Chapter #7By the Light of the Unconquered Sun, Part 1 by: Nostrum   Charles has something to tell you, that he can't tell Robert? "What is it?" you ask.
You must have shown some strong reaction, for Charles puts a comforting arm around your shoulder and draws you outside, to stand on the back porch and gaze into the darkened yard. The night air is very cool, almost chilly.
"Son, we have told and shown you and your brother things that we tell and show no one else. You have put your trust in us, and likewise we have put our trust in you. In the end, none of us will have secrets from each other. And in the end, you will have no secrets from Robert."
"What secrets, sir?"
"About your place with us."
It makes your heart sink a little with trepidation. Charles has taken in you and Robert, promising you shelter and aid. But there's been a hint of some other interest in you. Robert, for instance, has been acting like a dog with a scent in his nose, and has pestered Joe about himself and his prodigies and the Order he belongs to. I wish I could join, he has said, even if I don't have prodigies!
You, though, have felt something like anxiety.
"I don't expect to have a place with you, sir," you tell Charles.
"Why not?"
"Because I don't have prodigies. You and Joe and Frank, you're special. You belong with each other."
"Your brother wants to belong, though he also knows he doesn't have prodigies."
"He's just a kid, he doesn't understand." You feel a perverse pride in what you say next. "I don't want anything I can't live up to, sir."
Charles laughs, gently.
"That's very humble of you, Will," he says. "Very ... self-effacing, shall we say. Joe and I have talked about you. Not like a couple of old gossips, I don't mean. Only we've both remarked on it. You tend to hide your light under a bushel."
You shrug. You never felt like you had much of a light to show off.
"Your brother already has many gifts. His enthusiasm, for one. His tenacity. He is still young, but I see still more in him, gifts of mind and body that have not even begun to ripen. You too have gifts. There is nothing we can ask of you, still less demand, and we never would. But if you are withholding those gifts from us, I think it is only because you don't know you have them."
You feel yourself tensing all over. It's on account of that fucking book, isn't it? you think. "I guess I seem to be kind of good with magic, sir," you stammer.
"Seem?"
"I said that because I don't want to sound like I'm bragging," you explain, miserably. "And if I did ... study ... with you, I'd want to be responsible about it, a lot more responsible than I was back home. But you don't need me, sir, not when you and the other Stellae already have—"
"Yes, we have prodigies, Will. And so do you."
At first you're sure he must be speaking metaphorically, only repeating that you are "gifted" in some way, like he said of Robert. But something in his tone catches your ear, and you look up, sharply. "Sir?"
"Joe suspected from the start. He was astonished by your talent at sigil construction. That talent alone almost would have qualified as a prodigy. But you have shown others. And of course, the chart he drew up while you were on the plane— Did you wonder what that interview was about?"
"Yes sir."
"Well, it confirmed the hunch he already had about you."
"Hunch?"
"You're one of us, Will. One of the Stellae."
--
The talk that followed would have been more astonishing if you didn't already know much of the background from Joe's own explanations. Stellae like he and Charles and Frank are astonishingly rare—there are never more than a few dozen alive at a time upon the face of the planet—and their prodigies are wrought by the planetary conjunctions they are born under.
"We are really no different than anyone else, Will," Charles reminds you. "All are born under the skies and are influenced by the stars, just as we are influenced by the chemicals in the air and water and in our mother's milk. If you have ever known someone who was strikingly charismatic or creative, melancholic or magnanimous, it began with the influence of their stars, before being developed or retarded by themselves. And as for our prodigies, you see prodigies all about. Talents themselves are perfectly common, only developed to a prodigious degree in some people. Everyone has a modicum of musical talent, for instance. But Mozart had it to a prodigious degree. So it is with us."
"Was Mozart a Stellae?" you ask, for Joe dropped hints about a very famous composer having been a member of the Order.
