Chapter Four: The Lesson

“Ouch!” I winced, pulling back. My shoulder ached where the doctor touched it.

The professor scowled. “If you did not recoil, it would not hurt! Now stay put!” He commanded in his outlandish accent. Then he pressed his chubby fingers against my shoulder. He dug them in until I chomped on my cheek to repress the urge to scream. “Tell me, Genevieve, did that hurt?” His tone was condescending.

“Of course it did!” I yelled, boiling with anger. “What kind of idiot wouldn’t-”

“Jenny…” Papa warned forcefully. “So Professor Wash, what’s wrong?”

Tightly, he squeezed my shoulder again. “Definitely dislocated, probably in her sleep. I need to put it back in its socket and then sling the arm. Think she can handle it?”

Opposing my look of anxiety, Papa nodded. “You’ll be okay,” he murmured.

Professor Wash yanked my arm more forcefully than Sleepwalker; I cried out. He seemed to enjoy it too much. He rubbed it again mercilessly. “I’ll soon return.” With a smile, he stomped upstairs. He glared back at me. “And don’t touch it.”

“Must’ve been one hell of a dream,” Papa remarked, sitting next to me on my bed. “Are you going to tell me what set off these nightmares?”

I thought for a moment, anything to divert my attention from the pain in my shoulder. “It might’ve been my growing curiosity about my mother.”

“Look, Jenny, I know you want to know, but you know as much about the woman as I do. If you look for her, you’re going to get hurt. Look what me telling you did to you! You’re bruising your arm and dislocating joints in your sleep. I don’t want you to be disappointed if she’s untraceable.” He rested his head in his hands thoughtfully.

“Papa, I’m not a little girl anymore. I can handle a bit of hurt in my life. It does not matter if I can’t find my mother. I want to try at least.” I stated with finality. When the silence grew uncomfortable like dense moist air in a small room, I explained my dream to my father. I ended with the elucidation of how I was hurt in the dream.

“So, Sleepwalker, huh. You’ve got quite an imagination there. It’s just your mind wanting answers, you know. A wise man once told me that dreams are answers to the day’s questions. Perhaps he’s right. This only leaves me to wonder what my mind is wondering.” He grinned at me, attempting to lighten the moment.

Professor Wash in his stout rotundity plopped down the stairs to settle my arm into some contraption. His white goatee pointed and his eyebrows frazzled in frustration while he tied my arm in his ‘sling’.

The thing had a strap on my good shoulder, connecting to a pouch, which held my arm across my torso. “What can I do with this on?” I wondered rudely.

“You can rest it. You could also thank me,” He grumbled. “Load of work I do for an uncivilized, peasant, oafish child. Bah!” He stormed upstairs. Each step pounded above Papa’s head and mine. His complaints were still heard from the basement.

I sighed, “Papa, I’m no use in this. Could I just take it off?”

“No, It needs to heal properly. You will keep it on until Professor Wash says you can take it off. Until then, I suppose I can handle the inn on my own. I can’t have you hurting anything else. You’ll just study with Mary until you’re well enough to work again.” He ruffled my hair. “Your first lesson is today. Are you excited?”

I nodded. “Thank you for asking Professor Lester to teach me.”

He shrugged, standing. “I know that you’ve wanted a tutor for quite a while. The opportunity presented itself, so I went for it. You deserve it. Your talents are wasted if all you do is fold bed sheets. Now, get going you don’t want to be late, do you?” He climbed the stairs leaving me alone in the cellar.

Changing was awkward and painful as it put strain on my shoulder. When I finished, I splashed some water from the basin on my face. I trekked upstairs, wary of all edges. I passed through the lobby, reminding me of my dream. I cringed. Through the sitting room, I found the mahogany door with a topaz glass window, which led to my favorite room in the entire inn, the library. The must of dusty tomes was a comforting smell. Though, the stench of it became all too pungent as I neared the rear of the shelves.

Professor Lester was already there, reading and lounging. Amused, she remarked, “It looks like you have seen better days, Jenny. Sit down. Relax.” She laughed casually.

Sitting was another awkward motion. I maneuvered myself into the chair prudently. With an anxious smile, I stared up at the professor and hoped to begin.

“What do you want to learn?” She asked sincerely and slowly.

