Dawn of Wonder (The Wakening, #1)

by Jonathan Renshaw

Aedan had never felt embarrassed about his imagination. Without it there was no magic. Whether or not they actually found the silver dwarf wasn’t important. The magic was in searching their whole world, lost in the wonder of it all. Without imagination, things were only as they appeared – and that was blindness.

Aedan smiled at the memory, and it was like fresh water, the first drops just beginning to wash away some of the salt. And it felt good, it felt right, for nothing grows in salt.

Without realising it, she was repeating the fault she had so recently lamented. Too fearful to intervene and hold back the tormenter, she was pleading instead with the victim to be more submissive. It was a solution that would resolve the conflict while entrenching the problem.

“Shut up,” Aedan said. He had no desire to be counselled or comforted. He just wanted to be left alone. Where was the value in misery when nobody would respect it? He wanted them to recognise the consuming bitterness of his young life, not festoon him with a string of cheap suggestions for brightening the scene.

“But there’s no other way in.” “Ah, there we have a topic for our first lesson. Can you detect the problem with what you just said?” Aedan ran through the words a few times and then smiled. “I should have added ‘that I know of.’” “Just so. You tried to establish a fact from a lack of evidence. Unless the inquiry has been so exhaustive as to explore every possibility, the lack of evidence should never be used to ground a statement of fact. Unlikelihood certainly, but no more. A prematurely assumed fact blocks further inquiry.”

Aedan shifted and glanced up. “He may have hurt me, but he stood up for me too. He was the one who taught me to track and hunt and move through the woods. He taught me better than Wildemar could ever hope to. I have lots of good memories of those days.” After saying this, he wondered why he had. Why shield his father? He wanted to repay him. Yet somehow he felt the strangest need to defend when somebody else took up the attack.

“I am not saying that, neither could I say it even if I knew it to be true. I am addressing a flaw in your reasoning – a fact constructed from the material of ignorance, a brick made of air.”

“You would think,” Aedan said, “that I’d feel good about this – I’ve grown while he, my old enemy, has shrunk. Yet all I feel is a terrible ache. I pity him, that he has been called by age to surrender his strength.”

The bitterness and poison slowly washed away. It was peace, deeper and broader than the starfields around him. It was belonging. It was freedom. Kneeling before the one who could only be the Ancient had not been the cost of freedom, but the means.

The confession of ignorance is crucial to the pursuit of knowledge. Another way of putting it is that those who pretend to know never will – they lack the humility to learn. What we have fallen upon is something truly mysterious – not a word we scholars like to use, but a fitting one. I don’t believe anyone understands what is happening or what is to come. If I had given a closed answer to each of your questions, I would not be worth listening to.”