The Ten Thousand Doors of January(43)
By age nine Yule had achieved proficiency in three languages, one of which existed only in the university archives, and by the time he turned eleven—the traditional age for such decisions—not even his mother could object to his clear destiny as a scholar. She purchased the long lengths of undyed cloth at the harbor market and only sighed a little as she wrapped her son’s dark limbs in a scholar’s fashion. He was out the door with an armful of books in a white-blurred instant.
His first years at the university were passed in a state of dreamy near-genius, which provoked both frustration and admiration from his instructors. He continued to learn new languages with the ease of a boy scooping water from a well but seemed unwilling to dedicate himself sufficiently to master any single one of them. He spent untold hours in the archives, turning manuscript pages with a thin wooden paddle, but frequently missed assigned lectures because he’d found an interesting passage on merfolk in a sailor’s logbook, or a crumbling map marked in an unknown language. He consumed books as if they were as necessary to his health as bread and water, but they were rarely the books he had been assigned.
His most generous instructors insisted that it was purely an issue of time and maturity—eventually young Yule Ian would find a steady subject of study and dedicate himself to it. Then he might select a mentor and begin contributing to the grand body of research that made the University of Nin so prestigious. Other scholars, watching Yule prop a book of fables against the water pitcher at breakfast and turn the pages with a faraway expression, were less sanguine.
Indeed, as Yule’s fifteenth birthday approached, even the most optimistic scholars were growing concerned. He showed no signs of narrowing his field of study or proposing a course of research, and did not seem in the least concerned by his approaching examinations. Should he pass them, he could be formally announced as Yule Ian Scholar and begin his ascent through the ranks of the university; should he fail, he would be politely asked to consider some other, less demanding apprenticeship.
In retrospect, it is easy to suspect that Yule’s aimlessness was actually a quest, a search for some shapeless, unnamed thing that lurked just out of sight, and perhaps it was true. Perhaps he and Adelaide spent their childhoods in much the same manner, searching the limits of their worlds in search of another.
But restless quests are not the business of serious scholars. Yule was therefore summoned one day to the master’s study to have “a serious discussion of his future.” He arrived an hour late with his finger marking his place in A Study of Myths and Legends in the North Sea Isles and a bemused, distant expression. “You summoned me, sir?”
The master possessed a lined, somber face, as scholars do in most places, and venerable tattoos that wound up both arms indicating his marriage to Kenna Merchant, his dedication to scholarship, and his twenty years of admirable service to the City. His hair clung to his skull in a white scimitar, as if the heat of his working mind had burned it away from the top of his head. His eyes on Yule were troubled.
“Sit, young Yule, sit. I’d like to talk to you about your future here at the university.” The master’s eyes fell on the book still clutched in Yule’s hands. “I will be blunt with you: we find your lack of focus and discipline of gravest concern. If you can’t settle yourself to a course of study, we will have to consider other avenues for you.”
Yule’s head tipped curiously to one side, like a cat offered an unfamiliar bit of food. “Other avenues, sir?”
“Activities better suited to your mind and temperament,” the master said.
Yule was silent for a moment but could think of nothing better suited to his temperament than spending sun-soaked afternoons curled beneath the olive trees reading books in long-forgotten languages. “What do you mean?”
The master, who had perhaps expected this conversation to involve more distressed pleading and less polite puzzlement, pressed his lips into a thin maroon line. “I mean you might apprentice elsewhere. Your mother, I am sure, would still train you as a tattooist, or you could act as a scribe for one of the word-workers on the east side, or even a merchant’s bookkeeper. I could speak to my wife, if you’d like.”
Only now did Yule’s expression begin to reflect the horror the master anticipated. He softened again. “Well, my boy, we haven’t reached that point just yet. Simply spend the next week in contemplation, consider your choices. And if you would like to stay here and take your scholar’s exams… find a path.”
Yule was dismissed. He found himself leaving the cool stone halls, striding through courtyards and spiraled streets, and then climbing the hills behind the City with the sun baking the back of his neck, without ever being fully aware of any particular destination. He was simply moving, fleeing the choice the master had given him.
To any other young boy hoping to join the ranks of the scholars, the choice would have been an easy one: either he proposed a line of research in Amarican history or ancient languages or religious philosophy, or he abandoned all such aspirations and worked as a humble scribe. But to Yule both paths were unspeakably bleak. Both of them would necessitate a narrowing of his boundless horizons, an end to his dreaming. The thought of either made him feel tight-chested, as if two great hands pressed on either side of his ribs.
He could not have known it then, but it was much the same way Ade felt on the days she ran out to the old hayfield to be alone with the sound of the riverboats and the wideness of the sky. Except that Ade had grown up with the harsh boundaries of her life always close at hand and had long since set her will against them; poor, charmed Yule had simply never known such rules existed before that day.