Work Text:
Star of Guidance
by Catherine Rain
Apple stood in a cloud of white chalk dust, coughing uncontrollably, an eraser in each hand. I really should start making the students do this, she decided. Her physical reaction to chalk and dust hadn't been nearly this bad when she was fifteen, had it? She couldn't recall any problem; but then, she hadn't been the one to clean the erasers here-- usually that dubious honor was reserved for those kept after school for misbehavior.
Maybe I should just give more detentions. She smirked. Well, this was her first year running her own school. She didn't exactly have it perfected-- yet. But that was no excuse, she remembered; she'd seen it done well by the inexperienced before.
For the millionth time, she gazed at the little school building and marveled at the fact that she was teaching here. Of all the places she might have ended up by chance or necessity, she'd been able to come back to the one that mattered. No one else had been running this school-- it had been closed down and empty for nearly two decades, since she had been here... before...
She wandered towards the doorway, placed a hand on the worn wooden frame. Touching this doorway again made her heart seize up with sadness and memories and love. Of course she passed it every day, now again as she used to, and normally she paid it as little mind-- but in the depths of her heart, unconsciously, she wondered at it every time she crossed the threshold. And now she was remembering. The view of the classroom as she stepped inside, the hallway to the other rooms-- it wasn't big and it certainly wasn't Crystal Valley, but she would much rather be here.
"Apple?"
The voice made her jump and panic. Here she was, standing in the middle of the classroom staring into space, erasers in her hands, dust in her hair, and she must look like a total fool. She'd believed she was alone. Of course, most people wouldn't have known what her behavior meant-- but that voice was, embarrassingly, a familiar one.
Yet it was appropriate that a Silverberg would show up at this place just now. She ducked her head, aware that he would know what she had been doing anyway. "Sorry, Caesar. I was just remembering."
"When are you not?" She heard the familiar note of amused sarcasm in his voice, and knew his teasing wasn't meant to be cruel.
What could she say to a question so accurate? Standing once more in this room and feeling this way, she had no desire to cut back with a witty retort-- an admission of truth felt more appropriate. "Well, yes. I always am." She suddenly wanted to start explaining to this boy why, just why her memories were so powerful-- but he hadn't come here to hear about her feelings, and she let it go.
She turned around to face him, then, compulsively, went to put the erasers away. "It is good to see you, anyway. You-- oh that's right, you haven't been here before, have you?"
He shook his head, messy-as-ever hair falling into his eyes.
“Well. Welcome.”
“Thank you.”
She coughed once more, and rubbed some of the dust from her hands. “Please, come sit down in the office. These chairs never were quite comfortable.”
“Even in nostalgia land?” Caesar followed her down the little hallway.
“Nope, not even in my paradise.” Her breath caught as she called it that; she feared she spoke too strongly, and decided to shrug it off as exaggeration. She had meant it, but did it sound silly to this boy for whom it was ancient history—this child who hadn’t even been born yet when Master Mathiu died?
“So,” she said, indicating the chairs near her desk. “Is this a social visit, or is there… news…” Which could hardly be good, if such were the case. No one ever came to a strategist because things looked peaceful.
“No news,” said Caesar, “and actually, that’s why I’m worried.” He looked away. “About Albert.”
Ah, so it was his turn to be embarrassed. “Because whatever he’s up to must be big if it hasn’t happened by now?”
“Yeah. Well, I knew he had big plans, but…”
“You were telling yourself it wasn’t anything to worry about? Lying to yourself, basically.”
“Yeah…” He cringed, knowing it was a mistake.
“It’s all right. There’s not much we can do about Albert, anyway.”
“I know.” The younger brother sighed. “I actually came just to ask your assessment… how dangerous do you think he is? In the long run?”
“Hm, well, that’s a difficult question. He’s brilliant, ambitious and knows what he’s doing—but he’s also been poking at fires, if you’ll pardon the pun, and if he inflames too many he’ll end up cutting himself off. I don’t know how well he knows that danger.”
“So it’s difficult to say?” Caesar tipped the light chair so it leaned on its back two legs, probably unconsciously.
It was a habit of his that Apple had noticed before on occasion, but this time she frowned at him sharply. “Not in this office.”
“What? Oh.” He flushed bright red in embarrassment, and let the chair drop down on four legs again. “I’m sorry. I guess I shouldn’t do that to other people’s furniture.”
“It’s no big deal. I just don’t want to see you hurt yourself. Someday you’ll fall over backwards, you know.” And besides, I can’t stand to see these chairs… this room… this office disrespected in any way.
“Yes, teacher, I know.”
“Good.” She chuckled. Sometimes it was hard to believe she was really taking on this position, and sometimes it seemed that she could hardly be anything else. “Where were we… oh, Albert. I don’t know if I really have an answer for you on that one.”
