The Circles of Old (2)

Today my brother and I were to be rewarded, with just a drip of knowledge, a trickle of Father's great wisdom.

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My brother and I stood in Father's study like sentinels, awaiting his pleasure.

This was a test in itself. Of our patience, resolve, and obedience.

Today we were to be rewarded, with just a drip of knowledge, a trickle of his great wisdom.

We were eight years old, the summer air sultry and heavy. That couldn't be allowed to get in the way of decorum, of course. 

When Father deigned to acknowledge our presence, I saw his satisfaction, the gloating victor.

He put aside his book and reached for something on his desk: an immense roll of paper. 

He marched it over to the table by the window, empty except for a variety of paperweights, ancient trinkets I didn't like. A smooth brown stone, boring and unworthy. A wooden pyramid carved with tiny inscrutable writing. A crude soapstone figurine depicting a Dragon. And an amorphous undulating abstract monstrosity, of a substance unknown to me at the time, that I thought of only as "Nightmare".

"Come." Father's only command, for now.

We scurried to the table as he rolled out the great map scroll. He arranged the paperweights at suitable places to hold open a particular part of the map. Father had placed "Nightmare" at the corner closest to me. I suspected this was deliberate. I refused to react to it, and stared at the words and shapes on the scroll. 

I could tell from the writing that the map was upside down from my vantage, and I struggled to make sense of it. Then I noticed the wide cut of the River, and could quickly place the nation and the city, and a few other key landmarks. 

He prodded the map in six swift motions, counting them off. "This pattern is repeated the world over, with little variation. Six corners of a squashed hexagon." I could see the wider pattern spreading on all sides, like tiles on a kitchen floor. 

The two corners closest to me were within the boundary of the land of Aradan, an unfamiliar place. I could see it lay far to the north of the nation, and even the Kinnon. 

The two corners in the middle of the map sat in the northernmost section of the nation, in a wide wood, a wilderness reaching to our borders.

The furthest corner, at Father's right hand, sat in the sea, but marked as if it were a city. Perhaps it was an island? It looked like a morsel of food that the River was about to snap up.

The corner at Father's left hand was the city. Our city. This city. That didn't make sense to me.

"These are the Circles of Old, conduits of our Curse. But here, in the center of each hexagonal pattern, is the agent of our future doom: a Folly."

My brother followed Father's interests like a dog. I heard some things about Follies and Dragons, but these things seemed secondary to what Father had not said, and which to me was far more important.

The Circles of Old were the stuff of fairy tales. Everyone knew they didn't really exist. 

But here was Father, then the font of all the hidden secrets of my world, announcing their reality, and then only in passing.

Father lied, sometimes. I already knew that. I'd heard his untruths spoken to outsiders; our family secrets kept. Did outsiders have their own secrets? Did everyone speak lies to keep those secrets?

Now Father spoke the truth. A part of it, at least. It would be some time before I'd learn how little of it he was revealing that day.

My brother was so eager to please Father, and so he became eager to learn of the Follies and earnest in his desire to free the Three Worlds from their doom.

I already knew I could not please Father, and so I had begun to please myself. My brother could have the Follies if he wanted them. The Circles were mine. 

They did exist. And one of them was right here in the city. Even then I knew that the Circles were the key to freeing me from my doom.

I could worry about the doom of whole worlds later.

Continue reading with Part 3 - The Heirs of Azil.