CHAPTER ONE

 

The Academy

 

 

 

 

There was a stranger at the dining table. He was a tall, bulky, elderly man with large blue eyes, curly white hair and a white beard. Liam drew closer from the stairs as his father Gabriel beckoned him over.

‘Come, Liam, seat yourself,’ said Gabriel. ‘This is Rabbin Raphaël Tuteur.’

‘Bonsar,’ said the old man.

‘Good evening,’ responded Liam, sitting opposite him.

Rabbin Tuteur was rather quiet, consuming morsels of bread along with the lamb stew, and smiling at times as he listened to Liam’s parents converse from opposite ends of the table. Léo, Liam’s younger brother, aged two, ate silently next to the guest. The elderly man only spoke when enquired of his opinion or when posed a question.

‘They’re going to introduce a decree that prohibits drinking for us,’ said Gabriel, a solemn expression on his face.

‘Is that so?’ said Rabbin Tuteur.

‘Oui.’

‘What will that accomplish?’ asked Liam. He saw that the guest was staring at him unlike before; the polite, introductory smile had transformed into a sudden interest, as if the man had left something behind and Liam held it.

Gabriel looked down. ‘I suppose it’s because only the members of the nobility should benefit from such goodness and pleasure, and they wouldn’t want members of the third estate to become distracted, lazy and light-headed. Besides, it would make one less productive.’

‘And when does the decree take effect?’ asked Rabbin Tuteur.

‘This Sunday,’ replied Gabriel.

‘I’d like to thank you for having me,’ said Rabbin Tuteur after dinner had concluded and nightfall had long settled, the candles that Juliette, Liam’s mother, had kindled being the only sources of light in the room. She had an oval-shaped face, with soft features.

Liam lingered in the room as his mother collected the dirty dishware, Léo knocking his wooden spoon against the table, and his father and Rabbin Tuteur conversing in low voices by the open doorway. He couldn’t make out what they were saying.

He returned to his bedroom upstairs and lay on his side on the floorboards, pressing his ear against it, hoping to catch whatever the adults were discussing. Now his parents were speaking in hushed voices, which sounded like mumbles through the wooden barrier. He didn’t give up, not even if he couldn’t understand a word, but soon he drifted off to sleep.

 

‘Liam, let’s go for a promenade,’ Gabriel said to him the next morning after breakfast.

Liam’s street was bustling with people heading here and there. Next door to the left was supposedly a haunted house, and further down the street was a tavern Liam had always looked forward to going to someday, where his father would congregate with neighbourhood friends and colleagues. But now he wouldn’t be allowed to drink even when he came of age with the new decree. They headed in the opposite direction.

‘The guest we had last night, Raphaël Tuteur, will be coming tomorrow after noon. He’ll be giving you lessons. I expect him to be tutoring you in preparation for your commencement at university next year.’

‘Oh, when will I be going to university?’

‘In the spring, when you’ll have ten years.’

They continued down Rue Terr, and Liam turned to his father and asked, ‘What happens after we die?’

Gabriel looked down with a countenance full of concern as his eyebrows met, and he said, ‘We go back to the ground. Terr created us, and he’ll take us back.’

‘And what happens?’ asked Liam, quivering at the image of himself being underground surrounded by soil.

‘What do you mean?’

‘When Terr takes us back, what happens after that?’

‘Well, nothing. It’s done. Your life will end, and that’s it.’

‘So we die, and nothing at all happens to us next?’

Gabriel shrugged. ‘Oui, this is true.’

As they passed through the crowds in the street, merchants setting up shop selling bottles of wine and ale, jewellery, dishware, herbs, and others heading to work or carrying out their various endeavours, Liam couldn’t help but succumb to the rush of feeling that came with the realisation that his time on this earth was limited, and that he must accomplish whatever there was to accomplish, whatever that was. He ought to enjoy his temporary time in this life and benefit from the highest amount of pleasure he could indulge in.

Later that day, after a short nap, he descended the stairs and found Juliette feeding Léo mushed vegetables.

‘I’m going to the beach,’ Liam announced.

‘Of accord,’ she said.

‘I want to go,’ said Léo, his long, straight blond hair, blond like their father’s, which reached barely past his ears, bounced in the air over his chubby cheeks as he jumped off the seat and rushed, in his clumsy two-year-old way, which was not very fast at all, towards the doorway, to where Liam was heading.

