Lessons, Part 2

The next morning, she was woken up earlier than usual by a pounding at her door. It was Matilda, her maid — hers more than anyone else's, at least. The girl apologized several times as she came in and brought Katonah's fire to blaze. The light aggravated Katonah.

"What is it?" she groaned, pulling her covers closer. It was bone-achingly cold in the room, and with the light, she had to stifle the urge to pull them all the way over her head.

"Begging your pardon, milady," Matilda said as she poked the logs into position in the fireplace, "but milord would have you up and ready in a half hour."

Milord? A bolt of shock had Katonah sitting up in bed, ramrod straight. Suddenly, she fought for breath. "Xander's back already?" she gasped.

Matilda gave her an amused smile over her shoulder. "Lord Leo, milady," she corrected her.

Katonah's relief was so great it was nearly dizzying. But once it drained away, humiliation at Matilda's amusement turned her face pink. Gods, the fear and discomfort that Xander's very name invoked in her was an embarrassment. Yet, she could scarcely help it — the tightness that overcame her chest at the mere thought of him was automatic now, an ingrained response. Just another way that he controlled her, even from afar.

"What is it Lord Leo wants?" she asked, pushing aside her covers. "And why so early?"

"You'll have to ask him that, milady. Now." Matilda stood and moved to the wardrobe, thrusting it open. "Would you have the green or the blue, milady?"

She decided on blue — for some reason, it felt like a blue day. After Matilda helped layer her into the dress, she was asked how she wanted her hair. Up to that moment, Katonah hadn't realized how much her hair had grown since Camilla's brutal cut — it was working its way back down to her shoulders again, and was curlier than it had been originally. She asked Matilda if she could keep it down and the maid complied, brushing it into a tamed sleekness before setting out a pair of earrings that she thought would go well with the dress. They were long silver droplets — Camilla had given them to her to buff out her wardrobe several weeks ago.

When she was ready, Matilda led her down the stairs, their footsteps ringing about in the tower. Katonah couldn't believe how early it was — it couldn't be dawn yet, because the halls were pitch black, and the windows looked blacked out. That annoyed her — what could Leo want at such an hour?

They went past the dining hall, to some of the lesser-known corridors that led to the kitchen and other areas of the castle Katonah wasn't quite familiar with; the darkness certainly didn't help, and only served to befuddle her. Soon, they reached a wider hallway with a single door at the end. Leo answered upon knocking, already dressed sharply for the day despite the fact that the sun had not yet hit the horizon.

"General," he said civilly. "Please come in."

Katonah obeyed, and Matilda bowed and backed away. As Leo closed the door behind her, she opened her mouth to ask why she'd been summoned, but then paused, the surrounding chamber suddenly stealing her attention.

There was a bed in a high, stepped corner of the chamber, so technically the room could be classified as a bedroom. Yet it was so cluttered that Katonah was more tempted to call it a study. No, cluttered wasn't the right word to use — "clutter" implied mess, of which there was none. But there were a lot of things about, primarily books. Two separate cases were dedicated to the tomes on the far wall, yet, they were everywhere else too, in neat piles: on the desk, stacked by the door, sitting at the edge of the four-poster bed, piled around the storage chests... If Katonah needed any more evidence that Leo was an intellectual, then she had found it.

But there were a lot of other things that drew her eye as well. Several rows of brackets on the northern wall held an assortment of swords, some long, some short, some with curved edges, some serrated. Is he a swordsman? Or does he just like swords? Another wall held a giant swath of parchment up by pins in four corners. A strange, irregular shape dominated the center, and Katonah could not tell what it was.

On the desk, in neat piles around the books, were more stacks of parchment, filled with loopy handwriting, and a variety of strange knickknacks; they sat at the edge of some sort of game board with a range of playing pieces, some white, some black. Sitting at the desk side were several pairs of boots, one of them armored, and at their feet some sort of giant musical instrument — she could only tell because of the strings.

But the far most interesting object in the room had to be the falcon — it took a moment for Katonah to notice it, clutching the top of one of the posters of the bed. It gave her a suspicious, beady stare, but she just smiled at it, delighted in seeing something so familiar. Falcons were close friends to the Earth Tribe, reliable hunting companions. She herself had owned none, but her father had several.

"Is this your room?" she asked stupidly after taking one long look around.

"Technically," Leo replied, "this is a guest room. I only had it outfitted with some of my things because Xander implied an extended sabbatical out on this cliff top." He was over at one of the tables — there were three of them in the room. This one held several heavy tomes, which he heaved, then planted on the floor with a rough huff.

She stepped closer to the swords on the walls. "Are all of these yours?" she asked, inspecting the hilt of the longest one.

"Yes." He swept a layer of dust off the top of the table.

"Do you know how to use them?"

"Yes."

"Well?" For some reason, Katonah found it hard to imagine a fine-boned young man like Leo hacking and slashing with an instrument of destruction. Swords seemed more naturally suited for Xander, though she'd never seen him wield one. But with his thinly veiled menace, expertise at such things was implied.

Leo looked annoyed. "Whatever I choose to do, I do well."

Katonah stroked the edge of the blade and gasped as it pricked her finger. They were sharp!

"General." Sounding impatient, Leo gestured down to the chair he'd pulled out for her.

