Dragons' Truth

Chapter 9

Permalink for this paragraph 0 The weekend had blown by Larry like a light breeze across his face.  He hardly noticed as Friday passed into Saturday and Saturday became Sunday and suddenly it was time for the meeting.  His parents had grumbled a little when they had seen the note, but their disaffected attitudes kept them from actually resisting the tide of all the things in life they considered out of their control.  No golfing, no needlepoint, no working in the yard, they said, but Larry could see that they were using a short meeting at the end of the weekend as an excuse to put off doing all the things they didn’t want to be doing anyway.

Permalink for this paragraph 0 To see the school rising up ahead of him, empty, silent, with his parent walking ahead of him toward it, Larry had a strange feeling come over him.  It was a sense of foreboding, like the feeling of entering Ghadshyk’s house uninvited.  Perhaps the school had developed its own defense system to keep people away on the weekends.  Or perhaps Larry was still dreading the unknowns of this equation, worried that his new favorite things would be taken away from him by this menacing and powerful institution today.

Permalink for this paragraph 0 The three of them marched into the echoing corridors of the school and walked towards the main office, where the meeting was supposed to take place.  Between the clicks of his mother’s heels on the cold tile floor and the scuffles of his own half-lifted feet there drifted the sound of laughter from down the hall.  As they got nearer, Larry could tell that the laughter was coming from inside the main office.  As they rounded the corner and could finally see into the conference room there, Larry could see that Ghadshyk seemed to be the funniest man any of his teachers had ever met.

Permalink for this paragraph 0 If only they knew he wasn’t a man at all.

Permalink for this paragraph 0 “Good afternoon, Mr. and Mrs. Speck,” said Larry’s counselor, Mr. Corrington.  “Mr. Ghadshyk here was just telling us an amusing story from his youth.  Please, have a seat.”  Mr. Corrington indicated the side of the table that Ghadshyk was already seated at.  Every single one of Larry’s teachers, plus the Dean, was seated at the other side.  As Larry sat between his parents and Ghadshyk, he did not feel any more at ease than he had when he’d first approached the school.

Permalink for this paragraph 0 “Mr. and Mrs. Speck.  You’re probably aware of why we’ve all gathered together today.  Clearly, something must be done.

Permalink for this paragraph 0 Larry’s father spoke up, “Afraid not,” he lifted the envelope that Larry had given him on Friday and waved it gently under his nose, “this note of yours didn’t say what Larry had done wrong.”

Permalink for this paragraph 0 Mrs. Marsipal, Larry’s Drama teacher responded quickly, “Oh, no, no, no.  Larry hasn’t done anything wrong!  Quite the contrary–”

Permalink for this paragraph 0 Mr. Corrington cut her off mid-sentence, “Larry has shown marked improvement in every subject.  Since you hired Mr. Ghadshyk, Larry’s comprehension has increased tenfold and his grades have begun to follow.  Frankly, We’ve never seen anything like it before.”

Permalink for this paragraph 0 “I know I haven’t.  He understands Hamlet better than most of the people in the English department down at the university, and he says he read through it all in only one day.”  This was Larry’s English teacher Mr. Titch.

Permalink for this paragraph 0 “If he hasn’t done anything wrong,” asked Mrs. Speck, “Why have you asked us here, and on a weekend?”

Permalink for this paragraph 0 “Larry is a very special young man,” replied Mr. Corrington, “It looks like Mr. Ghadshyk here was the one to open him up, but he is definitely gifted.”

Permalink for this paragraph 0 The Dean, who had been sitting silently, spoke up, “We’d like to have an intelligence test administered, and we need your written consent to do so.”

Permalink for this paragraph 0 “What the Dean means is that we’d like to put Larry in advanced classes, or perhaps move him ahead to high school entirely.  He needs curriculum at his level.  The test is really just a formality required by the state before we can offer any alternate techniques.”

Permalink for this paragraph 0 “I think you should pull him out of school and put him right into University.  With Mr. Ghadshyk’s continued tutoring, of course.”  Larry’s math teacher was clearly convinced he was a genius.

