Raising Lessons

The boy has not been delivered to the custody of the orphanage and now sits in the study of the temporary residence of the man who adopted him. He is not entirely certain the adoption process included the traditional filling out of paperwork, but nevertheless, here he sits, having been handed over from the authorities who offered their condolences and promptly forgot about him soon after. The boy does not know the man’s name, nor has the man once inquired about the boy’s, nevertheless, the boy sits in the study and awaits his lecture.

Lectures began the day after he was adopted and have not stopped occurring at a specific hour each day for a specific length of time. The man brings book after book of diagrams and philosophies and sciences. He assigns chapters and readings and then teaches the boy things he does not understand but begin to form an understanding in him. He is inchoate, his instructor says. It does not matter what he understands now, it will matter what he will understand in time.

The boy has transcribed numerous symbols for purposes he does not understand. But the shapes and runes have become intimately familiar beneath his fingertips. They surround the animals he has been taught to analyse, from the outside in.

Today, the mouse his instructor brought to their lesson is surrounded by fewer symbols than is usually inscribed for this sort of endeavor.

“You must learn to make use of less,” the boy’s instructor said, before handing him the mouse. “Symbols are necessary, but you only need so many. Too many, and they become frivolous. In the game, there will be no room for frivolity.”

Now the boy stares at the mouse, concentrating and finding it taxing with fewer symbols. His energy wanes, but his focus sharpens. The clock counts the seconds ticking by with a steady hollow thump.

The mouse’s heartbeat is almost drowned out by the noise.

The girl grows up in a series of cities; most often in America, and among these trips to Chicago, Louisiana, California, are journeys to exotic and remote locations in Asia or South America. She and her instructor visit mountaintops and caves, and she picks up so many languages that she often begins speaking one in the middle of another, switching back and forth between the two, without realizing it.

During these trips the girl is made to read and study, and the locations they visit are, in their solitude and with their rich flora and fauna, conducive to her studies, her instructor tells her.

In her opinion, it does not make up for her scant diets, or the lack of company, or the physical effort with which they climb mountainsides or hike through jungles. The views are beautiful, but they begin to blend together so much so that she sometimes cannot remember what country she is in, or even what corner of the globe. Not that it matters.

She is exhausted by the constant travelling and practical study, and in combination with a diet of betel nuts and banana leaves, she is losing weight and must constantly take in garments to accommodate for it.

Her instructor is almost constantly by her side, watching her, and on the few occasions her is not, she is chaperoned by a maid who hardly speaks. She is discouraged from wandering around, but when they visit associates of his in the larger cities, she is groomed and paraded around fancy restaurants or opulent art galleries.

She is permitted to keep a modest amount of books that are unrelated to death or history, which she treats like treasure and reads in her spare time, or when she has been left alone to study, or practice. It is not until her instructor mentions the game that she begins taking her studies seriously.

The top of Mt. (in Macchu Picchu) is obscured by mist. When the girl looks up on the ascent, she cannot imagine how they will see two feet in front of themselves, when they reach the summit, when they finally arrive at their destination, a tent erected among ancient stone monoliths, she is ready to fall over, and sick of the heady scent of rainforest blossoms.

“It’s a game?” she asks, again, when she has her breathback. When her instructor mentioned it, she had brightened, but she still does not trust him entirely.

“Yes.”

“I like games,” she says.

“Let’s hope you like this one,” he replies.

Athens is particularly radiant this summer. The agora is a bustle of tourists and locals sipping red wine, eating sun-warmed apples dipped in honey, sampling perfumes of myrrh and laurel.

At the ports, the merchants trade copper and gossip and salt-sparkling fish. One the hillsides the lemon trees are blossoming in the burst of star-white petals and golden fruit.

But the boy, relegated to the library, experiences none of this.

The boy and his instructor spent the previous week in Alexandra, and some of it in Cairo, studying similar subjects, and staying inside. The boy has not felt sunlight for more than five minutes at a time in a few weeks. His instructor has given him numerous anthologies, mandates of philosophy and ethics, and scientific journals to read.  And once, to the boy’s surprise and bewilderment, a section of the Book of the Dead.

Filled with knowledge of myth, anatomy, and exequies, the boy tries and fails to answer his instructor’s question: “What is resurrection?”