"Sorry." Sucking on her finger, she came over and sat; when she was seated, he went to the other chair and did the same. Now, only one book remained on the table, and a small pile of parchment, along with an ink jug and a quill. She gazed at the material curiously.

"What's going on?" she asked.

Leo said, "I don't know if he informed you, but Xander intends to give you something of an education before you enter into Nohrian society. Normally, we would hire a governess for the job, but because Camilla and I are both here, we volunteered instead. I'm to teach you the fundamentals of language while Camilla instructs you on royal etiquette."

Katonah nodded, remembering Xander speaking about this back on the moor. "All right," she said, not sure of what else to say; she couldn't exactly say, "I'm still a bit tired — could you bother me with this in a few hours?" could she? "You said language?"

"Yes. Specifically—" Leo snatched the quill out of the ink bottle and scribbled something onto the first page of parchment. Katonah watched him, fascinated by how one loop swirled into the next. "Written language," Leo finished, dropping the quill back into the bottle. He held up the paper before her. "Can you read this to me?" he asked.

She stared at it. By the spaces and shapes of the swirls, she gathered that the symbols meant something, but she could no more read them than she could understand the chirp of Leo's falcon. "I'm sorry," she said, blushing.

Leo sighed and put down the paper. "I feared as much."

She tried not to grow irritated at his contemptuous disappointment. "What does it say?" she asked.

" 'My name is Katonah. I am the princess of the Earth Tribe.'"

She blinked, studying the page again. "Which part is my name?"

He pointed to one of the longer bands of script. It was strange, but looking at it, it didn't feel like her name.

"How did you know how to write it?"

"It was a guess. Phonetics, mostly."

"Phonetics?"

"It means sounding out a word. Kah-toh-nah. In more complex languages, each phonetic syllable is assigned to a particular symbol. I'll give you an example: the Tellius language. Old, featuring one symbol per a group of letters. Kah." As he said the sound, he wrote out the symbol — it resembled a square, with a slash going down the middle. "Toh." The next symbol was triangular, with three horizontal slashes. "Nah." This one was like the first — a square, but this one with a lengthwise instead of a sagittal slash. "This would be your written name in the Tellius language. Kah-toh-nah. Do you understand?"

She shook her head helplessly.

To his credit, Leo didn't get annoyed — patiently, he explained it to her again, the phonetic-symbol basis of complex languages. It took a moment for her to digest, but she eventually got the basics: a piece of her name, like Kah, was connected to a specific symbol. Even if that syllable wasn't part of her name — for example, the name Katori — the symbol would still represent that sound.

"But let's digress," Leo said, "and stick to our language — the one you and I are speaking now. Our writing system is a little different. Instead of a symbol system, we have an alphabet. Do you know what an alphabet is?"

She didn't.

"It's a catalogue of letters. These letters, grouped together, make up words that we recognize and connect to real things and pronounce."

"Is that any different from the Tellius language's symbols?"

"Good question. Yes, they are very different from the symbols. In a way, the symbols are less complicated — one pictograph for every syllable. Some languages go a step further and just have one symbol for every word. In our language, there are two or three letters for every syllable. We have to use several letters to spell out a symbol before it even becomes pronounceable. Do you understand?"

She shook her head again.

"Okay, examples, then. Let's say..." Leo glanced around. "Okay, the word bedroom." He gestured vaguely. "What two words can you split that into?"

"Bed and room."

"Good. Now, here's where phonetics comes in. To write, you have to sound out the words very carefully and determine which sound corresponds with which letter. Buh in bed — buh is the sound for B." He wrote the loopy letter on a fresh piece of parchment. "Eh, eh, is the sound for E. Lastly, we have the duh sound, which corresponds to D. All together, we have buh, eh, duh, three sounds corresponding to three letters that make up a word we can connect to a true-life object." He held up the parchment, letting her inspect the word. "Have I lost you?"

"No." She shook her head.

"Good. Now, the second word: room. Sound it out for me, and tell me what sounds are included in that word."

She couldn't help it: she blushed. She felt like a child, even as she was broaching new territory. "Um...roo and um."

"Not quite." He sat down the paper. "But close. You actually have three sounds: ruh, oo, and muh. It doesn't sound like that because we say the sounds so congruently in room that they seem to flow together. But from a written standpoint, yes, there are three sounds. Ruh, R, oo, O, two Os, in fact, and muh, M." He wrote the word out and then held it up. "Pronounce it as I point to it. Ruh, oo, muh."

"Ruh, oo, muh."

"Good." He put the paper down. "Those are the basics. So tell me, General, what kinds of things would you need to know in order to be able to write our language?"

She considered. "Well, there are a lot of sounds we make when we say words." She blushed again, not liking how inelegantly that came out. Leo didn't seem to mind.

"Yes. And?"

"So I would need to know all the letters for those sounds."

"Good. In essence, you're saying that you just need to know the alphabet, the catalogue of letters I spoke of earlier."

"How many letters are in this alphabet?"

"Twenty-six."

That shocked her. "But there are more than twenty six sounds needed to make words," she said.

"You're right. Sometimes, combining two or more letters from the alphabet together can yield a sound totally different from the independent letters. An example." He dabbed his quill into the ink well. "Cuh, C. Huh, H." He showed her the letters, then pronounced their sounds again. "What sound do you think they make when you put them together, side by side?"