Permalink for this paragraph 0 “Don’t get carried away, Mark,” Mr. Corrington tried to keep everyone calm as they tried to agree with the Algebra teacher all at once,  “All of you, just calm down.  First we need to get their consent to have Larry tested, then we can consider what needs to be done when we have the results.”

Permalink for this paragraph 0 “I don’t understand.”  Mr. Speck addressed Mr. Corrington, “You’re saying our son is a genius?”

Permalink for this paragraph 0 “We don’t know that yet.  That’s what the test will show us.”

Permalink for this paragraph 0 Mr. Speck turned to the other teachers, “But all of you think he’s some super-student… because of what?”

Permalink for this paragraph 0 Finally, Ghadshyk spoke up.  Instantly, everyone else who had waiting to speak set back and listened.  “Larry has been coming over to my house for the last two and a half weeks or so.  I’ve been tutoring him, as I’d thought he told you.”  Ghadshyk made a stern glance down at Larry and continue, “I’ve been able to help him to understand things in a way that excites him about learning.  In the process, he’s come to be not only more interested in his classes, but had become quite expert at any material that has been presented to him.  As a result of the shift from his former attitude of laziness and disinterest, he appears to be ‘gifted’ – as these teachers have put it.”  Ghadshyk paused and took a breath.  “I would suspect that with similar teaching methods, all of your students would be similarly motivated.”

Permalink for this paragraph 0 Everyone just kept looking at Ghadshyk, stunned into silence.

Permalink for this paragraph 0 “Still,” said Ghadshyk, filling the silence and finally allowing the rest of the room to take a breath, “I agree that under the current circumstances, it is appropriate to offer Larry a specialized and more advanced curriculum.  I would be glad to work with all of you in its development, and equally willing to teach you some of the motivational techniques that I’ve been using with Larry that you may find effective with your other students.”

Permalink for this paragraph 0 “Fantastic.”  Mr. Corrington appeared quite relieved at how this was going.  Ghadshyk’s soothing tone had helped to calm everyone in the room.

Permalink for this paragraph 0 “So if you’ll just sign this release,” the Dean pushed a multi-page form across the table to Mr. Speck, “here, here, and here, we can get Larry tested.  If it shows what these teachers seem to think it will, we can look into developing an advanced curriculum for him, but until then,” the Dean took the forms back after both of Larry’s parents had signed them, “thank you, there’s no need for such excitement.”

Permalink for this paragraph 0 “When will he be tested?”  Mrs. Speck sounded as though she thought the intelligence test might somehow be painful for him.

Permalink for this paragraph 0 “His teachers have agreed that he won’t fall behind by missing a day or two of classes, so he’ll be tested during normal school hours this week.  A specialist is coming in from the district.”  The Dean stood up to leave, holding the forms, “Now, if there isn’t anything else, I’ve got to get these forms to the district office right away.”  He walked out without waiting for their response.

Permalink for this paragraph 0 “Where did you two find Mr. Ghadshyk, exactly?” Larry’s English teacher wanted to know.

Permalink for this paragraph 0 “Oh, uhh…  we didn’t exactly…” Mrs. Speck began, but Ghadshyk continued for her.

Permalink for this paragraph 0 “I used to work with a friend of Larry’s.  They came to me together a couple of weeks ago, and I could see Larry’s potential, so I offered to tutor him free of charge.”

Permalink for this paragraph 0 “Oh.  Do you mind my asking who the other child is?”

Permalink for this paragraph 0 “Yes.”

Permalink for this paragraph 0 “Oh… Okay, then.”

Permalink for this paragraph 0 “We’ve got to be going, Larry,” Larry’s father grabbed him by the arm as he stood, nearly lifting Larry from the chair, “You can see everyone again tomorrow.  It was nice to meet you, Mr. Ghadshyk,” and they shook hands briefly but firmly, “Thank you for working with my son.”  Mr. Speck turned to Mr. Corrington before leaving and said, “In the future, if you could make any arrangements about Larry’s education with Mr. Ghadshyk here, I’m sure he’s more than capable.  If you need anything else signed, just send it home with Larry.  I don’t have time for this nonsense on my weekends.”