A knock at the door announced the sudden arrival of another unexpected visitor, one who would walk right into her school, oddly enough. “Come in!”
The door handle rattled, and slowly the crack between the door and the frame widened to reveal a twelve-year-old girl practically clinging to the wall. “Miss Apple?”
Now this must be important; all the students had already gone home. “Oh, come on in,” chided the schoolmistress with a smile, beckoning swiftly. “But leave the doorframe there; you don’t have to bring it in with you.”
The girl smiled in return as she crept inside—good, she knew it was a joke; but she would remember it seriously as well. Apple wondered whether it were possible to train the timidity out of her students without hurting them in the process. She was constantly trying to walk on a narrow rail between too much coldness and too much kindness, and the risk of pitching off either side scared her, each in different ways. Why couldn’t I have been a teacher of something simple like math or poetry? she thought with an inward sigh.
“So, Selene, what’s up?”
“I have a question…”
“What’s that?”
“Well, it’s sort of…” She trailed off.
“Don’t worry. I like questions, especially the ones that are ‘sort of.” Apple gestured to the chair behind her desk. “Pull that chair around and join us.”
With a sidelong glance at Caesar, Selene did so, her blue eyes large with worry. “It’s about the simulations we’ve been doing.”
“Ah, yes.” The students had recently started testing their skills in a simulation game she’d worked out. “How is that going for you?”
“Well… okay, I guess. I’m not really getting anywhere, but at least no one is getting to me, so I’m holding out.”
Apple raised an eyebrow. She had told her students explicitly to avoid that trap, which she knew was tempting to try. “Is the objective to ‘hold out?’”
“Well, no…” Selene sat on the edge of the chair, her shoulders slumped over. Apple wondered whether this girl liked the game. “Why are you settling for that, then?”
The unhappy pupil shrugged.
“What is actually the problem?”
She shrugged again.
“Can I guess?” suggested Apple. “You don’t really want to play, do you?”
Selene squirmed in the chair. “Well, not really, actually, no. Actually, it kind of bothers me that we’re supposed to be killing so many people, even if they are made-up imaginary people.”
The teacher waited, hoping she would keep talking.
“It’s kind of… Everyone treats it so casually. It’s a game, so it doesn’t matter that we’re killing. But I was kind of sad when I had my first casualties… everyone was, and then everyone else got over it, because it’s the whole point of the game to cause deaths. But that made me think… well… if you can brush it off in a game, couldn’t you brush it off in real life?
“And… I don’t want to become insensitive like that. I don’t want to stop caring if people are getting hurt… I don’t want to just get used to it. Maybe that will make me more used to it if it happens in real life, just because I’ve seen it before on a chessboard and it’s that much more ordinary. I don’t want that to be me. Maybe it makes me an awful strategist, but I don’t care, and I don’t even want to be a strategist anyway. My parents just want me to go to school here. I don’t want to kill people and I don’t even want to get used to having people die.” She took the handkerchief that Apple proffered. “I don’t want to do it, don’t want to see it. I want it to stay a big deal. Otherwise it’s just too awful.”
When Selene had regained her composure, her teacher suggested, “Want to hear what I have to say about that?”
She nodded.
“All right. There are multiple reasons to strategize. Either you are looking forward to the thrill of the game, or you are hoping to avert worse disaster, or both, or something else. If nobody had a plan, the armies would just go out and beat each other up and the strongest would win, and many would die. Strategy reduces that.
“In fact, it’s better for a strategist not to be desensitized—to be bothered by death and violence the way you are. Of course you must go on and cause it anyway, but you’ll be more careful and more accurate if it hurts you. And it will—you have to pay the price. I’ve been in three wars, Selene. Many lives have been lost because of the choices I made. Some of those choices were mistakes. Some of those soldiers didn’t have to die. I am responsible for measureless bloodshed and terror, and do you think I don’t pay that price in my heart?” She leaned forward, waiting for a response.
Selene stammered the obvious correct answer, “N-no.” She huddled on the chair, watching her teacher’s tirade with the eyes of a frightened deer.
“Then you’re wrong,” said Apple. She closed her eyes, wishing she did not have to face this. “I’m not as good as I could be. I let myself get away with far too much, and I sometimes have to make myself care, remind myself of the consequences of my actions. I’m not like you; I have always found it all too easy to forget.”
Opening her eyes, she leaned forward, once again lecturing from what she knew. “The ability to feel acutely the pain you are causing, and yet resolutely do what is necessary—that is a talent. That is true strength, and it’s something I strive every day to develop. It would be easier for me if I were like you—it’s easier to make yourself overcome pain than to make yourself feel it in a natural way. You have a talent that you don’t even realize. It’s people like you that are needed.
