Prerequisites

She has seen her father pour over piles of paper before, many of which she had not been able to understand when she was younger, and some scripts and volumes she still doesn’t. Yet these aren’t the organized chaos she is used to, these papers have been piled so high they have become the desk. Stacks of books and leather cases with the curling ends of parchment protruding from them are lined around the desk, supporting large sheets of blueprint paper, or scraps with delicate sketches in black ink. The blueprints and sketches are held down with a number of objects plucked off the shelves around the study; a butterfly encased in glass, a black widow trapped in amber, a paperweight resembling a black knight from a chess set, a heavy ancient silver coin with fading archaic Greek letters, a tarnished silver pocket watch engraved with F.I. They are layouts of something large, a structure of some sort with protrusions, potential lengths and measurements listed in the margins, various materials and tools scrawled at the tops of each page. There are more blueprints of a room; with so many sides it is almost completely circular. These blueprints have symbols around the edges, some of them, she reads, regarding intent and sizes of empty space.

“What are these for, Father?” she asks, compelled by her curiousity to take a step closer.

Her father does not seem to hear her at first, then he puts his hands on the desk and looks her in the eye. “You need not concern yourself with these. Go study, or practice. You need it.”

She does not retreat, instead, she moves closer, craning her neck to see the angle of a particular plane-

When her father lifts the black knight paperweight and brings it heavily down on her hand, resting on the edge of the desk. She pulls it back quickly, toppling a tower of books which rest on their spines and covers, or open on bent white pages. She cannot bring herself to care, as she cradles her injured hand, feeling the shattered bones in her fingers.

The books right themselves, coming to rest under the corners of blueprints they had previously held aloft. Her father returns to the blueprints.

“You need to practice. Begin with that, and do not attempt to glance at these papers again.”

She turns on her heel, still cupping her crushed fingers, and marches out of the room, biting her lip to keep from crying. Her cheeks are salt burned before she can calm enough to set her shattered knuckles back together again. 

Text by Lucie MacAulay