"I don't know...cuh-huh?"

"Chuh."

She blinked. "Chuh like...chair?"

"Yes."

She was surprised. "Why is it like that?"

"Ask the men who came up with our written language. All I know is that's the way it is." He scribbled some more on the paper. "Another example. Tuh, T. Huh, H. Together? Thhhhhhh."

She shook her head. "How many complications are there in our language?"

"Many. Very many." Leo set aside the paper. "But I have no doubt that you'll be able to master them before long. You use the vast majority of them already, without even knowing it. Now, it's simply learning how to recognize them on paper. So." He pulled a fresh piece in front of me. "Let's get started."

So began their first lesson. It covered the basic twenty-six letter alphabet of their language. Leo wrote them all out on paper once, and then they sat and went through them, one, two, five, seven, ten times, moving letter to letter, him, then her, speaking the sound that was associated with each letter. Once Katonah had a handle on them, he made her do them on her own, saying the letter then speaking its sound while he listened, watching for mistakes. This he made her do so many times that she nearly lost count.

She wasn't sure of how much time passed, but suddenly, the room was filled with pale, Nohrian sunlight — it was past dawn, and time for breakfast. He led her down to the dining hall, where they joined Camilla for the usual meal of bread and wine. When they finished, Katonah had no time to wonder about what she would do next: Leo summoned her back to his chambers, where he sat her back down in front of her letters.

A nearly maddening hour passed where she did nothing but speak of letters, over and over and over—he drilled her so hard that she reached that point past comprehension where, for a moment, staring at the letter Y, she could not understand what the symbol was or what it meant. Thankfully, Leo changed gears at that point.

"Let's start on numbers next," he said, pulling aside, to her relief, the letter sheet. "Tell me what you know about numbers."

Thankfully, she had a bit of knowledge on this subject. Some basic arithmetic was more necessary than a written language on the moor, as it had uses in counting crops, kills on the hunt, and inventory when taking stock of herbs. Leo had her count as far as she could go, and she used her fingers, as her father had taught her. Unfortunately, when she reached the twenties, she began to grow a little unsure.

But, surprisingly, Leo was pleased. "That's adequate, from someone who doesn't know how to write," he said. "Let's look at written numbers first, and then I'll teach you some easy ways of counting."

Numbers, Leo told her, were more systematic than letters — all figures were comprised of numbers zero through nine, and the system Nohr and Hoshido used measured figures in blocks of ten. What needed memorizing was each ten-figure number: ten, twenty, thirty, forty, fifty, and so on. In between, save for ten through twenty, all numbers sounded the same: n-one, n-two, n-three, n-four... Between ten and twenty, the naming was different, but Katonah knew those already, and so didn't need to be taught.

The numbers lesson went by too fast — soon they were back at letters, and then, it was time for lunch.

Thankfully, after lunch, Camilla took over with an etiquette lesson, though it wound up being even more maddening than Leo with his letters. It was on curtsying, bowing, and sitting properly — things Katonah had never given a second thought before. But unfortunately, the Nohrian court was painfully strict when it came to its lords and ladies following proper decorum — according to Camilla, it showed the class and poise of the socialite doing it.

"Why does Nohr care so much about all of this?" Katonah asked as she bunched her skirt and sank gracefully onto Camilla's bed for the umpteenth time.

Camilla shrugged. "I couldn't tell you for sure, darling, but I know what the commoners think: that it's a way for the upper class to distinguish themselves from the lower. A way for us to raise ourselves up and show them how far down they are."

Katonah was shocked. "Does Lord Xander see it that way?"

"I don't think Xander feels any particular way about it," Camilla said. "To him — to me, to all of us — it was just another thing that had to be learned. The implications behind it didn't concern us."

They didn't quite concern Katonah either. She just wondered why the Nohrians insisted on such stiff backs, and deigned there to be a proper and improper way to take your seat. The same annoyed curiosity could be imposed on their insistence for a complicated, written language.

After that — gods — it was more letters. By then, Katonah was certain that she would be able to say the entire alphabet in her sleep. To her dismay, she dreamt of letters that night—dreamt that Leo was yelling at her because she kept mixing up the sound for T with the sound for R.

The next day followed the same intense schedule. Thankfully, Leo interspersed the letter recitations with some free writing—ten minutes of having her write all the words she could while sounding them out. He told her to start simple, but she struggled even with very small words. In particular, she misspelled the words "tree"—tre—"sky"—scki—and "bear"—bayer. After that, it was back to letters.

That day, Camilla's etiquette lesson was on silverware. Katonah could not believe that Nohr's elite society had rules even for eating properly, but it wasn't just that — there were rules on when to eat, how to cut your meat, how to take a proper sip from your cup, and which tools were used to stab, scoop, or cut which type of food. There was even a ridiculous rule about keeping your elbows off the table, which Katonah saw no cause for.

Then it was back to words and letters, then numbers, then supper.

Katonah's grouchiness at the curriculum's rigor finally reached the surface on day three.

"I think I've got the hang of these," Katonah said crabbily when Leo placed the letter sheet in front of her. "Can we please do something else?"

Leo raised an eyebrow. "You're still getting your Gs and your Js mixed up."

"Maybe it's because I'm practicing too hard," Katonah said grumpily.