‘Léo, you can’t go,’ said Juliette.

‘But Maman, I want to go,’ he cried.

‘Non, you must finish your meal. Come, my dear.’

‘Non, Maman, non,’ Léo whined, ‘I want to go with Liam.’

‘You can’t come,’ said Liam. ‘I’ll be back soon.’

Léo moaned as he acquiesced and returned to Juliette by the table.

Free at last, Liam opened the door and shut it behind him.

The beach was glorious in this warm, June morning. The sand was golden against the azure sea. Liam relaxed, sitting down on the powdery sand as he stretched out his legs, his feet leaving furrows in it.

There was a dock nearby where a couple of small fishing boats were roped onto the poles. A massive caravel towered over them, its sails raised. Liam had never seen this colossal ship used, though he’d seen fishermen sail out into the sea in the fishing boats throughout the late spring and early summer. Fresh-caught salmon and tuna were sold as a delicacy. He could see the golden globe of the sun falling past its daily apex, nearing the endless horizon where sky and sea met, before it would sink underneath the surface of the sea. He couldn’t wait to tell his friend Nolan Fermerr about studying with Rabbin Tuteur or him going to university the next year. This seemed to be his sole mission at the moment: learning, or rather, preparing for learning.

The next day, Liam jumped out of bed upon hearing the door open downstairs, wondering whether it was Rabbin Tuteur. He rushed down the stairs and saw that it was only his father by the doorway.

‘Papa?’

‘Oui, my son,’ he said, stepping outside.

‘You’re going to work?’

‘Oui. My coach should be arriving soon. I’ll be gone for the next two days. I’ll return on Friday. Monsieur Tuteur should be here soon.’

Liam, now anticipating his father’s return this Friday, then noticed that the street was full with several carriages pulling away, over a dozen men in them.

‘Who are they? Are they going to your work as well?’

‘Non, they’re going to their work,’ said Gabriel, his blue eyes meeting Liam’s. ‘There’s a shortage of lumberjacks in Solill, so many are being transferred. Soon their families will have to move with them as well.’

Liam wondered how often there were transfers of subjects happening all throughout the island in order to fill any vacancies. He watched his father depart, then headed back inside. Later that morning, he sat down opposite his mother and Léo at the table.

‘Un, deux, tra, quatre,’ she counted with her fingers, moving Léo’s so he could do the same. ‘Can you repeat?’

‘Un, duh, tuh, quat,’ Léo mimicked.

Juliette spoke with a gentle voice. She had large, aqua-coloured eyes, was soft-spoken, and had long, straight, chestnut-coloured hair, which Liam had inherited.

There was a knock on the door.

Liam opened it, and it was Rabbin Tuteur.

Rabbin Tuteur smiled broadly, and spoke with a deep, joyful voice. ‘Oh, Liam! My new student! Bonjour to you – and to you, Madame Juliette, and Léo! Say, are you ready for your first day of lessons?’

‘Oui,’ answered Liam, grinning as he nodded his head, not having been this excited for something for a while.

‘Very well! Well, then, let’s go!’

‘See you later,’ Liam said to his mother, Léo staring as Liam closed the door behind him.

They walked without speaking much down Rue Terr, which was not as crowded as before as people were indoors working. Liam noticed that they were heading towards the road by which Nolan lived. After a turning, they went down the dirt road bordered on one side by wood and the other by the open field of Nolan’s family’s farm, walled by a wooden fence. None of the Fermerrs were out, which disappointed Liam. Still, he was looking forward to his first lesson with Rabbin Tuteur.

Further down the dirt road, rather than continuing straight, which led to the town of Merr, they turned left into the woods past Nolan’s farm. Liam wondered whether he was going to learn about the forests.

Liam had never really spent much time in the woods. The tall, thin pine trees now surrounded them in every direction as crickets chirped around them. Liam heard a toad calling nearby. They stepped over a fallen tree. Further into the woods was a running stream narrow enough for them to cross over easily. They climbed a hill. Liam had never stepped beyond the seaside community he lived in or the town of Merr.

It must have been about fifteen minutes of travelling, until finally they reached a clearing surrounded by a ring of trees, at the centre of which stood a two-storeyed wooden structure that looked like it was a secluded retreat for meditation. There were two young men patrolling, rotating around the lonely, isolated edifice. The closest one to them nodded, smiling at them and saying to Rabbin Tuteur, ‘Bonjour.’

