see what the old man was getting at. It was all still just basic connectivity, broken down into... And then it opened to his mind, how Foe had segmented the process. What Wren had always considered one single act, he now saw in distinct phases. The same tools, from a different perspective.

  “They’re building blocks,” Wren said. Foe dipped his head.

  “When we first began, everything you did, you did by instinct. By feeling. By way of natural talent,” Foe said. “You achieved results without understanding the mechanics of how. If you rely too heavily on feeling alone, it is difficult for the mind to perceive how else a technique may be employed. But now, boy... now we may begin.”

  A moment later a connection request came in. Wren accepted it. Foe sat up straighter, laid his hands palms-up on his knees, took
a deep breath and exhaled. Wren did the same, as he’d been taught, tried to relax his shoulders and control his breathing.

  “Now,” Foe said, and he smiled. “Follow me.”

  Wren didn’t understand what Foe meant but, as usual, it only took a few seconds for him to get practical experience; Foe’s connection slid. It wasn’t that he’d killed the signal or reflected it. It was still strong, but it felt like it was slipping away. Wren knew he was going to lose it and just before he did, it stabilized. Nothing he had done. Foe had backed off, given him a chance to catch up. But as soon as Wren had re-secured the connection, the same thing happened. He didn’t know what to do; he’d never experienced anything like it before.

  No, that wasn’t true. He had, in Morningside. When he’d tried to connect to Underdown’s machine remotely, and he’d needed Finn to help him. Wren tried to recall that moment, to draw up the image of what it was Finn had done... Too late; he lost his focus and the connection.

  “Again,” Foe said. They repeated the process; request, accept, follow. Wren felt the familiar frustration try to bubble up. He knew Foe could easily tell him or even show him what he was supposed to do. But now Wren was able to understand the sense of frustration, to acknowledge it and to accept it. Embrace it, even. He understood now, really understood.

  If Foe had just told him about walking on top of the posts in the Waiting Room, he would have missed so much of what mattered in that lesson. Haiku’s words came back to him, about not confusing the method of learning for the skill. Discovering the solution on his own was far more powerful than having it shown to him. He’d truly learned the lesson, at the deepest level.

  And even when Foe’s connection escaped him again, and Foe restarted, Wren was able to let himself settle into the moment, to let the frustration propel him towards the solution rather than thrash against the situation. Foe kept him at it for hours, and what Wren had previously considered the easiest, if most tedious, part of his training took on a new, far more severe character. Previous sessions had been shorter and much less intense. Though he’d always been physically weary when he’d undertaken them, he hadn’t had to deal with mental exhaustion on top of it.

  That was rapidly changing. The amount of sustained focus and mental effort it required to chase Foe’s signal made Wren’s mind feel like it was twisting in strange ways and drained him faster than he’d thought possible. By the end of the time, Wren had only managed to capture the signal a handful of times, and only briefly. And he hadn’t been successful at all in the last hour.

  “Good,” Foe said. “Enough for today.”

  Wren was pretty sure enough had been a couple of hours before, but he was grateful for the reprieve. Foe led him back to the parlor where they took a small meal together with Haiku. Between the lack of sleep and the brain-melting training he’d just been through, Wren could barely follow a conversation, let alone participate in one. Just before Foe took him to his next lesson, though, he did manage to remember one thing.

  “On the shelves,” he said to Haiku. “Hidden on the bottom one.” Haiku smiled at him.

  “Tomorrow,” he said, “we will make it a little more challenging.”

  Wren nodded, hardly comprehending the words. He followed Foe out and up the stairs. When they reached the top of the second flight and Foe turned on the landing, Wren’s heart fell. This meant the game with the petals. He was so tired, reality had lag. There was no way he was going to be able to handle the petals today. It took every ounce of his will just to stand on the mat and not break down into tears. And then it began.

  To Wren’s surprise, after the first few minutes he found that rather than overwhelming him, the gentle fall of the petals began to soothe his frazzled mind. Though the exercise required focus, it was of a different kind; passive, expansive. It almost felt like it carried him outside himself.

  “Missed one,” Foe said. He walked in his usual slow circle around Wren, occasionally changing directions, rarely stopping. Somehow he seemed to know exactly when stopping would be most disruptive, when Wren was counting on him to continue his movement a particular direction, or was anticipating a change.

  Wren reached out for a red petal and Foe, standing off to his side, moved as if to grab Wren’s wrist. Wren didn’t even think. One hand flashed out on its own and deflected Foe’s attack, while the other secured the petal. Wren tucked the petal in his pocket, mildly pleased with himself.

  “Still wasting too much energy, boy,” Foe said.

