Expectations of Prodigies
XAVIER BEIJERINCK
Clutching a bound grimoire under the glacial song of a winter's night, a young man dressed in fine robes dashes across a frost-crested path. The flora locked in a ballet of motion, stirred by the sporadic melody of the wind, still trying to dance to the vacant rhythm. Quickly opening the heavy and ornate wooden door a wave of warmth washes over him, lulling the chilling melody into a wholesome lullaby of wanting sleep. But he was to ignore such comforts, as he stumbles upon an open desk cleared of the typical academic mess that follows in his symphonic steps.
Slamming the thick tome down a wave of dust kicks up and scatters by a quick gust of a whispering wind. A scatter of silver moonlight dances across the edge of a tall runic candle. He reaches for the wick and gestures to invoke an incandescent note, sets the wick ablaze and coats the hallow study with a faint orange light. Opening the locks and chains that bind the perplexing tome, he finds himself initiating a siege against a tome full of ramparts of abstract rhyme, pages and paragraphs like palisades, meaning hidden amongst interwoven metaphor. His eyes are already weighed down by dark sacks that grow like leeches as the night presses on. Enraptured by his academic assault brought forth by an internalised sense of obligation; his failure to dissect meaning from prose would spur an overwhelming guilt of inability. This guilt clings to his heart like a miserable parasite, draining him of all passionate fury and numbing him of sensation.
The door behind him opens as the old hinges whine. A middle-aged man dressed in a mixture of regal and academic garb enters with greying blond hair worn in a long ponytail, heavily decorated with jewellery, his green-blue eyes scour the desk.
‘Any progress?’ the man asks, expecting some revelatory epiphany.
‘Father, I tried but I cannot find any lead into my study of this,’ Kain sighs. Quickly turning to his father's gaze. Then back to nigh incomprehensible tome in wishing revelation,
‘Kain, you must.’ Returns Kain’s father slowly leaving the elaborate study.
Kain could only hear an echo of disappointment within his father's voice and it lingers long into the creeping night.
Waking to a harmonic morning, the songbirds a resonant choir harmonising with the gentle whistling wind.
Face planted on top of the evasive prose as if in an almost-wish to absorb the words entrenched within the book. The golden light of the rising sun sears his opening eyes, jolting him into a half stupor, the body longing for food and drink but his mind focused on study and trying to unravel the proverbial Gordian knot lying upon the table in front of him. But there was no sword to cleave the knot in half, he was forced to pull it apart, thread by thread, to understand what mysteries within its centre.
Kain pulls himself away from the monumental text for but a moment. Barely acknowledging the whining hunger in the pit of his stomach.
Reluctantly Kain turns again to the archaic book, a heavy weight places itself upon his shoulders and mind, binding him in metaphorical shackle and chain to the desk — A chain stronger than steel and one that can bind without one knowing. As if a stern hand holds him down and keeps his face towards the page. Once again Kain began attempting to assail the monumental text. A biting pain of hunger claws for attention, trying to pull his focus away from what he believes he needs to do. His mind conflicting with his need, a driving want to understand and in doing so satiating his hunger for knowledge, while denying his need.
These pains would draw him away from study to the growing sense of guilt. It bites at his mind and gnaws against his soul. Kain feels the burgeoning spectre of malign doubt and burning hate festering inward. As Kain wanders under the crystalline sky with the soft whispering wind, his limbs feel as if they are entangled in a fine web. Each willing wish of his movement snaping the ethereal web as he moved forward. Even as he succeeds against the imagined silken threads their weight finds purchase as he stops to look out over the once-frozen garden.
Kain watches in contemplation, letting his senses fade, and his eyes close, until only his rational mind sings a choir alone; this singular song, speaks only of need and the dominating wishes of others. The solemn song repeating uncontested.
‘We need to break into the book and derive meaning alone. It is part of my purpose as Heir.’
As the solemn thought dominates, Kain opens his eyes to decipher another sweeter voice as it whimpers into the spotlight. It did not speak in proclamations, nor speak at all. It simply hints in veiled emotions and wordless ideas. Feeling the heat of the sun, Kain stands watching the whispering winds dance across the long grasses and plants that slowly dance to the hidden chorale choir. The onyx and quartz fountain built in a representation to the abstract delivers a deluge of water to a winding pond. A garnet leaf caught Kain’s blue-green eyes. The water carries the leaf in an effortless pirouette, cresting against the granite spires. It ebbs and flows moving in a seamless dance. It did not stagnate, for stagnation was death, for it to be consumed by the flowing current. And to stagnate was to find itself against an impassable obstacle. And he saw himself as the leaf, but unlike the leaf, he had agency over aspects of his fate. His stagnation relates to the proverbial Gordian knot and his attempt to untie it. but was not the knot cleft in half by a blade?
Now he just needed the right cutting edge.
Slamming open the study door in studious fervour, Kain searches the bountiful armoury, finding many metaphorical blades for him to wield, yet their edges glance against the impervious armour of the manuscript. With each failed dissection self guilt spurrs its toxic questioning.
‘Why not prove yourself, by forging a new key against the cypher? Cleaving the knot with your own edge will only make success all the sweeter.’