‘Bonjour,’ he replied, and he led Liam towards the entrance. ‘You like it?’ he asked Liam. ‘I call it the Academy.’

Inside was a peaceful, calming space, the essence of which eased every tension Liam had felt from all the walking. It was dim, though brightness seemed to pour down from up the stairs, and Liam would’ve agreed to stay here had he been offered.

‘Follow me,’ said Rabbin Tuteur as he led him up the stairs and to a luminous room which had a table stationed at the centre with parchment, jars of ink and quills on top. ‘If it pleases you, seat yourself.’

Liam sat down by the table. Rabbin Tuteur opened a rotating hidden door that led to a dark room, and he emerged with a large container wrapped in a scarlet blanket with words written in gold on it.

He laid it down on the wooden table before them, unwrapped it, exposing the scroll that was inside, and held it by its handles, breathing in deeply, exhaling, and then sitting down beside Liam. ‘What do you know about being a Mountain Person?’

Liam, unsure as to whether Rabbin Tuteur was a Mountain Person himself, answered, ‘I just know that we’re different, in that we have a different origin from the rest of the people.’

‘Oui, but I want you to know that it goes much deeper than that. You see that? That’s called the Torah.’ Rabbin Tuteur opened the scroll, and a pool of black characters appeared on the parchment. Liam bent over, admiring the script. ‘Don’t worry; I don’t expect you to read that any time soon,’ he said, then closing the scroll as Liam wasn’t giving him his full attention. ‘I want you to know that we have a tradition, a tradition that goes back a very long time, a faith, and I’d like to teach you everything I know about it, if that interests you.’

Liam’s ears were perked. He’d always known and felt that as a Mountain Person he was different, which had only made him feel eccentric in relation to the rest of the population, but he hadn’t been aware of any tradition that went along with being a Mountain Person, and he wanted to learn everything that came with it.

‘We also have our own language, traditionally,’ continued Rabbin Tuteur, ‘which is different from Terran.’

‘Terran?’

‘Oui. We’d just call it human speech, or tongue, but of course you wouldn’t know, because what use is there to know the name of the common language we speak if there’s nothing else to distinguish itself from it? But the name of the language we know as “the tongue” calls itself “Terran”, as we, who live on the earth, and in our kingdom of Terr, are called Terrans. But our language, the language of the Mountain People, is Mountainish.’

‘Mountainish?’

‘Oui, it might not have always been called this way, but it seemed logical to be called Mountainish, seeing that we’re the Mountain People.

‘So, we’ll first be learning the Mountainish alphabet, and we’ll then continue to move on to reading words and verses, until finally you’ll be able to read from the Torah scroll itself. I’ll also be teaching you things about our cherished tradition along the way. Not to worry, I’ll also be preparing you for university as well, as I’ll later be teaching you how to read and write in Terran.’

Liam had completely forgotten about university, until now having been under the presumption that somehow the Torah and university preparation were related. ‘Rabbin Tuteur –’

‘You may just call me Rabbin.’

‘Rabbin, won’t I be learning about this in university as well?’

‘Non, you’ll be taking other subjects in university. And there is something that I want you to know. I’m sure by now you’re aware of the word, the forbidden word that one is not permitted to say.’

A heavy weight of dread hung in the core of Liam’s heart as he stared into the rabbin’s cheerful eyes. ‘You mean…’

The rabbin nodded. ‘Oui.’

Liam swallowed.

‘You don’t have to say it if you don’t want to – and I suppose there might be benefit in refraining from doing so here, as it would prevent you from getting too accustomed to it, which might lead you to saying it accidentally outside these walls. But it’s an essential part of learning, and I not only invite, but encourage you to use the word here.’

Liam nodded again, suddenly mute.

‘Don’t worry. I understand. We were raised never to use the word – and for good reason! Its usage would come with mortal consequences, but I just wanted to make you aware of that rule. Now, let’s start with the alef-bet!’

Liam played with the sounds of the words in his head and realised they contained the same sounds as the word ‘alphabet’. He thought to correct the rabbin, but felt too timid to.

Over the next couple of hours, Liam opened a jar of ink, held a feather quill in his hand, and wrote letters, all for the first time.