Leo's frown intensified. "Or you aren't practicing enough."

The frown was a warning — she was overreaching. And yet, she pressed — she couldn't stand the thought of going through that sheet for another minute. "Please, Lord Leo. I've been through these letters so many times that I see them when I close my eyes. Do you know that I dreamt about them last night? For the third time in a row! It's like they're glued to my eyes."

To her surprise, Leo let out a harsh burst of laughter. It must've been spontaneous, unintentional, because he quickly covered his mouth and turned away, ears red. He composed himself, still chuckling. "Are you serious?" he said. "You had a dream about letters?"

"Yes, and you were in it. I was saying the sound for A, but you kept snapping at me and telling me that it was buh for B. I tried to tell you otherwise, but you wouldn't have it. You kept threatening to take away the prisoners' food if I didn't say it like you said it, even though I knew it was wrong."

Another snort of laughter escaped. "That's rich."

"I find it scary. My mind is trying to warn me. I'm studying too hard."

"Are all your dreams this peculiar?"

"They only started getting strange after you began your lessons."

He considered. "Maybe I have gone a bit overboard on the letters..."

A bit? She didn't dare say it aloud. She didn't want to irk him when he seemed close to compromise.

"All right, fine," he finally said. "How about this? After lunch, I give you a turn at being the teacher."

She straightened. "How do you mean?"

"You said that you would teach me about your brand of meditation if I wanted it. Right?"

"Oh, yes. You want to try it after lunch?"

"Why not? I'm feeling charitable today."

She nodded eagerly. Anything to get away from the letters. "But I might need some time to pull a lesson together," she said. She blushed when she realized that she wanted to seem prepared, like he always was.

He waved a hand. "Fine. We'll break now and rejoin at lunch. You have until then."

(/\)

Lunch was a quick affair. At least for Katonah, it was. She was excited — she didn't know why. Most likely, it was the prospect of doing something other than letters or etiquette. Maybe it was because she was suddenly in Iseabail's position, teaching an acolyte new to the subject about something she had such authority on.

Maybe it was because she would be getting out of the castle. And yes, they would be leaving the castle.

Katonah informed Leo of this after dinner. He seemed surprised, a little suspicious: "Why? I thought you wanted me to speak to your tree."

"I want to go to some real earth first," Katonah explained to him. "It's better for beginners. Easier to palpitate."

He was intrigued. "Palpitate? You mean like a pulse?"

"Yes. The earth has a pulse." That had been one of her first lessons from Iseabail — the fact that the earth, like humans, had a life force that could be detected by sensitive fingers.

Predictably, he was skeptical. "That's ridiculous. Animals have pulses. They have blood, plasma that circulates and induces pressure on vessels. The earth — plants — do not."

"It's not a pulse in the figurative sense."

"Then in what sense? The spiritual sense?"

"Yes."

"I don't understand."

She grinned. "Then I'll show you. Come on."

Leo had horses prepared for them — this time, Katonah was given a more tolerable steed, but she was still forced to hand Leo her reigns as she struggled to stay on the saddle. Still, soon, they, along with their two-man escort, were off, leaving the castle behind and crossing through the mountain wall.

"Where exactly are we going?" Leo asked as he galloped in front of her.

"I want to go back to where I found that Dragon Vein," Katonah said.

"Why there, exactly?"

"So I can use its power to strike you dead. Why else?"

For a moment, he actually looked horrified. Then he scowled. "How dare you. Was that supposed to be funny?"

"I'm sorry."

"You should be." He snorted. "And so should I, for falling for it."

"I was trying to cheer you up."

He looked at her with disbelief. "Cheer me up? Why?"

She gestured. "You just...I'm sorry, but you just look so serious all the time. So..." She searched for an adequate adjective. "Uptight."

His face wrinkled, insulted. "Do I look uptight right now?"

"Yes."

He didn't like that. "This is my normal face."

She decided to be honest. "I'm sorry, but it can be a bit intimidating."

He let out a huff of annoyance. "Gods, why does everybody say that? Do I have to grin like a fool to assure you that I don't bite?"

She remembered how he'd laughed at the tale of her letters dream. "No, but perhaps you should smile more often," she suggested.

He looked away, suddenly grouchy. "I can't imagine why you care."

She blinked. "We're friends, aren't we?"

He gave her a long, probing stare before grunting, "Friends don't tend to mock each other."

He was talking about the Dragon Vein joke. "I was joking."

"My point. I've killed for less, you know."

It was her turn to be horrified. "Really?"

For a moment, he didn't answer, just gave her a long, solemn look — then, he let out a snort of laughter at the growing shock on her face. "Your face," he said. "You really are terrible at hiding your emotions."

She felt her ears turn red, but was not all that embarrassed. In fact, she felt proud, that she'd managed to coax a laugh out of him. Knowing Lord Leo, that was quite a feat.

Leo remembered the way to the Dragon Vein, and within twenty minutes, they were there. They dismounted on the stone plateau and then squeezed through the cleft in the rock, into the glove of trees on the other side. It was lovely and green here, quiet and peaceful — the sun felt a bit warmer, the air smelled a bit sweeter. The bubble of the creek was as pleasant as birdsong.

The two guards tried to follow, but Leo waved them off, assuring them that they'd be fine. "All right, we're here," he said. "Where do we start?"