“The Egyptians believe a person can be reincarnated into a bug, then into a bird, and with each life they are brought back as different creatures, ascending the chain of being until they are brought back as human. Then, when they die, they begin the whole cycle again,” he had said in Egypt. “And through the power of Anubis, the jackal-headed protector of the underworld, they could be resurrected in the light of Ra, the sun-god.”

“And what is resurrection here?” His instructor gestures at the books and anthologies written in Greek, scattered on the table around them.

“The Greek religion and mythologica are full of resurrection. Asclepius was killed by Zeus, then resurrected as a major deity. Achilles was also resurrected. Immortality, to the Greeks, includes an eternal unity of the body and soul. The idea of an immortal soul arrived after the Christian era. Prior to that the belief was the after death the soul went elsewhere and was forever disembodied. The new idea of a soul living on separately from its body argues in favour of resurrecting one soul in another body, as opposed to its original body.”

“Correct,” his instructor says. It is the highest form of praise he offers. He absently flips through a book while the boy looks down at his notes, furrowing his brow.

The boy hardly ever speaks during his lessons - unless answering a question - neither commenting nor questioning as inquiries usually lead to much more complex lectures about things he already does not understand.

But today he interrupts his instructor.

“Is necromancy the same as resurrection?” he asks.

“Not at all. Resurrection is a form of alchemy - a science; necromancy is a manipulation for selfish purposes. You are not controlling the dead you are raising it.”

“They’re all just theories though, aren’t they” the boy says, watching his instructor organize some of the books into a messy pile. “None of it is true, is it?”

His instructor looks up at him, guardedly, and stops moving the books. “They are explanations for phenomena that can not already be explained by science. The results, the events, are real. The theories are nothing. What is real, is the boundaries. Can you resurrect someone from ages past?”

The boy looks down at his notes once more. “No,” he answers quietly.

“That is the truth,” his instructor says. The boy gets out of his chair and begins putting books away. He leaves pushes them into the back of the shelves, hidden behind other journals and volumes, to collect dust.

One particular excursion to New Orleans lasts longer than most of their trips. At first she is kept in her room, pacing like a cat, restless. When she is allowed to leave the rented flat, escorted as always, she marvels at the jazz, is entranced by the lounges and the beignets sold in the Vieux Carre.

One evening, her instructor takes her out of the flat and leads her through the streets on a path she has not previously taken. When they arrive at their destination, in a dimly lit corner of the city, there is already a small crowd assembled around the spectacle.

The spectators step aside, parting like water as she and her instructor move up to the front.

In the glow of several candles a voodoo queen holds up a doll, the size and shape of a corn dolly, with a lock of hair secured tightly to it with a red string.

“What is it?” the girl asks, but her instructor shakes his head and puts a finger to his lips.

She watches, silently, as the voodoo queen takes a pin and gently prods the arm of the doll. A yelp of pain comes from the audience and the spectator steps forward. Their hair is the same shade as that of the lock tied to the doll

The voodoo queen takes another pin and sticks it into the doll’s leg, with a small smile.

The man in the audience cries out again and clutches his leg.

The audience is abuzz with murmuring when the voodoo queen removes both pins, unties the hair from the doll, and hands it back to the gentleman, who quickly gathers it into his hands.

The voodoo queen bows to some hesitant applause.

“Je prennais (revenge on faithless spouses, men who cheat at cards, en francais), sit u peut donner-moi quelque chose son lui,” he announces.

When he begins pulling amulets from his belt and bargaining their prices, her instructor leads her away from the crowd and back to the flat.

They do not discuss the affair until they are seated in the parlour with their tea.

“What is the name of the performance we just witnessed?” he asks her.

“It is called Louisiana voodoo, or gris-gris,” she answers.

“And what kind of magic-,” he says the word disdainfully. “-would it be classified as?”

The girl thinks for a moment. “Sympathetic magic. (Insert short definition here.)”

“And how does it relate to your studies/resurrection?” he asks, then sips his tea while awaiting an answer.

She frowns, unable to form a response immediately. She recalls the principles they have discussed in her lessons.

“Something is required, in both voodoo and resurrection, from the subject, in order to have an impact,” she says. “Like the hair on the doll, or like using the same eyes in one body as in another.”

“Very good,” her instructor says, and offers nothing more.