With some repetition, a drilling in of the names of some of the characters and a quick revision, Liam then found himself visualising the characters in his mind like a permanently inscribed piece of parchment. He and the rabbin returned to the woods, the two young men still rotating around the building behind them, and his revision in his head would continue all the way back until he reached his home.

‘We’ll meet four days a week, Monday through Thursday, for a couple of hours, assuming my timetable permits me to,’ said the rabbin by the doorway, before he took his leave.

 

‘What did you go over?’ asked Juliette, after the rabbin had left.

‘I’ve learnt so much,’ said Liam excitedly. ‘There’s a certain tradition we have as Mountain People. We have an old language, and we have –’

‘I don’t think he’s mentioned to you that you’re best not to go about mentioning that?’ she said in an unusually strict and brusque tone, her soft face the sternest he’d ever witnessed.

‘Mentioning what?’

‘That you’re a Mountain Person?’

‘Er, non, but –’

‘You shall not mention this to others, Liam.’

‘Of accord. But could I mention it to you, as you’re a Mountain Person?’

‘You shouldn’t spread these ideas to other people. Just do as I say.’

‘Papa’s not a Mountain Person, is he?’

‘Non, he is not.’

‘Did you not want to marry another Mountain Person? What did he think about marrying a Mountain Person?’

‘Enough, Liam. That’s enough for now. Has he begun teaching you how to read or write?’

Liam, instantly assuming what she meant, mumbled, ‘Not in Terran.’

And she didn’t ask any more questions after that.

But Liam didn’t want to stop. He wanted to share with her everything he’d just found out – from the Academy, to the Mountainish language – and the scroll! Did she not care to learn about her heritage? Their heritage? But the two words she’d uttered lingered in his mind: for now.

The next day, Liam was to meet the rabbin at the Academy. So after noon, he headed down the dirt path by Nolan’s farm and was delighted to see Nolan there, sitting on the wooden fence.

‘Salut,’ said Nolan.

‘Hi,’ responded Liam.

‘It’s going?’

‘It’s going. You wouldn’t believe it. I’m going now to study with Rabbin Raphaël Tuteur. Do you know him?’

‘Oui, that sounds familiar,’ said Nolan, narrowing his brown eyes as he swung his feet over the ground. ‘Doesn’t he tutor kids in preparation for university?’

‘Yeah. But you wouldn’t believe it! He’s teaching me about our tradition. It’s in a secret place called the Academy, but you mustn’t tell a soul! It’s a secret, and I mustn’t share that I’m learning about our tradition, according to my mother.’

‘I didn’t know there was anything to learn about our tradition. Are you enjoying?’

‘Oh, very much so. Doesn’t it excite you, as a Mountain Person, that there’s more to it?’

‘Honestly, not so much,’ said Nolan, shrugging. ‘I don’t even see what the big deal is about being a Mountain Person. I never asked to be one. I don’t even tell people I am unless they were to ask.’

‘All right, then,’ said Liam. ‘Well, I guess I’ll soon find out about it.’

Nolan nodded, wincing. ‘Soon enough you’ll be in university.’

Nolan was a year older than Liam, though much taller and scrawny, with straight, jet-black hair.

‘Is something wrong?’ asked Liam.

‘Non,’ said Nolan in a high-pitched voice, as if hiding something.

A cow mooed behind Nolan. A trio of white goats sauntered across the field as a row of ducklings followed the lead of their mother, a row of chicks doing the same after their mother hen, all chirping along the way.

‘I missed being here, playing with the animals,’ remarked Liam, grinning. He admired the fields of barley and wheat and the vegetable field of cabbage, carrots, parsley and leeks. He never desired to enter Nolan’s house, however. The animals that couldn’t fit in the shed slept in their cottage at night, and the fire would always leave a smoky smell in their one-storey dwelling, the combination of factors contributing to an unsavoury odour. A pig approached them, sniffing the ground with its curled tail behind it as if it had lost something underground and were trying to find it, and then shifted direction, heading elsewhere in the farm.

‘I remember that time years ago. Your mother saw you playing with the animals here, petting the goat and following the ducklings. She looked really upset when she called you over.’

‘Oui, I remember,’ said Liam, feeling as though he was somehow expected to apologise for his mother’s behaviour several years prior.

‘How much I would’ve loved to be a poet,’ said Nolan.