Katonah chose a spot in the shade of a small pine, a little ways away from the Dragon Vein — despite her excavation of dirt a few weeks prior, it was still there, its power drawing her to it. "Here," she said. She gathered her skirts and eased down to the ground, resting her back against the trunk of the tree — all within proper decorum, as Camilla had taught her. She was surprised at that — already, her hands and legs were drawing on the muscle memory induced by Camilla.

"What about me?" Leo asked.

"Sit beside me."

That made him uncomfortable. He stared at her a moment, clearly wondering if she was joking again. When he saw that she was serious, he cleared his throat, glanced around, then finally came over and dropped down beside her. "Like this?" he asked, folding his legs underneath him.

"Closer."

He reddened. "How close?"

His discomfort made her laugh because it was so childish. "I don't bite, Lord Leo. Do I have to grin like a fool to prove that to you?"

He scowled with embarrassment. "All right, fine." He scooted closer, until their arms were almost brushing. "Now what?" he asked.

For a moment, his scent befuddled her — it was an interesting mix of hardwood, stone, and water. The insides of a castle. She shook her head to clear it and said, "Well, what I want to do is talk to you about the meditation and then go right into it. That's how I learned it, more by doing rather than teaching."

"Okay," he said.

She cleared her throat, suddenly a little nervous. He was watching her expectantly, uncharacteristically compliant — it was her that usually gazed at him like that. Taking a moment, she remembered the first time that Iseabail had sat her down at the edge of a windswept field, in the shade of a towering pine, and taught her about Communion with the earth — seventeen years ago. Yes, she'd only been five years old when she'd started her training — apparently, the girl who was to sing the earth's song had to start earlier than the customary seven years when it came to training to be a wise woman.

"Long ago, the Wanderers, our ancestors, developed a special relationship with the earth. This was because they realized that the earth is not just a lifeless crust that supports our feet and grows our food. It is a living, breathing, ancient entity. Because they saw it like that, as a person, as a being, they found that they were able to communicate with it, speak with it."

"And your ancestors, these Wanderers, did this through meditation?" Leo guessed.

"Nobody knows how they did it. We just know how we do it now. Long ago, it's possible that the Wanderers had a different method of communicating with the earth, a simpler, purer way. The earth spoke, and they heard it. My mentor has talked with many trees, and they all said that as the self-absorption of humans grew, their ability to speak with the earth degraded, approached dormancy. The ability kept growing weaker and weaker as we grew more powerful and greedy and topped the food chain. It now takes more effort to awaken the ability."

"Go on," Leo said. He was rapt with attention, his focus completely devoted to her. She was surprised at how confident that made her feel. Not many people had ever shown such interest in what she said, including her own father.

"These days," she continued, "yes, meditation is the easiest conduit through which the people of the Earth Tribe speak to the earth, to trees." She paused, then found herself saying, "Those that are very good at it, very adept with the earth, sometimes have the ability to reach this state of nirvana, where you come very close to realization with the Earth Dragon herself."

Leo's eyebrows arched sharply. "Realization?"

"Yes." Katonah didn't know why she was telling Leo about the divine state Ch'idzigyak had first informed her about, but she kept going, saying, "The tree at the castle told me about it. She says it's akin to a kind of enlightenment. Transcendence to a higher plane of being."

"And what happens when you reach this higher state?"

"I don't know. I've never done it."

"But she said you can achieve it through meditation?"

"She didn't say that. She told me that the Wanderers were able to achieve this transcendence by respecting the earth, so that the earth respected them. But to respect the earth, I figure that you have to be able to know the earth. And to know the earth, you have to speak to it. And to speak to it, you have to be able to mediate."

He narrowed his eyes. "That sounds like the life goal of a Hoshidan monk."

"Do they strive for enlightenment too?"

"From what I've heard, some of the more stalwart ones are fanatic about it. They fast on nothing for water for months at a time, subsisting on little more than silence and their own feverish prayers to the Dragons."

Katonah was interested. She hadn't known that anyone outside the Earth Tribe had ever tried to achieve enlightenment before. "Have any of them ever succeeded?"

"That I don't know. But I'm certain that many have died trying." Contempt leaked into his voice.

"You don't think it's possible," Katonah said, frowning. She tried not to let his skepticism compound her own doubts about the prophecy and the nirvana's hand in it.

Leo shrugged. "I suppose anything is possible."

"You suppose?"

He raised a brow. "Has my skepticism offended you, General?"

"No. But..." Katonah paused. "I'm just surprised that you haven't altogether rejected its possibility. Like you have my claims of other Earth Tribe abilities. Does part of you think it could be possible?"

He folded his arms across his chest, gazing towards the mountain wall in the distance. "Why does that matter?"

"I'm just curious."

Leo huffed. "It's not that complicated, General. I may be a scholar, but even I can't deny that there are things in this world, this universe, that can happen that I cannot and will not understand. Mostly because I have never experienced them."

"I don't follow."

"My realm of belief only extends to that which I've experienced before. Do I believe in the Dragons? Yes, because I've wielded their power before, in the form of Dragon Veins. Do I believe in magic? Yes, because I have cast spells and used tomes. Do I believe in this divine plane of being that you speak of, one that can be achieved through mediation? No, I don't. Not yet. Because I haven't experienced it yet. And I doubt I ever will. Understand?"

