A Final Lesson

Her father counsels her constantly to remain isolated and practice on her own. To make ‘unimpeded process’, though he himself hardly overlooks her education anymore. Lessons and lectures that once occupied entire days at a time have dwindled to passages read from books, and short tests of skill. The arena has become a second home to her, and any chance of ingratiating herself with anyone outside of Piper and her father is prevented by the “potential”, as her father describes to her, to do better.

It does not diminish the importance of her tests, he emphasizes, that they occur less often. They are, if anything, of more import than they initially were.

On this particular day the passage to the arena is permeated with a heavy silence and the impression that her next challenge has a terrible purpose.

Before her father allows her to enter the arena he pauses, blocking the threshold, preventing her from going any further. He turns, his eyes black in the dim light.

“Each lesson you have ever had has been for your own good,” he says.

She nods. She has a feeling of dread, a sinking in her stomach.

“You are a good student, and a fine competitor, but you have always lacked control. You are impulsive, and it has cost you more than you know at the moment,” when he notices her confused expression he continues. “Do not think I have not noticed that you have been… teaching that friend of yours.”

Her blood turns to ice water.

“I have simply been too busy to react to it until now. I know you have been telling her your secrets for a long time. Secrets have power, and they are dangerous. More so than you can imagine.” He pauses, stepping out of the way, his shoulder moving into the light of the arena, the outline of his arm and side illuminated like a halo. “Remember that. “

Her knees tremble as she enters the arena. Around the perimeter are more people than she has ever seen in the room, or in the castle altogether. Yet she hardly glances at them. Instead she focuses on the other person in the centre of the arena, standing across from her, edgy and held in place by a black-suited man. Piper does not struggle as he holds her arms, but she casts a fearful glance as her friend as she enters.

“What is the meaning of this, father?” she asks as she takes her place where, customarily, she begins her challenges.

Her father stands off to the side, not far enough to be considered a spectator but not close enough to be considered an opponent.

“Your challenge today is to beat her,” he says, nodding toward Piper, though his eyes remain fixed on his daughter’s face. “The challenge does not conclude until there is a victor. And the victor is the last one standing.”

She cannot find her voice. “Why?” she manages.

“To determine which of you is the better student. If you are confident in what you have taught her, then her beating you should not be a problem,” her father surmises. “If you are not confident, then you will learn that there is no one equivalent to your skill and to try to teach otherwise is a waste of your talent. An abomination of the order of things. And your punishments will be her death.”

“No, father,” she says, the scope of the challenge before her making awful sense at last.

She has been imagining various punishments for days, and this is worse than all of them.

Piper’s face is stricken and white, her eyes darting frantically around the arena.

“What you believe you feel is irrelevant. This is a punishment. You refused to heed my warnings. Your insistency to rebel has put yourself in such a position.”

“Test me another way,” she insists, watching Piper’s face. “You cannot expect this of me.”

“The intent of this is not to test you,” her father says. “It is to teach you.”

She remains silent, heart pounding like a giant pendulum.

“You are a special student. All of these… vermin-,” her father says, sweeping his arm to gesture at the crowd of students and suited persons. “Are below you. I am only trying to make you see that.”

“Please father,” she pleads. “I am sorry. Punish me in some other way.”

Her father’s expression does not change. His face is stony, his stoicism a suddenly constant force. “There is no other way to teach you. Power is finite. To be great there must be as little of it elsewhere as possible. I hope you will know that now.”

The walls of the arena contract as her father steps back, beckoning for Piper’s capture to bring her forward.

Piper stumbles as she is pushed toward the centre of the room.

Her father steps away, and with a small flourish of her hand, he brings her closer to Piper. To her opponent.

Piper does not move. She is stationary, her arms swaying unsurely beside her. She raises them slowly.

Piper pushes her back.

It is the tiniest of gestures, shy and gentle and bred from fear, but Piper looks sick at having performed it.

She refuses to fight back. She is sure her father will stop them.

Piper pushes her back again, harder.

Her father does not move.

The glass of a nearby window shatters, some shards falling to the ground in a jagged pattern, others flying haphazardly toward the arena. She is only cut by one, and Piper falters at the sight of her blood.

Her father does not move.

Piper stares at her beseechingly, face pale, hands trembling at her sides.

She glances at her father. The expression on her face, one she has never been able to read before, has a horrific clarity now. In less than a second she knows, in her heart, what she will do.

She steps away from Piper, in a move that could be defensive were her arms not falling to her sides, her legs not straightening as she stands to her full height.

She closes her eyes, putting Piper’s face far from her mind, tucking it away like one of her volumes hidden in plain sight on a shelf in her father’s study. Her father’s voice, so often intrusive, fades.

She instead concentrates; recounting the hours she has spent in her father’s study, surrounded by bottles of wine or basins of salt water. Separating substances, diluting them when she has finished so she may practice once more.

It is different with herself, she realizes. With all of herself there is much more to separate than salt and water. Her limbs feel sewn to the air around her, her breath mixing with the atmosphere.

Slowly, very slowly, she withdraws from the space around her.

She separates. Pulling herself apart is painful, more painful than anything she has ever done. There is a sound like a screeching train, and she realizes it is someone screaming. She wonders belatedly if it is her.

The power it takes is incredible. The concentration is even greater. She cannot focus on anything else, cannot focus on keeping her energy in one place. It spreads outward from her, knocking many over, shattering windows, shaking the core of the academy.

She feels the repercussion of her action, her energy bouncing off each surface of the academy. Books burn, foundations tremble, birds click their beaks in terror. She feels it as though it were happening in front of her.

The academy is little more than a whisper of what it one was. A mass of rubble that she feels she is overlapping rather than being a part of.

The fire flickers, dimming, though it does not diminish or lessen in size. It is losing solidity, becoming less opaque. The walls of the arena, the people within them, are becoming transparent. Fading to ghost-like shadows. They move in phantom-wise blurs, fleeing and reach for crumbling pieces of the building to steady themselves.

When they are almost gone, the academy an empty piece of ornately carved rock, she closes her eyes. As her physical body disperses, pulling apart, she feels one last pain. Some falling object striking her head.

Between hitting her head and hitting the floor, she does not feel the fall. 

Text by Lucie MacAulay