  Wren snorted a chuckle. He didn’t have any energy left to waste or to use otherwise. Faster than Wren had ever seen him move, Foe whipped his fist straight out towards Wren’s face, too fast to dodge, almost too fast to see. Wren barely had time to tense up and squeeze his eyes shut before the impact... except there was no impact, only a breeze from the strike. Wren opened his eyes to see Foe’s knuckles a half-inch from his nose. Foe didn’t take his arm back or lower it. Just let it hang there. Wren glanced from the fist up to the old man’s eyes. The look on his face was one of his subtle hints that a clue had just been given.

  “Missed one,” he said. And then he lowered his arm. “Why did you tense?”

  Even though Foe had asked a question, Wren knew he was still supposed to be catching red petals. He continued as best he could.

  “Because I thought you were going to hit me,” he answered.

  “Mm,” Foe said. He started walking his slow circle again. Wren had learned to read that reaction. The question, his answer, Foe’s odd all-purpose mm. Taken all together, that meant he was wandering around close to a discovery. This use of energy was the issue Foe had commented on the most over the past week. Wren replayed his own words; because I thought you were going to hit me. He thought Foe was going to hit him. And the first time Foe had mentioned it, hadn’t he feinted as though he was going to shove Wren? That was it. He felt it snap into place, felt the mild burst of relief of a difficult problem solved.

  “I thought you were going to hit me,” Wren repeated. “But you weren’t. And if I had known you weren’t going to hit me, I wouldn’t have flinched. I’m wasting energy reacting to attacks that won’t actually hurt me.”

  Foe didn’t make any comment, didn’t even acknowledge that Wren had spoken. He just continued around in his circle. Wren waited for confirmation. The longer he waited, the less confident he felt. Doubt crept in.

  “Is that right?” he asked.

  “Missed one,” Foe said.

  “Foe, is that right? Is that what you meant about wasting energy?”

  “What do you think?”

  Wren caught a red petal, tucked it into his pocket.

  “I thought it was.”

  “But you do not now?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because you’re not acting like it’s the right answer.”

  “Mm.”

  Wren shook his head, made a grab for a red petal that was passing his knee. How many lessons was he supposed to be learning? He was having trouble keeping all the threads separate in his mind. But no, he was sure of it. The pieces fit together too cleanly. Maybe there was some other hidden aspect to it, but Wren felt certain he at least had gotten part of the answer.

  “Yes,” he said. “I’m right.”

  “Then why did you ask me?”

  “Just to be sure.”

  Foe held up a finger, the way he did whenever he wanted to draw attention to something Wren had just said.

  “In the Waiting Room,” he said, “how many times have you successfully struck me with your clicker?”

  Wren didn’t have to think about that long at all.

  “None.”

  “How do you know?”

  Wren started to say because Foe had never reacted to being hit, but he caught himself. Hadn’t he managed to control his reaction to being stung? Surely if he could do it, the old man was far more capable of the same. He didn’t quite know where Foe was leading him yet, but he felt the connecti
on between the two lines of thinking. And then he had another thought.

  “Actually I’ve done it a bunch of times,” Wren said. “So many times I lost count.”

  Foe made his little rumbling chuckle.

  “Good,” he said. “Very good. Though if you cannot count beyond six, I have more work ahead than I supposed.”

  “I’ve hit you six times?” Wren asked, surprised. He couldn’t help but wonder when and how he’d managed to score any hits at all.

  “Not according to you,” Foe said with a smile. “But how can I prove otherwise? Missed one.”

  He feinted as if he were going to shove Wren, but Wren saw it now, saw Foe’s posture and his foot position, knew there would be no force behind it. Wren ignored the motion and caught another petal.

  “What is your foundation?” Foe asked.

  “Truth,” Wren responded without even thinking about it.

  “Why?”

  “Because with clarity, I see that which is.”

  Foe nodded. And then he lunged at Wren. Instinctively Wren swept his arms up, twisted, deflected the attack and redirected its energy. Wren kept his place in the circle, and even managed to catch another petal after Foe moved away.

  “Did I succeed?” Foe asked.

  “No.”

  “Are you certain?”

  “Yes.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because you didn’t knock me out of the circle.”

  “And why do you believe that was my aim?” Foe asked, and as he did he held out his hand, open, palm up. On it were a few crumpled red petals. At first Wren thought the old man had managed to catch several at once, but then he realized the more likely case. He jammed his hand in his pocket. The petals he’d captured were all gone.

  “You took all my petals,” Wren said.

  “Yes.”

  “You distracted me with the shove, so you could get them,” Wren said.

  “Well, no,” Foe said. “I wanted to shove you out of the circle, but you prevented it.” And then he smiled. “Appearing to get what you want can be almost as powerful as getting what you want.”