She nodded. And she had a better word for it. Harsh as it may have sounded, what Leo labeled as healthy skepticism she labeled as faithlessness. By his explanation, he had no ability to believe in that which his faculties could not fathom. The only reason he believed in the gods was because his blood connected him to their power. Likewise, he didn't seem to accept the existence of a divine state because he couldn't reach it, even if it truly was there.

Not that she was much better. These past few months had tested her faith in her tribe's Matron and found her wanting—she couldn't accept the idea of a divine will shaping her everyday life, even though her father and Iseabail kept telling her that the prophecy was real.

"Are we done talking philosophy?" Leo asked impatiently. "This meditation. How is it done?"

Right. "It'll sound simple, but it won't be. The first step involves relaxing and stepping back."

"Explain."

"My mentor described it as reaching a resting state where you are not really 'you'," Katonah said. "Where you feel more there than here. Where you are not Katonah or Leo as much as you are a person watching Katonah or Leo. More soul than body."

She expected cynicism and got it. "How exactly are we supposed to do something so abstract?"

"I already know how to do it."

He scowled. "Please don't mock me, General."

"I'm sorry. I can't teach you how to do it. The only way to learn is to try it, and see where the experiment takes you. I can give you hints and guide you, but only you can find the doorway to such a state, a door that is unique to you and only you."

He was grumpy — clearly he was a man of clarity, of which this practice had little. "All right," he said. "How do we start, then?"

"Lie down with me."

There was a shocked silence. His face turned redder than wild tomatoes. "Excuse me?"

She couldn't help but laugh. "On the grass, Lord Leo. Let's relax."

"Oh."

She held back another chuckle. Had that been relief or disappointment in his voice?

He watched her as she maneuvered down onto her back, letting the thick green grass embrace her like a furry green pillow. It was soft and sweet-smelling, like moorland grass, and more comfortable than the thick mattress back at the castle. After a moment, looking embarrassed again, Leo shifted down beside her.

"And now?" he said.

"Relax."

"I am relaxed."

"Not enough. Make yourself comfortable. This isn't a test. You have to let yourself drift."

His mouth was pert. "I can't say I'm very good at that."

Of that she had no doubt. All of the Nohrian siblings, she found, were so edgy, constantly coiled and tense by the constraints of royal propriety. Camilla to a lesser extent, but Leo and Xander both had armor on the inside that wouldn't let them unwind. It would be nice if she could teach one of them, the likable one, to ease up.

"What do we do now?" Leo asked.

"Rest."

"That's it?"

"Basically."

"How is relaxing and resting going to help us speak to the earth? I though you said we were supposed to palpitate its pulse."

"We are, and this is how."

He sighed, exasperated. "Do you savages ever make sense?"

"Spiritual techniques rarely do, Lord Leo, and I told you that we would be finding the earth's pulse in a spiritual sense."

"Will I be able to feel it, eventually?"

"You'll feel peace. Contentment. And that is the earth's pulse."

His snorted. "Peace is the earth's pulse? That's an error in semantics."

She smiled. "Maybe. But it's true. When you finally feel yourself drift and notice that things have gone quiet, calm, then you are speaking with the earth. You have successfully knocked onto the door of her domain, and she has let you in." She paused. "At least, that's what my mentor has told me."

"Is that how it is for you?"

"I haven't done it much, but yes, that's usually how it feels."

"What do you mean, you haven't done it much? How many times have you spoken with the tree?"

"Speaking with trees is different. You get pulled out of your body, yes, and there's peace, yes, but there's also communication. Speaking with the earth is emptiness. It's reaching that emptiness inside yourself."

He was silent for a moment, simply staring up at the canopy that filled the sky overhead, breaking the sunlight into beams of wintry light. Katonah watched with him, wondering what had suddenly made him fall silent. Something about the abrupt quiet made the young prince appear a little anxious.

Then he folded his hands across his chest and crossed his legs and said, "What do I think about?"

"Nothing. Anything. It doesn't matter."

"You mean I don't need to think peaceful thoughts?"

"You can if it helps. But this isn't about following directions, Lord Leo. There isn't a specific way to do this, after relaxing. Don't impose any will on yourself. Just let things lie. Let the thoughts flow. Let it all go." She paused. "But don't sleep. Sleep is not the same as meditation."

"In what way?"

"I'm not sure. I just know that it isn't. Many beginners fall into that trap. Don't."

"Are you sure?"

She smiled and said, "Stop asking questions."

He let out a breath of surprise. "That reply was dangerously close to impertinent."

"Who's the teacher here, Lord Leo?"

At that, they lapsed into silence. It was a little awkward at first — two months ago, the last place that Katonah would have expected for herself to be was lying out on a sunny cliff top with the cold prince that had threatened to massacre her piece of Tormod's army weeks ago. And certainly not so close — Leo had lain down near enough that his sleeve, once again, came close to brushing hers.

But the sun soon evaporated the slight discomfort in the air. Up here, in this echo of the moorland the Nohrian mountains had so kindly provided her, the air was warm and sweet, the sunlight lovely as it spilled down through the branches of the trees. The grass was so soft, so comfortable and, combined with the murmur of the creek, it lured Katonah towards a nap, a light doze that would leave her feeling rested and refreshed a few hours later.