“Because if you don’t pay the price in your heart—if you simply get used to what you are doing and refuse to think about it, it will build up in your conscience anyway, because you know. You know, but you push that aside—and so the years go by, and you commit more and more sins, and then it all falls upon you at once and you can’t bear the weight of what you’ve done—and it breaks you. I saw it happen, or rather, I heard the close details. Jowy Blight was a textbook case, and it happened in front of us all. It’s a real phenomenon. Some people can tolerate more than others, but in the end, you either pay or you go insane, and either will break you and leave you nowhere. That is why the most important thing you can do is feel that reflection of the pain you cause—and yet go on under that burden. That is the single most important thing my master ever taught me, and it wasn’t in the classroom…” She began to tremble. Oh no, no, I’m losing my composure. I can’t stop the flood from the sluice gates of my heart. She sat back against the chair. Why come to me with this question, why today, when already I am about to collapse from the power of the memories that drove me for so many years?
She closed her eyes in silence, struggling to regain herself. “I’m not that way,” she whispered. “Though I try so hard to be.”
But the importance of those memories—didn’t they count for something? Why had they haunted her for so long, driven her to do every thing that she had ever accomplished? A relieving, self-satisfying thought flashed through her mind: since she cared so much about becoming that ideal, did that not indicate that in some way, she did have a natural inclination towards it?
Yet that answer seemed too sweet and tempting for belief. Inclining towards it and actually becoming it were two different things. She knew she was not, nor could she ever be, what Master Mathiu had been—for he had been that without trying, and Apple had to try. So long as she reached toward it, she could not reach from it. Yet she tried to aim at the ideals by which he had lived, and if she always did so, perhaps she could find, somewhere, that true strength…
“Miss Apple? Are you all right?”
She opened her eyes. “Oh… Selene, I’m sorry.” She focused on the child.
“Are you all right?”
“No… yes. No, obviously I’m not very composed right now.”
Selene handed back the handkerchief, although Apple wasn’t crying. “He was important to you, wasn’t he?”
“Master Mathiu? Yes. Oh yes; why would I write a book about him if he weren’t. Why would I tiptoe around this school, afraid to own it, if I weren’t still thinking of it as his. I—oh, Selene, you don’t want to hear all this; I’m sorry.” She gave her a weak smile. “Just think of him as my personal… guiding star. But yes. I’m sure, had he been here, he would have liked you.”
“Oh.” Selene looked hopeful. “So… you think…”
“I think you’re doing well. And I think you won’t be desensitized. It’s your basic nature to be affected, and that won’t go away, not if you don’t push it away. That would be a mistake, but since you’re resolved not to, I don’t think you have to worry.”
The girl seemed convinced, surprising for the amount of misery that had come through the door. “Thanks, Miss Apple… I guess I never thought of any of that before, but thanks.”
“Of course you wouldn’t think of it—I only did because I saw your talents as helpful, whereas you see them as something that cause you sadness. I suppose someone like you… wouldn’t even have known it himself, would he…”
“No, I’m sure your Master Mathiu didn’t know.” Selene jumped up from the chair, eyes twinkling. “Really, thank you. You helped a lot.”
All I did was break down in grief and have a pathetic moment of wallowing in memories twenty years past. “You’re welcome.”
As the door swung closed behind the girl, Caesar grinned at Apple. “Your ‘guiding star?’”
“Ooh, you…” She almost wanted to kick him. “You have a lot to live up to, kid, you know that?”
“Evidently so.”
Silence.
“Oh, um…” Apple suddenly remembered the reason he’d come in the first place. “About Albert?”
“Yeah?”
“I don’t think you have to worry.”
“If your theory’s correct?”
“Certainly he can do a lot of damage. But from what you’ve told me about the way he used to be… ambition or no, he’s going to crash, probably sooner rather than later. He isn’t the way he acts.”
“And here I thought the Silverberg coldness merely skipped a generation.”
“I was rather hoping it had been bred out.”
“You don’t like my family?” He gave her a look of mock hurt.
There was nothing to do about that but laugh.
Maybe the world hadn’t ended when Master Mathiu died. Maybe the things he brought to the world—hope, understanding, kindness and strength—could be passed on in a more explicit form. If Apple could show others the value of what he was, perhaps they would strive to take on those qualities. It would take more than lecturing—it would take experience and proof. She might not be a perfect example of what he was, but she could spread it around.
She was still doing her best for her teacher—and that was, after all, the only thing he’d ever asked for. Maybe, just maybe—though she didn’t dare assume—maybe he would be proud of her, which was the only thing she’d ever asked of him.
Live, she thought to him, wherever he might be. Live on in those children. Be their values and ideals. Be their star of guidance.
-fin-