The Spell-Bound Scholar

by Christopher Stasheff

  You cannot mean it! They reared us to work for the good of the people!

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  All the people, yes, the kind lady said, but not those closest to home. They want you to work for the people only through SPITE. They want you for themselves.

  Finister groaned, sinking in on herself. She searched for an argument but found none—other than to question the kind lady's motives, and with them, her whole argument. When she woke from this dream, she would seek evidence—but she suspected it would only prove the kind lady's tale. There were too many little questions she had ignored as she grew up, too many answers not given.

  Then a glaring, horrid memory—the slaughter of a sheep, and herself wielding the knife. The others congratulated her on her courage, though quietly, and when they were alone, Mama gathered Finny's head onto her breast to let the teenager weep. "I know it's hard, Finny, but the world is grim. It's a cruel place, and the only way to live in it is to become capable of cruelty yourself, and to harden your heart to others' pain."

  Then she was outside the event again, watching herself weep, and the kind lady was saying, / disagree. The world can be cruel yes, but it can also be kind and loving. You must protect yourself against others ' pain that you cannot avoid, but if you shut out all feeling, if you truly harden your heart, you shall close yourself off from all that is tender and affectionate.

  Finister frowned, uncertain. If that were true, why would Mama have said such things?

  The better to make you able to kill human beings, the kind lady said. That is why they insisted that each of you help in the slaughtering. You were trained to kill; you began with chickens, progressed through sheep and pigs, and ended with men.

  Finister said nothing, only watched her younger self sob in Mama's arms and brooded. It would explain why Mama had given her so much attention on her first slaughtering—to make her wish to please Mama by killing again. It certainly was training for assassination, especially if you learned to block out all the victim's pain and anguish and to ignore your own qualms, the suspicion that killing might be wrong.

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  Then, suddenly, she saw a succession of all the men and women she had murdered, thirteen deaths by the power of her own mind, by the silent explosion in the brain or the stopping of the heart—deaths that were quick and merciful, but murders nonetheless.

  // was not my fault! Finister cried. You have seen even now how they made me do it!

  That explains your deeds but does not excuse them, the kind lady said. You might as easily try to excuse your foster parents' actions by saying that they did it for the Cause.

  They did!

  Did they hurt you any the less thereby? Is your soul any the less corrupted thereby? i

  She waited for Finister to answer, but she only stood mute, her mind churning, trying to find some concept that was secure, to rebuild a new understanding of her world.

  The damage they did you is still done, no matter what the reasons were, the kind lady said. Only by acknowledging their responsibility, by telling you that what they did was wrong, could they begin to heal the wounds they made.

  They do not see that they have done anything wrong, Finister said in sullen tones, nor do I!

  I think that you do, the kind lady contradicted. If you wish to regain control of your own life, to win back your soul, you must accept the blame you have earned and the damage it has done. They may have reared you to it, but it was nonetheless your mind that struck the fatal blow.

  The world whirled again, making Finister dizzy, but before she could cry out in protest it steadied again and the words froze on her tongue, for she was looking at the hayloft of her parents' barn with a sixteen-year-old Finny coming up the ladder to make sure the barn cat had not yet started to labor. She went over to Puss's corner and parted the hay to look down at the swollen-tummied feline, who lifted her head and parted her eyelids to purr at Finny—but behind her, Orly's head appeared on the ladder, then all of him, and he swung off, grinning.

  4 'Why, Finny! Have the kittens come, then?"

  "Oh! You startled me!" Finny leaped up, then saw it was

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  Orly and couldn't help letting out some of that special feeling as she gave him a sleepy-eyed smile. "No, they haven't come yet, Orly. But it's late enough that we need to watch her closely. Why are you here?"

  "Papa sent me to knock down the old hornets' nests so the bee-sties wouldn't come back," Orly said, then looked at Puss. "Watch her closely now? We should have been watching her closely two months ago!" Orly grinned as he came nearer. "It's a little late."

  He was standing a little too close, and Finny felt a strange new presence about him, something like her own special feeling, and wondered if Orly were a projective, too. They talked, some inane chatter about Puss, when all the while they only wanted to talk about one another. Then Orly stepped a little closer, reached out to touch her waist, to almost touch her waist, and his face hovered near, so very near, and the adult Finister watching remembered how his breath had smelled sweet and musky, remembered how she had felt her special feeling growing as she looked deeply into his eyes, the delightful shivering sensation all through her body as their thoughts mingled and she swayed just a little forward and their lips brushed, brushed again, and stayed. She watched her younger self melt against Orly, pressing and grinding against him. She remembered that she hadn't known she was doing that while it happened, had only been aware of her whole body melting against his as that fatal first real kiss had deepened into sensations that set her whole body on fire.

  For a moment, adult Finister longed to be back in Orly's arms, longed for that sweetness, that yearning again. Then the kind lady's face appeared beside the young lovers, smiling fondly at them and saying, How fortunate that you both came to this loft at the same moment, or this adventure would never have begun.

  Even now, Finister's face grew hot with embarrassment, and she protested, It must have been an accident. Surely Mama would never have sent me to the hayloft if she had known Papa had just sent Orly up.

