Tree of Life Book III

Part II - Chapter 06

TREE OF LIFE BOOK III – PART II

CHAPTER 06

How does anyone learn to be a father?

I tried to remember what it was like when I was new to the world and that didn't help me very much.

I was wandering through the forest, with the sword on my back and the baby in my arms, when I sensed it on the wind. Following my nose, I found a wolf family nearby. They were living inside a cave. The mother had just delivered a litter of three. Seizing the chance, I settled in with them and offered her Artanis to be fed too. The mother didn't mind very much. She knew me for who I was. The father nudged closer to the two of us. He bent and licked Artanis on the cheek.

I smiled. Perhaps I could learn to be a father from him.

~~~

Those first years with Artanis went by in a flash. She learned to walk. Then to run. She hasn't stopped since. Always the adventurous one, she would race the other cubs everywhere she went. She reminded me of my early days in the Garden. Her favourite game was to run beneath the sunlight or hold her hands out beneath it to see them shine. She couldn't say 'Artanis' at first, so I called her what she called herself—Annie.

Annie was about three when she came into her powers.

By then, we were living by ourselves, just the two of us, in another house I had conjured from the ground up. I was giving her a bath that day. Bent over the tub with her in it, I realized I had left the bar of soap on a chair on the far side of the room. Instead of walking over and getting it, I waved my hand and caused a twist of vine to rise up out of the ground, which then snaked over to the soap and retrieved it for me. This was nothing unusual, as she had seen me do something similar on numerous other occasions. It had always frustrated her, however, that she could not summon the animate around her to obedience like I could.

While I received the soap into my hand, as she had done so many times before, Annie bunched up her brows and concentrated. Only this time, she didn't do what she normally did. She didn't ply her will to the soap to see if she could pluck it from my grasp. Instead, she began to wave her hand about and over the water, inside her bathtub, in a circular kind of pattern like she was stirring it.

The water rose beneath her fingers.

She squealed with delight. And then she waved some more and the water broke off into bits and were moulded into shapes like apples and oranges and other fruits she liked.

I stopped where I was and sat back. I was caught off guard. Completely surprised. Although, I suppose I shouldn't have been, knowing who her mother was. Why shouldn't she take after Val in this way and have some of her abilities too? But how much of her abilities? And which ones?

I found myself sitting still and quiet for the longest time, just watching her play, throwing the water about and wetting down the whole room.

In the end, I got her to stop fooling around so we could get back to business. I never did get her very clean that day.

She continued to play with her new skills over time and got much better, more adept at them as she went along. She came to realize that she could manipulate any inanimate object as long as it was close enough to her, whether it was the water in the river, or the dirt or the pebbles on the ground. Sometimes, she would even call forth a gust of wind strong enough just to mess up my hair and make me look silly. She would do anything for a laugh.

I taught her to respect her powers. I told her that most of the people around us did not have powers and would find us strange that we did. They would fear us. She was to keep from using them when there were others around and could see. She was to keep it a secret, in the same way that I kept my powers a secret so no one would know any different.