I was taken aback. “You’re asking me? I…don’t know. What could you teach me?” I cocked my head in curiosity. Why would she ask me? I don’t know anything.

When she nodded her head, I knew she’d decided. She questioned me in response, “Why do you want to learn? Shouldn’t you be happy enough owning your father’s inn someday? Why bother with studying and reading?”

For a moment, I faltered unsure. The question settled in my mind, appeared in script across my imagination. “I want to learn because I…I don’t want to run the inn. I want to travel and study and…I want to be a professor.”

“So why don’t you just run away and live your dreams? That’s how your father got his start,” She challenged. Her intentions rang clear from what I had heard before.

Heavily, I exhaled, “I couldn’t leave my father. I couldn’t leave this inn now even though I want to. My father is the only family I have. If I ran away, I would hurt him as my mother did. I can’t do that to him. He gave up too much for me.”

“Jenny, it’s okay to be selfish. Your father wants you to be happy more than he wants you to run the inn, but enough talking. Let’s continue to the lesson.” She pulled a book out from under her. “How much arithmetic do you know?”

Though I wasn’t found of arithmetic, I still absorbed the lesson, hoping for perfection in each stroke. With my headache, Professor Lester proved true to her word. I struggled through each problem she gave me.

She corrected me as I moved along slowly and unsurely. “What happened to the negative one?” A long tanned finger pointed to my work.

I moaned in frustration and slashed through my work. After a final dip in ink, I circled my answer.

Apathetically, the professor shook her head. “Try it again.” She slid another piece of paper toward me. She raised her eyebrows at me. “You seem agitated.”

“There’s a difference between reading it in a book to know it and actually using it,” I replied, rescanning the problem. I started over for the fourth time.

She stifled a laugh. “Were you expecting everything to come easily to you? That’s never going to be the case, Jenny. Now, redo it.” She directed my gaze to the paper.

My quill scribbled along, filling the void of silence. I pushed my work over to her.

When Professor Lester saw my answer, a wry smile formed on her lips. “Well done, Jenny. Do you know who that problem was intended for?”

I shook my head. My guess was someone in school much younger than I.

“Do not feel badly about taking so long. This is a problem that I struggled with when I studied under a professor named Ericson. This was on my final mastery test when I was twenty-six years old. I failed this exam. Professor Ericson told me that I would never amount to anything afterward. I looked at his problem and asked him to apply it to life. He couldn’t. So I am only going to say this to you once. You do not need to know how to do everything to succeed.” She ripped the piece of paper. “Impressive that it only took you four tries. It took me six tries and I was a decade your senior at the time.”

I nodded. “So what are we going to do next?” I queried excitedly. I wasn’t expecting her lesson to be so profound, only difficult.

She smiled at my enthusiasm. “What is your knowledge of history?”

“As much as I have read in books. Although, many say conflicting things.”

The professor pulled a notebook from her satchel.  She flipped to the first page. “This is my own research. Let’s begin. The thing about history is there are two eras. This is the era in which we live now and there is one era that is long forgotten. No one is quite sure how long this era was, but they had things that we cannot even dream of.”

“What happened then? Where did everything go?” I wondered.

Her voice became an enigmatic whisper. “That’s just it. No one knows. Most everything was lost. A few things remained. Stone writings, very few tombs with illegible hieroglyphic writing. Their culture, their appearance, their language is unknown. We may only assume that any intelligent life was an ancestor of ours. The curious thing that we know is that the magic of the world was more unknown to them than it is to us. In fact-”

“Mary, why do you clog the girl’s head with theories?” A professor whose name I did not yet know sat beside me. “All she should know is that the old era existed and we know little about it. It’s this life that matters. Why concern ourselves with things unreal and unknown? Ah, how rude of me, I am Professor Jerref of Borrone in the north. The little we know of the first era is their ancient history. For example, the teachings of Professor Hort, whom you spoke to briefly, are nothing more than an ancient religion.”

“Oh, Greek Mythology right?” I rested my head atop my good arm. My elbow burrowed into my thigh with the added weight of my head.

“Precisely. Damn you, Mary for monopolizing the girl. You know we are all waiting to teach her, test her. Well, those of us willing to teach a girl.” He teased the professor good-naturedly. He was a stringy man, tall and lean. His head was bald for the most with only small tufts of white scattered across it. “A decade or two ago, I was severely chastised for taking on a student who was a female. She was sharp of wit and her submission essay impressed me. I was not one to deny a bright student willing to learn.” His weathered rumpled face curved into a smile.