Permalink for this paragraph 0 Then Larry was being dragged out of the room without even saying goodbye to Ghadshyk or any of the rest of them.  Mrs. Speck’s heels clicked faster than before as she hurried to keep up with her husband.  He grumbled the entire way home about having to put off his entire weekend just to sign some form, and Mrs. Speck was quiet and supportive of him, agreeing that the school should be taking care of Larry’s education, whether he was gifted or normal or not, without having to bother his parents with all the little details.

Permalink for this paragraph 0 Larry stayed quiet in the back seat, shaking his head as he watched his parents settle into their normal, hands-off positions about everything they could.  After spending only a few weeks with Ghadshyk’s influence, Larry could only look forward to the day when he was no longer going to be forced to stay with these people who didn’t care about him or his future or well being.  He had begun to see how such disaffected parents could destroy a young man’s potential through his studies already, and was glad he’d had the luck to meet Ghadshyk.

Permalink for this paragraph 0 Tuesday and Wednesday of the next week, Larry spent all day at school taking test after test with a funny-looking man from the district office instead of attending his normal classes.  Most of the tests seemed to be biased towards the sort of education that Larry had only recently begun to see beyond, but he was still able to see beneath the surface of each section to the real point of it and to give the answers they seemed to be looking for.  They covered subjects Larry had never studied, used words he had never heard, and asked him to reproduce complicated geometric shapes with basic building blocks, but since Larry could see what each question was really trying to get out of him, he was able to handle every challenge thrown at him with relative ease.

Permalink for this paragraph 0 So, that Friday when he was handed another envelope for “Mr. Ghadshyk”, he didn’t have any of the trepidation that had come with the first one only a week earlier.

Permalink for this paragraph 0 “They say your IQ cannot be expressed on the standard scale, Larry.  What did you do on those tests?”  Ghadshyk was practically laughing as he finished reading the note.

Permalink for this paragraph 0 “I just used the basic ideas you taught me for how to understand what a question is about instead of focusing on the actual surface of the questions, and answered to what the test was really trying to find out.”

Permalink for this paragraph 0 “So instead of answering their questions, you just told them what they wanted to know directly?”

Permalink for this paragraph 0 “They were asking for it by making everything so open-ended.  By the end of the second day, that funny-looking guy from the district office seemed to have learned more from me about the test he was administering than he’d known about it in the twenty years since he’d first started using it.”

Permalink for this paragraph 0 “How did he take that?  You didn’t upset him, did you?”

Permalink for this paragraph 0 “No, no, nothing like that.  He seemed happy when last I saw him on Wednesday afternoon.  Like the whole world had just opened up for him.  Like I felt a couple of weeks ago after you started to really open my eyes.”

Permalink for this paragraph 0 “Well, it looks like they’re going ahead with it and want me to come out to the school every day next week to work with each of your teachers individually.  I suspect they’ll want me to teach them all how to teach, since they’re all so generally dreadful at it.”  Ghadshyk sighed and moved to the Go table to face Larry.  “I guess you’ve affected them the same way you affected that man from the district office.  Now they’re all want to know how to have the same passion for life and learning that you’ve given them a glimpse of, and they expect me to give it to them.”

Permalink for this paragraph 0 “Will you?”  Larry began the game of Go in a vulnerable position at the edge of the board.

Permalink for this paragraph 0 “I can’t promise them anything, but with these one-on-one meetings, anything could happen, Larry.”  Ghadshyk played on the opposite side of the board from Larry’s opening move.  “But I won’t keep venturing to your school to teach your teachers, Larry.  I’m only doing this for your benefit.  Once I help them lay out an appropriate curriculum, I’m going to make it clear that I’ll only deal directly with you in the future.”

Permalink for this paragraph 0 “Isn’t that a little selfish?  You have so much to offer.”  Larry began a strategy of defensive building on the side of the board nearest him.