“Is voodoo real?” she asks, after a long pause.

“It depends on your definition of real. If you are asking if superstition can influence a subject, the answer is yes. Whether or not the subject is physically connected to the doll or poppet, is another matter entirely.”

Her instructor leaves her alone, and the next day they take a train back to California/New York.

While there are other trips to New Orleans, the girl is not taken to see any more voodoo queens.

“It’s ready, I think,” he says, stepping away from the bat on the table, laid flat with its wings carefully spread out on either side of it.

“Is it ready?” his instructor says, from his position by the wall. He always stands back when the boy works.

“Yes,” the boy says, firmly. He turns to the bat and concentrates, ignoring his instructor’s presence until it is a distant shadow. The bat has been dead longer than any of the mice with which he has performed. It was damaged, and now has a sewn up wing and torso, still crusty with dried blood. The boy’s own fingers are stained red, and also black with ink. Several symbols and diagrams surround the winged creature.

The boy thinks of the immortal soul, a technique he has begun to use to hone his senses. He does not tell his instructor. He does not think his instructor would improve.

Eli closes his eyes and focuses. In the darkness behind his eyelids, the body before him burns red. The threads appear slowly, blooming golden and shimmering behind his eyelids. They open like the birth of a star and he grasps them.

They shudder as he weaves them together, pressing them into the sinews and veins of the body. Between the brittle bones of its skeleton. Into its ribcage. Twines them around its heart.

When he pulls back, his own muscles are tired, his eyes drooping. But the bat is shivering as it wakes. Its first sound, a strangled shriek, makes the boy smile. When he closes his eyes, the golden threads are fading, shimmering like dust as they sink into darkness.

She has never been given an animal so decomposed, nor so messily killed. Its body is a mangled affair of blood and fur, sinew and splinter-small bones.

Its body can’t be salvaged,” she says to her instructor, feeling nervous and annoyed under his scrutiny.

“But you must bring it back,” he says.

“Bring it back to what?” she asks.

“To a body,” he answers, and she can tell his patience is wearing thin.

“I would need to construct an entirely new body to do that,” she says.

In the silence that follows, she understands what her instructor intends for her to do.

“No,” she says.

“If you want to win, you must get your hands dirty.”

 A week later, the girl’s instructor informs her that he will no longer be providing the specimens used in their lessons. Instead, she will be expected to provide her own.

He takes her on a train out of the city and into the woods. She watches the city, then the woods, pass the windows in a blur of brown and grey and green. When they arrive in the countryside he leads her out of the town and through the farmland, into the woods, which enclose around them until they are surrounded by walls of green.

“Sit here,” her instructor says, standing still in a thicket of grass.

The girl walks to him and crosses her legs, sinking into the dirt. She waits, listening to the hum of cicadas and the rustling leaves for some time before she asks, “What are we doing?”

“Shush. You are waiting,” her instructor says, and will say nothing more.

She becomes silent, and to occupy herself, imagines her bones are roots, her hair is moss, her body is made of earth, solid and still.

When she has been quiet for so long the blood is beginning to rush in her ears, a deer appears in the clearing.

She must hold back a gasp when she sees it. It is young, a fawn with a dappled coat and glassy, dark eyes. As it comes closer, her eyes fall to the grass.

Where there had been nothing before, a knife glints in the sunlight.

She raises her eyes to her instructor.

His expression fills her with dread.

“You do want to win, don’t you?” he says, lowly, and the deer’s ears prick up, but it does not stop approaching.

She does not answer, but slides a hand through the grass toward the knife.

She waits until the deer nuzzles her cheek before lifting it.

She holds the deer while it struggles and bleats before sinking into the grass.

Today their lesson involves the use of a tank, the sides of which are metal and cold to the touch.

“Today we will be learning about suspended animation,” his instructor says. He lifts the lid of the tank and white gas pours over the edges of the tank, like a smoky veil. The boy peers over the edge of the lid at the preserved body of a fetus.

“Resurrection can only occur when there is a body for which it may occur in. When does the body begin decomposition?”

“Within 48 hours,” the boy answers.

“At which point the chances of performing a successful resurrection begin to decline, and when the body is in the late stages of rot, it can no longer be used. Suspended animation, however, can prolong that point.”