“Professor Lester,” I answered, even if I said it more to myself than anyone else. 

He raised a white eyebrow at her. “You do not wish to relinquish her, do you?”

“I’m not opposed to the views of several professors,” I stated. “But I must admit that I sympathize with Professor Lester a bit more in her downtrodden position.”

Curious, he nodded. “Interesting. Many women feel suppressed in recent days. Professor Lester is among them. She spends a great deal of time searching women’s influence in the First Era. She is much too modest about her findings too.” He studied my slashed work with a friendly grin. “I see that you are more inclined toward language studies than arithmetic.” His teeth had a grey tinge to them, like a smoker, like the Sleepwalker; I studied them hoping for another clue. He was probably just a smoker.

“It was a difficult problem. Do not give her a hard time.”

“Excuse me, Professor Jerref. Do you know of a…thing called the Sleepwalker?”

He squinted at me. His smiled disappeared. “I am not sure. Why do you ask?”

“Well, it was in my dreams talking to me. And he was able to do…this.” I gestured to my shoulder. “Is it possible that he’s real or at least if some believe he is that he’s found a way using old magic to manifest himself?”

“Interesting theories. I’ll look over my notes on magical beings. Perhaps one of these books holds the answer. You should always continue these dreams to see-”

Professor Lester interrupted, “Are you insane? Jenny was seriously hurt from this creature and you want her to give into the dreams? Who knows what would happen?”

Another professor joined to discuss. “See, this is why women are not suited to be professors. Women are too soft. They would think the health of this child before the research and discovery.” He sat next to Professor Lester. He was the dark-haired one who had bothered her at breakfast a day or two ago.

“I am in the middle of a lesson with a student. I would appreciate it if you would leave now, Andrew,” Professor Lester frowned. Her eyes were dark with anger.

“Professor Likens if you please, Mary,” He corrected arrogantly, standing.

“Professor Lester if you please. Now, leave so that I may continue my lesson.” She sighed in relief as he strutted away. “He thinks his methods are so good. I’ve seen tapeworms with feats larger than his. His largest discovery is his ego,” she muttered. “Jenny, are you ready to continue?” With my nod, she began to speak again. “Why am I teaching you history?”

I thought before I replied, “Well, we use the past to avoid future mistakes. When we don’t repeat those mistakes, we can develop as a society and as a people.”

“But you’re so young. What good does history do you?”

This one, I was prepared for. “I’m the future, the next generation. Teach my generation and the future will be better for everyone. The current leaders will only confuse everyone by implementing new ideals halfway through a regime.”

She nodded with a large grin. “Very good answer. Are you interested in history?”

As I noticed people focusing, I spoke in hushed tone. “Most topics interest me, but I must admit, you’ve ruined arithmetic for me.” I smiled, trying to lighten the mood.

She returned the gesture. “So what have you learned from Professor Hort’s loan?”

“I haven’t finished reading it yet. It’s quite interesting actually. Since I’ve nothing else to do with my injury, I hope to read it.” A loud noise crashed in my eardrums.

Professor Lester had dropped a book on the table in front of me. “Nothing to do, eh? Well, here is your assigned reading. The History of Arithmetic by Harvey Lane. It covers both of our topics today. The old era and basic mathematics. I expect it done by our next lesson. Then we’ll discuss it together. I think because of all our interruptions, we are done for the day unless you would like to talk about anything else?”

“Well, I was hoping you might help me with the Sleepwalker. It’s bothering me.”

Professor Lester reasoned, “I know, Jenny, but it’s a deep psychological problem. I can’t determine if it is your imagination or if there is something…surreal going on. I can tell you this though, if he is real, he is in disguise. And if he’s in disguise, he needs to blend in.” A sly smile parted her lips to reveal her smooth pearly teeth.

Following her deduction, I continued, “And if he needs to blend in, provided he’s at the inn, then he’s a… professor.”

Author's Note

Exciting. I know. The next chapter will move the plot a little further. You know, like out of the exposition? Yeah, that. Anyway, thanks for reading. Drop a comment if you're interested. Again, thanks for reading.