Permalink for this paragraph 0 “On the contrary, I believe that your teachers may be acting out of selfishness.  I will give them the benefit of the doubt,” Ghadshyk began placing his pieces all over the board, seemingly randomly, “but there is a good possibility that they have seen the change I have elicited in you in so short a time and want to use similar techniques to make themselves appear to be ‘super-teachers’.”

Permalink for this paragraph 0 “Well, if they become even a little bit like you in that regard, they really will be super-teachers.”  As they spoke, the two of them continued to play what appeared to be two disconnected games of Go.  “Compared to the rest of the teachers at the school.”

Permalink for this paragraph 0 “Compared to the rest of the teachers of humanity, I would suspect.”

Permalink for this paragraph 0 “Humans aren’t the only short-sighted creatures on the planet without respect for the possibilities of community over individuality.”

Permalink for this paragraph 0 “Don’t you think you’re taking the way they treated Merle a little out of context, Larry?”

Permalink for this paragraph 0 “Well, they accepted him as a dragon into their society according to their own rituals and customs, but then they treated him as though he were not worthy to so much as look at a dragon.  And they treated him like he hadn’t just proven his maturity at the proving ground.  They weren’t exactly being true to their word, or to logic.”

Permalink for this paragraph 0 “There remains among dragonkind, even to this day, a powerful prejudice against humans.  As you recall, I was taught by even the wisest elders that humanity could not be trusted, but more specifically that they did not have the mental capacity to comprehend dragon languages or philosophy.”

Permalink for this paragraph 0 “But you saw that they were wrong, as you taught Merle those very things.”

Permalink for this paragraph 0 “What I did, in their eyes, was to prove them wrong.  I had gone against their long-held beliefs, challenged the system, and shown them that thousands of years of their tradition and respected philosophies were not limited to being understood by dragons alone.  Many considered it an affront and an abomination.”

Permalink for this paragraph 0 “But oughtn’t they all have been able to see that logically it was just a matter of changing a couple of core ideas, that the rest of it was sound and stood up, even in the face of a difference of species?”

Permalink for this paragraph 0 “They ought to have, yes.  And a few, like Tyllym, did.  But if it’s hard to change the mind of a human only thirty or forty years old about the way things are and the way things ought to be done, just remember that we’re talking about creatures who had been doing things the same way for literally thousands of years.  If Merle had been there, among the dragons somehow, actually studying alongside them for the three centuries and more than he studied our teachings, perhaps they might have come to accept him.  But he used his magic, a magic that our traditions say should not be used willy-nilly, and did it all in under ten years.  I should have seen the folly of our ways and introduced him more gradually to the others.”

Permalink for this paragraph 0 “Don’t fault yourself, Ghadshyk.  As Tyllym said, your actions showed maturity and respect for life.  Just because the dragons who had not gained the true sight couldn’t see that in you doesn’t mean they’re right and you were wrong.  Of course, if they had had the true sight, they would have seen that Merle’s soul was the same as any of theirs.”

Permalink for this paragraph 0 “Unfortunately, only a very few dragons have the natural talents and instincts that made learning the true sight so easy for me.  Most dragons must study at least six hundred years at the exclusion of all other activities and studies, just to begin to see the truth.  This means putting off friendships, family life, other studies, explorations, and more in order to simply gain a new way of seeing the universe.  It is not a path for those who are not called to it.”

Permalink for this paragraph 0 “Were you called to it, Ghadshyk?”

Permalink for this paragraph 0 “Not the way others are.  I knew from an early age that it would be something I would excel at, but it did not call out to me the way the outside world and humanity always did.”

Permalink for this paragraph 0 “Is that why you left the enclave with Merle after only three years?  I thought it was more to do with the way the others were treating you.”

Permalink for this paragraph 0 “Every situation is more complicated than it seems at first.  Look for instance at you and I.  What at first was a little boyhood adventure became a friendship and led you to your passion for education and understanding.  And now what at first appeared to be a few short after-school study and story sessions has become a much more complicated endeavor.  Now I am drawn out of my home to perhaps change the face of human education, and you have been labeled a super-genius and placed upon a pedestal I fear may be too high for you to maintain your balance.  The lives of your teachers, your counselor, that man from the district, and probably many other people who you and they come in contact with, have been irrevocably changed by your appearance behind that plate over there.”