‘Got any good poems for me to hear?’ requested Liam.

‘I do, I’ve been working on one lately, actually,’ said Nolan. He looked towards the wall of trees opposite the farm on the other side of the dirt road.

‘The trees of the land

They stand so still

They speak of le Ra

On yonder hill

And the animals hear

But the world is set in its ways

People will laugh and cry

But time keeps everything from moving.’

Liam couldn’t come up with a polite way to express that he wasn’t so fond of the poem. He didn’t understand what it was about. There wasn’t even a coherent rhyme scheme.

A middle-aged couple passed by, ambling down the dirt path. The husband pointed his walking stick at Nolan.

‘You there, boy! What are you doing there, sitting by idly? You should be working in the field! And who are you, talking to this peasant? Are you a peasant yourself? How do you call yourself?’ The man was dressed in a bright green cloak and his wife wore a radiant brown dress.

‘Liam Merr.’

‘Liam Merr? And how does your father call himself?’

‘Gabriel.’

‘Ah, I’ve heard of your father. He works for the Administration. You shouldn’t be associating yourself with such lowly people; it isn’t befitting for men or boys of your stature. Go on, get back to work!’ the man commanded Nolan.

Liam could hear Nolan’s faint sigh. He couldn’t bear to see the look on his face, so he continued on his way to the Academy, seeking solace in learning the next five letters of the Mountainish alphabet.

 

Throughout the next several weeks, for four days a week, Liam would continue to follow the rabbin’s lessons consistently. He would practise reading and copying the rabbin’s inscriptions of verses from the scroll, the scroll which the rabbin described as holy, and which Liam longed to see again, a sight he would be eligible to see again only by becoming literate.

It was at some point in late July, in the middle of the rabbin’s eighth week of lessons, when he looked at Liam and said, ‘It’s time.’

Liam’s eyes widened, his heartbeat accelerating as the rabbin opened the revolving hidden door and withdrew the scroll donned in its crimson cloth from the dark room. He removed the cloth, undid the strap that bound it together and opened the scroll. He pointed his finger at the first word on the top right.

‘Ready?’ said the rabbin.

Liam nodded.

‘It’s much more difficult without the vowel markings, but we’ll read it together and work on translating.’

So Liam led the way with guessing, the rabbin correcting him when necessary, and taking the lead when Liam couldn’t guess, and Liam would then repeat after him: ‘Be’reshit bara Elokim et ha’shamayim ve’et ha’aretz.’

‘In the beginning,’ translated the rabbin, ‘God created the sky and the earth.’ The rabbin looked at Liam, a faint smile wrinkling his lips.

‘God?’ repeated Liam.

‘Oui.’

‘Which god?’

‘We believe in one God, He who created everything.’

‘But which one?’

‘There is only one.’

‘But I don’t understand. He created Cell and Terr? Which of the gods is “He”? Solill? How can that be?’ Liam, who’d always understood that Solill was the son of Cell and Merr, couldn’t wrap his head around the parents’ and children’s roles being reversed.

‘You’re misunderstanding. The thing is, the other gods don’t exist.’

Now Liam’s heart was accelerating again, and he felt as though he were suffocating. ‘What do you mean?’

‘We only believe in one God, who created all that exists in creation. The other gods don’t exist.’

Liam got up, stepping away from the calm presence of the rabbin, shaking his head. ‘Non. I don’t understand. What do you mean “We believe”? I’ve never heard of anyone else saying such things. That the gods don’t exist?’

‘This is what our tradition teaches us.’

Liam no longer understood this tradition, nor understood its apparent authority over truth. It no longer seemed appealing, alluring to uncover. What had been an innocent curiosity towards his heritage had now become a horrifying, domineering force against everything he held as true. ‘I don’t think I want to learn about this anymore.’

‘Liam, listen. What we’re going to be learning is going to be very different from everything you’ve ever known, I understand that. I know that. I was in your exact same position as well.’

‘But what is this? How do we know this is true?’

Now the rabbin was starting to look rather concerned. He said in a soft tone, ‘It’s a lot to explain. This isn’t such a simple matter. This will take time, Liam.’

‘Non,’ said Liam, shaking his head, his body now quivering. ‘How could you say that? That the gods don’t exist?’

‘I think we should take a pause for now.’