Charles laughs. "No, not Mozart, and not Michelangelo either. Only a few Stellae have ever gained worldly fame. And in a way that proves my point about there being a smaller difference than you might think. There have been many skilled and famous men, from Alexander the Great to Albert Einstein, who throve and astonished the world without being members of our company. So you see," he adds, wryly, "we can be just as humble as you."
You blush a little.
That one is a Stellae, he continues, comes from being born under a conjunction, but the particular prodigies one manifests vary from one to another. For instance, there can be only one Stellae at a time born under a conjunction; one such Stellae must pass over the horizon of the Great Event, as the Stellae sometimes call it, before another can be born under the conjunction's recurrence. And even those born under the same conjunction at different times manifest different prodigies, though they will resemble each other in some ways, being born of the same influences.
"We know your ousiarchs from your chart," Charles explains, using the Stellae name for the "lord of being" that steers each planet. "Sulva the Mirror, and Kenandandra the Smith. The Moon and Pluto. From that, we can guess what some of your prodigies might be. During your last few days with us, under my influence, you have manifested some. You may have even manifested them before, under great stress. Have you ever wished to be invisible? Or unseen? Say, when you ardently hoped someone in particular would pass you by?"
"Only all the time at school."
Charles laughs. "Exactly. When you didn't want a teacher to call on you, I suppose," he says.
Or when the Molester or Seth Javits was cruising the halls, you silently add.
"Possibly," Charles continues, "there were times they looked through you because you so strongly wished them to. Something like that has happened here, when you and your brother played paintball with Joe. There were times you surprised him, when he should have seen you but didn't. Joe has better than twenty-twenty vision," he adds, "and very little gets past him."
It gives you an odd feeling, the idea that you made yourself invisible without realizing it.
"That is a prodigy that derives from Sulva, which"—he looks up into the moonless sky—"sometimes vanishes even though he is always present. Your dwelling under the face of Sulva, I am sure, is why we did not find you years ago, even though we seek out our fellow Stellae when they are still babes. And why Joe and Frank did not immediately recognize you as one of their brothers."
A brother of Joe and Frank. That is an even queerer thought than the idea of being invisible! Aloud, you only say, "And the other ousiarch?"
"Kenandandra is the Smith. The engineer, the organizer, the inventor. A close brother of Perelandra, who is also creative and fertile but whose light shines on the kingdoms of plant and animal and spirit. Kenandandra's throne is the mind and hand. The puzzle box I gave you can be completed by Kenandandrans and Perelandrans alike. But only the Kenandandran can give life to a machine. You, child, made it dance!"
--
He speaks more with you about your ousiarchs and the prodigies that some of your predecessors have shown. He can already tell you that your skill with sigils is a prodigy of Kenandandra, and its early manifestation a sign that it might be your greatest prodigy, and he assures you that there was nothing intrinsically wrong with your curiosity—your thirst—for the magic you stumbled upon. It was a Kenandandran yearning, and one that can be quenched endlessly in the study of Kenandandran arts.
Of Sulva he has less to say, for they are the rarest and (to the other Stellae) the most mysterious of the company. "You are the only one we know of now," he tells you. For though there must be seven more in the world, "they are unknown to us, being, as you were, in eclipse."
At the end, though, you have to confirm: "But Robert isn't a Stellae?"
"No." There is, perhaps, some shade of regret in the word. "It is not a 'magic' that dwells in the blood. It is a beam of light that glances off the face of a newborn babe and is gone. Though your brother, too, is gifted."
"So he can't join the Stellae." It grieves you to hear this, for Robert is so enthusiastic.
"No, he can join us."
"But you said—"
"He can join, Will, because he is not a Stellae. Just as you cannot join, because you were already born one. He can join us, but you can only reject us."
--
Later, that night, with Robert asleep in the bunk above, you reflect in Charles's words, and the ache it gives you to withhold this knowledge from your brother, even for awhile. In particular, you dwell on one of the temptations that Charles told you Sulvans face. The temptation to deceive.
Are you not deceiving your brother by keeping this secret?   indicates the next chapter needs to be written. |
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