But Katonah didn't allow herself to sleep. Instead, she took deep, slow breaths, her eyes drifting closed — still fully awake, but resting, not sleeping, easing the tension in her muscles, the ever present tightness in her limbs. She imagined it seeping down into the grass beneath her, and slowly, she felt it drain away, leaving her loose and completely unwound.

Time passed. At first, her mind sought to keep track of how much, by the strength of the sun's warmth, the trickle of the creek, but she soon gave up, because it didn't matter how much time passed — in fact, time itself seemed irrelevant in this place she found herself in, this warm, dark, relaxed place behind her closed eyelids. She drifted there for a while, riding a warm, churning sea.

More time passed — maybe hours, maybe a year. Perhaps a century. Beneath her, the waves grew stiller — she felt herself grow lighter, as if pieces of her were evaporating into dust on an invisible wind. These pieces, the pieces of herself, left a blissful oblivion in their wake, and her recall soon grew poor. She had been in a different place before here, she thought — a place with trees, water, a boy...but she couldn't remember where that place was, because there was only the here, the now, even though she was now outside of past or present.

Another century, another eon, passed. The waters were quiet now, utterly still — she began to sink. The longer she stayed, the deeper she went, and the more she seemed to forget, until she couldn't remember who she was or where she was or when she was.

For a moment, anxiety took her, the need to remember took her; she fought her way to the surface in time to remember — Katonah. Moorland. Nohr. Xander. Leo — and then she was under again, under and gone, and she didn't care. It didn't matter who she was. This place was what mattered. This dark, loving sea. The still waters. The peace into which she sank.

Another stretch of timelessness passed, and the waters took her further down. Something changed, then — the peace was still there, warm and abundant, but there was something else as well: a temptation, an enticement. It was near the bottom of the sea, and she saw it, felt it: a crevice.

A doorway...

(/\)

A touch to her arm awoke her. It was dark now — the sun had disappeared over the mountains to the northeast, rendering the horizon a pale pink and the sky a blackish-indigo. Leo was crouched beside her, hand on her arm.

"Are you all right?" he asked. "You look befuddled."

"Just a little bit." She sat up and rubbed at her eyes. She had not gone that deep into her meditations for quite a while, where rising from it felt like rising from a coma. Yet, it wasn't the physical awakening that had disoriented her: she didn't feel tired, she felt rested, refreshed. It had been better than a nap.

No, it was the harsh transition from being someone watching Katonah, someone outside of Katonah's body, to being her again. As usual, her shoulders felt heavy, her skin a little too tight. She knew the feeling would pass, but it still annoyed her — it was because meditation melded you with your surroundings, made you a bigger, freer entity, and it was that entity that was now stuffed into the too-small form of Katonah.

"Wow," she said, regarding the darkness as she rolled out her shoulders. "How long were we resting?"

"According to the very annoyed escorts waiting for us on the other side of the rock," Leo said, "nearly five hours."

She was shocked. "Why didn't you wake me sooner?" she asked. "How long were you waiting?"

He rose, then helped her up. "I wasn't. I was asleep."

"Asleep?" She was disappointed; she hadn't expected for his first try at meditation to be a failure. Maybe she was a worse teacher than she'd thought. But then again, she hadn't been able to meditate properly until she'd turned eight, even with a knowledgeable instructor like Iseabail teaching her.

If Leo noticed her disappointment, he didn't show it — in the dim sunset, his eyes were cloudy, his face shadowy with consternation, as if something were bothering him. Before Katonah could ask what, he said, "We'd better head back. Camilla will be missing us by now."

On the ride back, Katonah chanced asking him what was the matter, but he rebuffed her concern with a shrug. He was silent at supper as well, picking idly at his food — twice, Camilla asked him a question, and each time it took the usually rapt prince a moment to answer, as though she'd pulled him out of a deep brood.

"Did anything happen today that I should know about?" Camilla asked after the third failed attempt to get Leo to contribute to the conversation. She looked pointedly at Katonah as she spoke, asking the question beneath the question: Did you do something to upset him? Katonah just shook her head at both inquiries, now genuinely worried about Leo's despondency. Had she done something? Had the meditation upset him in some way? She decided that she would ask him after supper.

Surprisingly, after the platters had been cleared away and they rose from their seats, Leo beckoned to her, and led her into the gloom of the hallway that led to his chambers.

"I apologize for my rudeness after our outing today," he said to her astonishment. "It was just...I was thinking some things through, trying to figure out a way to word the experience in a way that you might understand. Because believe me, it was all quite conjectural."

She became excited. "So you weren't asleep?"

"No, I wasn't. I think...I think I was doing what you suggested before we lay down. Letting go."

On his first try? "Explain, please."

He cleared his throat. "Bear with me," he said, "because some of this might sound strange, and I can't remember all of what happened. I did as you said. I tried to let go. It was very hard at first—I estimate that I spent the first thirty minutes trying to relax, as you instructed. First, I couldn't find a comfortable position to lie in. Then, I had trouble letting my thoughts roam. I kept thinking about how ridiculous and vague your instructions were and that maybe I needed to think about this to get myself to relax, or this, or this... But..." He hesitated, rubbing at his jaw. "It's like my mind wore itself out, trying to keep control. I got so tired of thinking so hard that my mind eventually began to relax; it loosened its hold on the reins, if you will. Then, they — the thoughts — went...flying everywhere, in ten thousand directions at once. It was complete chaos, but I was only slightly aware of how chaotic it was, because I was so tired, and it's like I wasn't really there. I wasn't the one having the thoughts. I was watching the person having the thoughts, as much as a person can watch the leaves blow in the wind. Do you follow me so far?"