‘Non, I don’t want to learn these things anymore.’

The rabbin bit his lip, looking down at the parchment of the scroll. ‘Very well. No one’s forcing you to. Shall we head back to your home? We’ll call it a day. We’ll start learning how to read and write in Terran next week, so we can start preparing you for university. You can take tomorrow off.’

Tomorrow was Thursday. Liam hadn’t taken a day off since he’d started taking lessons with the rabbin. He watched, feeling the heavy pain of guilt in his heart, as the rabbin donned the scroll back in its cloth with a downhearted expression, and silently returned it to the inner chamber, shutting the revolving door. Liam had never seen someone look so hurt before after something he’d done or said. The rabbin led the way down the steps to the dark ground floor. It was then Liam realised that after looking forward to viewing – let alone reading from – the scroll, he’d only got to experience it for about fifteen minutes before deciding to never do it again.

The rabbin waved at the two young men walking around the building, and the two of them waved back, each with a confused face.

As Liam and the rabbin traversed through the woods, over the stream, the undergrowth and the fallen tree, Liam asked, employing the forbidden word, the Terran word for why, ‘Pourká did you decide to teach me?’

‘If it pleases you, I’d recommend that you only use the word within the walls of the Academy. We might be secluded here, but I’d rather us be safe.’

‘Of accord,’ said Liam, suddenly feeling a heap of panic after finally taking advantage of the rabbin’s permission, only to be advised of the exception for doing something that could be so dangerous and life-threatening. Then again, he wasn’t quite sure whether he’d step foot in the Academy again after today. ‘What made you decide to teach me?’

‘I remember that day your parents Gabriel and Juliette invited me for dinner.’ The rabbin paused from walking and so did Liam, as the rabbin looked him in the eye. ‘I saw something in you…deep, inquisitive, with a critically thinking mind. These are the qualities I search for in students – very rare indeed.’

They continued walking, Liam meditating over the rabbin’s comments, never having been described in such terms, and feeling oddly exposed as he’d been handed for the first time an external portrait of his personality.

‘Your father Gabriel is a very generous man,’ the rabbin continued. ‘He offered me a meal when he saw me in the street.’

Liam didn’t know quite what to make of this comment, except that he appreciated the praise the rabbin had for his father.

Gabriel spoke in a hushed tone with the rabbin after he left Liam at his house. Liam didn’t mention the contents of that lesson to his parents. He no longer mentioned his learning Mountainish or of the Mountainish tradition. He’d already petrified his mother by the mere mention of it; he didn’t want to mention the rejection of the deities.

But once the idea had been planted in his head, he couldn’t uproot it. He spent some time that night in his bed thinking about the concept of there being a god of the Mountain People, which he thought fascinating and terrifying. To suggest that the other gods didn’t exist…how could anyone say such things? So the sky would shift to purple, black and sapphire blue in the morning, and despite his ruminations, he hadn’t gained any epiphanies.

Soon enough, Monday came around and Liam started to learn an entirely new system of writing, though this familiar one corresponded to a living language that he used every day. It was also read in the opposite direction from Mountainish, from left to right. The rabbin called its table of characters the Terran alphabet. Liam wasn’t quite sure whether he was grasping it because he’d already engaged with the realm of learning alphabets in general, and indeed there were subtle similarities, or because he was thrilled to see words he used every day in actual written form. What had been the practice of uncovering an ancient language was now being replaced with the revealed spelling of already known words.

There were fewer questions during these sessions, and Liam and the rabbin were less engaged overall. Perhaps there would be another scroll that the rabbin would bring out in Terran, Liam thought, but that moment never came. All was just a direct transfer of knowledge and information from the rabbin to him, along with writing and reading on pieces of parchment.

Liam would sometimes want to suggest they’d continue studying from the scroll out of pity; the rabbin never smiled anymore, but always carried a serious, dutiful expression. But then he’d think back to the dreadful experience he’d had when he’d last read from the scroll, and knew how so much shock and horror had come from just one line on the parchment – how much more so from the rest of the large scroll!

Nonetheless, he felt he was making progress, despite the rabbin’s less frequent praise. The Terran alphabet had twenty-six letters, four more than Mountainish, and yet he learnt them and could start reading and writing in less than three weeks. Among the shared resemblances were the letters of Terran M and R, when the latter was lower case. And there was not one instance in which the rabbin would mention that he was failing overall in his learning.