  Would she not? the kind lady asked. You learned later that all the other graduates of the farm had encounters that began

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  as secret assignations like this — that led to sexual initiation and this same early bliss. Could they really have all been accidental?

  She had put Finister's own covert suspicions into words. Afraid to confront them, Finister lashed out. You re saying they arranged that private meeting, that they wanted me to have that first tryst with Orly. Impossible! They told us it was wrong! Why would they have maneuvered us into doing something that disgusted them?

  Because they did not really think it wrong, the kind lady said, only useful. Remember!

  A haze seemed to spread over the hayloft. When it cleared, the hay was lit only by moonbeams that managed to find a way through the chinks in the wall, to illuminate cast-aside clothing, and two young lovers separating to stare into one another's eyes, panting and both alarmed yet exalted by the emotional and sensational explosion they had just experienced. Then they rolled back together, kissing fervently, deeply, trying to raise that ecstasy again. The haze rose over them, and Finister was aware of her own pulse hammering. She started to protest, but the haze cleared, showing her younger self just climbing down to the barn floor, with Orly a step behind her. Laughing, they ran lightly out the door . . . . . . and froze to see Mama and Papa striding toward them, their faces red with wrath.

  Even now, Finister shrank from this most horrible of all memories, from the intensity of her foster parents' rage, from the humiliation, guilt, and shame they had heaped upon her and Orly—but their lips moved without sound, and the kind lady's face appeared between her and them. It was wrongly done, and they knew it, and at a moment when you were both most vulnerable. They linked your first sexual experience with shame and guilt, and by doing so, they deliberately destroyed your ability to ever enjoy it ag
ain, or even to remember this first experience without pain. They publicized something intimate instead of teaching you how to keep it private even in your most ecstatic moments. They contaminated something pure; they desecrated the part of the experience that was spiritual, convinced you it did not exist, that there was only

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  physical sensation and nothing of true joy — and did all this purposely.

  Purposely? Deliberately? You talk nonsense! Finister cried, all the more angrily because it resonated with her own unspoken fears. Why would they have done such a thing?

  To debase your self-esteem and convince you that you were fit only for prostitution, the kind lady said, the better to make you a tool for their use. They destroyed the core of your sexuality and left you only the husk and the techniques of seduction, the better to make you a more effective agent and assassin in ways that only women can be.

  The shriek started deep inside and burgeoned upward and outward into a wild scream of rage that went on and on as Finister took hold of the picture of Mama and Papa ranting and whirled it about and about with her mind, circling it over her head as though on a rope, swinging it again and again as the scream echoed on and on, deep and ugly and shrill and raw until she finally let the picture go to fly away, sailing farther and farther over the farmyard and house, over the trees, over the horizon, and out, far away from Finny's world.

  With them, the farm disappeared, leaving a void of darkness, and Finister collapsed in on herself, panting and heaving with exertion, stunned and dizzy and frightened by the magnitude of her own anger. Panic clawed up in her at the thought of losing Mama and Papa, of the farm and her foster siblings.

  Then she regained self-awareness with a shock of alarm. / cannot hate them! Without them I have nothing, am nothing!

  Only without them can you truly be yourself the kind lady's voice said sternly. You must cast off the chains with which they bound you and discover yourself as you truly are, as you might have been without the devastation they wreaked upon your mind and heart and soul.

  Finny longed to believe the words but still felt the numbing fear of being alone. It is all right, she assured herself frantically, / still have SPITE.

  Then she froze, suddenly realizing why she had clung so frantically to SPITE, no matter how foul the tasks her superiors ordered her to execute.

  Yes, said the kind lady. Your foster parents made sure that,

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  deep within, you saw SPITE as an extension of the farm, as a home away from home, as a place where you might feel secure when you had to go out into the world.

  It is that for which they trained me, Finister protested. It is my purpose in living.

  It was they who made it so, not you, the kind lady reminded. They never even suggested you might have a choice.

  Choice? The concept burst upon Finister like an explosion of light, leaving her numb. But — what else could I do?

  You have risen to be Chief Agent by your own strength and intelligence, the kind lady reminded her. SPITE is nothing without you now, but you have no real need of them — only the illusion of such need. Step out of the shadow they have cast over you, put behind you the fears and self-contempt they inculcated in you. Discover your own virtue, your own worthiness, for if you are the most potent of the anarchists 1 tools, you can also be the most outstanding woman of your generation — aye, in virtue and wisdom as well as in strength and intelligence.

  But I am nothing! I am corrupted!

  Suddenly she was thrashing her arms and legs, though they struck nothing. She lay against something soft but secure and, looking up, saw a blur of a face framed by touseled hair matted with the sweat of labor, a face that sweetened as a smile of delight and amazement lit its features. "She is beautiful! I shall call her Allouette."

  Then it was gone, and Finister stood alone, crying, What was that? Who? What name?

  Your earliest memory, the kind lady said, dredged by magic from the depths of your mind. She was your mother, and the name she gave you is your true one.

  It cannot be! It is a trick, a deception!

  Memories can deceive, the kind lady agreed, but this one does not. Allouette is the skylark, whose music charms, and you are a woman of power and great magic who can move a world — this world.