“Is that how I can bring back older things?” the boy asks. There is a fission of hope bubbling in his chest. But his instructor’s words halt it.

“No. There is no way to bring back something that has been so dead for so long. Not to its original state.” He replaces the lid over the fetus as he continues. “In a few months time, when you try to resurrect that, you will see what I mean.”

When the girl turns seventeen, she is given, as a birthday gift, a kitten.

The kitten, a black ball of fluff streaked with silver, prances in circles and attacks the lace hem of her dress. It is vicious in the way of creatures too young to be malicious or obedient, and the girl adores it.

The girl tempts the kitten onto her shoulders with morsels of meat, and rolls her onto her back to scratch its soft underbelly.

Until her instructor visits her for her daily hour-long lecture and takes the kitten from her hands, before neatly and carefully slitting its throat.

It is sometime before she is done crying, and then some more time before she is calm enough to listen to her instructor.

“What is the first step?” he asks, stepping back.

“To close the cut on its neck. Or she’ll bleed again when she comes back” the girl answers, biting back more tears.

“That is the easiest part. Begin.” Her instructor stands perfectly still, with his hands clasped behind his back, waiting for her to focus.

For Christ’s sake, stop crying,” he says, and pushes the dead kitten across the table toward her.

The girl looks away from the vivid red line at its neck and takes a deep breath. She turns back and stares at the blood drying at its throat, and for the next half hours, she looks at nothing else.

The fetus breathed, struggled and gasped. Its body thawed, warmed, moved and craved its mother.

It stopped moving less than a minute later.

“What went wrong?” his instructor asks, as the boy stares at the fetus on the table.

“Its body was weak,” the boy says, trying to find another reason for its sudden death.

“Incorrect. What went wrong?”

The boy is silent for a minute before, “There was nothing to bring back. It has a body but no… life.” There were no threads to grasp, nothing but some energy from the candles around the room. The fetus thrived then died.

“Without the rest of the life it would have lived it could not live at all,” his instructor summarizes. “Everything has its time. If it dies before its time, and you get there fast enough to preserve the body and its potential life, it can be brought back. But you cannot raise it with only one.”

The boy is silent. He cannot bring himself to look at the fetus.

His instructor relights the candles, then picks up the boys newest journal, bound with leather and inscribed with alchemical symbols as well as mythological. “We are finished for today.”

He waits for the boy to take his book before replacing the fetus in its tank and leaving the room. White gas trails behind him and fills the room like mist. Alone and fighting back tears, the boy shivers.

When they come to the practical portion of the lesson, her instructor lifts the sheet off the table and its contents in a cloud of white linen. She must hold back a gasp when she sees, upon the table, two cadavers.

Her instructor circles the table, coming to stand on the opposite side, and fixing her with a steady gaze.

“What are the similarities between these two corpses?” he asks her.

She forces herself to look at them long enough to determine mundane features. “They’re both male. Similar height, and possibly weight. Possibly similar in age. I cannot tell. That one,” she gestures to the more dilapidated of the two corpses. “It’s too decomposed. I can’t see any of the details.”

Her instructor nods. “Good. Now focus, and bring them back for a minute.”

She turns back to the corpses and picks the more decomposed of the two. While its appearance is distracting, she resists the impulse to close her eyes and concentrates until she is looking not at the corpse, but beyond it.

She sees nothing. There is no thread of energy or breadth of life. There is no thing to call back. It is hollow/empty. She frowns and returns her attention to her instructor. “I can’t find it.”

“Why not? Her instructor asks.

She searches the corpse for an answer. Where she would normally hear the echoes of his life, it sounds only like the emptiness of a very old palace.

“It’s empty,” she says, frustrated that she cannot properly articulate exactly what she means. “And old,” she appends.

“Precisely,” her instructor says, resting his hands on the edge of the table and leaning forward. “Resurrection has a limit. Its enemy is time. Only so much of it can pass before you can no longer perform resurrection. The stronger you are, the more you can push the limit. And you must push it. That is how we will win the game.”

In a hotel suite in Florence, among a plethora of books filled with syllabary, alone and with the curtains drawn to allow in the last of the day’s sunlight, the boy holds a photograph of his mother, creased and scratched, and cries.

Art by Abigail Larson

Text by Lucie MacAulay