Permalink for this paragraph 0 “Would you like to be able to take it all back?”

Permalink for this paragraph 0 “The fact that it is complicated is not reason enough to want to take it all back.  That is part of what I am saying; every situation is complicated.  Getting through it is just a matter of opening your eyes to see that while you can match the complications with more complicated behavior of your own, there is also the simple response to be considered.  The one that you would have taken naturally had you remained blind to the complications inherent in the situation.  But your question is not irrelevant, and it goes both ways.”

Permalink for this paragraph 0 “Do you mean, would I take it back?  Not at all.  I have valued not only your companionship and the stories you’ve told me, but also the new perspectives you’ve opened up for me.  They are worth any difficulties that come up as a result.”

Permalink for this paragraph 0 “Are you sure?  I think there is one big complication which you have not yet noticed.”

Permalink for this paragraph 0 “What do you mean?”

Permalink for this paragraph 0 “Have you noticed anything strange about your clothes lately?”

Permalink for this paragraph 0 “Sure.  I figured it was just a side-effect of the transformation.”

Permalink for this paragraph 0 “So you’ve noticed?”

Permalink for this paragraph 0 “Ghadshyk, come one.  Look at me.  This shirt was red at the top of the stairs, just like it was when I put it on this morning.  Now it’s as blue as your scales.  And look at my skin!  It’s almost as blue as the shirt, which, I might add, no longer appears to be something I’m wearing, but just an extension of my skin.”  Larry crossed his arms and rubbed his hands up and down his biceps where the sleeves should have ended, “I can’t even feel a seam, it all just feels like my own skin.”

Permalink for this paragraph 0 “I’m sorry about that.  I hadn’t known…”

Permalink for this paragraph 0 “No, no, it’s okay.  I was wondering when you’d bring it up.”

Permalink for this paragraph 0 “I didn’t know how to bring it up.  You’ve been so distraught and distracted by the things going on at school that… well, and you hadn’t seemed to notice it.”

Permalink for this paragraph 0 “Well, if my disappearing, color-changing clothes hadn’t given it away, this would have.”  Larry swung his short but definite tail around into view, waving it back and forth.  “I’ve had a little bit of increasingly long tail since Wednesday or earlier.”

Permalink for this paragraph 0 “Right, well.  I thought that might tip you off.”

Permalink for this paragraph 0 “It might not have, since your furniture is all designed to accommodate a tail and wings, but it itched a little on Wednesday, and the first couple of times I scratched at it, I didn’t even realize I was touching the beginnings of my very own tail.”

Permalink for this paragraph 0 “Well, with what this appears to be leading to in mind, is your answer to the question the same?  You wouldn’t change a thing?”

Permalink for this paragraph 0 “If hanging out and being tutored by a dragon is cool, then actually turning into a dragon is like a dream come true.  Do you think I’ll be able to fly?”

Permalink for this paragraph 0 “I have no idea.  I’ve already contacted Merle about it.  He’s the one who created the enchanted stairwell for me, and he’s the only one who can answer questions about what’s happening for certain.”

Permalink for this paragraph 0 “When will he be here?”

Permalink for this paragraph 0 “I don’t know.  He didn’t respond at first.  Then I just got the feeling that he would be in touch as soon as he could.”

Permalink for this paragraph 0 “You were communicating with him telepathically?”

Permalink for this paragraph 0 “Sort of.  It’s like an extension of true sight.  Merle spent over a millennium trying to master the true sight, using his magical time tricks, but he’s still not very good at it.  But this form of it, seeing thoughts on the surface of a mind one is very connected to, is relatively easy.  Dropping thoughts carefully onto that surface is just a step away from that.”

Permalink for this paragraph 0 “Could you teach me how to do it?”

Permalink for this paragraph 0 “Do you have a spare millennium to learn it in?”

Permalink for this paragraph 0 “Well, if Merle could extend his life by learning your philosophies, I should be able to, shouldn’t I?”

Permalink for this paragraph 0 “That, we do not know.  Merle may be a special case.”