A septic idea implants itself. Progress is hindered by a want, nay need for ultimate self-reliance. Carving out his own self-identity and legacy, as if an outward branch of the sturdy oak of familial legacy instead of being but another branch in the bountiful canopy
The desk sits barren except for Kain and the mythical tome, whose words wove into paradox and paradigm—evading every fruitless attempt of the heir to pin the book to an idea. Kain’s blue-green eyes drained of enthusiasm and wonder, instead filling with frustration and blind determination. The teeth of his mental gears stuck in a deadlock, giving rise to friction that mutates into white-hot anger. the forceful bending of a pen nib, the spilling ink across the clean parchment. Gears of motion locking together in stagnation. His heavy eyes look to an open window where the dancing silver moonlight wove between distant mammoth pines.
A breath of winter’s glacial winds from the window chills and cleanses Kains’s heated lungs. Clarity of mind returns amid the gentle wandering hymn of a young night. A myth of counterpart twins dancing on the twilight edge; one to a warm life-filled melody, the other danced to a grim chilling cord. The dancing of two dissonant counterparts defined the harmony of the twilight winds. But in uncounted aeons, their dance became one harmony. A harmony Kain knows and feels as he takes in the winter air.
A sudden gust of winter’s touch crested against Kain’s neck. He quickly turns to see his grandfather. An aged man with deep malachite eyes, scarred by experience with a winding burn scar consuming his right arm and clawing against his neck. White grey hair blackened at the ends like candle wicks.
‘Still stuck, I see,’ Kain’s grandfather’s voice cut across like fingers against a chalkboard.
Kain places his hands to his face and returns, ‘I hold a lock and I have no key’
‘Every cypher has a key, you just need to find it,’ Grandfather says as if expecting some grand influx of knowledge.
A statement that felt near tautological, a haze of frustration flashes across Kain’s mind and a tensing of muscle. Were keys and blades going to fill his dreams or was it to be a perplexing myriad of meanings and themes?
Looking down at the grimoire.
He whispers ‘Enough.’ proclaiming defeat against the evasive text.
Kain closes its pages and capitulates to his want of luxury, he is welcomed by the warm embrace of a wholesome lullaby of well-kept and well-lit hearths. He welcomes his room like one welcomes a friend, falling into the proverbial arms, and finally relents, letting his body know how much he needs sleep; for as soon as he found his bed he fell into deep sleep
Scattering rays of new dawn lit the room through a radiant crystal, drenching the entire room in an incandescent orange light that shines through Kain’s eyelids and forces him awake.
A mind renewed in focus and intent, the miasma of misunderstanding and the reticent guilt of failure washes away deep breaths of the song crisp morning air. A melody intertwined in twilight rhythm and the warm strings of the sun. Was Kain to find or forge a blade that would cut the Gordian knot that lingers on the desk of his study? This question he asks himself spurs twin, doubt and guilt, gnawing away at his self-confidence. Kain let his shoulders sink. Doubt asks if he was even good enough to understand it even with help and Guilt screaming that he should have been done yesterday if only he ignored his need. Ideas of self-medicated poison begin to cloud his mind. Spectres pulling him down.
He saw his siblings sparing with swordplay and spellcraft in an open courtyard lined by statues of their familial history. Grand visages of marble stood as testaments to their great deads. Their sheer presence weighs further on his shoulders. And guilt and doubt spoke their minds again. Guilt saying you’re not worthy of walking in their presence while you’ve not proven yourself. And weighing Doubt talking as if he was not worthy of being remembered. Thoughts like lead weighing him down, buckling his knees and welling tears in the corner of his eyes. Pushing against the empty pit of weight hanging against his heart. He once again enters the study collapsing at the desk with his head in his hands. Soft tears spill from his eyes, as his mind floods with dread and panic that seek to devour all other thoughts that are not self-destructive.
In his teary mess of guilt and doubt, Kain did not hear the door open behind him.
‘Kain, are you alright?’ his father’s voice reaches out.
Kain felt a set of caring hands grab at his shoulders, placing just enough weight to say he was there.
Kain tries to speak but his throat grows hoarse, tightens up, preventing any whimpering words from leaving Kain’s mouth. His muscles were frozen in quivering weakness. Each fibre of his very being screams in dissonant voices, wanting to collapse and to act as if nothing was wrong. Wipe away those tears, they’re not protective.
His father continues ‘Kain I see you’re struggling, is it still the tome? I struggled with it as well while I studied it. I only had an epiphany when I finally understood we live on the shoulders and knowledge of our legacy. I will help you just give me a second’
Kain felt relief, an unknowable weight lifts from his shoulders. Kain still silently weeping, but the tears no longer burn, but were instead calming. His mind still screams and cries in a miasma of confusion. But it was quieter now.
‘Here Kain, this will help you. And if you need me to help, please ask’ he consoles Kain. He gently places another book on the desk and then firmly embraces his child.
Kain calms himself after taking in the clean air of winter’s day. And finally takes to the new book on the desk. As now he held the sword aloft above the Gordian knot. Now all he needs is to cut.
Author Bio
I am Xavier and I am a young writer from Sydney who specialises in the fantasy and sci-fi genre and developing intricate storyworlds. And whose works explore themes of expectation both self-imposed and externally enforced through my characters and aspects of my intricate worlds.
