Chronicles of Den'dra - Spencer Johnson Page 0,101

him what I had learned. My joy was unsurpassed when he offered to teach me what I had missed. Most of it was simple things like a letter that I had memorized upside down or the gaps that came as a result of being called to other duties instead of eavesdropping. We fulfilled each other’s needs. He desired a student that actually cared about learning as much as he and I had a voracious appetite for knowledge.

Our midnight learning sessions continued for a few months before one night the master of the house burst through the door with Melindra close behind. I was stricken with terror and disappointment in the woman that I loved. I was relieved when I was ordered to return to bed and was hustled out of the room with Melindra’s claw like fingers digging into my arm to the tune of how imbecilic I was the whole way to my bed. I was heartbroken having lost my chance at learning. I was sure to be punished severely come morning, but that was nothing compared to my sorrow at having the ability to continue my education slip from my fingers. I craved it more than I needed food or water.

I cried myself to sleep and was plagued by dreams. In some, I was clinging to a rope I knew was knowledge while watching in horrified fascination as it frayed and broke above my head. Another dream had a great woman offering me a place in her household, but when I held up my calloused fingers and confessed I couldn’t read, she turned away in disappointment. It seemed to me that learning would mean the difference between life and death. Another dream followed in quick succession. I saw the lordling, only a few years older; he was bound and a prisoner. The cords were made of words and numbers. The same dream had him turning me on the roasting spit over a crackling fire. This time, I was the one bound by words and numbers, only I couldn’t read them to know how to undo them. There was one last dream. It terrified me most of all. I saw men all around me. They would ask me questions that I had no answer to. Every wrong answer turned a new set of eyes on me. The last set of eyes would signal my doom. I knew the answers were in the books I held, but each had a lock and I had no key. Morning came and I wept a few more tears.

Putting on a brave face that felt like an empty mask, I dressed and washed the tears off my countenance. I was going about my chores when Josen, the teacher, appeared and told me to follow him. He led me to the solar where he announced that because of the advanced state of my studies, I was going to be assisting the little lordling with his letters and numbers. Those two moments in my life I was the happiest. When Josen offered to teach me and when he made me an actual pupil free to pursue learning for three hours each morning. I learned later that he had argued in my defense and risked being sent away or worse. He had prevailed with the argument that Melindra was old and getting feebler by the day and that a new housekeeper would have to replace her err long. There was a couple other women who were eyeing the position, but Josen argued that a housekeeper that could read and write with the ability to do arithmetic would be far more valuable. Consequently, I was granted the privilege of learning if my other duties were not neglected.

Little Oscarion was livid that a mere girl had outpaced him in secret. The indignity of it couldn’t be tolerated. At first he besot his father to right the injustice, but when that failed, he actually applied himself for a time in the hopes that he could prove once and for all that he, being the heir to a noble house, was in fact superior to a purchased servant wench. He took to calling me that whenever he could to remind me of my place. After the unhappy discovery that he couldn’t casually best me at learning, he set about sabotaging my education in every way possible. His tricks were insufferable, but I refused to be distracted by him. I was reading and writing months before he and I had read a