"Yes."

"Okay, well, then, they disappeared," he continued. He gestured. "The thoughts. It was like my mind — the mind — ran out of ammunition to hurl, and I was left in this black void. But, well...it was strange. It wasn't exactly like that. Someone was there, but it wasn't exactly me, because I couldn't remember who I was. I wasn't Leo. Just an iota of consciousness in this warm nothingness. Does that make sense?"

She smiled. "No, it doesn't."

His face fell. "Oh."

She laughed — she was shocked at how many times she'd done that today. "I'm teasing you, Lord Leo. Don't you see? No, it doesn't make sense, but it's not supposed to! And it makes perfect sense in the fact that it doesn't make sense."

"Is that your twisted way of telling me that I did it? I spoke to the earth?"

"I don't know if you did it or not, Lord Leo. It's different for everyone, and I can't tell you for sure if it was real, if you really did it because I'm not you, as you so helpfully explained earlier. But the whimsicality of your experience is a good sign. When things start to become bizarre in ways that it's difficult to explain, then you're on the right path. And some of the things you said, about your mind exhausting itself, trying to hold onto control...I have definitely gone through similar stumbling blocks."

Leo's eyes lit up — pride at having conquered uncharted territory on his first try. And little wonder — hadn't it taken her years to do the same? Everything I choose to do, I do well. Indeed!

"I don't feel particularly enlightened, though," Leo commented, pensive. "Just...rested."

Katonah nodded. "That's basically what you did. Rested. You loosened up your body and your mind, allowed your consciousness to drift so that it was hard to tell where you stopped and the earth began. That is the foundation of communicating with the earth. But you're right, it's not enlightenment. Earth Dragon only knows what it will feel like to reach that plane of existence."

"That dark void I went to was interesting enough," Leo said. He paused. "It was strange. It was dark, but the darkness was...friendly, almost. Kind and inviting. Not cold and frightening."

"My mentor called it the Center. She says you shake off most of human vice there, leaving peace and serenity behind."

"I thought it was the earth."

"It is."

He was exasperated. "You aren't making sense again."

"I know. It gets a little... perplexing. What I've been told is that, essentially, when you go to that place, you're both in the earth and not, at the same time. You're in her domain, but at the same time, you're simply in a deeper level of yourself. As in the phrase 'to find one's Center'. That's where it came from. There's peace in the Center, balance, and because you found that peace while touching and relaxing with the earth, you are also considered to be inside the earth."

"Are you saying that you can't find the Center when you aren't touching the earth?"

It was a good question. "I don't know. I don't think so. I just think it's easier to do if you are lying with the earth. Because the earth is home, everyone's home, and, in most cases, there is peace at home. Earth is peace. And peace is in the Center."

"Perplexing indeed." Leo shuffled a little, gazing towards one of the windows — it was pitch black outside, and cold. "I never knew that I had such a depth."

She smiled. It was hard not to, with an intellect like him speaking of a spiritual center in such scholarly terms. "Few people do, even though it's in everyone," she told him, repeating what Iseabail had told her. "And it's always there. It's always been there. Most of us aren't aware of it, and few of us ever use it."

"Use it? For what? Something other than finding a measure of peace?"

Katonah paused, considering. "I don't know. I don't even use it myself."

"Despite the fact that you're from a tribe that seems to capitalize on its spirituality."

She blushed. "Like I said, we've lost a lot of our connection with the earth since the Wanderers." Communion with the earth itself was something of a novelty today, done for the sake of practicality more than actual heartfelt spirituality: speaking to others from far away, asking trees for direction, shelter, food, even lumber in some cases. Even the wise woman used the earth as more of a conduit, to divine messages from the Mother Dragon. It was little wonder the Earth Tribe, along with all other human tribes on earth, had slowly lost the earth's love, and therefore its respect.

"Well, now that I see that your meditation has some merit," Leo said. He finally looked back at her and gave her a small nod. "Thank you for the lesson."

She appreciated his thanks. "I enjoyed it."

He gestured vaguely — something about his face was oddly shy, now. "Perhaps, when you begin to go crazy from letters and numbers again, we could go out and meditate again."

She smiled at his chagrin, then said kindly, "Trying to achieve enlightenment, Lord Leo?"

He snorted. "It certainly would do me a favor. Trust me, General, when you're the crown prince of Nohr, there's no shortage of issues that make mediation a necessity."

--

A lot of confusing mysticism in this part of the chapter. But part of the pull of mysticism, I've found, is that you DON'T understand it, not all of it. In the case of ES, communicating with the earth and trees is a complex process that sometimes seems to contradict itself, so if you're confused, don't worry about it. That's the point, honestly.

Finally, Leo's defrosting a bit! Maybe the meditation loosened him up a bit. Think they'll go out and do it again? ;)

Next week's update will be pushed to Wednesday.