  I cannot be! They would have told me! But Finister knew that was not so.

  That is why they needed to shackle you, the kind lady cor-

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  rected. Burst your fetters, stand free, and grow into your true self If you were a valued tool, you can be often times greater value as a woman.

  Finister tottered in the void, wanting to believe but afraid. Then she felt a wind at her back, a wind that rose, strengthening to a gale, and it was all she could do to hold her place against its push.

  It is the wind of Destiny, the kind lady said. Have the courage to rise without broom or wing and ride it. Trust your destiny, trust your own talent and intelligence, your own immense worth, and see where they all may take you.

  A vision of a castle sprang up in Finister's mind, but with shock and amazement she heard herself saying, What use is a castle?

  None, unless it shelters people from attack, the kind lady said, or serves as a storehouse for food to feed them when famine comes, and medicines to heal them when they are ill. You who were reared to serve the people — can you make a castle that will truly do so?

  Yes! Finister's soul shouted, but she withheld the words from her lips, shocked and frightened by her own essence.

  Go and do it, then, the kind lady's voice said, and the darkness seemed to deepen around Finister; she stood naked in the void, the tatters of the illusion in which her foster parents had wrapped her drifting away, drifting thin, fading, extinguishing themselves. At last she stood bare and shivering in the cold wind, still not quite daring to trust it to bear her away, to trust herself to ride it, to fly, but the kind lady's voice echoed around her, saying, Rise and go. Explore your soul, sound your own depths, then rise and grow and become all you can.

  That last word rang and echoed and built into a whirlwind of sound that surrounded Finister and dazed her to distraction, vibrating all about her, within her, making her one with it. With glad relief, she realized her consciousness had joined with it and was dissipating, and surrendered herself to harmony and to the Void.

  Gwen went limp, shudders racking her every limb. Geoffrey and Cordelia instantly caught her between them.

  "You have exhausted yourself, Mama!" Cordelia cried in alarm.

  "I shall. . . revive. ..." Gwen gasped. "What of. . . yourselves?"

  Cordelia paused a moment to take stock; in her concern for her mother, she hadn't noticed her own depletion. "I am wearied, but far less so than yourself."

  "I, too," Geoffrey said. He glared daggers at Gregory. "This lass of yours had better be worth such a wasting of our mother's strength."

  "I need only .. . rest," Gwen said, beginning to catch her breath. "Then I shall be ... stronger than ever." With an effort, she straightened. "As to Allouette ..."

  "Who?" Cordelia and Geoffrey asked together, but Gregory protested, "Is she not truly Finister?"

  "She is not," Gwen said. "I unearthed a buried memory, her very first after birth. She has used it as a nom de guerre several times but never used any other more than once. It is her true name, that which her mother gave her at birth."

  "Allouette," Gregory said, wondering, then again and again, tasting the word, making it a part of himself. "Allouette ... Allouette ..."

  "Je te plumerai," Geoffrey said bitterly, "and her plumes were most definitely plucked."

  "So that she could not fly freely," Cordelia agreed, then said, remembering, "Allouette—skylark."

  "You must never call her that without her permission," Gwen said sternly. "You must not let her know that you have heard of it until she tells you."

  "Then why did you tell us, Mother?" Cordelia asked.

/>   "Because Gregory must know it is her true name," Gwen said, "not merely another she has invented."

  "I shall take that to heart, even as I forget the name," Gregory promised.

  "That is well," Gwen said. "Be sure that she shall be well worth your love and my labor—if my attempt at healing has indeed succeeded."

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  "But what of Gregory's labor?" asked Cordelia. "For surely there shall be a great deal of constant work needed to woo and win this lass, then more to bond her to him/'

  "That is true of all romances," Gwen told her. "The effort never ceases. You must win one another's love again and again, all your life long, and work at the bonding as surely as any mason building a castle."

  "But it will shelter you all your days."

  Gregory nodded. "I expected nothing less."

  Nor did any of them. They had all watched Gwen's lifelong struggle to keep Rod believing he was good enough for her. Only Cordelia, though, had noticed his constant effort to convince Gwen that he was good enough for her, too, and looking back to her toddling days, she suspected there had been several times when her mother had doubted that rather strongly.

  " 'Tis well," Gwen said, satisfied. "Be mindful, though, that this Al . . . this Finister will have all the self-doubts and uncertainties of a lass of fourteen, though she has the memories and experience and skills of her twenty-four years."

  "A difficult combination." Gregory frowned. "Will she, then, struggle with the guilt of those years, too?"

  Cordelia looked up, startled by his insight.

  "She will," Gwen confirmed, "and will have a greater need to prove that you love her for herself, not for her body. Why do you love her, my son?"

  "I cannot pretend to be immune to her beauty," Gregory admitted, "though I have seen it in so many forms that I begin to doubt it enough to cancel its force. I also cannot claim indifference to the allure she projects, though I know it to be only a skill of the mind, like to my ability to reason. But I am most attracted by the fire of her spirit, by her intelligence, her ingenuity in solving a problem, and her tenacity, her refusal to give up when solution after solution proves inadequate."