Hence it came as a surprise during one of their lessons in the middle of August when the rabbin suddenly yelped.

‘What is it?’ asked Liam.

The rabbin buried his face in his palms. ‘So much. So much has changed,’ he howled.

‘If it pleases you, tell me.’

‘There are a lot of changes, Liam. There have been so many things going on these past few weeks, and I would’ve told you, but seeing that you withdrew your interest in learning about our tradition, I hesitated from telling you so, as it mostly involves our people.’

Liam never recalled indicating his interest in learning about the tradition in the first place.

The rabbin continued, ‘But because you’ve asked, I’m going to tell you. I’ll summarise briefly the goings-on over the past few weeks. There’s been a decree that all outlandish customs be outlawed.’ Seeing the unmoved look on Liam’s face, he clarified, ‘That means circumcision, or any of the few customs we’ve held on to have now been officially banned by law. We’ve got so few customs left, such as particular married women who cover their hair, and others keeping some of our traditional names, even though some of the non-Mountain People have chosen to adopt some of the names as well. Even the study of our tradition had been illegal as it runs contrary to Terranism.’

‘Terranism?’

‘Oui, the polytheistic religion of the Terrans.’

‘Polytheistic?’

‘Oui.’

‘I still don’t comprehend what that means.’

‘That means a religion, or system of beliefs that believes in many gods.’

‘Of accord.’

‘So now any custom that we have maintained has become outlawed. But that’s just the beginning. All forms of identity have become patrilineal.’ Again, Liam was silent, so the rabbin continued, ‘That means that by law, you’re a Mountain Person only if your father is a Mountain Person. By law, you, you’re not a Mountain Person!’

Liam felt an odd feeling of sudden liberation, like he’d nearly become airborne. Now, he didn’t have to feel so different from the rest of the inhabitants of the land anymore; he could be like everyone else. Now he didn’t have to associate with the scroll and all of the teachings, because it no longer concerned him; it wasn’t his tradition. It did, however, make him feel somewhat distinct from Nolan, both of whose parents were Mountain People. But now, the Terran traditions belonged to Liam. No more questions. This relief, however, was not long-lasting, due to what the rabbin said next.

‘But in our tradition, being a Mountain Person is matrilineal; it’s determined by whether one’s mother is a Mountain Person.’

Liam frowned.

‘If people continue to think like this, then those who are truly Mountain People according to our tradition will misidentify themselves as not and vice versa; the authentically Mountain People will be unaware of their true identity, and those who think they’re Mountain People would be mistaken. Our authentic tradition would cease to exist…’ The rabbin looked down again, covering his face with his palms, and speaking in a muffled voice through them, ‘We’re only about 400 people left! And with this law of confusion, I cannot see any hope in the continuity of our people. Oh, God! My God!

‘And that’s not all! And now, now there has recently been a new decree, a new decree in which there will be Night Spirits patrolling the forests. They’ll be keeping an eye out at night for any suspicious activities. Seeing that they’ll be active in the forests in the next coming weeks, it’s only a matter of time before they come across this place. It’s not good for our safety, to keep learning out here.’

‘What are these Night Spirits?’

‘Demons, they say. Or perhaps ghosts. The Crown’s necromancers and sorcerers have managed to employ souls to keep watch at night for any suspicious or illegal activities. I’m afraid that this is going to be the last day that we’ll be learning here. I’ll be left with no choice other than to close down the Academy for good.’

The rabbin started weeping. Though he covered his eyes again, Liam could see all the tears gathering on his wincing face. Many questions ran through his mind. What would an encounter with one of these scary Night Spirits look like?

Then, he looked down, puzzled as the rabbin kept crying out to God, Liam’s God as well, apparently. He felt in his core the anguish the elderly man was feeling and expressing. It was unlike any other pain he’d ever witnessed, and it made him wonder, wonder what foreign perspective this man had from him, what could inspire such raw emotion from their shared tradition, and what could bring a man to feel such a sincere pain in the first place. He took one more look at the rabbin, gazing upon his agonised face, listening to him weep, and he couldn’t help but be moved. He was crying for something. And even if it was only something felt by him, it was real.

The rabbin would then continue to tutor Liam in the rabbin’s house, as he did with his other students.

Liam would no longer set foot in the Academy.